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The software industry: So efficient, we invented shelfware

Have you considered helping customers to stop overspending?
9
Alan Pelz-Sharpe, 22 Apr 12:06

Are you being robbed of sleep by badly designed servers?

Sysadmin Blog Mornings, nights, they all blur into one for our man Trevor
58
Trevor Pott, 22 Apr 06:31

British bookworms deem Amazon 'evil'

Something for the Weekend, Sir? Chuck away your e-reader - everyone else is
127
Alistair Dabbs, 19 Apr 11:00

Bitcoins: A GIANT BUBBLE? Maybe, but currency could still be worthwhile

Lessons from tulip-hoarding Dutch speculators of 1634
96
Tim Worstall, 15 Apr 13:04

CIOs: Are you your CEO's business partner or their GIMP?

CIO Blog A Machiavellian guide for the modern CIO
24
Warren Burns, 14 Apr 21:02

I salute Lady THATCHER - Shoreditch's SILICON GODMOTHER

¡Bong! Investor Steve directs the baroness's funeral
32
Steve Bong, 12 Apr 11:44

Columnist Roll

Matt Asay

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Matt Asay is vice president of corporate strategy at 10gen, the MongoDB company. Previously he was SVP of business development at Nodeable, which was acquired in October 2012. He was formerly SVP of biz dev at HTML5 start-up Strobe (now part of Facebook) and chief operating officer of Ubuntu commercial operation Canonical. Asay is an emeritus board member of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

John Lennon's lesson for public-domain innovation

Open ... and Shut IP protection hurting, not helping, US and UK
While I've never thought John Lennon's Imagine offered a particularly useful prescription for peace, I am starting to wonder if it might not suggest something better than free and open-source software. When Lennon sings that if we can just "imagine no possessions" we'll end up with "all the people sharing all the world," he's …
18 Feb 08:03

Data scientists: Do they even exist?

spiders crawl through tunnel of binary numbers
Open ... and Shut Data data everywhere, but not a drop to shrink
Big Data is all the rage. Now if only someone had to clue what to do with it. According to a new survey of senior executives by Big data consultantancy NewVantage, Big Data is "top of mind for leading industry executives," but these same executives struggle to find the right people to analyse their data. In fact, while 70 per …
13 Feb 10:24

The business mullet: Cool or tool?

Open ... and Shut When testosterone dresses itself....
Silicon Valley is notoriously casual in its dress and business demeanor. In a culture that celebrates every day as Casual Friday, it's hard to get the tech crowd to dress up. Which is why it's so painful when techie types try to dress up. Maybe they need to pitch a VC. Maybe they have an important sales meeting with a potential …
08 Feb 16:04

When open-source eats itself, we win

Open ... and Shut Lessons of the Nginx v Apache slug fest
For years the headlines have been about open source cannibalising proprietary software. But what happens when open source starts to cannibalise itself? In some markets, open source rules the roost. For example, Drupal, Joomla, my old company Alfresco and other open-source content management systems regularly duke it out for …
06 Feb 12:38

Introducing the Open Source Rookie of the Year... Whoa, it's Microsoft

Open ... and Shut You don't understand the Power of the Source
It's déjà vu all over again for Microsoft, as Black Duck Software has named Redmond's TypeScript project among its 2012 Open Source Rookies of the Year - despite Microsoft spending nearly a decade trying to figure out this crazy communist software manifesto. Back in 2001, Microsoft labeled open source a "cancer," "un-American," …
02 Feb 08:24

My top tip for Microsoft: Stop charging for Windows Phone 8

Open ... and Shut Really guys, you're trying to SELL a mobile OS? C'mon
While Microsoft posted solid numbers for Windows 8, anyone paying attention to Intel's quarterly report can see that the writing is on the wall for desktop computing. Perhaps surprisingly, this is also true of the enterprise, generally not an early mover on technology trends. According to a new Appcelerator survey of enterprise …
28 Jan 13:01

More Matt Asay columns >