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It seems that Cloud computing is already scaling its way down Gartner’s trough of disillusionment? For those not familiar with the Gartner Hype Cycle, the trough of disillusionment begins right after a technology has hit the “Peak of Inflated Expectations”.

Dan Lyons starts things off by agreeing with Richard Stallman about the risks surrounding cloud computing. Dan says:

“Just think of all the little hooks and Velcro straps a cloud service provider can create to keep you locked in. For one thing, they’ve got your data. But think also of all the business logic, the customized apps created uniquely for you. Just look at what Facebook does to make it extremely painful for users to move. That’s a tiny taste of the cloud.”

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If you want the latest releases of Google’s browser Chrome quicker than the official Beta updates, you can now download a special “channel switcher” executable from Google.

Run it on Windows and you’ll see a dialog where you can check the Dev option and hit the Update button. Restart Google Chrome, and in the Options -> About Google Chrome dialog, click the Update button.

Google explains that the Dev channel “lets you test the latest fixes and get access to new features as they’re being developed,” with automatic updates coming “every 1-2 weeks” (a release notes page is also available).

On the downside, these updates will also be less stable in comparison, as Google implies.

Careful if you have themes installed: running the updater killed my currently installed Chrome skin.

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Updates from the Open Source Census, the survey launched in April by OpenLogic to collect quantitative data on the use of open source software.

Up today 2,181 machines have been scanned with OSS Discovery, discovering over 767 unique open source packages and nearly 300,000 open source package inm    stallations. founding on average 57 unique packages per enterprise.

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Five years ago, on 24 September 2003, the European Parliament adopted some amendments to limit the scope of software patentability, listening to many European SMEs and associations. Today A global coalition of more than 80 software companies, associations and developers has declared the 24th of September to be the “World Day Against Software Patents“.

On 24 September 2008, the World Day Against Software Patents will provide volunteers with the opportunity to express the growing concerns of users, businesses and developers. The granting of software patents by patent offices around the world affects their freedom to innovate. The organisers expect 24h of activities across the globe. Volunteers will gather in front of patent offices to inform the general public of the problems underlying software patenting.
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BusinessWeek has a surprisingly non-hype-laden story about open source the other day. Very cool to see that more of the media is coming around to the points I’ve been making for a few years now. Specifically, while I’m a believer in open source driving customer value, I have never seen it as a panacea. I’ve always argued against oft-quoted myths about why the open source business model will crush the traditional software business model.

It’s refreshing to read quotes from open source leaders who “get it” because they’re living through the challenges of converting “Category B” users.

Marten Mickos is quoted in the BW story:

“Open source is not a get-rich-quick scheme. You have to have patience.”

While Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst is quoted:

“There’s a concern that our growth rate will slow. We’ve been in that funk the last couple of years.”

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Randall Kennedy’s blog at InfoWorld writes:

“Matthew Paul Thomas - a long-time critic of FOSS user interfaces in general, and Linux in particular - lamenting the lack of usability in FOSS projects.”

Here’s Matthew’s list of 15 reasons why FOSS projects lack usability:

1. • Weak incentives for usability
2. • Few good designers
3. • Design suggestions often aren’t invited or welcomed
4. • Usability is hard to measure
5. • Coding before design
6. • Too many cooks
7. • Chasing tail-lights
8. • Scratching their own itch
9. • Leaving little things broken
10. • Placating people with options
11. • Fifteen pixels of fame
12. • Design is high-bandwidth, the Net is low-bandwidth
13. • Release early, release often, get stuck
14. • Mediocrity through modularity
15. • Gated development communities

I’d urge you to read Matthew’s original post as it offers ideas on how to address the usability issues he raises.
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OpenLogic, an open source provider offering software and services for open source governance, conducted a study based on the answers to the questionnaire of 123 enterprise open source users. Only 38 percent of respondents - included systems and application architects, IT executives and managers and developers - said they were satisfied with the support they received from a commercial open source organization.

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Ounce Labs, a software risk analysis company, has uncovered two security vulnerabilities in the Spring Framework.

Considering how long Spring has been in use, and its popularity, how could such vulnerabilities remain hidden so long? After all, isn’t one of the hallmarks of open source the strong community vetting? Could it be that the shift towards single vendor-driven open source is making open source riskier?

What the Spring vulnerabilities are

Kudos to Ryan Berg, chief scientist and co-founder of Ounce Labs, and Ounce team for uncovering the issues and working with SpringSource to raise awareness.

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Six months ago OpenLogic announced the Open Source Census, an initiative to quantify the global use of open source in enterprises. On the 16th of April OpenLogic eventually launched the collaborative project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software, and recently announced the first results.

• Ubuntu is the top Linux distribution on machines scanned to date - Various versions of Ubuntu accounted for almost 50% of all Linux distributions installed on participating machines. Debian accounted for 14%; SUSE Linux accounted for 12% of install base; Fedora Core 7%.
• International interest in Census - 66% of machines scanned in the first two months were outside the U.S. U.S. participants represented about one third of participants. Active global participation in the Census came from areas such as Europe, Canada and Australia.
• Top open source packages - The top 5 installed open source packages were in order were, Firefox, Xerces, Zlib, Xalan and Prototype.

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When a Forrester Research representative emailed with the following survey highlights, I was more than a little surprised:

“Forrester released data today analyzing trend lines in enterprise open source usage in 2007. Among the key findings:

• Seventy percent of decision-makers responded that they don’t have interest or have no plans to adopt open source software;
• Only 23 percent of respondents said expanding their use of open source software was a priority;
• Security is the main concern around adopting open source software. Eighty-eight percent of respondents said it was an important or very important concern.”

The data is from 1,017 decision makers in North America & Europe. The survey was conducted in Q3 2007.
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