Three months into 2013 and no one has rundown how open source is fairing so far. LinuxInsider finally took the initiative with “Black Duck’s Dave Gruber And Peter Vescuso: Open Source Is Maturing.” Black Duck does not have its own open source software, instead the company helps software developers build better software faster through open source. The article is an interview with Dave Gruber the Software Director of Developer Programs and Peter Vescuso the Executive Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, asking them about how open source has matured and where it still needs growth. In the interview, the pair mentions they keep close watch on the open source community and have ideas on new trends. There are many rookies that Black Duck believe have dynamite projects, mostly with Javascript and a few with non-browser functionality. They keep track of projects via Github, SourceForge, and Bitbucket.
Because of open source, Vescuso and Gruber mention that the enterprise market is growing rapidly. To continue growth, Vescuso says:
We are trying to do some educating around that with regard with our own consulting organization. I’m saying, however, that it is a general market trend. At the same time, enterprises are engaging directly with communities. These organizations are looking to influence the direction. They want to make sure that their changes and patches, etc. are part of the mainstream so they are looking to become extensions of those organizations. The whole software development process has gone through a lot of very positive changes, all around open source technology and methods.
Open source is more viewed from a profit standpoint and the entire community has insights that used to regulated to a small niche. The biggest thing the open source community needs is to put all the pieces together and build on that foundation. Consumers, though, are still not aware they are using open source. Black Duck gives more of a general overview, but nothing about where open source is going immediately. LucidWorks, an open source search vendor, is headed down a path that delivers reliable enterprise, Cloud and Big Data applications to customers.
Whitney Grace, April 3, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Beyond Search