Communia published its Public Domain Manifesto. The manifesto identifies the public domain concept with respect to historical development and more urgently, its relevance to culture today.
I think it makes an important statement, in terms of offering a level, common understanding that could be used widely across society, government, and business. Early in the manifesto, it [...]

Ad hoc social networks: right now that’s what I’m calling the disruption Google Wave will wreak. I’m looking forward to it leaving the invite-only preview. It’ll be like kudzu sprouting everywhere, from its quiet persistance in the nooks and crannies of the Web, right on through to the most popular gathering spots.
Google Wave, or maybe [...]

I continue to be concerned with what I once called digital cultural amnesia. Though in reflecting on the word “amnesia” I no longer think it’s the best way to express the problem. Lynne Brindley, chief executive of the British Library, writes about the phenomenon in The Observer.
Too many of us suffer from a condition that [...]

The TEC Blog went live today. It’s been quite a while in the works but finally TEC is publishing its own analysis and corporate blog. My TEC colleagues and I will use it to regularly discuss enterprise software and selection issues, and augment the other research/articles we publish.
Although I’ll continue to blog here at pundit.ca, [...]

A long running debate at TEC, is it a good idea or bad idea to enable public visitor comments on our research? I’m not referring to blogs, which by their very nature are intended to enable commentary. I’m thinking in the context of analyst firm research. I think there is a lot of room here [...]

Finally. TEC (the company I work) for launched its redesigned web site. Sometimes a web site redesign can be such a breath of fresh air. In spite of many people’s best and sincere efforts our old site didn’t seem to convey the services the company offered. Of course part of that is that businesses evolve [...]

Technology Evaluation Centers (TEC) has been working on a very large software selection project for an electric utility. We only take on a few specific projects a year (though lots of people/companies use our analysis tools and data for their software selection projects). After our team mapped the utility’s business processes, quite diligently, to 6654 [...]

The latest draft of the third GPL version is provoking a lot of argument, posturing, and controversy. I’m glad its careful drafting process is taking the amount of time it is. I think it’s useful to widen the sphere of public awareness on the issues the license addresses. Some of the most controversial issues, such [...]

Yesterday I was editing a document for a project in which we’re helping an organization select its ERP system. The document covered practical reasons that the organization’s selection steering committee should take part in reference site visits. In other words (and this is a regular practice our company recommends) while evaluating the right system, the [...]

I’d like to comment quickly on the net neutrality issue. The Web thus far is a system–that from the beginning–essentially anyone could access in a like manner. A few companies have a strong interest in changing that though, in making, what I understand, are something like tiers of accessibility. Considering the life and social changes [...]

A few articles about open source database growth made the rounds recently. Mostly these discuss a rise in growth, for example the EnterpriseDB survey notes
More than half of all survey respondents indicated that their respective companies had either already deployed an open source database or were more likely to deploy an open source database than [...]