- Why Red Hat says Xen isn't ready yet
- Microsoft to charge for Office beta
- SPAM is getting worse
- Open source applications and the changing face of competition
- Viewpoints on Linux in the Channel
- Making Sales while Making Friends: Matt Asay's OSCON2006 Presentation (Online)
- GPLv3 and the worst of intentions
- Off-topic: Lazy Hiring Web - Anyone know a good Marcomm and Support/Engineer in the Bay Area?
- Sun the new open source platform?
- Cool open source web conferencing product: DimDim
July 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Why Red Hat says Xen isn't ready yet
News.com reported earlier today on Red Hat VP Alex Pinchev's comments on XenSource and why Red Hat isn't rolling it into RHEL just yet.
"XenSource is not stable yet, it's not ready for the enterprise," Pinchev told CNET News.com sister site ZDNet Australia on Monday.
"We don't feel that XenSource is stable enough to address banking, telco or any other enterprise customer, so until we are comfortable, we will not release it," he added.
Now The Register adds detail from an Illuminata report:
1. The new "credit scheduler" was just checked into the xen-unstable tree earlier this month. SLE10 shipped with two other schedulers (BVT and sEDF). According to this posting by Keir Fraser (one of the original developers of Xen): "With the new credit scheduler checked into the xen-unstable tree, I wouldn't recommend to use either BVT or SEDF. They're both buggy. The new scheduler is supported by us, automatically load balances on SMP systems, and has a simpler administrator interface. Once credit scheduler has demonstrated its stability we'll most likely remove the other two schedulers."
2. The SLE10 installer is primarily just for SUSE guests at this point. "...for Windows you have to use the manual approach by editing config files and changing entries to boot from CD/HD."
3. Performance profiling (xenoprof) is still in flux. e.g., it doesn't save or restore performance counter state on context switching (so it's difficult to profile performance within guest OSs).
4. According to Red Hat: "Xen security is an issue [that] Xen currently has no concept of: opening up the migration port, for example, will expose all of the guests to anybody on the network. (Imagine driving a server truck into a corporate parking lot, migrating all the instances to your servers, and driving off ;-).)"
This whole thing is a bit confusing, especially as I attended the Red Hat Integrated Virtualization launch where XenSource and Red Hat were all chummy. Don't ask me. I just blog here.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 31, 2006 07:49 PM
July 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Microsoft to charge for Office beta
Microsoft will begin charging $1.50 per download of Office 2007 Beta. This cost to consumers reflects Microsoft's concern that the 3 million downloads thus far cost too much money to support in terms of bandwidth.
Let's see if this makes sense:
-Office is Microsoft's cash cow
-3 million people downloaded the beta of Office 2007 because they are interested in using it
-Microsoft can't afford the bandwidth charges associated with demo'ing the new version of Office so they pass the cost onto customers.
I'm not saying that $1.50/download charge is unreasonable for beta Office software--no, wait, I am. When one of the worlds' richest companies starts charging for consumer bandwidth their sales and cost models are seriously broken.
It is nothing short of absurd that any company would charge users for a beta version of the product they want those users to upgrade to. They should be embarrassed.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 30, 2006 02:27 PM
July 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Remember when Bill Gates said in January 2004 that the SPAM problem would be solved by 2006? Actual statistics suggest that 86% of all email is now SPAM and I have to say that personally I find its gotten much worse. I confirmed this sentiment with a number of people informally at OSCON as we all fought through our email sea of crap.
I have 4 email addresses of which only one has ever been truly published. That account (on Gmail) gets about 300 SPAM per day and I am finding more sneaking through the Google filter every day . My main business email addresses are filtered very heavily and receive about 300/day as well with about 10-15% sneaking past the filters--both server and client side.
I just wanted to remind everyone that problems don't go away just because Microsoft wants them to. (I am feeling very vindictive today.)
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 30, 2006 02:17 PM
July 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Open source applications and the changing face of competition
I remember a few years ago speculating that open source applications would never happen: not a wide enough development community with interest and aptitude in writing that kind of software. (I mention it here.) In short, I had bought into the open source myth that open source is all about hordes of developers contributing code to this project and that out of love and benevolence.
Older and wiser now....
In the past week I've learned about Coupa, an open source self-requisitioning procurement system; DimDim, an open source web conferencing solution, DabbleDB, a...well, I'm not exactly sure what it is (maybe a thneed? It does cool things with data), and a range of others.
We are now forming a world where every software product we buy will be open source. I'd say there will always be proprietary software, but I'm not sure as to why anymore. Now that the business models are firming up for open source, why would you ever care to weaken your competitive advantage by keeping code closed?
That said, this begs a larger question: what happens to open source competition once all the code is open? My bet? Product innovation will return to the fore as the primary decision driver. The difference will be that this innovation will not lock you in...it will just lock competitors out.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 29, 2006 07:26 AM
July 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Viewpoints on Linux in the Channel
OSDL just launched a microsite off a URL that will feature "viewpoints" (http://www.osdl.org/viewpoints) from various vendors, solution providers, systems integrators and Linux distributors sharing their thoughts on what makes the 'channel' ecosystem around Linux tick.
It's a sort of discussion build-up leading up to the "Linux in the Channel" event (emceed by CRN) that's taking place at LinuxWorld on August 16 in San Francisco. At the event, there's going to be a lot of discussion behind what are the trends motivating channel players to choose Linux and open source solutions for their customers, and what sorts of technologies and support are they seeking from their vendor partners?
On the OSDL viewpoint page today, a few vendors weighed in with their thoughts on where the opportunities are for resellers in taking Linux and open source-based solutions to market.
Miguel Nhuch -- VP of Sales and Channels at Levanta -- discusses his company's view that the mid-market is a huge, relatively untapped Linux market for resellers:Mark Hinkle -- VP of Strategy at Emu Software -- weighs in on the customization and managed services opportunity around Linux for the channel
OSDL will continue to feature vendor and channel player perspectives on the Linux reseller opportunity over the next few weeks, and have put an open invite out to anyone who wishes to contribute (Ingram Micro, CGI, Wild Open Source, Avnet, Quail Technologies, rs-unix -- and other participants in the event will be sharing their viewpoints over the next few weeks as well).
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 28, 2006 11:46 AM
July 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Making Sales while Making Friends: Matt Asay's OSCON2006 Presentation (Online)
Earlier this week I delivered a presentation at OSCON 2006 entitled "Making Sales While Making Friends: Lessons Learned from Open Source Businesses." I've been involved with commercial open source since 1998, and have learned a lot over the years (including how to fail spectacularly and slightly more gracefully). I'm in the middle of a string of successes, though, and figured now was the time to pretend to know-it-all. You can view my OSCON 2006 presentation here. It was an extension of some JBoss analysis I did recently, as well as an attempt to pass on some of the lessons I've learned so that the next round of open source commercialization will avoid my mistakes.
My basic premise is that an open source business is hard work, and requires that entrepreneurs spend as much time thinking about the "second sale" as they do about the first sale. In the proprietary world, you sell a big upfront license and then promptly forget about the customer. In open source, however, every business model variant I've seen requires ongoing customer service to help ensure a "second sale" (i.e., renewal of an "Enterprise" license or support contract).
There is a range of ways to help secure a second sale, but the most popular of which (but still nascent) is the "network" offering. Hyperic offers the infrastructure to build such a network - others (including Red Hat, MySQL, and SugarCRM) have built their own. A network offers real value to the customer, above and beyond support, and should be on the shopping list of every open source company.
I argued that the type of sales model an open source company has should directly correlate with its market penetration...
...which is perhaps best measured by its downloads:
Regardless of the sales infrastructure (starting with inside sales, usually, and moving to direct sales over time), marketing is critical to success, because marketing improves conversion rates and builds deal size as brand value intersects with download rates:
I also suggested that startups be realistic about outside development assistance. The Sourceforge (and other) data doesn't lie: you're going to do the bulk of your core development work. You need to worry about building a user community. The development assistance will come, and it is significant, but don't wait for someone else to build your product for you. (As I've written before, some projects - like SugarCRM - see a lot of partner-assisted development. In Alfresco's case, nearly all of our outside development comes from our customers. Not sure as to the reason for the difference....)
Despite my incessant harping on Silicon Valley, I argue that you need to be where your market is, and today the paying open source market is overwhelmingly in the US (with Europe starting to catch up):
And, among other things, I revisited the idea of what it takes to make a successful open source project, commercial or otherwise:
There's more to the presentation which you can see in the download above, but this was the baseline "gist" of it. I really enjoyed giving the presentation, and expect to give a revised version at OSBC 2007. See you then/there.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 28, 2006 10:16 AM
July 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)
GPLv3 and the worst of intentions
So, the big flap today is that Linus doesn't like GPLv3 (Draft 2), as Stephen Shankland (CNET) reports. As it turns out, there's much to dislike in GPLv3. Linus just happens to not like the hardware regulations it puts forth:
GPLv3 "basically says, 'We don't want access just to your software modifications. We want access to your hardware, too,'" Torvalds said. "I don't think it's my place as a software developer to judge how hardware works around it."Nor do I. You can feel in the GPL a desire to force people to think like Stallman (and Eben, for whom I have a huge amount of respect). That "force" is fine, albeit a little uncomfortable at times, when applied to its direct responsibility: software modifications of GPL'd software. It becomes irresponsible and overly ambitious when it extends to hardware.
This is true, in part, because it puts the FSF in the game of judging intentions. A license should never try to gauge intentions - it's ill-equipped to do so.
This same attempt is made by those who denigrate "attribution licenses" like SugarCRM's. Some cry foul because they believe the intent of the license is to make it difficult to commercially profit from Sugar's code without giving them a share. Whatever the intent (which, frankly, is probably designed simply to afford Sugar credit for the work it has done - if you're not going to contribute code or cash back to Sugar, why not at least contribute credit?), it is not the business of open source licenses to try to guess at the intentions of the software's users.
According to the Open Source Definition:
The license must allow modifications and derived works, and must allow them to be distributed under the same terms as the license of the original software.This, to me, is the bedrock of open source. It is, in Brian Behlendorf's terms, "the right to fork." Does Sugar's license enable this right to fork? Absolutely. Is it similarly required to ensure that the modified code can make money from that software? Absolutely not. That is beyond the license. So, do I think Sugar's license is open source? You bet.
Neither the FSF nor the OSI nor anyone else should be in the business of trying to contemplate every bad intention and hedging against it. I believe OSI's open source definition shows the right way: focus on maximizing freedom, not on finding every possible way to guarantee it. A license will fail at that endeavor.
The FSF should not waste time on supposed bad intentions, but should instead invest in promoting the good ones. I thought the original GPL did an excellent job of this. It needs to stop over-engineering fixes to something that isn't fundamentally broken.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 28, 2006 08:59 AM
July 27, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Off-topic: Lazy Hiring Web - Anyone know a good Marcomm and Support/Engineer in the Bay Area?
A certain company I know (starts with an "A," ends with an "O," and has "lfresc" in the middle) is looking for a mid-level marcomms person, as well as a technical support person. On the latter, this company would prefer someone with a solid engineering background (in the JBoss tradition). I want someone that will know a lot of the answers to the problems customers will ask.
Thoughts? Ping me at first dot last at alfresco dot com. Doesn't matter where you're located, though Pacific Timezone would be nice.
(No more hiring announcements on this blog, I promise.)
We d
Posted by Matt Asay on July 27, 2006 07:50 AM
July 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Sun the new open source platform?
In case you missed the news, Greenplum and Sun have teamed up to deliver a monster of a business intelligence/data warehousing appliance. What's it called? Well, that's the downside: "The Data Warehouse Appliance." If you're still awake after reading the name, you'll still be blown away by the performance (and the price). Those, at least, are interesting: capable of scanning 1 terabyte of data in 60 seconds and can easily scale to hundreds of terabytes of usable database capacity (10-50X performance boost over the Terradata/etc. competition).
What will it run you? Well, you won't find it at CompUSA, but it's pretty cheap (relative to the competition) all the same. From the press release:
Initial configurations will deliver usable database capacities of 10, 40 and 100TB. Pricing for the 40TB and 100TB configurations begins at $15,000 per usable terabyte, and pricing for the 10TB configuration starts at $25,000 per usable terabyte. Ideal industries for this solution include telecommunications, financial services, retail and Internet services.As I've written elsewhere, this isn't something that Oracle will be able to match any time soon. Its databases simply aren't set up to handle this kind of load. Greenplum is able to do it because it has the luxury of fine-tuning a PostgreSQL database to fit this need. In this way, we get to orders of magnitude price/performance benefits over the proprietary competition.
Since when is open source not about innovation and product strength?
All of which makes me wonder why Sun isn't doing more of this. That is, why isn't Sun striking up partnerships with MySQL, Alfresco, Red Hat (Yes, Red Hat), SugarCRM, JasperSoft, JBoss, etc.? Why not a campaign that says, "Open source runs fastest on Sun?"
Is there a big market for this today? Not really. Will there be tomorrow? Absolutely. The trajectories of open source's most successful companies are fantastic - revenues are doubling every year (if not more than doubling).
So why isn't Sun, which has done so much internally to support open source, doing more to highlight how well open source applications, application servers, databases, etc. run on Sun? Even Microsoft is doing this.
Jonathan?
Posted by Matt Asay on July 26, 2006 08:08 PM
July 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Cool open source web conferencing product: DimDim
I've been tracking a cool startup since Linuxworld Boston, and was glad to see them formally launch at OSCON today. DimDim is the company, and they are to WebEx and web conferencing what SugarCRM is to Salesforce.com and Alfresco is to Sharepoint (and Documentum):
An open source, value-rich competitor that should keep the proprietary competition up at night.
The product is still in alpha, but will go beta in September and production in November. (You can sign up to be part of the alpha and beta on their site.) I saw a demo today, and thought it was fantastic. Still some rough edges to work out, but remarkably well designed and it performed quite well. By November, I hope to cancel my WebEx account (WebEx crashes on us at least once per demo...) and move to DimDim. Frankly, my experience with WebEx has been so bad that I'll be using the alpha version of DimDim. It could still crash every other demo and be 100% better than WebEx. :-)
Under the covers, DimDim is yet another story of a successful, cohesive development team going from nada to alpha in just a few months. In their case, it took them three engineers and six months to get to a solid alpha. This is similar to Alfresco and SugarCRM, both of which had exceptionally short initial development cycles because of a strong development team that has worked together before and intelligent use of existing open source software (In DimDim's case, they leveraged open source code libraries (e.g. log4J), components (quartz scheduling component) and pre-packaged products (Helix Streaming Server)).
A few other things I like:
- DimDim is presence aware, and will integrate all major instant messaging systems.
- They're going for 100% transparency as a company, with code 100% open source, roadmap and technical documentation available online, etc.
- Ajax-based web meeting console. No client-side application necessary.
- They have the coolest logo of any of the open source companies, including my own. I'd like a T-shirt, please. :-)
Good work, DimDim!
Posted by Matt Asay on July 26, 2006 06:24 PM
July 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Ubuntu's Jeff Waugh says power management is getting better
I tackled Jeff Waugh, prince of Ubuntu to discuss why I would be thrilled to switch to an Ubuntu laptop but several things aren't allowing me to move off the Mac. My main complaint with Linux laptops is around power management. Linux desktop applications are a whole other issue.
Power Management
Jeff said that Thinkpads are still the most popular laptop for Linux and "since they are mostly all Centrino based it's a big advantage as Intel open-sources the drivers. This makes those specific drivers more manageable in an open source distribution. Power management is still a bit of a bleeding-edge issue simply because its so new-that's something that was realized at the OSDL Desktop Architect meeting and has since become an important thread of development."
There's an Ubuntu developer Matt in the UK who has an enormous library of laptops. He’s working on getting all of the user stuff sorted out related to power management, including things like suspension. One of the real unknown areas is around device power management. Things like powering down your sound card still have work to be done.
Applications
"The way I see the market operating is that we just have to keep on moving toward the core. One of the biggest problems with OO.org is that the whole thing is feature matrix comparison with MS Office. I think a better strategy is to just go beyond Office and leapfrog. Apple's Pages app is a good example of that position. I've been talking with several other projects like AbiWord to try and work together. We're seeing progress but we need to outshine what Microsoft offers."
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 26, 2006 02:43 PM
July 26, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Lessons learned from Open Source: Making Sales While Making Friends
Matt Asay, bon vivant, kung-fu master and man-about-town is delivering a session on how companies can partner to create more sales and more opportunities for OSS adoption while avoiding the spectacular failures he's experienced in the past. I am going to attempt to live-blog this session.
So why do we need to figure out open source models?
Open source is changing everything about sales, support and implementation of software. This correlates to open source advantages associated with innovation and cost savings.
Lesson 1: We are not successful by association
Open source may be hot that doesn't mean you are--there will be many failures for each success
Open Source is not a tagline
Lesson 2: Friends are nice: Cash is critical
Downloads=friends; customers=cash
You need friends but cash means survival
Matt is making a point about JBoss that once they had brand recognition and validation their average sale and customer number went way up. This leads to:
Lesson 2 revisited: Pushing the Pull
Marketing is critical
Invest in tools to convert friends to customers
Question from the audience: what kind of marketing?
Matt cites SugarCRM as an example of successful PR - PR is perhaps the open source company's best form of marketing.
Lesson 2 re-revisited: Does this mean that open source (cost) advantage is overstated?
No, but it does mean that the benefits should taper off over time. If you're still arguing about how you're cheaper after five years, you've failed. The conversation should quickly switch to superior software and service, not price. At any rate, after 5-7 years the cost advantages start to go away (you start hiring direct sales, etc., which makes the P&L look more like a traditional software company. But by that time your incumbent competition is dead.)
Lesson 3: Scaling to fit your model
Year 1-100% pull
Year 2-Inside sales (100% proactive pull)
Year 3-Inside + direct
Year 4-Direct + inside
Year 5-Direct
Lesson 4: Think "user community" not developer community
Your company will do 85-100% of the core development work, but you should rely on your user community to greatly assist on localization, roadmap, bug spotting, etc. Users matter a great deal.
Lesson 5: Be where your customers are
Goes back to Matt's argument that OSS doesn't need to be in the Valley. Or, rather, that you should have a strong US presence (because that's where the current market is), but need not set up perma-camp in the Valley.
Lesson 6: Don't make your customer think about licenses
Clarity is everything in the sales process.
Lesson 7: basic ingredients for success
Market timing
Prepare for participation
Great initial code base
Degree of applicability
Modularity of code--Matt takes an aside to show us an unrelated soccer clip, which was a supposed explanation of modularizing anything. [Matt comments: Arsenal is relevant to everything. That clip made my entire argument.]
License to fit the need
Lesson 8: basic ingredients for success
Documentation is critical
Price cannot be your primary value driver
Enterprises have been taught to distrust sales
Lesson 9: Be permeable
Be open, not just in code but in relationships with everyone in the universe
Ultimately open source is not about price. It's about being the best software on the planet.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 26, 2006 10:54 AM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Your enemy is your best friend: Zenoss and Hyperic collaborating
I am sitting with Doug and John Mark from Hyperic and Bill from Zenoss talking about how you manage relationships with your competition. According to both parties, neither is the enemy-rather they are both fighting a common enemy in IBM, HP, CA and BMC. It's a $9 billion software market--bigger than CRM, content management etc.
So can two competitors meet in the middle? In collaborating, Bill says that what's important is being clear what each partner does and where they fit in and what are the things that can be put into a common project to make better for all parties.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 25, 2006 03:58 PM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The new world domination? Telco? (Report from OSCON)
Tim O'Reilly just got done introducing Mark Spencer (founder, Asterisk and CEO, Digium), and called Asterisk one of the most disruptive technologies in the world today. High praise from the high priest of technology.
I couldn't help but notice an eerie similarity between Linus Torvalds (left) and Mark (right).
You know, I didn't see Linus during Mark's presentation. Could it be a new form of world domination?
Posted by Matt Asay on July 25, 2006 02:27 PM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Competing against the void: MySQL and PostgreSQL (Greenplum)
I'm listening to Scott Yara talk about Greenplum's commercialization of the PostgreSQL database, and comparing it to what Paul Weinstein (EVP, Business Development, MySQL). I had always viewed the two projects - MySQL and PostgreSQL - as direct competitors, and figured both were also competing with DB2 and Oracle. This is clearly not the case, at least, not for these two companies.
Who does MySQL compete with? With no one. Marten is on the record as saying that
We continue to have most of our deployments in areas where there was no database before. Either the application didn't use a database earlier, or the application is new. We are now seeing more and more migrations from old databases, but the majority of our installations are greenfield use.Marten has also stated that he's not interested in competing with Oracle - his goal is not to become the cheaper, "good enough" competitor to Oracle. He's looking to be the backbone of the web - a market that isn't well suited to monolithic databases like Oracle and DB2.
Greenplum, for its part, is taking PostgreSQL and making it into a business intelligence/data warehousing workhorse. This would seem to be easier for Oracle or DB2 to compete against, but would require both to rearchitect their databases for a purpose not originally intended. In other words, it would be insanely expensive and would take a long time.
In both cases, both companies are thriving on "asymmetric competition." They're competing on their own terms, not the incumbents'.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 25, 2006 01:23 PM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
OSCON: Open Source and Asymmetric Competition
I was late to the panel and since Matt is on it I am trying to cover as much as possible. David Skok is talking about JBoss and the fact that they will do $50-60m in revenue this year. Is that true?
Skok says that customers wanted from Jboss:
1. Support
2. Roadmap
3. Longevity
These make a lot of sense and speak to what people want from projects that turn into companies.
On the sales approach, JBoss responded only to incoming demand--which are people who have already sold themselves on JBoss. Which takes out the sales costs (in theory) as telesales are much cheaper than on the street sales guys.
Questions from Tim: To what extent do users help drive the company vision? Do the dynamics still work if you lose community?
Matt says: The developer dynamic changes as the project becomes more successful. The company's developers do 85% of the development. Users don't really drive open source once a company becomes successful.
Tiemann says: There is a collection of people who will always go to the underserved niche. The mistake that we make is assuming that that is the only leading edge. In the Fedora world for example we see guys who appear too normal--early adopters may go away but we find a larger audience.
Matt's question: What is your competitive advantage (if it's not price)
JBoss-it is cost.
Red Hat-it's value. I can't keep track of the rest of the argument.
Question from Will Price: What about support as a model?
Support needs to be more than just the model. You need to offer more, things like network and other value-added services in order to get people to re-up for the subscription cost.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 25, 2006 11:23 AM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
"Honest dual licensing" (Fabrizio/Funambol)
Fabrizio has one of the best posts I've yet seen on open source licensing. It's one of the most candid posts I've ever seen on open source licensing (and candor is something all software companies need - open and closed).
Fabrizio traces the contours of open source licensing, honing in on dual licensing strategies. He astutely observes that a dual-license strategy works well for MySQL (or a product that is embeddable), because there the "trigger" is clear: you either pay your way out of the GPL (or similarly restrictive license) or you contribute code back. Simple.
Open source applications, as Fabrizio notes, are different. There is no obvious trigger (You'll need to read Fabrizio's post to discover the non-obvious trigger that he comes up with) for either contributing back or buying. So what do you do?
In Alfresco's case, we moved to a 100% open source model for various reasons (not the one Fabrizio suggests - the model was financially quite good to us). One was that it correlated better to our personal beliefs - I, in particularly, never liked the mixed-source message I had to say while at my previous employer. It never felt right.
Beyond this, however, there were solid development reasons for moving to a 100% open source model. We didn't need to worry about what was free and what wasn't. We just had to worry about writing the best possible software.
All of this (and other things I could say) doesn't answer Fabrizio's implicit insight: there needs to be a purchase or contribution trigger for open source applications. What is it? I have my ideas, and like Fabrizio's. Thoughts?
Posted by Matt Asay on July 25, 2006 10:50 AM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Why Google and Yahoo! can't be better open source citizens
Tim just finished the Ghost in the Machine: The Impact of Open Source on Web 2.0 session. It's part of the Executive Briefing that I helped Tim put together (and which, btw, is completely filled - a huge success), and proved to be insightful.
One particular thing bothered me, however. I kept hearing Jeremy from Yahoo! and Chris from Google talk about how they don't open up code because "no one would understand our code, or be able to make use of it - it's too specific to a massive web company."
Oh, really? Who is to say? Shouldn't the market decide the relevance of code? Aren't Yahoo! and Google missing the point or, rather, conveniently looking past it? Open source isn't about beneficent companies giving code to the impoverished underclass. It's about working on code collaboratively within a community.
Jeremy eventually owned up to a reason that I found much more compelling - disappointing, but compelling. Jeremy said that Yahoo's applications are tightly bound together, making it difficult to open one piece without giving away information about how the remainder is written, or making it useless because knowing 1/10th of the application wouldn't be helpful (because of all the unknown code).
All of which means, as Tim pointed out, that these companies have failed to write code according to a cardinal open source principle: modularity. Yahoo! and Google can't open source more code because their code is too tightly bound together - layer upon layer upon layer requiring layer upon layer upon layer. This doesn't mean that Yahoo! and Google are bad, but it is disappointing that they are such heavy users of open source, and have architected themselves into a corner that makes giving back impossible or problematic.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 25, 2006 09:49 AM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
OSCON-Bill Hilf: "Microsoft is learning from open source"
Sitting in the back at OSCON, it's a bit hard to hear the conversation between Danese Cooper and Bill Hilf.
Bill's comments on Martin Taylor:
"Martin did a great job at the messaging around open source and Linux." Danese reminds Bill that Martin was in fact the guy that created all the threats and disinformation. Bill claims MS spread no disinformation re: Get the Facts.
Danese tells Bill that Groklaw published a story on the Office-->ODF transform and the fact that it doesn't really work very well.
It feels a bit like Bill is talking alot but not saying very much...
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 25, 2006 09:37 AM
July 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Tim O'Reilly: Opening up OSCON
Tim is in the middle of his opening keynote at OSCON, talking about the Big Ideas that are driving open source.
Tim just made an interesting point, one that I first heard r0ml make years ago at eGOVOS: open soure is about efficient free markets, not licenses. Why does open source work (and why does Web 2.0 properly architected, work)? Because it feeds off the self-interest - not generosity - of individual developers. People scratch their own itches, and the overall community of software grows. Just as Adam Smith and free market economists have always said it would.
He had a few other interesting points:
- How do we reinvent open source for a world where software is "performed," rather than distributed?
- Open source will increasingly intersect with the web through mash-ups. Open APIs may overtake open source. Google uses open source to build itself, but is a proprietary company.
- One other open phenomenon involves closed applications, but opening the frameworks used to build them. (Like 37Signals and Ruby on Rails.)
Posted by Matt Asay on July 25, 2006 08:32 AM
July 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The secret of successful open source companies (The JBoss example)
At OSCON next week, I'm giving a presentation entitled Making Sales While Making Friends: Lessons Learned from Open Source Businesses. I'm in the middle of preparing it, and also reflecting on some conversations I had earlier this week with sales executives from MySQL, Red Hat, JasperSoft, and SugarCRM.
In the course of those conversations, I was surprised by how differently we supposedly similar open source companies run our operations. We're each an open source company, but with varying licensing, sales, and support models. That's a good thing.
But it's also a perplexing thing if you're trying to weave together a common theme between them.
After our meeting, I spent some time on Sourceforge, pulling download data and correlating it to company revenues for these and other open source companies. After awhile, similarities started to emerge from the data.
Let's use JBoss as an example. Here are the company's downloads over the course of the project:
The red numbers underneath reflect revenue increases year over year. (All the numbers are available out on the web - you just have to dig.) Assuming Red Hat's CFO was telling the truth (and he wouldn't last long if he weren't), JBoss went from next to nothing in revenues (2001) to $60M. (Btw, this is pretty incredible for any company, much less one that started giving away its software only a few short years ago, and has stubbornly persisted in giving it away for free. Nice work, Marc.)
How? I took a walk through the Wayback Machine, to remember what was happening over the past five years at JBoss, and see how the rising revenues correlate with downloads, product releases, etc.
The most intriguing thing I found is that there has never been any magic formula at JBoss (or at the other successful open source vendors). JBoss made great software. The media picked up on that and reported it. People heard about JBoss, and then downloaded JBoss' software. The biggest spikes in the downloads correspond to significant product releases (usually developer preview versions got the most traction upfront). The biggest spikes (or, rather, gradual but insistent rise) in revenues came 6-9 months after JBoss had started working with HP and Novell.
What I actually find almost shocking in the data is that JBoss' downloads have stayed relatively constant over time. It's not like they jumped 10X each year, or even 2X. They just slowly, incrementally grew. So, contrary to the argument that open source is a volume game, I'm coming to believe that while volume is important to get you through your initial hiccups and customer wins, the real measure of a successful open source company is its ability to convert whatever volume of downloads/would-be customers it has.
JBoss never had the tens of millions of downloads that Red Hat or MySQL have, but it was able to convert a significant percentage of its 50,000 - 100,000 downloads per month into paying customers.
How? Well, one way is simply through brand. The more momentum JBoss has enjoyed, the better its conversion rates have been. That's why the numbers from 2005 to 2006 rise so rapidly - it has established itself as the open source application server to beat. (You can actually trace the download activity to analyst reports and other news JBoss highlighted on its website through the Wayback Machine.)
The other equally important way is through push. That initial 3X JBoss enjoyed seems to stem, in significant part, from the added marketing Marc did back in early 2003 for the support services JBoss offered:
Knowledge from the source. JBG services are delivered directly by the developers of the code. JBoss Group consultants spend 50% of their time writing Free Software and 50% of their time consulting. This is a novel and unique service in the software industry.January 30, 2003. JBoss Landing Page.Purchasing JBG services is a value added investment in your people and your IT infrastructure. It is transfer of real information from our teams to your teams. Spend your money on knowledge not empty licenses.
You can also see sales start to accelerate after Matrix, Accel, and Intel Capital invested $10M in JBoss back in February 2004. The company started to ramp its sales force, and revenues followed.
All of which confirms something I'll be presenting at OSCON. (It also, I think, confirms much of what Larry was arguing in his post about "natural revenue growth.") Below I've mocked up a (very) rough idea of what the appropriate sales model is for the number of downloads your company has:
The more volume, the less bandwidth (and need) you have to reach out in a direct way to your user base. The less volume, the more need to "push" sales to maximize conversion rates on the few downloads you have (all the while doing what JBoss did to increase downloads: build a fantastic product and try to get the media and analysts to notice so that people will know to download it and try it out).
The secret sauce, then, for JBoss and all successful open source companies is an exceptional product. Next, be sure to build momentum for your brand so that conversion rates (and sales) rise even as downloads level off. JBoss is the perfect example of a company that has done this exceptionally well, along with its new owner, Red Hat. In this way, creating a successful open source company really isn't dramatically different from building a strong closed-source company. The difference is in all open source's other benefits that give you unfair competitive advantage. But that's another blog entry.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 21, 2006 09:34 PM
July 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Software is from Mars and Entertainment is from Venus
A recent court ruling will have me watching almost no movies going forward. A recent software trend has me using a lot more software.
The use is directly proportional to the copyright owners' willingness to open up.
In the former case, you may have heard (on Slashdot or elsewhere) that the multi-year fight with the Directors Guild is over: there will be no movie editing allowed (except for TV, airplanes, or whatever else gives Spielberg a big upfront check :-). All the players who scream for IP freedom (including Larry, Mr. "Remix") in software are strangely (or not so strangely) silent in defending CleanFilms, CleanFlicks, and their ilk. (Who wants to protect conservatives, after all?) Without a lobby, the judge decided and these companies go out of business.
As a prude when it comes to movies, I'm now out of the market. Oh, well, my life was fine during the years before the editing companies came along. I'm sure I'll survive without Hollywood.
What is interesting to me is technology's trend in the opposite direction, toward open source and open standards, with real money attached to the trend. Yes, I know the core issue is about "integrity" of one's work. When Spielberg throws in a gratuitous sex scene to achieve a PG-13 or R rating (because it will help ticket sales if it has that rating, not the scene), he wants to be sure no one can think of him without thinking of his silly pandering to the box office. Fine.
But it's this rigid control of a copyrighted work's future - its "integrity," as it were - that is precisely what the technology world is abandoning (through open source, Web 2.0 mash-ups, etc.), and to excellent effect. So, of interest to me is that one set of copyright holders is deliberately letting go of the reins to make money (software), while the other camp is tightening restrictions. The results speak for themselves (in movies and in music.) Is there a lesson here?
So, while I used to use the slide below in my presentations, I don't think I can anymore. The point of the slide was to show that we should learn from the entertainment industry's mistakes, not replicate them.
Apparently, we (software) have. The entertainment industry is closing up...and shutting down revenues. The software industry? Well, even Microsoft is opening up. Sales will continue to rise as we learn to master the new model of openness. The tradeoff is that we'll have lots of software to use, but nothing to watch or listen to. :-)
Posted by Matt Asay on July 21, 2006 07:04 AM
July 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Novell and JBoss: What's going on?
First off, where did Computer Business Review come from? I've been pining for interesting commentary and news on open source that isn't a regurgitation of press releases, and CBR consistently delivers it. Matthew Aslett (No relation, despite the similarity in names :-) is doing an exceptional job.
Case in point: I think he's the one who broke the news that Novell's SLES 10 doesn't include JBoss 4.0. Now, he's the one hounding the two to find out why.
As for the Novell vs. JBoss decision, it seems fairly pedestrian, as Justin Steinman (of Novell) explains:
As part of the SUSE Linux Enterprise development process, we evaluate the licensing for each package that we ship in our distribution. While packages like JBoss are distributed under the LGPL license, there are many components which are proprietary technologies from third parties.So, for those looking for mystery, anger, finger-pointing, and what-not, you're going to be disappointed. I'm sure Novell wasn't happy with the Red Hat acquisition of JBoss, but that's life in software (open or closed).We found several components in JBoss4 that fit this profile. We checked with JBoss and the two areas in question, the SRP security extensions and the application client, ship under licenses that have questionable redistribution rights for Novell.
We didn't want to modify the JBoss package and we couldn't get legal clarification until March 29, 2006. At that time, it was too late to include JBoss4 in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, as the SLES 10 beta test was well underway....
Our decision not to ship JBoss4 in SLES10 was made on March 29. The Red Hat acquisition of JBoss was announced on April 10. There is no connection between the removal of JBoss4 from SLES10 and the acquisition of JBoss by Red Hat.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 20, 2006 07:52 AM
July 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Pickaxes and shovels, Part II: Krugle
I spent a productive hour with Krugle yesterday, meeting with a few members of management: Steve Larsen (CEO), Laura Merling (VP, Business Development - yes, that Laura Merling), and Ken Krugler (CTO). I have to admit: I went into the meeting with low expectations. In Ken's words, I figured a vertical search engine focused on open source and development might be interesting, but not useful (with "use" translating into dollars).
I was wrong.
First off, Krugle is more than a vertical search engine. It does that, and it does it extremely well. Krugle aggregates the many and various open source software repositories (Sourceforge being just one of them), indexes them, and makes them easily, productively searchable. So, if I know I need a utility to convert documents to PDFs, or need a special library to do X, Y, or Z, I can easily find it using Krugle.
Even more interestingly, once I find the code itself, as well as relevant how-tos, I can actually select this grouping of tabs in Krugle and email a link of that composite of information to someone. So, if I'm trying to show a friend, customer, partner, or whomever how to integrate JasperSoft with OpenOffice, it becomes super-easy to aggregate that information, package it, and send it over to someone as a unified URL. Nice.
I would argue that as Krugle grows and improves, it will become as critical to development as the IDE. There will simply be no reason to not facilitate development using Krugle.
Keep in mind, however, that Krugle is not relegated to the airy confines of the uber-elite developers. Krugle is something that system administrators or casual developers/programmers can use to get their jobs done. Krugle provides access to the world of code samples, tech notes, etc. that can help someone get their job done, e.g., I'm a system administrator that knows I need something for my Linux installations to facilitate monitoring of those servers. I go into Krugle, type in a relevant search, and up pops relevant projects and their descriptions (as well as licensing information, strength of the project measured in active developers, downloads, comments from other developers, etc.), code from various projects that I can immediately drop in, tech notes that describe how others have done the same thing, etc.
It's like having the entire world of open source on your hard drive. Quickly accessible.
So, that's search. Where I think Krugle gets even more useful is as a tech support option. Krugle centralizes forum/wiki/etc. support for the world of open source projects, giving users a one-stop shop for Alfresco, SugarCRM, JasperSoft, MySQL, etc. (online) support. Krugle takes it a step further, however, and allows its users to add comments to the support pages ("Follow steps 1-4, but instead of 5, reboot and type "XXXXX" into the command line"). Krugle thereby enables user-generated support pages and enriches the support of both project-based and company-based open source products.
There's more, but this is getting a bit long. The short of it is that Krugle is doing some exciting things relative to open source search, development, and support. Done right, Krugle should become a central aspect of open source development going forward.
P.S. My biggest question going into the meeting was how Krugle plans to make money. The immediate answer is "advertising," but the longer-term, more interesting answer is many and varied. Tech companies (proprietary or open source) should consider Krugle to beef up and improve their developer support (or just technical support) offerings. That's just one OEM possibility - I can see several others. I can also see enterprise IT licensing Krugle as a natural complement to their development tools.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 20, 2006 07:42 AM
July 19, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Event tonite: Can You Make Money in Software Anymore?
I am on a panel tonite from 6-8pm that SV Bank put together out in Pleasanton on the future of software. In case you are wondering I will be the guy supporting open source. And yes, I should have posted this sooner.
Can You Make Money in Software Anymore?
The software market is undergoing monumental changes. The days of multi-million-dollar sales are over. Having experienced failed, costly, and time consuming implementations, enterprise buyers want vendor independence, embrace open standards, and see software-as-a-service is coming into its own. Whether, when, and how you can make money in this environment are open questions. Venture capitalists and software executives will offer their recommendations on the best opportunities for today's up-and-coming software entrepreneurs.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
6-6:30 pm: Networking and Hors d'oeuvres
6:30-8:00 pm: Panel discussion and Q/A
Register on the website (http://www.svase.org)
Moderator: Randy J. Friedman, Managing Director, Sogno Group
Panelists:
Chris Hummel, Vice President Services Global Sales Support, Oracle Corporation
Sunil Kurkure, Vice President, SVB Alliant
Dave Rosenberg, CIO, Glass Lewis & Co.
Peter D. Henry
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 19, 2006 02:15 PM
July 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Open source in the national interest
Computer Business Review has an interesting review of the United States Department of Defense report "Open Technology Development". [PDF] If you haven't read it, you need to take a look. It is one of the most clear-sighted documents on open source that I've yet read, and should banish CIO doubts as to the core benefits of open source: cost savings, security, speed of development, robustness of development, etc.
SCO and others have been crying 'Foul' on the US government's increasing adoption of open source, suggesting (as Darl McBride writes here in his letter to the US Senate and House)
"I assert that open source software - available widely through the Internet - has the potential to provide our nation's enemies or potential enemies with computing capabilities that are restricted by US law."Think that's a bit silly? Try this one, from the CEO of Green Hills Software:
"Now that foreign intelligence agencies and terrorists know that Linux is going to control our most advanced defense systems, they can use fake identities to contribute subversive software that will soon be incorporated into our most advanced defense systems."Apparently O'Dowd (Green Hills CEO) has never actually taken the time to learn how open source and, specifically, Linux, operates. But we'll forgive his abject ignorance on the condition that someone pays his tuition to head back to school at some point. He needs it.
Anyway, back to the Department of Defense's report. It has a treasure trove of insight, nicely counterbalancing the ignorance noted above:
Currently within DoD, there is no internal distribution policy or mechanism for DoD developed and paid for software code. By not enabling internal distribution, DoD creates an arbitrary scarcity of its own software code, which increases the development and maintenance costs of information technology across the Department.To be fair, the DoD is not talking about open source exclusively in this report. It is talking more broadly about open development:Other negative consequences include lock-in to obsolete proprietary technologies, the inability to extend existing capabilities in months vs. years, and snarls of interoperability that stem from the opacity and stove-piping of information systems....
Software code has become central to the warfighter's ability to conduct missions. If this shift is going to be an advantage, rather than an Achilles' heel, DoD must pursue an active strategy to manage its software knowledge base and foster an internal culture of open interfaces, modularity and reuse. This entails a parallel shift in acquisitions methodologies and business process to facilitate discovery and re-use of software code across DoD.
The national security implications of open technology development (OTD) are clear: increased technological agility for warfighters, more robust and competitive options for program managers, and higher levels of accountability in the defense industrial base....
DoD needs to use open technology design and development methodologies to increase the speed at which military systems are delivered to the warfighter, and accelerate the development of new, adaptive capabilities that leverage DoD's massive investments in software infrastructure.
In the private sector, changes in design methodologies for software development are enabling enormous gains in productivity and efficiency. Individuals and companies are able to leverage open technology platforms to rapidly deploy new solutions and capabilities to improve their competitive advantage. These open technology platforms may be open source or proprietary software applications with open standards and published interfaces that allow the rapid development of new capabilities by third parties without coordination agreements.It's the mash-up mentality, in some ways, that seems to appeal most to the DoD. But it's not just about "Web 2.0" thinking. It's about how to make the DoD a participant in the wider software community, thereby saving development cycles and development dollars, as this fascinating excerpt indicates:
DoD has two competing interests:Amazing stuff. The DoD summarizes as follows, and shows a clear understanding of open source's benefits:These trade-offs are well understood for physical goods and services, but not as well understood for digital ones. DoD can easily calculate the cost difference between developing or acquiring a physical good or service by simply comparing make or buy costs. There is however a fundamental difference between physical and digital products. Digital goods (software code, music, movies, etc.) once created can be copied perfectly with relative ease: limiting distribution enforces scarcity, but that scarcity is arbitrary and negotiated, rather than an innate property of the product. Software's ability to be replicated also means it can be incorporated into other software systems without "using up" the original component, as one would with physical components.
- Provide for the defense of the U.S., and;
- Support and grow the U.S. industrial base, which provides materiel and systems so that DoD can accomplish its mission.
The business model of purchasing physical goods and services has served DoD well in the past; but it falls short when applied to software acquisition. By treating DoD-developed software code as a physical good, DoD is limiting and restricting the ability of the market to compete for the provision of new and innovative solutions and capabilities. By enabling industry to leverage an open code development model, DoD would provide the market incentives to increase the agility and competitiveness of the industrial base.
Currently within DoD, there is no internal distribution policy or mechanism for DoD developed and paid for software code. By not enabling internal distribution, DoD creates an arbitrary scarcity of its own software code, which increases the development and maintenance costs of information technology across the Department. Other negative consequences include lock-in to obsolete proprietary technologies, the inability to extend existing capabilities in months vs. years, and snarls of interoperability that stem from the opacity and stove-piping of information systems.
DoD needs to evaluate the impact that locking into one set of proprietary standards or products may have to its ability to react and respond to adversaries and more importantly, to technological change that is accelerating regardless of military conflict. In order to remain competitive in a rapidly shifting technological landscape (including the disruptive technologies leveraged by our adversaries), DoD's software development and business processes must break out of the industrial-era acquisitions mold.
To summarize: OSS and open source development methodologies are important to the National Security and National Interest of the U.S. for the following reasons:Amen. Now if you're a CIO tasked with saving money and resources for a large or small enterprise, wouldn't it seem prudent to follow the lead of an organization tasked with saving taxpayers' money and lives? Yeah. Me, too.
- Enhances agility of IT industries to more rapidly adapt and change to user needed capabilities.
- Strengthens the industrial base by not protecting industry from competition. Makes industry more likely to compete on ideas and execution versus product lock-in.
- Adoption recognizes a change in our position with regard to balance of trade of IT.
- Enables DoD to secure the infrastructure and increase security by understanding what is actually in the source code of software installed in DoD networks.
- Rapidly respond to adversary actions as well as rapid changes in the technology industrial base.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 18, 2006 08:52 AM
July 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
McAfee blames open source for all the worlds evils
This article from PC Advisor Hackers learn from open source states that McAfee is blaming open source development methods for the rise of hacker bots.
The current generation of bot software has grown to the point where open-source software development tools make a natural fit. With hundreds of source files now being managed, developers of the Agobot family of malware, for example, are using the open-source CVS (Concurrent Versions System) software to manage their project.
This is so absurd I couldn't even comment so I asked my pal Bill Weinberg to give us his thoughts.
On one hand, the McAfee position is Jurassic, in that they aver that their proprietary methods yield better software and that they deny the advantages of full disclosure and adhere to the outdated premise of security through obscurity.On the other, the story merely indicates that McAfee is calling out the fact that crackers are using the same methods and tools and open source developers. However, the accusatory nature of such a statement is absurd, in that no one would impugn Microsoft C/C++ and Visual Studio (and Windows) just because malware authors use them to create their wares (our mals).
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 17, 2006 03:34 PM
July 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Taking user-generated apps to the enterprise--A quick look at Coghead
Coghead is a web-based application for the creation and delivery of web-based applications. (Yes, that is the correct description.) Coghead allows savvy users (those who have dealt with Excel macros and such) to become the mythical "business analyst" and develop workflow and applications on their own. The essence of the product allows a broader group of people to leverage technology to solve their own problems and create their own applications. There are a variety of applications that make sense--workgroup oriented workflow, places where you have form submissions for data collection etc.
What's interesting about the approach is that it's a development and deployment platform all in one. The goal is to allow non-programmers to create web-based applications in a collaborative manner and allow access to anyone who has the proper credentials.
The founders set out to create a model that was conceptually simple and based on my demo mostly succeeded. The product does require some solid computing experience but isn't like writing code by hand. Free accounts are available for single-users, but they see the value of the application as used in a collaborative manner. The company is driving people to use the free product as an end run to get them to pay.
On the technology side the stack runs on Linux, is Java-based using Tomcat as the servlet container, and uses the Sleepycat database and an Open Source BPEL engine.
The company is planning to launch to consumers in September with an affiliate program follow-on that will allow partners to develop their own applications, increasing the reach of the Coghead product itself.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on July 17, 2006 02:51 PM
July 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Hyperic: Enabling the Gold Rush
Hyperic just went open source, raised more cash, and is poised to do very well.
Why? Well, I see Hyperic as the quintessential "49er" beneficiary. You remember the cliche: those that made money in the Gold Rush were those selling pickaxes and shovels, rather than those wielding them. Hyperic provides the tools open source companies need to succeed. Namely:
The Hyperic HQ open source management platform provides a suite of free inventory auto-discovery, monitoring, alerting and portal tools that can be deployed out of the box in less than an hour, using plug-ins for the specific commercial and/or open source IT assets used in the customerÂ?s network. Support for products without plug-ins can be rapidly added to Hyperic HQ through its free open source development kit.What does this mean? Well, it means, for one thing, that open source companies will be better able to track where their downloads are going. One of the big frustrations in any open source company is the lack of data about who is using its product, and for what. Hyperic gives vendors (with the approval of their customers, of course) the ability to gather aggregate data on how their software is being deployed, or whether the downloads are just that: downloads that sit on a user's hard drive but never get moved into evaluation/pilot/production.
The Hyperic solution also enables vendors to better manage bug fixes (both reporting and patch management back out to the customers), customer support (as envisaged above), and a range of other things. These are some hefty "pickaxes and shovels," and available under GPL (v2).
Hyperic is funded by Benchmark and Accel Partners (Peter Fenton wearing two different hats?).
NOTE: I'm actually not familiar enough with the IT operations market to know how Hyperic competes with Groundwork, which is another successful open source startup. I'm only commenting on Hyperic's enablement of open source project/product operations, which they've been doing for JBoss for some time.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 17, 2006 11:06 AM
July 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Open source's biggest services gun?
Bet you didn't think "Unisys" when you read that subject line, but it's true, all the same. Unisys has done a great job reinventing itself and extending its brand and expertise into new territory, most recently open source software. The firm has strong and growing relationships with MySQL and JBoss, and will increasingly be seen as one of the primary go-to partners for open source.
Julie Giera of Forrester has an interesting report on Unisys' open source services. The report deals primarily with Unisys, but also has interesting things to say about the larger open source services market.
On Unisys she says:
Unisys has announced a set of service offerings, called OASIS, for companies with open source platforms. It is the first time that a major IT service provider has offered a fully integrated set of services - including installation, configuration, maintenance, and enhancement - for a predefined open source stack. Competitors like HP and IBM have long had a menu of open source services that customers could choose from, but they have been reluctant to put a stake in the ground around a specific set of open source components. The OASIS announcement is an early indication that the open source services market is starting to mature. Through the OASIS offerings, open source customers can expect to achieve some of the same benefits as commercial software customers - predictability, cost savings, and strong service-level guarantees. With the OASIS set of services offerings, Forrester believes that Unisys should be on the shortlist of vendors for open source services.Fine and interesting. But Giera also takes the analysis a step further, identifying key requirements underpinning the open source services broker:
This sort of ambivalence - born of the best intentions, I have no doubt - can't persist in services companies. As Giera notes, "[S]ervice providers have to standardize the platform they're supporting. In fact, the differences between supporting a standard platform and supporting a nonstandard platform are as high as 40% over the life of the code. That's a huge number, especially if you consider that some IT applications can live for 10 years or more." This is the route Unisys is taking, and it's the same route taken by several of the smaller (but still highly successful) open source SIs like Cignex, Enomaly, Rivet Logic, Novacoast, etc.
- Open source choices delight, and confound, the CIO. Companies have many more software choices available to them today, in the form of both commercial software products and open source projects. Forrester believes that in the next two years entire enterprise application suites targeted to specific vertical industries will be available in the open source community. But since open source can be changed by anyone, the version control and feature/function planning that IT managers have come to depend on in commercial software markets doesn't necessarily exist. Of course, distributors like Red Hat are trying to dampen some of that unpredictability by applying change and release management processes to some of the more popular open source components. But the rigidity that comes with standardization flies in the face of some of the core tenets of open source - namely freedom and choice.
- IT service providers have tried to be all things to all people. It has proven difficult for IT services vendors like IBM to appear supportive of customer choice and freedom on the one hand, while at the same time driving standardization. In a recent discussion with IBM, Forrester was told "we don't want to alienate the open source community" by creating a standard services offering around one specific open source stack. IBM, like its rival HP, is concerned that if it creates a standard set of services around a predefined stack, it will be accused of forcing open source customers into an IBM-defined set of choices. IBM wants to avoid even the perception that it might be limiting customer options for software; especially since it has long been a cheerleader for open source, and it's been a proprietary software vendor for even longer.
To be successful in services (and software), you must pick your battles. Or, in open source terms, you must pick your packages/projects. You can't be all things to all people. I know, because I tried once. When at Novell, we struggled with the decision to support KDE or GNOME, and ended up straddling both (unsuccessfully, in my opinion). It burned development cycles, caused wasteful internal debate, and confused customers. Ultimately, GNOME won out by executive fiat. It should have happened much sooner, as at Red Hat.
So, you need to figure out how to be a few significant things to a decent swath of the buying population. That's where the money is, and Unisys is going about open source services in an optimal way.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 17, 2006 10:11 AM
July 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Why is good software harder to find than good music?
A good friend from Stanford, Lincoln Davies, turned me on to Clap Your Hands Say Yeah today, and I've been listening ever since. What a great sound. If you're into Radiohead, The Shins, White Stripes, etc. (as I am), you'll probably really like their sound.
I've used Pandora before for this same purpose - music discovery - and it works much the same as Lincoln's informal advice. (Except Pandora doesn't abuse my basketball prowess while advising on music.)
Why doesn't open source work the same? You like Plone? You'll really like SugarCRM (or whatever), and here's why. Nothing like that exists (of which I'm aware) today in open source. Ohioh (weak name) aims to help us discover the relative strength of a project, and Krugle helps you find great code in the first place, but there are no matching engines (again, of which I'm aware) to coordinate needs and preferences with open source software.
I suppose this is what SIs and analysts do (and I know some do it quite well), but surely there's a first-try method available somewhere? Or should be?
The record labels - bless 'em! - perform the music selection and promotion process reasonably well. Surely a software analog is ready to be born....
Posted by Matt Asay on July 15, 2006 05:21 PM
July 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
Where to find good open source employees
One of the most important requirements for any startup is hiring exceptional people. Hire weak people, and the company rises to the level of their incompetence. Hire exceptional people, and the company is elevated to the level of their expertise.
So how do you hire well in open source, given that - outside the realm of developers - very few business people actually have open source experience?
This is a question that I've had to answer repeatedly of late, as I've been hiring Alfresco's North and South American sales and business development organization. I have been very fortunate thus far, hiring three of the best people I've ever worked with: Luis Sala (Solutions Engineering), Jason Hardin (Inside Sales), and Martin Musierowicz aka "Mark" (Alliances).
What do most of Alfresco's employees have in common? Not a minute of open source experience. (Martin (JBoss) and Jason (Novell) are exceptions to this rule, as both came from open source companies.)
Despite this void, they've managed to pick up the open source strategy and mindset very well, and use it to good advantage against old employers (now our competitors) in the Enterprise Content Management market. The same is true of many of the hires at MySQL, SugarCRM, Funambol, etc.
The interesting part of this is that they were each mostly incapable of effectively competing with open source, or turning their companies to open source, while still with their proprietary ex-employers. During my three years at Novell, I was amazed at how hard it was to culturally shift people from a proprietary mindset to an open source one, and even more surprised by how difficult it was to change bureaucratic things like sales compensation models, distribution models, etc.
In short, people can change relatively easily in the open source world, if you take them out of a proprietary company. But proprietary companies, themselves, find it excruciatingly difficult to change. The same people struggle to embrace open source while locked within a proprietary company, and thrive with open source outside these companies. You just have to offer them a way out.
I'm therefore finding that a great place to find excellent talent for an open source company is within one's direct competitors (though this rule didn't inform our decision to hire Jason or Martin, for they came from partners, not competitors), or within vendors that compete in the same industry, but in a different niche of the industry. Whatever the competitive company's position, there are scads of employees at all levels of the organization who dearly want to get out and thrive with open source (starting with the CEO :-). So long as they're not constrained by a non-compete, and provided they are stellar performers, odds are they'll kick tail for an open source company.
Now, if you're a proprietary software company, wondering how to morph into an open source-friendly organization, you're going to find it very difficult. In fact, I would argue that your best bet is to isolate a group within the company and allow that company to experiment with open source separate from the rest of your company. Give them free rein. If the trial succeeds and the division/subsidiary/whatever grows, try grafting it back into the main branch of the tree and let them run amok.
Novell sort of did this with Ximian - the deal made no financial sense but lots of cultural sense as the Ximian team ran wild through Novell's staid culture and shook things up. Ximian may have accelerated Novell's transition to an open source company by two years (i.e., it only took two years instead of an estimated four years it otherwise would have taken).
In short, it's very hard for a proprietary company to embrace open source, for a wide range of different reasons. This gives open source a competitive advantage over them. And it also means that proprietary companies that want to open up are probably going to be most successful if they give employees room to do so...in isolation from the stultifying culture and processes of the closed source company.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 14, 2006 02:09 PM
July 14, 2006 | Comments: (0)
The age of the ideal entrepreneur
Do you have to be 14 to start a Google? No, according to some research cited by Will Price on his blog.
creativity comes in two distinct types - quick and dramatic and careful and quiet. David Galenson, an economist at the University of Chicago, analyzed the creative output of leading artists. He plotted the relationship between an artist's age and the value of their paintings. He quickly realized the artists clustered into two distinct groups - conceptualists, who did their breakthrough work early in life and then declined and experimentalists - who developed slowly, experimented and iterated, and peaked later in life. In the former camp are artists such as Mozart (age 30), Andy Warhol (33), Picasso (26), F. Scott Fitzgerald (29), and in the latter camp are figures such as Twain (50), Cezzanne (64), and Beethoven (54).So, abbreviating far too much (and far too sloppily), you get the young entrepreuners who rock the world because they don't know any better, and the "old" entrepreneurs who innovate on the world as it is, because they know the world too well.Conceputalists rewrite the rule book and in their extreme creativity revolutionize their area of focus and specialty. Experimentalists innovate more incrementally and while not as radical do infact generate great creativity over much longer periods of time. It is fascinating to apply the two mental constructs to the high-tech industry.
This distinction makes sense to me. My company, Alfresco, was started by two 40-something entrepreneurs who had been there, done that (founded Documentum and former COO of Business Objects). So, we have some hefty innovations in the Enterprise Content Management space, but we're more evolutionary than revolutionary (shared-drive interface, Google-esque search functionality, better performance, open source, etc.). But then I look around at blogs and such, and it's unlikely that Alfresco's founding development team would have been the first to innovate these.
At 33, I guess I'm hamstrung in the middle. Too young to know it all, and too old to not know better.
Posted by Matt Asay on July 14, 2006 08:40 AM
July 13, 2006 | Comments: (0)
What's on O'Reilly's Open Source Executive Radar?
I've been fortunate to be able to help Tim put together the Open Source Executive Briefing for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention this year. Fortunate because my views of open source tend not to stray far from "What will make my company more money today?" Tim, of course, tends to think in terms of years and decades, not days and weeks. So working with him has helped me see a bit farther out into the darkness to see where open source is going.
The picture is very, very bright.
However, most people will continue plodding along in their "open source is about commodification" mode, missing out on the bigger picture(s), unless they attend. There are very few events that I think can fundamentally change the way you look at, invest in, and monetize open source technology. This will be one of them. If you're an investor, you must be there. Same with any software executive. If you're not there, you're going to be left behind on the next big waves in open source.
July 25. Portland, Oregon. Only 12 more days to register, book travel, etc.
So, what will be talking about? The Executive Briefing is divided into four major divisions, corresponding to the O'Reilly Radar:
- Open Source as Assymmetric Competition. - For years the software industry has largely competed on the basis of symmetry: Oracle versus IBM in databases; BEA versus IBM in application servers; etc. Feature wars, price wars, but not true competition wars. That is, competing by playing a different game, with different rules. Open source enables an alternative battleground upon which to compete, with community, code, and culture the new competitive tools. This session brings together the top open source executives deploying these tactics of asymmetric competition, to learn from their experience. We'll also ask them how they respond in turn to the possibility of asymmetric competition from Web 2.0 platforms and applications, and to the operational needs of businesses delivering software as a service? Finally, we'd like to ask them the converse of what we asked Google and Yahoo!: Are you guys working together closely enough? Speakers include: Michael Tiemann (Red Hat), Marten Mickos (MySQL), David Skok (Matrix Partners, investor in JBoss), Jim Buckmaster (Craigslist), Bill Hilf (Microsoft), and others.
- Operations as Advantage - In a world where software is delivered as a service, the quality of a company's operational infrastructure is a key source of competitive advantage. Is this a world where scale matters? In a recent interview, Debra Chrapaty, the VP of Operations for Microsoft's Windows Live, contended that in the future, being a developer on someone's platform will mean being hosted on their infrastructure, and suggested that only a few companies will have the scale to compete. At OSCON this year, we're going to hash through this idea with some of the most exciting thinkers (and companies) in the industry: Ian Wilkes (Second Life), Brian Behlendorf (CollabNet), Javier Soltero (Hyperic), and others.
- Open Data - Tim has long believed that "data is the Intel Inside" of Web 2.0 applications, the source of competitive advantage and lock in. As a consequence, he also believes that it won't be long before "open data" becomes as hot-button an issue as open source software has been. He'll be grilling Chad Dickerson of Yahoo! on Flickr's decision to not allow Zoomr, a competitor to Flickr, to use Flickr's own web services API to help users to move their photos from Flickr to Zoomr. Flickr's been a pioneer in open web services, but they drew the line there. Was this the first shot in the "open data" wars? And how can open source companies make money from data, not source?
- Open Source and Web 2.0 - Everyone knows that Google, Yahoo!, and many other "Web 2.0" companies are built on top of open source, but how exactly do they use it? What's more, how do they apply principles from open source to other aspects of their business? How does a Web 2.0 business differ from a traditional software business? In this conversation with Chris DiBona, Open Source Program Manager for Google, Jeremy Zawodny, open source point man in Developer Relations for Yahoo!, and Jim Buckmaster, CEO of Craigslist, we'll explore these topics and more. We'll also put them in the hot seat: how do they give back to open source projects when source code alone isn't enough for people to recreate the application?
It's going to be one of the most exciting (and intellectually stimulating) open source days I've ever attended. Where else will you have Irwin Gross commenting on an observation that the output of the United States keeps getting lighter (as in weight), and how this begs for more efficient software markets? Or Tim O'Reilly pointing to 5-10 of the rising leaders in ope