In our first annual survey of our membership and other open source software and services companies, the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) found much optimism despite a murky economy, and a surprisingly high level of collaboration by open source software and services companies.

Anyone who's ever been involved in the beginning of a nonprofit consortium will tell you that the first year is the hardest. The initial high of coming together in the name of a shared cause gives way to the drudgery of meetings, working groups and member politics. The realities of exe...

There's been a lot of pubic discussion recently about what it means to be open. While the OSI has published the Open Source Definition, which lists 10 attributes of what it means to be 'open source,' commercial entities have emerged that are described as 'hybrid' models. Many companies...