The second half of 2006 was truly remarkable for the open source software universe. Sun announced it would release parts of Java under the GPL after years of opposition. On the darker side, Oracle announced it would “clone” Red Hat’s Linux distribution and attempt to compete on price, while Microsoft and Novell allied to promote interoperability but with a none-too-subtle hint that Microsoft believes Linux violates its patents, and that anybody running other Linux distributions might run afoul of Microsoft’s legal department. The biggest open source competitor recharged its batteries, releasing Windows Vista and beginning to ship related products. While competitive mayhem was the norm, technological progress was impressive. Eclipse made the first decisive step in realizing its application platform vision with the integrated mid-2006 "Callisto" release. Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) became an increasingly common buzzword for many and a proven reality for some, particularly as Salesforce.com launched its own partner ecosystem. XML-based file format wars raged, most notably around the ODF office document format. These innovations are likely to reshape the economics of the software business in general and open source in particular. We will look at how software providers can turn these changes into opportunities, not threats. Though we’ll talk about the overall open source world, we’ll pay particular attention to unique features of the Eclipse community and business models of Eclipse contributors. We’ll look at recent and upcoming technologies expanding the reach of Eclipse and how they may herald incremental opportunity for companies that deliver on the potential value of the expanding platform. This presentation is targeted at business decision makers needing to understand more about how open source in general and the Eclipse ecosystem in particular may color investment decisions in these technologies. Though the Wall Street perspective is most immediately useful for publicly traded companies, this talk can provide background for smaller companies about what outside investors want to see. This may also be useful for product architects looking to make technology decisions based on an even broader understanding of how to make their companies and their customers successful.

Brent Williams heads equity research at Hapoalim Securities USA, a division of Bank Hapoalim, Israel's largest bank. Mr. Williams has been a stock analyst covering publicly traded software companies (including Microsoft and several key Eclipse Foundation members) for ten years. Just before moving to Wall Street, he covered software development tools at Gartner Group, and ran the operating system/desktop applications group at IDC. He has also been involved in marketing and selling infrastructure software at several startups. He spent nearly a decade as a C programmer, including five years working on database engines at Ingres in the 1980s.