My essay explaining that software freedom means business value is now available from the Essays section.
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☂ Community Escrow Essay Posted
Posted on November 10, 2010 by Simon Phipps
My essay on Community Escrow, one of the differentiating features of open source software, is now available in the Essays section.
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☂ Open Core Essay Posted
Posted on November 5, 2010 by Simon Phipps
My essay on the open core business model is now available in the Essays section.
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☂ DRM Essay Posted
Posted on November 3, 2010 by Simon Phipps
My essay explaining why DRM (Digital Restriction Measures) are toxic to culture is now available in the Essays section.
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☂ “Rehost” T-Shirts Available
Posted on November 2, 2010 by Simon Phipps
There was such a lot of interest in the “Rehost and Carry On” graphic I mocked up for an article a while
back that I’ve just created a CafePress store with t-shirts, mugs and other stuff. They make perfect gifts 🙂
The image itself was created by adapting a public-domain design from Wikipedia, itself a representation of a second world war British information poster. Over here in the UK the design is pretty iconic, no idea about the rest of the world.
The message behind it is that, when the open source project you depend upon goes seriously bad and you can all see it, the four freedoms – to use software for any purpose, study the source code, modify it to better suit your needs and distribute the result – mean you can just take the source code, rehost it somewhere that the problem you are facing isn’t in the way and all carry on as if nothing had happened. Some may call it a fork (and yes, it is) but when everyone agrees apart from the one who is messing it all up, it’s also a rehost. So don’t panic. Keep Calm, Rehost and Carry On.
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Ⓕ ForgeRock: Announcing OpenIDM
Posted on October 27, 2010 by Simon Phipps
You’ll recall that we started ForgeRock near the start of 2010 to provide continuity for customers of Sun’s enterprise identity middleware products and from that to establish a new ISV creating an identity-oriented application platform, all as open source software. So far we have rehosted OpenSSO in the OpenAM project, and rehosted OpenDS in the OpenDJ project. Demand has been strong and we’ve established a diverse international customer base already, after only 9 months.
Today at GOSCON in Portland we have announced that we’ve taken the new step of releasing a completely new project. We felt there was no strong open source identity provisioning project, so we have launched OpenIDM and released full source code (under CDDL for compatibility with OpenAM and OpenDJ). As with the rest of ForgeRock’s business, there’s no lock-in, no “open core” upsell – just great software with passionate and skilled subscription services and a global network of partners.
OpenIDM’s architecture is uniquely flexible and developer-friendly. It is lightweight yet through a modular architecture enables a hybrid model of storing entitlement-carrying attributes for certification, audits and compliance. OpenIDM is fully open source and relies on well-established, proven components such as the workflow engine from OpenESB and the Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which allows connectivity to a large number of resources such as OpenDJ, Active Directory, SAP and more. ForgeRock can provide subscriptions now to customers requiring assistance with evaluations, proof-of-concept or migration projects.
There’s more about it in the press release and on the OpenIDM web site.
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☂ Compliance Essay Published
Posted on October 27, 2010 by Simon Phipps
My essay on open source license compliance for end users is now available in the essays section.
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★ Rehost And Carry On
Posted on October 5, 2010 by Simon Phipps
T-Shirts Now Available!
I spent the last two days in Brussels with many of the key participants in the OpenESB Community. OpenESB is a large software subsystem that conveniently allows all kinds of applications to communicate with each other across networks. It was created by Sun, but since the Oracle acquisition has, as the former Sun project leader (now at Google) wrote eloquently, languished in the decline reserved for projects with important customers which are nonetheless no longer wanted. There’s the soft sound of footsteps backing away to leave it in splendid, unannounced isolation.
The community around OpenESB is actually fairly active, and they (or, as it includes ForgeRock where I now work, perhaps I should say “we”) want OpenESB to stay around. But what do you do if the project is hosted somewhere under the control of a disinterested party? There’s no huge crime or disagreement to “justify” a fork and the code is still out there, but on the other hand any new plans really will need the source and the community presence hosted in a way that allows the interested parties to change and improve things without having to wait for weeks to get replies to requests and risk having them declined if they are deemed inconvenient.
That’s why the topic under discussion is not forking – the remaining community is not divided – but rehosting. That’s also how I would characterise what ForgeRock has done with OpenAM (formerly OpenSSO) and OpenDJ (formerly OpenDS). No conflict, no malice, just a desire by the remaining community to carry on in the aftermath of the main sponsor backing silently away.
[An expanded version of this post can be found on ComputerWorldUK]
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☆ New ventures: OpenDJ, FossAlliance
Posted on October 4, 2010 by Simon Phipps
Friday was a busy day full of news for me. After an exhausting day full of conference interventions on Thursday at Open World Forum (a total of five), Friday was the day that I was free to announce both OpenDJ and FossAlliance.
OpenDJ from ForgeRock
OpenDJ is the next addition to our product family at ForgeRock. It is a highly scalable directory server written entirely in Java. It deploys easily into any Java EE application server, is fully LDAP compliant and is rich in features. It meshes beautifully with our OpenAM access management, federation, authentication and authorisation server. It’s entirely open source and may be freely deployed with the confidence that ForgeRock have subscriptions available when needed.
If it sounds familiar, it may be becuase it is based on the OpenDS project Sun used to work on. My old colleague Ludovic Poitou has joined ForgeRock to look after it for us, and I am keen to see a co-developer community grow around it in addition to the substantial deployer community that is now free to migrate from OpenDS to OpenDJ. There’s plenty more about it in the press release and FAQ.
Open Source Consulting from FossAlliance
On a more personal note, over the last few months I have received more and more requests for advice and help from a range of organisations. I’ve joined with several trusted long-term friends to form a consulting alliance for and about free and open source software, called FossAlliance. It provides a “one stop shop” delivering a full range of help, from training to strategic consulting, policy-setting, migration, community engagement and everything else in between – even marketing. We’re able to deliver these services through our alliance of companies, carefully balanced to deliver the full range of engagements.
I’ve also received a large number of speaking engagement requests and now work with a facilitator to arrange engagements. Hopefully these changes will help make life smoother without affecting the building momentum.
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☂ Copyright Aggregation Essay
Posted on September 16, 2010 by Simon Phipps
My essay on copyright aggregation in open source projects has finally moved to the Essays section of the web site; future updates and edits will happen there.
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