Hi, A long time friend of mine, Peter Winston of ICS (old-timers will remember that Peter produced the Xhibition conference on the X Window System and also provided support for Motif and other X related products) has recently bought a "Project and Portfolio Management" (PPM) system and made it Open Source Software, under a "commercial open source" license (yes, you can pull down the source code for free).
I suggested to the Nashua GNHLUG that they invite him to speak on his decision to do this and the results and issues he found. When I looked up his web site to see the status of the project, I found this white paper by him, and I was impressed by his clarity and the strength behind his statements despite this being his first real foray into "Commercial FOSS" as we know it. His point about why large proprietary projects failing to "catch on" is well stated, and might be worth while printing off and sticking under your purchasing department's nose. You might want to take a look at his paper at: http://www.project.net/root/files/WhyCommercialOpenSource.pdf Here is a local, smaller shop used to selling proprietary products, and actually taking a closed-source proprietary product that they bought and making it open. By the way, if you are into project management software, I can tell you that Project.net is one of the more complete and comprehensive, distributed solutions I have seen in a long time. md -- Jon "maddog" Hall Executive Director Linux International(R) email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 80 Amherst St. Voice: +1.603.672.4557 Amherst, N.H. 03031-3032 U.S.A. WWW: http://www.li.org Board Member: Uniforum Association Board Member Emeritus: USENIX Association (2000-2006) (R)Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds in several countries. (R)Linux International is a registered trademark in the USA used pursuant to a license from Linux Mark Institute, authorized licensor of Linus Torvalds, owner of the Linux trademark on a worldwide basis (R)UNIX is a registered trademark of The Open Group in the USA and other countries. _______________________________________________ gnhlug-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://mail.gnhlug.org/mailman/listinfo/gnhlug-discuss
