The Enterprise Open Source Blog

5 Ways an Open Source Governance Process Can Improve Your Organization

Posted by Greg Bell on January 13th, 2012 in Governance

Is one of your resolutions for the new year to create an enterprise open source governance process for your organization, or review and update your existing governance process? If your organization doesn’t already have an open source governance process, this should definitely be on your list of goals for 2012. Likewise if you have a governance process that’s outdated, incomplete, or inconsistently implemented throughout the organization.

As with any business process change, it can be difficult to find the time, inspiration, and support from others necessary to get started with creating or updating your company’s open source governance process. If you find yourself in this predicament, now is the perfect time to review the many ways an effective governance process can positively impact your organization. Here’s a list of five benefits to help motivate you and your team to get started.

3 Steps to Jumpstart Your Open Source Policy

Posted by Greg Bell on December 12th, 2011 in Governance

Developing and maintaining an open source policy is the foundation of an effective enterprise open source governance processes. An open source policy that is current, comprehensive, adaptable, and continually reviewed will help guide your organization to increased open source usage where appropriate while reducing potential open source license violations.

When was the last time you reviewed and updated your company’s open source policy? If it’s been a year or more – or even worse, if you don’t yet have a formal, written open source policy – make a resolution to start the new year with a renewed focus on creating or updating your policy and aligning your open source governance processes with it.

Fortunately, there are a ton of great articles, examples, and suggestions available to help guide your efforts. Here’s a list of three easy steps to jumpstart your open source policy, plus a whole bunch of free policy and governance resources to help you get stated on the right track.

Open Source Compliance in the Supply Chain

Posted by Greg Bell on July 21st, 2011 in Legal & Compliance

Open source is an integral part of almost every embedded consumer product, but companies using open source to build embedded products face significant challenges as they work to comply with open source licenses without eroding already thin margins. It’s critical for embedded vendors to build open source compliance activities into existing development and supply chain processes in order to avoid dealing with licensing issues at the last minute, or — even worse — after a product has shipped.

Give Your Open Source Policy a Tune-Up

Posted by Greg Bell on June 30th, 2011 in Governance

If your company is using open source software — and odds are it is — it likely has at least an informal policy about how and where open source software can be used. But whether your company has informal guidelines or a detailed, enterprise-wide open source policy, it’s important to conduct periodic reviews to ensure that your policy is aligns with internal goals and addresses ongoing changes in open source licenses and technologies.

Participate in the 2011 Future of Open Source Survey

Posted by Greg Bell on March 24th, 2011 in Open Source Trends

The Future of Open Source Survey is back, and OpenLogic is proud to once again be a survey collaborator. Just like last year, the North Bridge team will present the survey results at the OSBC conference, but first we want to hear your thoughts open source!

Real-Time Searching of Big Data with Solr and Hadoop

Posted by Greg Bell on January 12th, 2011 in The Cloud

Hadoop and HBase make it easy to store terabytes of data, but how do you scale your search mechanism to sift through these mountains of bits and retrieve large result sets in a matter of milliseconds?

How Do You Stay On Top of Open Source Releases and Security Patches?

Posted by Greg Bell on December 9th, 2010 in Support

There’s no shortage of reasons to use open source software for your mission-critical projects, but one of the benefits of open source that sometimes gets overlooked is the frequent release schedule — open source projects typically fix bugs and release new features much, much faster than commercial software companies. However, this “release early and often” approach can make it difficult to stay on top of the most recent open source security updates and version releases.

Top 10 Lessons Learned from Deploying Hadoop in a Private Cloud

Posted by Greg Bell on November 17th, 2010 in The Cloud

Hadoop, HBase, and friends are built from the ground up to support Big Data, but that doesn’t make them easy. Just like with any other relatively new and complex technologies, there are some rough edges and growing pains to manage. We’ve learned some hard lessons while deploying HBase tables containing billions of rows and dozens of terabytes on OpenLogic’s Hadoop infrastructure.

Signup for Online JBoss Training

Posted by Greg Bell on October 29th, 2010 in Support

Want to learn how to install, configure, and administer JBoss? We’re offering online JBoss training from Tuesday, November 9 through Friday, November 12.

Learn About the Ins and Outs of Open Source Audits

Posted by Greg Bell on October 25th, 2010 in Scanning & Provisioning

As enterprise use of open source software approaches 100%, it’s becoming more imperative than ever for businesses to determine what open source software is being used, establish open source policies, and ensure open source license compliance. Litigation, loss of revenue, and compromised bargaining position are some of the risks associated with lack of open source license compliance. As a result, open source audits are becoming common requirements in a wide variety of scenarios, including mergers and acquisitions, financing, and distribution deals.