Open Source Solutions

We (Clarise, Bernard and I) recently submitted two article ideas, and one was rejected becuase

The second one is product-specific, thus unsuitable for publication. If you wanted to reshape it into a product review, which are written by end users to describe their experience with a product, please contact [a sister publication]... must emphasize that you avoid mentioning product names as well as methodologies specific to certain vendors.

Here's the proposal for that second article, which will now be writen on this blog.

Mondrian is an open source OLAP engine that is very mature, having been in use since 2001. It is of interest, not only for its own capabilities, but for the fact that it is included in or required for nearly every other open source BI project that includes OLAP capability, from simple tools such as jPivot to full BI suites such as Pentaho. This article provides details about Mondrian and discusses its use in and importance to open source BI. The article will also discuss how to incorporate Mondrian into an organization's BI project.

As far as we know, Mondrian doesn't have a commercial arm, though its recent relationship with Pentaho may change that. It is difficult for me to think of various open source solutions as "vendors". That's why I tend to refer to them as "projects" rather than "products". Granted, some open source projects are dual-licensed, or have a commercial arm, like Green Plum for Bizgres, and Kinetic Network for KETL, MySQL AB for MySQL. So, is this rejection an indication of a telling lack of awareness about open source, or am I wrong in my thinking? Are open source licensed software packages projects or products? Is discussing an open source project, a discussion about a "specific vendor"? Food for thought.