Did you know that you can get a free license of Clearspace X if you are a non-commercial open source project or developer group? This is one of the cool parts of my of my job … I get to give people free software licenses!

Our Clearspace X product just won the Best Community Platform award from InfoWorld, so we're giving you some great community software! You can read the full review on the InfoWorld site. This award is no surprise to me. We power the 2 communities that I manage, Jivespace and Ignite Realtime, on Clearspace X.

One group taking advantage of this free license program is the Open Management Consortium.  Last week, they just released a beta version of their new site based entirely on Clearspace X. They managed to get the entire site up and running with the old data moved into the new site mostly over a weekend. The OMC was formed with the goal being to "advance the promotion, adoption, development and integration of open source systems /network management software." They are using Clearspace X to power the community where the members of this group collaborate, discuss ideas, and get organized about how to accomplish this goal.

If you have an open source project or a developer group (users group, etc.) and want to take advantage of the free licenses, you can find more details and a short request form on the free license page on Jivespace.

The Jivespace Developer Community at dev.jivesoftware.com is launching at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) on Wednesday, and we wanted to give everyone a quick preview here on Jive Talks first. We also used our own Clearspace X product to build the collaborative elements of the community (discussions, wiki docs, blogs, etc.)

The Jivespace Developer Community is a place where developers can collaborate with Jive employees and their peers to write and share plugins, themes, macros, and other extensions to Clearspace, Clearspace X and Jive Forums.  Collaborative features of Jivespace include discussion forums, wiki documents, sharing of plugins, plugin wish lists, and blogs. Additional developer documentation, tutorials, and video podcasts will also be available in Jivespace.

We are also announcing an open source plugin contest that recognizes developers who create original and innovative open source plugins for Clearspace. First place in the contest will be awarded $5,000 cash, with second place receiving $2,500 and third place receiving $1,500. The plugins developed for this contest will benefit all Clearspace users as they will be available free of charge and will extend the already feature-rich solution.

Don't forget that we  also give away free copies of Clearspace for open source projects and developer user groups!

Come visit us at our OSCON booth.  If you sign up for Jivespace, we'll give you a cool new Jivespace t-shirt.

We would also love to see you at Beerforge, a great after party sponsored by Jive Software, POSSE, OSL, OpenSourcery, and OTBC.

• When: Thursday, July 26, 2007, 6:00 PM to 8:30 PM

• Where: Thirsty Lion Pub, 71 SW 2nd Avenue, Portland, OR 97209 (just a couple stops on the MAX Light Rail from the Oregon Convention Center)

• How: Please RSVP to rsvp@jivesoftware.com to receive a copy of the invitation or download the invite. Will also have a little stash of invites at our OSCON booth, so let us know if you need one.

Win a trip to OSCON (O'Reilly's Open Source Convention) in Portland, Oregon, July 23 - 27, 2007 by creating the best blog entry about how Jive Software products have helped your organization. Your blog should be entertaining and creative while describing how you've used Jive software to make your organization better in some way. Blogs will be judged by a panel of Jive experts on the following criteria:

• Thoroughness of solution description

• Creativity of description

• Entertainment value

• Number / Quality of screen shots (minimum of two)

• Number / Quality of video clips

How do I win?

• Post your entry on a publicly accessible blog before 7/12/07

• Send the link to your blog entry to OSCONTrip2007@jivesoftware.com no later than July 12, 2007 at 11:59 PM Pacific Time

• Include your name, organization name, email, phone number, and address in the submission email

• The winner will be announced on 7/13/07 and the winning submission will be posted on the Jive Talks blog

Exactly what do I win?

Jive Software will reimburse you for either

• Trip costs: airfare and hotel for July 23 - 27, 2007 in Portland, Oregon USA (up to $2000 USD)

OR

• OSCON Convention Sessions Plus Tutorials (up to $1990 USD)

You should also read the fine print and content rules before entering.

Our advice to you is to do something cool with this contest and have fun! Keep in mind that our panel of judges is made up of humans, not mindless automatons, and we like to be entertained.

Between my trip to OSBC and recent questions from a reporter, I have been spending some time thinking about how commercial interests impact open source software. Over the past few years, commercial interests have had an increasing amount of influence on open source projects. Ten years ago, it seemed like most open source projects were created by people working in their spare time without any compensation and limited resources for the project. Now, many open source developers are sponsored by companies or other organizations who provide them with a regular paycheck giving them more time to contribute to open source projects. Commercial companies also provide support in the form of servers, hosting, software, and other resources to help open source projects succeed. For example, Jive Software is the sponsor for the Ignite Realtime project where Openfire (GPL), Spark (LGPL), and other related open source projects are hosted and managed. We hire developers from the community, and we have people like Gaston Dombiak aka Gato (Openfire project lead) and Derek DeMoro (Spark project lead) on staff at Jive Software. In Gato's case, he was a contributor to Ignite Realtime projects long before he became an employee of Jive Software. We also do what we can to support collaboration within open source and other software developer teams (i.e. software user groups) by providing them with <span class="jive-link-external">[complimentary licenses|http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/forums/resources/opensource.jsp] of Clearspace X or Jive Forums.

There is sometimes a fine line between providing help to open source projects and exerting unwanted influence. For a commercial open source vendor to be successful, a careful balance between commercial open source interests and community interests must be preserved. This can only be accomplished when both sides provide input and listen to the other when making decisions about the direction of the project. Jive Software uses the Ignite Realtime forums, weekly chat sessions, community voting on the top issues, and other collaborative methods to make sure that our relationship with the Ignite Realtime community continues to be beneficial for both.

I expect to see more companies with mixed business models offering some products that are open source while also offering products under more traditional licenses, similar to the Jive Software model. Even on products licensed under traditional licenses, Jive Software strives to maintain openness and transparency by providing the source code along with the product giving customers the ability to make additional modifications, customization, and inspection of the source code. For pure open source companies, it can be difficult to maintain a revenue stream large enough to sustain the business through support and services revenues. Companies with mixed business models can benefit from having licensing revenue on some products in addition to support and services revenue making the road to profitability a bit easier.