Mark R. Hinkle

Mark Hinkle's Blog There is a funny thing about commercial open source software companies as much as they like talking about their community-driven open source heritage they end up doing a lot of things their proprietary counterparts do. Spout off about being enterprise-ready, b... (more)

Mark Hinkle's Blog In the world of open source software Red Hat’s crossed over from exciting leader to respectable elder statesman. The action is among the new batch of up-and-coming open source software companies who are not yet venture backed but are developing interestin... (more)

Mark Hinkle's Socialized Software Blog Is 2008 going to be the Year of the Acquisition?  Activity in 2007 was on the rise but now things seem to be at full speed. I remember when Alta Vista and Excite! were the hot search engines, my how the world has changed.  It looks like it&rsq... (more)

It is with some sadness that I am writing my last editorial for Enterprise Open Source Magazine. As the founding editor-in-chief of this magazine and a past contributor to its predecessor, I am going to miss it. However, all things must end and this chapter of my writing career, ... (more)

Mark Hinkle's "EncoreOpus" Blog I am very conflicted by Steve Jobs iPology. You see I bought the iPhone on day one.  Normally, I would say they told me the price, I paid it, and I moved on no big deal. I am/was happy that I purchased the iPhone it's been a very cool choice for me... (more)

During my career I have had the privilege and the misfortune to be involved with quite a few nascent businesses. Some have been small, with no more than five or ten employees. To this day they still have that many or less. Others grew from 50 employees to over 10,000 in a very sh... (more)

Mark Hinkle's Blog Okay, that was a catchy title but for the first time in my love affair with Ubuntu have I had an install failure. I tried to install Ubuntu on my Dell Inspirion 1505 and couldn't get X11 to automatically configure. It was very dissappointing. It's really not Ub... (more)

Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, in the 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land, coined the term "grok." In the story the word was part of the Martian language: 'Grok' means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed - to me... (more)

There was a time when you couldn't shut me up about the Linux desktop. I was a fanatic. In 2000, I made the switch to a full-time virus-free Linux desktop and weeks of crash-free computing. I was a zealot. However, I did suffer from a few of the alternative operating systems shor... (more)

I had originally written an editorial for this month's issue titled, "Is Commercialization Killing Open Source?" Then I read William Hurley's blog (http://talk.bmc.com/blogs/blog-whurley/whurley/opensville). William or as his friends call him, "whurley," is the chief architect of... (more)

Of late there has been a lot of buzz around what constitutes open source software. Industry leaders and pundits alike have weighed in on the "openness" of certain software and companies' business models. The generally recognized test for open source software is the Open Source De... (more)

Blogs are a great platform for people to espouse their passions (not unlike editorials). They are different than traditional news outlets because they may be objective, opinionated, and even wrong. Interestingly enough, each of these behaviors is frequently rewarded equally. I w... (more)

I got a note from a notable virtualization company today proclaiming that this year is going to be the year of virtualization.  With the arrival and notoriety gained by Xen last year I don't doubt it in the Linux space. Along with the popularity of the commercial tools like VMwar... (more)

The other day I was driving down the highway when I passed an American classic, a 1965 Ford Mustang. As I waxed nostalgic, I realized that there will never be another era in history where we will appreciate automobiles like those produced in the 1950s and 1960s. No matter what th... (more)

Linden Labs developer of the virtual online world,  SecondLife, has announced that they will be releasing their virtual world viewer client software under the GNU Public License. This is a very smart move especially for a business driven by community. It also has the potential to... (more)

This has been an exciting month for proponents of the Linux server. Two of the world's largest software companies have started to provide Linux support and services. As you probably already know, on October 25, Oracle announced that they would be selling their own derivative of R... (more)

Today I read Andy McCue's post on,"Why the Linux desktop dream is over" and "Stephen O'Grady's "Do Operating Systems Matter: Part 1 " and Jonathan Schwartz's post on  Network Clients  and it becomes clear to me the eventual direction of desktop computing.   How do all three thou... (more)

Let me preface this discussion with the disclaimer that I am not the typical desktop user. I am technical; I am mobile and travel frequently; I support and use software that runs on multiple operating systems; and I am an incessant tinkerer. Now that we got that out of the way, l... (more)

I recently read an article in the "mainstream" media that gave me pause. The author made an assertion that the current trend towards Open Source might just be a passing fad. I thought about this and looked critically at the software industry, thinking about whether there was meri... (more)

Enterprise Open Source Magazine editor-in-chief, Mark Hinkle, interviewed Mulesource (www.mulesource.com) CTO Ross Mason and founder of the Mule Enterprise Servive Bus (ESB) project (http://mule.mulesource.org) about the usefulness of this technology and its recent success. EOSM... (more)