Archive for category Open Source

Required Reading

May 22

Posted by Sam Hamilton in China, Marketing, Open Source, Random Stuff | No Comments

    to mySQL or not?

    May 22

    Posted by Sam Hamilton in Open Source | No Comments

    So this blog runs on mySQL but most things critical for the company run on postgreSQL unless horror of horrors it requires a MS SQL database. With first Sun buying mySQL then Oracle you would expect better things from them and they do seem to have most of the limelight when it comes to scaling outward into the cloud (this blog is running from Mosso) but what is becoming apparent is that mySQL seems to be a melt down – have a read here (updated with…) and also here as it seems that more people are thinking the same way

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    Fedora 11

    May 21

    Posted by Sam Hamilton in Open Source | No Comments

    I am looking forward to getting hold of the Fedora 11 – the beta reviews have been good and it will be a welcome upgrade for my desktop

    OFBiz release branch – “release9.04″

    Apr 21

    Posted by Sam Hamilton in Open Source | No Comments

    So finally after months of planning and much talk on the mailing lists OFBiz have branched once more, but this time the collective I will be making use of the branch. There are enough features now in this branch for us to make use of over the next year but what we really need is stability. I can see this process being massive in terms of both changes to our internal code and also time of the developers but i think it will be worth the effort. Going to wait a few weeks for some of the simple bugs to be fixed but its on the developers road map very soon.

    How a year in China changes everything

    Aug 24

    Posted by Sam Hamilton in Open Source, Work | No Comments

    So this time last year I was planning on building a distributed IT system across many small offices with a maximum of 30 people in each. This year we are consolidated in one building on two different floors with all the servers in one room. Amazing change.

    But to be honest it does not really change the overall IT plan that much. Our customers are still spread out all over the world and we now have staff members on three continents – not bad for a 100 person company.

    The one thing that has changed is what software we use – we are driving firmly away from Microsoft and into the hands of Linux and open source software.

    We are working with an Apache project ERP system called OFBiz with help from the great guys at Hotwax Media – the improvements we have seen from in our warehouse are just amazing.

    How to handle user authentication has also become clearer with the help of a Redhat project called FreeIPA. This really looks good enough to replace our current Active Directory setup.

    Finally Rackspace, my personal favourite managed hosting company went public and is about to open its Hong Kong data center. Servers already ordered!

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