OStatic

As the saying goes, few things in life are certain except death and taxes. To that, we should add another certainty: that the amount of data that you need to store and manage will continue to grow at a rapid pace. One way to deal with this profusion of data is with clustered storage, like Gluster.

Gluster is an open source storage platform for working with large amounts of data (terabytes all the way up to petabytes) that ties together everything from the operating system layer to filesystem and management interface. To get a deeper view on Gluster, we asked Anand Babu Periasamy, CTO and co-founder of Gluster, to describe the technology and give a glimpse into the project's roadmap.

A lot of people are gloom and doomy about the prospects for free and open source software in the cloud. Some even argue that software as a service or cloud computing should be avoided, but you can't fix the market, you can only adapt. It's good to see that some folks in the FLOSS community get this, like Dries Buytaert.

Buytaert, creator of Drupal and founder of Acquia is taking a different tact to supporting open source in the cloud: Building a business around it. While some Software as a Service (SaaS) platforms are built around lock-in, there's no reason why a company can't reject that model and carry the values of free and open source into the SaaS/cloud computing model. Buytaert argues that it's time for FLOSS advocates to redefine the SaaS model:

If you're fortunate enough to live near New York City, you can catch Eben Moglen at the NY Chapter of the Internet Society (ISOC-NY) on Friday, talking about Freedom in the Cloud. Specifically, Moglen will be talking about the implications of cloud computing on software freedom, privacy, and security.

Cloud computing does pose quite a few challenges for software freedom. In addition to software licensing, users have to worry about privacy, data portability, and more. Just having the source is no longer enough, when users do have the source. Software freedom in the cloud is possible, however. For example, as this report of a talk by Aaron Williamson of Software Freedom Law Center points out, the Identi.ca microblogging service is an example of how to provide a cloud service and maintain user freedom:

February is a great time to visit Barcelona -- the sights, the culture, the history, and of course, the Mobile World Congress. As an astute mobile enthusiast, you've probably noticed that open source platforms, applications and services are cropping up all over the mobile industry. It's no secret that a few of us here are fond of Funambol, thanks to its cross-platform functionality and community involvement.

At the Mobile World Congress, Funambol will unveil new products to interest mobile users and developers.

Last Friday, Sam's Buffer Overflow run-down featured a piece by Walter Koenning discussing why campaigning hard for Linux on the desktop is selling open source -- and the operating system -- short.

I agree with Vincent Danen that wondering whether Linux is ready for the desktop is silly, even irrelevant -- wider usage tends to foster growth in related sectors (think cloud computing and virtualization). But Koenning's made a particularly strong (and strangely parallel) point that encouraging non-technical end users to use open source software is a great way to ease vendors into supporting non-proprietary platforms.

Open source collaboration software vendor MindTouch announced today that its widely-used enterprise collaboration platform is now available in the cloud. This is great news for businesses who want a service comparable to Microsoft SharePoint, but don't want the headaches of proprietary software or the hassles of a lengthy installation process.

If you're a regular reader of OStatic, then you know this move is one of series of releases MindTouch has launched to drive the future of collaborative networks. Following the creation of the MindTouch Creative Knowledge Base and the MindTouch Collaborative Intranet, a move to the cloud was the next logical step.

The phrase all-in-one always puts me on edge. Perhaps that shouldn't be the case any more -- there are ever increasing numbers of software and hardware products offered in group packages, and most, if not wonderful, deliver what's claimed on the box. But instead, the first association that comes are the old school printer, copier, and fax combinations. They generally did one task well (depending on the manufacturer) and the other features didn't quite live up to even lowered expectations. The manufacturer was a huge factor in which functions worked well. Even with apparently sound off-label fax modems and drivers, printer manufacturers couldn't quite make it all work together. They deal mostly with printers, after all.

Open-Xchange's collaboration with Rack-Soft brings an all-in-one solution that's an actual solution. The partnership combines Open-Xchange's open source groupware with Rack-Soft's telephony products.

Let's face it, open source software companies and projects have a wide variety of innovative platforms and methods to drum up awareness, business, and interest in development for the projects they create and support. The problem is, it's not always easy to quantify how much interest and awareness (or ultimately, new contributors, users, or customers) result from any specific method.

Social networks are a great way to reach out to people with specific interests and start the chain of word of mouth recommendation. But they just aren't the traditional sort of public relations drives or advertising many organizations are used to. If an organization understands this, there's a lot to gain from social network outreach -- and open source software, a model that works based on input from the wider community, is in a position to benefit even more.

There's just that matter of metrics -- will the push yield good results? Engine Yard, a Ruby on Rails hosting and services provider, found it's well worth the effort.

While there have been some questionable strategies playing out on Wall Street recently, and the Securities and Exchange Commission continues to scrutinize the legalities of a few high frequency trading techniques, former NYSE chairman William H. Donaldson's statement to New York Times holds true: if an individual investor can't keep up with larger brokerages, it's a major disadvantage.

Marketcetera feels that open source software is an ideal way for smaller brokerages to keep up with -- and perhaps outmaneuver -- their larger competition. Marketcetera CEO Graham Miller sees open source hosted/SaaS (software as a service) trading platforms as having particular potential for investors using high frequency trading methods. And Miller isn't the only one who believes this -- the evidence is vibrantly illustrated by Sky Road LLC's integration of Marketcetera's open source, automated trading platform into its SaaS financial services product line.

When I heard that Funambol was rolling out an open source mobile cloud sync service for mobile VoIP users, I'll be honest -- I wasn't thinking about the open code, or about how much easier it would make contacting people worldwide over a diverse array of devices. I immediately thought of my dad.

He could very well be just like your dad, or mom, or you. He likes gadgets, and if the gadgets beep, flash, or vibrate at a random enough interval to make my mom grind her teeth or clutch her ears, he likes them even more. However, he's got two things working against him -- he's not blessed in the patience department (like my mom, it would seem) and he's got arthritic hands to the point of immobility. As such, his work-issued Blackberry wasn't nearly as useful as his old Palm Pilot when it came to being an electronic memory. It was merely a phone he couldn't dial all that easily.

He was delighted when I showed him Skype, and was flattered when all these young women he didn't know kept calling. The novelty gave way to annoyance when he realized he must know some people on Skype, but finding and connecting with them took patience.

New mVoIP users start with a blank address book, and many mVoIP services can't sync existing contact information from cell phones or other address books. Funambol's mVoIP enables service providers to allow syncing from address books and social networks -- so that an address change made anywhere (say, a contact's Facebook profile or the Funambol web portal) updates all associated devices.