Business

CALL TO ACTION: Let’s stop the spill the open source way

Each day as I drive to work and hear the radio updates on the unfortunate situation in the Gulf of Mexico, my fears and concerns compound considerably. » Read more

14 CommentsPosted 26 May 2010 by Tony O'Driscoll

Five questions about authenticity and the open source way with Jim Gilmore

A few months ago, I had the opportunity to meet Jim Gilmore, co-author (with Joseph Pine) of the book Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want. I first read the book a few years ago, and it really struck a nerve for me—these guys were on to something.

So I convinced Jim to subject himself to a Five Questions interview about the place where authenticity and the open source way intersect. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 25 May 2010 by Chris Grams

GPL for Artificial Life?

The Economist is right on top of the story of the first fully synthetic life-form. For those of you who may have missed the announcement last week, Craig Venter and Hamilton Smith, the two American biologists who unravelled the first DNA sequence of a living organism (a bacterium) in 1995, have pushed the envelope again, demonstrating the first successful boot-up of a synthetic bacterium. » Read more

0 CommentsPosted 24 May 2010 by Michael Tiemann (Red Hat)

Show me the money...

Every day I come to work, I get excited about the possibilities of the power of participation: to solve complex problems, to share knowledge, to bring people together. Opensource.com has been a great vehicle for me to learn and participate in a dialog about the power of open source principles–-especially when applied beyond software. » Read more

11 CommentsPosted 24 May 2010 by Jim Whitehurst (Red Hat)

Rethinking office design

First, a confession. Despite the hip corporate persona of Red Hat, when I first joined the company everyone had typical cubicle farm workspaces. Sure, there were hints that the company aspired to Google-like coolness: a foosball table, a game room, lots of free junk food. But in our daily office-worker lives, we were holed up in a standard maze of shared cubicles. Our idea of “open office design” was to persuade our cubemates to leave the sliding doors open. » Read more

12 CommentsPosted 20 May 2010 by Rebecca Fernandez (Red Hat)

Open Your World forum | Event details

The Open Your World Forum is scheduled for Thursday, May 27th, beginning at 8:45 a.m. EDT.  Bookmark this page for the latest information on the day's schedule, speakers, and presentation topics.  Be sure to register for the event if you haven't already done so. » Read more

4 CommentsPosted 19 May 2010 by John Adams (Red Hat)

MindTouch CEO on open standards, culture, and working at Microsoft

(...hint: it might not be what you expect!)

I recently had the pleasure of interviewing Aaron Fulkerson, founder and CEO of MindTouch. Before founding the company in 2005, Fulkerson (and co-founder Steve Bjorg) worked in Microsoft's advanced strategies division. After leaving Microsoft, the duo recognized a growing need for a scalable, easy-to-use open source collaboration platform for business and focused their efforts on a pet project, Deki Wiki. Within three years, Deki Wiki was rated as one of the Top 5 OSS projects by SourceForge.net and ultimately grew to become the company known as MindTouch today. MindTouch offers a robust enterprise collaboration platform with more than 16 million users and 400,000 web visits each month.

» Read more

6 CommentsPosted 18 May 2010 by John Adams (Red Hat)

Open marketing: What does it really mean?

The Open Source Way book has a section on Open Marketing, and I'll be honest: I have my doubts.

I will grant that the American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large."

But in the real world? It seems to me that marketing is often better defined, "the art of convincing others they have a need for something... for which they have no need." » Read more

8 CommentsPosted 17 May 2010 by Rebecca Fernandez (Red Hat)

Think laterally

When Thomas Friedman enumerated 10 "flattening forces" in his book The World Is Flat, he declared that force #4, Open Source, was the most powerful and disruptive of all. New discoveries in nature suggest that Friedman's assessment may be more profound (and more consistent) than even he imagined.

» Read more

5 CommentsPosted 13 May 2010 by Michael Tiemann (Red Hat)

Meetings: Worthwhile or waste of time? Here's how to find out.

The pointless, endless office meeting. We've all been stuck in one. And if your department is like most, there's no transparent means to determine which conference room gatherings are highly productive and which are taking valuable time away from the business.

So here's a simple technique to hold your co-workers and management accountable for the meetings they call. » Read more

7 CommentsPosted 10 May 2010 by Rebecca Fernandez (Red Hat)