The CEO of Red Hat, Jim Whitehurst, is scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Open Source Business Conference this week.

At a pre-conference activity last night he encouraged the various open source vendors to make the most of the current economic climate and get out there and start knocking on doors, referring to his own recent experience as an example.

There are companies we’ve been trying to set up meetings with for years that are all of a sudden calling us up and saying ‘We need to talk.’ The more desperate the industry, the more interested people are.

I have to say that I agree. While writing a paper on the topic a couple of years ago, I discovered that one of the biggest struggles potential customers have with the whole concept of open source is actually one of the biggest selling points the movement has – the cost (or lack thereof). Customers believe that the lack of fees is related to a lack of quality in the product, meaning a lot more effort to maintain.

Now that the shrinking IT budget is more important than ever, it’s time for open source vendors to show just how capable their products are compared to those expensive, off-the-shelf solutions that are costing more in annual maintenance fees than the original price of the license.

If the vendors can clearly demonstrate the business value of using their products, they stand a greater chance of getting inside for the long term. This could be a real turning point for the open source movement, but we need to act now – the opportunity won’t be there forever.

Australia’s third largest Internet Service Provider, iiNet, has issued a press release confirming that they have dropped out of the Federal Government’s internet filter trial.

Managing Director Michael Malone, who has been stating throughout the entire process that they only agreed to participate in the trial to demonstrate just how flawed the idea is, had some interesting things to say…

It became increasingly clear that the trial was not simply about restricting child pornography or other such illegal material, but a much wider range of issues including what the Government simply describes as “unwanted material” without an explanation of what that includes.

Everyone is repulsed by, and opposed to, child pornography but this trial and policy is not the solution or even about that.

In reality, the vast majority of online child pornography activity does not appear on public websites but is distributed over peer-to-peer networks which are not and cannot be captured by this trial or policy.

iiNet’s withdrawal means that the trial continues without any representation from the country’s three largest Internet Service Providers.

I wonder what will happen next with the comedy of errors affectionately known as the Great Aussie Firewall.

United States cellular telephone company AT&T has finally confirmed to the Associated Press that it will start selling the popular iPhone without a contract next Thursday.

The catch?

The new phones will still be “locked” to AT&T and won’t work with any other cellular carrier unless they’re modified. AT&T will only activate them on the regular iPhone plans, which include a $30 monthly charge for data access.

Surely this exclusive agreement to only sell iPhones locked to the AT&T network must be hurting Apple in some respect? What about the punters who like the iPhone, but don’t need or want the data plans? What about the punters who simply don’t have coverage in their area?

I can personally see the benefits of using an all in one device like the iPhone, but not if it means paying $30 per month more than I am already just because of the model of phone I have.

I believe Apple would sell a lot more units if there was the option of a completely unlocked version that could be used on any cellular network. Mind you, that option may be available sooner rather than later.

If the combination of very firm rumors and Apple’s usual product cycle are to be believed, a new version of the phone is due this summer. Add to that the belief that AT&T’s comfortable and exclusive arrangement may be due to end in June, and the cynic in me says AT&T is rushing to offload existing stock before it becomes obsolete.

We’ll see.

Oracle Corporation has just announced positive results for Q3-09. So positive in fact, that they’re throwing in a 5 cent dividend for shareholders.

Oracle also announced today that its Board of Directors intends to pay a quarterly cash dividend of $0.05 per share, or $0.20 per share annually, on its common stock.

This is the first quarterly dividend Oracle has ever paid, and the first dividend of any kind for a long, long time. In the current economy, this will certainly be good news for their shareholders.

The good news still didn’t stop CEO Larry Ellison from pointing out that they could have done much better if they didn’t have to report their global income in US dollars, but that seems to be all the rage these days…

“But for the strengthening of the US dollar leading to unfavorable currency exchange rates, our non-GAAP earnings per share would have increased 29% in Q3,” said Oracle CEO, Larry Ellison. “This is a tremendous achievement in the face of the serious slowdown in the world economy.”

I don’t think the shareholders will worry too much…

A lot has been said over the last few months about the “Great Wall of Australia” – the current government’s attempt at internet censorship.

Currently being trialled by six of the country’s smaller internet service providers, the whole process has been nothing but a case of one piece of bad publicity after another.

Earlier this week, the hosting provider of the Whirlpool forum, BulletProof Networks, was threatened with an A$11,000 per day fine because just one of Whirlpool’s thousands of members posted a link to a website which is among those which would be banned should the filter be permanently implemented.

The great irony here is that the filter is being “sold” to Australia as a necessary evil to block sites that promote the sexual abuse of children. The link posted on Whirlpool was to an anti-abortion site that had been added to the blacklist because of just one complaint by just one person about just one page. See here and here for more.

It gets better. As a result of the above, Computerworld has discovered that it only takes just one person to add a site to the blacklist.

The decision is made by a single ACMA staffer, even someone part of a graduate process, who assumes the classification board would not like [a Web site].

The two types of content that ACMA can hide from the eyes of Australians are prohibited content, which has been previously classified; and potentially prohibited content which is banned on a hunch that the classification board won’t like it.

No committee review or consultation with a panel or “experts” – just one person who can decide based on his or her person feelings.

The current version of the blacklist has now been published on Wikileaks (you can find that one by using your search engine of choice), and that site has also been added to the blacklist, along with the official business website of a Dentist, and several other legitimate sites.

I’ve taken a look at the list, and based on the URLs alone, can safely say that no normal person should be looking at those sites anyway, but that’s not the point.

Censoring the internet is essentially a step backwards for Australia, a country that takes pride in its tradition of democratically electing governments. Not only that, but determining the blacklist on the decision of just one person reminds me of a certain other type of government that Australia frowns on.

19 March 2009 Update: Senator Conroy has released a statement both condemning the publication of the blacklist contents, and denying that the published list is the actual blacklist.

Last week, Apple announced their third generation iPod shuffle. The new version is so small that the controls don’t fit on the body and are actually located on the earphone cable.

Personally I don’t understand why anybody would want a music player that’s so small you could lose it among the lint in the bottom of your pocket, but that isn’t the reason it’s still in the news.

The gurus over at iLounge reported that Apple have included a proprietary chip in the unit that determines whether or not you are using Apple’s earphones to enjoy your music. It seems that regular earphones will allow you to listen, but if you want to actually control what you’re listening to, you’ll need the Apple headphones to do so.

In iLounge’s words, this

needlessly and seriously complicates controls by switching to a buttonless body, which cannot be controlled without Apple headphones or not-yet-manufactured third-party proprietary remote control solutions.

This will certainly slow down the flood of manufacturers making compatible accessories to a crawl – not only can apple choose whether or not to share the specifications with the various earphone manufacturers, they can also choose who in particular to share them with.

Forget the manufacturers – this is bad news for the punters. It means that they will be stuck with the supplied accessories until such a time that Apple has shared the necessary specifications and in turn, the manufacturers have been able to adjust their production lines accordingly.

Sorry folks, you’re stuck with the tell-tale white ones for now.