Open Source Business

Openads, formerly known as phpAdsNew, is one of the more successful open source development projects. Its online advertising software is used by many thousands of domain owners who want to make a profit on their Web content by selling advertisements. Scott Switzer, the project leader, recently went commercial with the project, securing $5 million in venture capital and a new CEO straight from Skype. The key to the company’s success? “I have really seen the value in what a community can give to a software project,” he says.

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POS System - MerchantOS is based on open source software. It’s web based, easy to use and affordable. At MerchantOS they make retail software easy.

Mindbridge didn’t start out as an open source company — far from it. “We had a predominantly Microsoft-oriented shop,” says David Christian, Mindbridge CTO. But the company, which at the time offered an “intranet in a box” application, began hosting the software for its clients. “That required us to get a good handle on Linux, because Linux was the only inexpensive, cost-efficient way of handling that in a scaled environment,” Christian says. “And I didn’t want to add Microsoft to our customers’ overhead.” The more Christian worked with Linux, the more he liked it. And, as they say, the rest is history. (more…)

The idea is floating around again: Let’s make a special Linux distribution for women! We’re smarter than that, aren’t we? I say, let’s spare ourselves and the world yet another pointless and less-than-useful version of Linux. (more…)

Space enthusiast and engineer Paul Wooster wants to open the source code for outer space, because, he says, it should be easier for everyone who wants to contribute to human activities in space to do so, not just people with advanced degrees in rocketry. To that end, Wooster has established DevelopSpace, a community based on open source philosophies, designed to attract anyone interested in sharing their skills in order to make more space exploration possible. (more…)

In the world of Linux, many things have changed in the last decade. The operating system itself has grown up, and is no longer an “upstart.” But one mainstay of the Linux community, the Linux user group (LUG), appears to be on the decline in some areas. Attendance is down, LUG presidents say, and some groups have stopped meeting. Does this mean we don’t need LUGs anymore? (more…)

Universal Electronics Inc. (UEI), best known for its line of universal remote controls, also sells SimpleCenter, an all-in-one application for Windows PCs that ties together in a single interface all of a user’s multimedia devices and software. It streamlines the management of photos, music, and movies, and even acts as a Universal Plug and Play server so you can stream your files to any device on your home network, while the software converts files to the proper format for the device. Recently, UEI released the basic version of SimpleCenter under the terms of the GNU General Public License in order to take advantage of the community’s ability to make the software better faster than the company can do it alone. (more…)

Dr. Tomislav Svoboda spends a lot of time working to improve the plight of the homeless in Toronto. He began his residency by working at the Seaton House, Canada’s largest homeless shelter, which cares for about 700 men. Svoboda and Seaton House director Art Manuel are transforming the way the homeless receive services in this city. In their quest to provide the best care possible and to fulfill their vision to end the problem of homelessness in Toronto, Svoboda and Manuel aren’t afraid to challenge paradigms by using non-traditional tools, like a small glass of wine and a full-blown open source development project.The homeless in Toronto are mostly single men from 20 to 70, and the vast majority of them suffer from alcoholism, mental illness, and all the other medical issues one might expect to go along with the condition. In the throes of their illnesses, they tend to be devoted to one thing: the bottle. Many homeless outreach programs have failed because potential clients were unwilling or unable to leave the alcohol behind long enough to enter the doors of treatment programs and overnight shelters in a sober condition. In a well-publicized 1996 case that spurred many grassroots reform efforts, three homeless men froze to death on the streets of downtown Toronto because a shelter turned them away. (more…)