As the Open Source Census grinds on (over 250,000 installations so far) it occurs to me just how useful it can be for an enterprise to participate.

You might learn something you can profit from.

At CIO India, for instance, Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz tells the story of a financial firm which thought it had no open source at all, only to discover it had 1,300 downloads of mySQL.

Schwartz used this teaching moment to make a sale, but such revelations can mean more than a ka-ching in a vendor’s bank account.

They can point the way to big savings for you.

In the case noted above open source came in through the back door, serreptitiously. It’s not just that users lacked support, many probably didn’t know who else was using. Open source was illicit.

But when enterprise open source use comes out of the closet (so to speak) miracles occur. You  find yourself with a vast internal user group. You may even find you can replace some proprietary tools with open source alternatives. And you’ve opened up conversations both inside and outside your shop.

Open source does not do its best work in the dark corners, but in the light of day. That’s where you’ll realize the value, when your own people can share knowledge, and you get to share with the wider world.

It’s not just a question of downloading and using. It’s a question of sharing and improving. This activity exists in the proprietary world, too. It’s just easier in an open source environment.

So do join the census, and do check around. The results will surprise you. And opening yourself up fully to the open source process will both save you money and spur productivity. Guaranteed.

We’re about to find out.

Netgear, a reputable name in routers, has launched the WGR614L, an open source 802.11g router.

It looks like any other Netgear router, it can even run under Vista (thanks Nachi), but it can run everything at a new Netgear site, MyOpenRouter, and more besides.

While Cisco accidentally created an open source router a few years ago, getting caught with Linux in its Linksys, the company never exploited this as a feature, but treated it as a bug, blaming chip supplier Broadcom.

Netgear is definitely treating this as a feature.

MyOpenRouter offers developers a comprehensive user guide, applications forums and downloads. Best of all this isn’t a stinky would-not-sell-otherwise router. It’s got an internal diversity antenna to improve performance, and supports WPS.

The site’s home page also has direct links to popular open source router software like Tomato and DD-WRT. Tomato downloads are even hosted from the site.

Nachiketa Prachanda, no relation (we assume) to the Nachi worm of five years ago, seems to be the main host-blogger at MyOpenRouter, and that’s a great idea because it immediately personalizes a site, gives it a voice.

So if there is a substantial open source router market out there, in 2008, Netgear will find it. I just wish the industry had this attitude back in 2003.

Open-Xchange has released a preview version of its next generation open source collaboration server designed for the Web 2.0 era.

Open-Xchange Server Edition, which will succeed Open-Xchange 6 and Open-Xchange Express Edition, features an Ajax-based, customizable user interface for managing emails, contacts, task and document sharing, new mashup capabilites provided by Netvibes Universal  Widget API and
support for OSGi, which will ease the addition and removal of third party applications, the Tarrytown, NY company plans to announce July 1.

Aside from the Ajax support, the new UI also offers a plug-in architecture to ease integration of instant messaging tools, as well as support for text messages and faxes. 

The architecture is modular and allows for Open-Xchange to snap into existing mail servers without migrating all the e-mail data.

The mashup feature enables easy integration of web applications such as RSS feeds, podcasts, video channels, Salesforce.com and SAP Business One, thus allowing users to have one central information center.

The OSGi framework allows for snap in of third party applications such as virus and spam protectio with zero downtime, the company also said.

 The new server edition also offer support for the latest enterprise Linux distributions: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and  SUSE Linux Enterprise Linux 10. 

The software is expected to ship in the third quarter of 2008.  According to the company, Open-Xchange is installed at more then 3500 companies and sites worldwide and is hosted by many service providers including Network Solutions in the U.S.

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