Tag Archives: opensource

Scaling a .Net architecture

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There’s an interesting article on High Scalability discussing the use of .net within MySpace: Did the Microsoft Stack Kill MySpace? The discussion is based on this post by Robert Scoble: MySpace’s death spiral: insiders say it’s due to bets on Los Angeles and Microsoft.

The conclusion is that you can’t blame the microsoft stack for MySpace’s death, but I find this piece of the conclusion quite contradicting:

The stack isn’t the real problem. … You can’t exist at this scale without transforming everything you touch to meet your specific needs.

How are you going to transform everything, if you’re using closed software? Google can and has modified Linux to meet it’s specific needs, Facebook can and has modified php to meet it’s specific needs, and there are more examples.

Opensource allows you to transform everything when you need to.

NOiV promotes collaboration

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One important aspect of open source is often overlooked: collaboration. Open source enables organizations to collaborate on building the software they need. Too often open source is just consumed: downloaded and installed because it’s free.

To my surprise, the report i mentioned earlier, Ranking OS and OSS: NOIV monitor does reward organizations that release their own software with an open source license. It’s on the list of criteria by which the organizations are ranked: NOiV toelichting.

I think this is a very important aspect in the adoption of open source: government agencies that collaborate on software, instead of every organization writing their own version of something. There’s a big opportunity for, for example. local government to collaborate on software. There are about 470 municipalities in the netherlands, that all do the same things, and all need more or less the same software. Why not collaborate on this?