Brian Prentice

For those of you not familiar with commercial open source software – which I will now refer to as COSS (hey, I’m an analyst, it’s my job to create acronyms) – it is essentially a business model loosely tied to the concept of “freemium.” On one hand a vendor provides a free, open source offering [...]

[Read more →]

Why is it that Open Source Software hasn’t had as big an impact in the area of business applications as it has for infrastructure software? It’s a question that regularly circulates around Gartner.
[note: by "business application" I'm referring to the acronym-laden category of software that encompasses an organization's business processes - things like ERP, SCM, [...]

[Read more →]

I have long held the view that the Open Source license agreement has been one of the most disruptive ideas to have hit the IT industry. The core concept of providing non-discriminatory modification and re-distribution rights within a copyright agreement has been, and continues to be, as great an innovation as any single piece of [...]

[Read more →]

Have you been noticing that just when an open source project starts building some momentum – things like mySQL, WebTide or Spring – along comes some cashed up proprietary vendor to buy it ? Even the venture capitalists are in on the act! Companies like New Enterprise Associates, Accel, and Benchmark Capital – organizations noted [...]

[Read more →]

Australian’s take pride in several things – it’s flora and fauna, it’s successful actors and the fact it’s the only place on Earth where they enjoy eating Vegemite. Originally brought to the world’s attention in the 80’s Men At Work hit “Land Down Under,” it is best described as a foul-smelling dark brown paste which [...]

[Read more →]

Recently, Google was granted US Design Patent No. 599, 372. Ostensibly, this was to protect the design “innovation” of Google’s home page from blatant rip offs.
As I’ve noted, the design innovation of Google.com is basically the white space. That makes this a Seinfeld patent – it’s a patent about nothing. But let’s for a moment [...]

[Read more →]

If I went into an Apple Retail Store and got irate with staff at the Genius Bar because there were no Windows-based PCs being demonstrated you’d think I’d was loco. So I am at a loss to understand all the commotion about Apple’s rejection of the Google Voice iPhone application.
When dissecting the name “Apple App [...]

[Read more →]

Last week I had a chance to speak to Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network (OIN), about their recent acquisition of 22 “Linux-focused patents.” The objective of this purchase, as stated in their press release, was to avert “the prospect of these patents being placed in the hands of non-practicing entities …whether or not [...]

[Read more →]

The top shelf of the closet in my home office can be affectionately described as my digital device graveyard. It serves a dual purpose. First, it allows me to avoid the realization that I probably wasted my money buying these things in the first place as I can pretend that an emerging market for vintage [...]

[Read more →]

Google – an organization deeply committed to reforming our broken patent system – has just taken advantage of that very same system to get a patent for…well…nothing.
Google has just been granted US Design Patent No. 599, 372 S for a “graphical user interface for a display screen.” It looks like this:

Note – the design patent [...]

[Read more →]