Project.net

[Jon maddog Hall]

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: maddog at li.org         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)

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