Open Source Projects Form Open Solutions Alliance

Published: March 1, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Just after The Unix Guardian went on hiatus two weeks ago, a bunch of companies behind various open source software projects decided to band together to form the Open Solutions Alliance. The OSA is a non-profit group that will help drive the adoption of open source software into corporations.

The OSA organization is not to be confused with the Open Source and Industry Alliance, which was formed a number of years ago to promote open source software and which doesn't seem to be very active at this point.

Adaptive Planning, Centric CRM, CollabNet, EnterpriseDB, GroundWork, Hyperic, JasperSoft, Openbravo, SourceForge, SpikeSource and Talend are the founding members of the OSA, and they span the gamut of software providers above the operating system level, providing distributed development environments, ERP suites, CRM and business intelligence software, systems management tools, databases, and supported open source stacks that combine some of the most popular programs. Immediately after its launch, server maker Unisys, which resisted the Linux and open source wave for many years but which has recently caught on, joined OSA as the first platform provider. The usual suspects--IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Sun Microsystems, and maybe even Dell are sure to follow suit.

The initial focus for OSA members will be to ensure the interoperability of their various programs--something that is necessary to spur the adoption of open source alternatives to closed source or in-house developed applications and tools.

Unlike Open Source Development Labs, which was recently folded into the Free Standards Group to create the Linux Foundation (see the story from a month ago for more on that), the OSA is not focused on any one particular product, or even solely the companies that stand behind open source projects like the initial vendors that formed the group do. Any platform provider that sells or supports or in some other way gets open source technologies is eligible to join the group.

Which means even Microsoft might give it a whirl just so it can attend the meetings and see what the competition is up to. Keep your enemies closer, after all. Microsoft's deep pockets could end up fueling the marketing campaigns that help promote the use of open source software among companies large and small--and that would be truly ironic, considering how little Microsoft cares for the open source software idea. It seems more likely that the big server makers and the commercial Linux operating system providers will join the OSA and foot that bill long before Microsoft does. But, stranger things have happened. Look at the Microsoft-Novell Linux distribution deal, just to name one.

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