If you're on the CIO site, you may have seen my blog here, referenced in Esther's intro. As a more general introduction, I run Navica, which is an open source management consultancy that works with organizations to help them take advantage of open source and address open source risks. I've worked in large IT shops and large enterprise software vendors, so know the proprietary software world quite well.

When I was exposed to open source, I recognized that its characteristics and cost advantage would transform enterprise IT and resolved to understand it better. After a lot of research, conversations, consulting, and so on, I decided to write a book giving a CIO-level perspective on the topic ("Succeeding with Open Source," Addison-Wesley, 2005).

I think we're still in the early days of enterprise open source adoption, but that it will change the way IT is done in the future. It's already transformed software vendors and Web 2.0 companies here in Silicon Valley, where I am located.

Happy to be labeled "expert" on something ;-)

Jokes apart, I am the CEO of Funambol, the mobile open source company. Over seven years, we built the #1 open source project in wireless, with over 2M downloads. And a nice business around it, selling a Carrier Edition to service providers (mobile operators, ISPs and portals). With Funambol, you get push email for the mass market (yep, that's your email on your RAZR).

I am an open source geek since I remember. It all started in the late eighties (gasp, I am that old...) in a lab in Pavia (Italy), where Alessandro Rubini was writing the mouse device driver for Linux - the first step to get Linux out of the hands of just geeks. I used/wrote/pushed open source since then. And I am definitely not stopping now...

Mobile is the next stop for open source. Actually, with 3 billion mobile devices out there, mobile is the best market ever for open source. If it worked for a bunch of mice, I can assure you that open source works even better for billions of devices. There is no other way to make sure your mobile application works on every device on the planet. A community effort is the only way. Open source solves the #1 issue in mobile: device compatibility. You need people for it. You need a community. You need open source. There is no other answer.

Oh, and I write a boring blog on Mobile Open Source as well, if you are interested.

fabrizio

I can genuinely say that I've been a student of community development for nearly 14 years. In the mid-'90s, I helped re-build Apple's developer relations programs - reaching tens of thousands of developers (many of which felt forsaken at that time). I then spent the late '90's at Sun, creating the company's first-ever global developer relations programs. With the remarkable tail-wind of Java and Solaris, we built the largest and most successful developer programs in the world (yep, we even surpassed Microsoft).

Also, I've spent a good bit of my career near data and its analysis. After I left Sun, I spent a few years at Brio - helping to advance this venerable silicon valley brand. After we sold the company to Hyperion, I spent a couple of years at Informatica where I learned even more about world-class data warehouses and customers who appreciate deep analytics. So, Business Intelligence (BI software and products) has become a real passion.

Now at JasperSoft, the market-leader in open source Business Intelligence, I get to marry two of my favorite activities: building community and promoting business intelligence.

I hope to provide a feet-on-the-street view within this blog - by infusing real-world customer and community experience to keep the conversation on point. I look forward to participating and invite all ideas and feedback.

Brian Gentile
Chief Executive Officer
JasperSoft

I'm Bob Sutor, IBM's VP for Open Source and Standards in the Corporate Division. We have several executives with various combinations of "open source" and standards in our titles, but I'm responsible in part for

• issues that span multiple business units
• intellectual property and membership agreements
• promotion of new standards activities in emerging markets
• accelerating use of common standards across vertical industries
• strategies for business growth via new standards and open source programs
• driving activities to help reform and improve the standards programs in which we take part
• talking about all the above, though I don't think of it as "evangelism" because that has too much of a marketing tone to me.

My academic background is in mathematics and I spent 15 years in IBM Research. I like to brainstorm and discuss what some people might consider outrageous ideas, if only to extract the interesting and creative bits. All the rest will be useful next year. Lately I've been looking to dialog with with people who are "progressive, passionate, and pragmatic."

I keep wondering about 'the next generation'; i.e. what are the corporations doing for schoolchildren.

According to Tapping America's Potential, the corporates all feel they need to be able to recruit more engineers and scientists than the education system will produce.

Hewlett-Packard are doing something proactive about it in conjunction with the University of Colorado here Physics Education Technology, offering to all who will take it a pile of physics/engineering simulation models, source code included.

The material looks technically pretty good, to me as a physicist; and I would applaud Hewlett-Packard in their investment.

If this material does saturate the schools, it will shift the 'competitive balance' of various businesses in various ways. Some will benefit; others will suffer.

So which of you CIOs will help it to saturate the schools ? Will you give the time of your engineers to deploy it ? Will you sell the service of installing it ? Will you allow your engineers to give their own time ?

Where does progress lie ?