Omniture & Fedora

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Jesse Eversole Jr wrote:
 >
 > In answer to the question as to when Omniture might open source their
 > hosting code I would say definitely not before they let Charles Manson
 > out of jail. I could be wrong. I am genuinely interested in the movement
 > toward hosted systems that are driven by proprietary software. Many of
 > these systems are data collection and reporting systems that serve
 > business needs. The data belongs to the subscriber of the service while
 > the core software remains proprietary and belongs to the hosting
 > provider. In many cases these systems provide open APIs for clients to
 > customize their own installations.

A few questions:

To be clear, who owns the data in this Omniture exchange?  What data is 
sent into the service?  Can we get it back out in raw form (and who does 
that belong to)?  Can we get it back out in processed form (and who does 
that belong to)?  Do the pieces of software (the javascript on the 
client in this case) have an open source license?

We've talked about the possibility of using S3 before and we have s3fs 
and boto in Fedora.  S3 is a proprietary web service but it seems we've 
entertained the idea of using it because:

1) The code that runs on the client is open source.
2) The data (in S3, files) is ours and can be placed into the service 
and taken out with no problems.

If it's not okay to be packaged in Fedora we've so far said no to using 
it for Fedora.  If Omniture placed the javascript client code under an 
OSS license (or someone reimplemented it under an OSS license being 
careful not to violate copyright law) then I'm pretty sure it could be 
made available in Fedora repositories.  That would eliminate the #1 
blocker to using it on our websites.

That would still leave the interesting question of whether we would be 
okay with:
1) the data going from us to Omniture.
2) the data being used by Red Hat.
3) using the data ourselves.
4) whether we'd want to be able to pull the data back out in raw form or 
a processed form that we would be free do things with.

 > In reading the thread I am
 > interpreting from some that service providers such as Salesforce should
 > open source the software that drives their service business.

Not necessarily.  What I hear is if Salesforce was used within Fedora 
then it should be open source before that happens.

(Of course, raving open source fanatic that I am, I'd be very happy if 
Salesforce open sourced their code :-)

 > Indeed I
 > have heard calls for Red Hat to open source RHN.

RHN is a funny proposition since Red Hat is in the business of 
convincing other companies that open source software is superior... but 
has a piece of proprietary software in its offering.

I think it's a distraction in a conversation about whether we want to 
help Red hat by using a hopefully open source piece of client code via a 
closed-source company.

 > Google is a proprietary
 > software service that makes money off indexing open source websites as
 > well as the rest of the world. Does it make sense for an open source
 > community driven website to collect revenue from banner ads pointing to
 > its site through Google?

Generically, it might make sense.  Specifically for Fedora it probably 
does not.

-Toshio

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