Open Sources | Rodrigues & Urlocker | August 2006

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August 2006

August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

CrossOver Mac runs Windows programs without Windows

CodeWeavers announced the beta of CrossOver Mac, which allows you to install your favorite Windows applications and games on Mac OS X without a Windows installation and without a high-price Windows license. The Windows license aspect makes both Boot Camp and Parallels a bit of a bummer.

Speaking of Parallels I wowed a whole crew of people with the fact that I was running MacOS, Windows and Ubuntu all on the same laptop. If only the laptop itself didn't heat up like a Viking range the whole thing would be more impressive.

Also this week OpenOffice Premium was launched which brings clip art and templates to OO.org. Personally, I'd prefer the ability to run Excel macros to clip art but as we've seen previously my opinion is meaningless.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 31, 2006 10:18 PM

August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Work is for the Proletariat

Not Richard Stallman. In an interview with RMS posted on the All About Linux blog, Richard makes a classic argument for why he's not the poster child for open source:

Q. There are a lot of misconceptions about free software. What kind of an economic model does an entrepreneur look at when he starts out with free software ?

RMS: I want to ask you why that question is worth asking. First of all there are many people who don't have to make money. [!?!?! Um, maybe, Richard, but I don't know them. Did you meet them at The Hamptons? Can you introduce me?] Importantly even if a person has to make a living, he doesn't have to make a living from everything he does. [Asay: True enough. Can you sense the punchline coming?]

Lots of people develop free software in their free time and there are people who have to make a living and they do make a living.

To jump from, this person is not rich and therefore has to work, to this person can't write free software because he is not paid to write it, is an error.

There are over a million contributors to free software, a substantial fraction is getting paid and a majority are volunteers.

Oh, well. He redeems himself in the end. But Richard, most of us don't have a MacArthur Grant to support us. Most of us do, in fact, have to work. And most people writing software get paid to write software. In the most widely used open source software out there, they are almost universally getting paid to write that software, even if they are working on a "community" project like Apache.

There really is no free lunch. Nor free software. Someone is paying for it. It doesn't just grow on trees. Like RMS says, my day job might subsidize my night passion for coding (OK, I'm lying). But most people can't afford to overindulge passions. They have to work. Stupid Proletariat commoners like me. :-)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 31, 2006 08:06 PM

August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source risky? Nah. Just if you hire an attorney who doesn't grok it

I came across this opinion piece by Paul Barton, an attorney at Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP today. I wish he would have attended the Open Source Business Conference before writing his piece. (OSBC includes, among other things, two full days of legal education on open source.) He could have saved himself the embarrassment of misinformation. (I won't call it malpractice. :-)

(Btw, I am an attorney. I don't play one on TV.) (Unfortunately.)

First off, Paul is clearly talking about "in the wild" open source, whereas most enterprise open source adoption is of commercial open source (Red Hat, MySQL, JBoss, etc. etc.). It's true that Red Hat doesn't own the code (or most of it, anyway) that it ships, but this is emphatically not true of virtually every other piece of commercial open source software. Alfresco has as much right to its software as Documentum does (to Documentum's software). JasperSoft has as much right to its software as Business Objects does (to Business Objects' software). MySQL has as much right to its software as Oracle does (to Oracle's software). Etc.

Any time you start talking about open source as "risky," you need to clearly define what you mean by "open source." This lack of definition leads Paul into trouble later, when he says

...[M]ost forms of OSS licences are structured in favour of the contributor rather than the licensee. There are usually no contractual commitments of quality or fitness for purpose. The licensee will have to bear the risk of any errors in the code, and since there are often many contributors at work, there are numerous opportunities for infringing code to be introduced. This may, in some cases, outweigh the time and cost advantages of using open source.

This is inaccurate on so many levels that I hardly know where to begin.

The licensee and the contributor are treated the same. Each has rights so that the other's rights are protected. Regardless, in commercial open source, this is a non-issue. Because JBoss owns its code, it can license JBoss Portal, for example, to a user under any license that it wants to. Regardless, Paul should check out a comparison of the GPL to Microsoft's EULA. The GPL doesn't hold a candle to Microsoft's restrictions on end users ("licensees").
Contractual commitments...Has Paul seen an Oracle/SAP/Vendor-of-your-Choice EULA recently? I'm unaware of any that say anything other than "This software will explode at any minute. Look out!!!!" Microsoft's XP EULA at least gives you 90 days when it will "substantially perform" to expectations...I guess the viruses hit on the 91st day. :-)

At least the open source licenses have a good reason for not providing a warranty: you're getting the bits for free. Why should the code author warrant software (and assume the costs of legal liability) without payment? As Paul would discover if he tried to buy the software, warranties and other protections are forthcoming the minute he pulls out his checkbook.
"Numerous opportunities for infringing code to be introduced." I'd love to see Paul try. Go ahead, Paul. Infect Linux today. Submit code. We'll see how long it takes you (try at least two years of patient, solid work on the Linux project to actually get code committed).

In the case of commercial open source, Paul would fare no better, because all incoming code must be assigned to the company/project with a guarantee that it's his code (and the same rigorous legal analysis to screen infringing code that any Oracle or Microsoft would use - in fact, it's often better).

In short, Paul, you need to define what kind of open source you're talking about: the kind that most people use (commercial open source with all the protections you mistakenly say aren't there) or the random, rogue open source virus factory that no one uses. Yes, I'm exaggerating, but no, the "risk" of open source is no greater, and is generally far less, than the risk of using proprietary software.

I thought everyone already knew this.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 31, 2006 11:07 AM

August 31, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Universal Music opens up...sort of (not really)

Not open source, but it's a related attempt by a Big Proprietary Company (BigPropCo) to open up. And failing.

In case you hadn't heard, Universal Music today announced that it is licensing "its catalog of recordings and music videos available for free on an ad-supported Web site launching later this year.

Sounds great, right? Free music without the KaZaA?

Well, here are the details:

Users can download an unlimited number of songs or music videos if they register at the site. [Verdict: Good]
The tracks cannot be burned to a CD [Verdict: Bad], but users will be able to transfer music to portable media players equipped with Microsoft Windows digital rights management software. [Verdict: Insane, because the punchline is that the songs will therefore not be available to 77.9% of the market (the iPod, of course, but it also won't work with Macs, though that's only bad news for we "enlightened few." :-)
The service will require users to return to the site and renew registration at least once a month or the tracks cease to play. [Verdict: Disappointing. I understand that ad-supported sites require users to...look at the site, but this is obnoxious..]

So, all in all, Universal has taken a baby step, but not one that will get it running in the digital music era. Maybe next time.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 31, 2006 09:51 AM

August 30, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Research: Maturity of software processes and their impact on open source development

I was reading a research paper [PDF] last night by Martin Michlmayr (University of Melbourne) entitled "Software Process Maturity and the Success of Free Software Projects." The paper addresses the question of "whether the maturity of particular software processes differs in successful and unsuccessful projects" (1).

While the paper offers little in the way of hard conclusions, it does make some interesting observations.

Version Control Tools.
Version control tools, such as CVS in the case of projects hosted on SourceForge, are used more widely in successful than in unsuccessful projects. Furthermore, a higher percentage of version control repositories are available publicly. In free software projects, CVS and similar tools play important roles related to coordination. Having a private version control repository limits the access of prospective contributors. On the other hand, a publicly available CVS repository allows contributors to monitor exactly what other people are working on. This allows multiple people to work together efficiently in a distributed way. In a similar way to defect tracking systems, public version control systems may attract more volunteers since users see what needs to be done and how they can get involved.
Mailing lists. 80% of successful projects use mailing list archives, compared to 50% of unsuccessful projects.
In both, version control tools and mailing lists, it is not clear from the present findings whether a successful project requires these types of infrastructure to flourish, or whether the implementation of the infrastructure has attracted more volunteers and so led to more success. Our assumption is that there is no clear causality and that both affect each other.
Still, it would appear that mailing lists are important for lowering the "cost" of outside contributors getting involved with a project, as it serves as a form of documentation. (I've talked here about the importance of documentation.)
Documentation. Interestingly, documentation wasn't found to definitively impact a project one way or another:
it can be argued that user documentation is an important factor in free software projects. However, this factor alone does not determine success. Developer documentation, on the other hand, is not very common in free software projects. A reason for this might be that prospective developers find most answers to their questions from other sources, such as mailing list archives or the source code.
Still, the author doesn't analyze code quality of the projects with/without extensive documentation, as well as other factors. My bet (based on experience) is still that documentation is outcome-determinative in open source projects.
Systematic Testing.
The analysis of processes involving testing shows that successful projects make more
use of release candidates and defect tracking systems than unsuccessful projects. There is no difference in the presence of automated test suites. The availability of release candidates has been taken as an indication of a well defined release plan. While it would be revealing to qualitatively study and compare the release strategies of different projects, the present findings suggest that a clear release strategy coupled with testing contributes to the success of a project.
Let the developers know where you're going, and when you'll get there. This makes it easier for them to find the time and inclination to help.

Not a lot of big conclusions in the paper, but it does point to one general theme: successful projects are permeable. They make it easy (or relatively so) to contribute and use the software. Less successful projects horde information and so require larger investments of time in order to use or contribute to the project.

So, if you're thinking of starting a project, or wanting to improve use of an existing project, try improving access to your CVS (or whatever you use), use of mailing lists, and follow a well-defined release plan. Oh, and document everything. It's boring work, but it's critical.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 30, 2006 05:53 AM

August 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Marc Fleury is back, and as shy as ever

Marc Fleury is back from vacation (or wherever he was), and kicks off his return with a great (and long) post on his blog. Marc is proof that you can work for a public company and not be a complete drone. At least, not yet. Maybe The Matrix has not yet sucked him dry of attitude and creativity....

Anyway, here are a few of the more interesting points:

One of the nuances becoming increasingly clear to many insiders is that the power of the model rests in the extremely low cost of distribution and sales. We reach millions of folks with free distribution and then monetize this base. It is a very efficient way to acquire customers. The result is that we spend 30 cents for every dollar of maintenance revenue, while the competition, on average, spends $3 for every dollar that ultimately comes in as maintenance. The downside, compared to proprietary software, is that on average we only monetize 3% of our user base for JBoss and roughly 10% for Linux. This low cost of sales we achieve through mass distribution is what makes the model tick. The customer gets to make up his own mind as to whether the software is any good as opposed to having to go through the vendor's pricey and biased salesforce. This enables the OSS enterprise sales force to be very effective since they mostly are targeting highly pre-qualified potential customers.

What I find most intriguing in this section is the conversion rates he assigns to JBoss (3%) and to Linux/Red Hat (10%). Marc doesn't go into this, but it's certain that his conversion rate (and Red Hat's) has gone up over time, as I blogged before. Why? Momentum, brand, sales "push," etc.

What will be very interesting to see is whether JBoss' conversion rate jumps to 10% when it hits the market maturity point that Red Hat currently enjoys, and whether Red Hat's moves to, say, 20%. (Is there a natural ceiling to open source conversion rates? We just don't know yet. Watch Red Hat to find out.) I would imagine that Marc's conversion rate will continue to scale with JBoss' brand and market presence.

Marc, true to form, then refuses to duck the Oracle/Linux rumors:

Let's assume Oracle wants to introduce a NEW distribution, what analysts call "Oracle/Linux." It would take time to assemble: you need Linux engineers, you need OS experience. You also need to build a support structure and you need to make it not suck. None of this says "?Larry can
t do it." It is just that it is all easier said than done. For more background reading on this, and why it's an uphill battle, read Trip Chowdhry of FTN Midwest Research's evaluation report on this scenario.

In fact, the recent rhetoric from the press has now been toned down to "Oracle wants to redistribute and support RHEL instead". From a distance it sounds like this is feasible as RHEL is GPL. However it is a bit more complicated than that, read Baird'?s Steve Ashley's note for excellent background reading on the topic. See, nowhere in the GPL is it said that we must distribute the software to you in the first place. Dion Cornett likes saying GPL != Public Domain. In fact, in the case of RHEL, RedHat doesn't distribute it to anybody, not for free that is.

If you want to have the software, you must subscribe to RedHat Network (RHN) and if you redistribute the patches or RHEL (which you can) you must pay us for every instance, if you don'?t, well, we are under no obligation to give you the future patches and upgrades, in other words, we cancel the RHN distribution to you and you are technically /forking/ RHEL.

Did you catch that? Most people don't. And that's why they fail to see the beauty of Red Hat's business model: people assume open source requires distribution of source code to anyone that asks. Not true. In Red Hat's case, you don't get access to their certified/tested/supported RHEL unless you pay. No $$$, no source code. Just because they write something doesn't mean they have to give it to you. That's not in the GPL I know.

As for Oracle and Linux, Oracle has a great deal of Linux experience. But at some point, you play your game and leave the rest to others. Linux is not Oracle's game. They provide excellent support for Linux, but they're not an operating system company, and couldn't become such simply by wishing it to be so. It's a different beast. It's not one that Oracle should bother trying to tame.

If they did, as Marc writes, and if everyone stopped whining about Red Hat's rising clout and actually acted on it, where would that leave us?

So, today, we are in an interesting situation. RHAT is being perceived as the new kid on the block in the big leagues. Some label us a new "Microsoft" - conveniently forgetting how, in open source as opposed to proprietary software, the inherent checks and balances limit the establishment of anything resembling a conventional monopoly. I, for one, believe that no one has an interest in moving against us here. The ecosystem of open source is a stable environment because of something akin to a Nash Equilibrium. If Oracle moves, what do you think IBM, HP or Microsoft would do? Short of a software industry equivalent of the Hitler/Stalin pact (and we all know how short a honeymoon that ultimately would be), it would really be unwise for Oracle to take that risk as it would only set up a replay of the Unix wars, but this time with Linux.

I believe the future of professional open source probably will be this large INDEPENDENT open source vendor. We are in the top 5 among the large infrastructure vendors, after IBM, Oracle, SUN and Microsoft. They may not like it, but if they move, the ensuing Linux wars will ultimately only benefit Microsoft and RHAT, just as, outside of Microsoft, Sun was the only beneficiary of the Unix Wars, which they used to consolidate their position. Why upset a situation that currently works to everyone's advantage?

Exactly. Great post, Marc. Glad to have you back. (And thanks to Matthew Aslett for reminding me.)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 29, 2006 10:41 AM

August 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Xanthus Communications? Anyone get these marketing calls?

I am traveling and wondering if anyone else is being tormented by something called Xanthus Financial(?) They call me literally every three hours and I keep calling back to get on Do Not Call (which I am already registered.)

Anyone else ever heard of this? Do I have any recourse against these mother-fletchers? Feel free to email if not comment.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 29, 2006 10:04 AM

August 29, 2006 | Comments: (0)

When will Access give us a Palm-based Treo?

Not in the near future, but hopefully soon. As this CNET article indicates, PalmSource (Access) is working hard to bring Linux to the Palm platform. I'm not sure what has taken it so long - it's been a year-and-a-half since PalmSource acquired China MobileSoft as an inroad to Linux.

I do know that at least some of the fault lies not with PalmSource, but with the carriers and handset manufacturers. People whine about the Palm platform being old, not realizing that its Garnet (or even Cobalt 6.1) are huge improvements over the existing Palm OS. They're available, but handset manufacturers aren't using them. Not sure why.

At any rate, here are some interesting bits from the CNET interview/article:

Q: Where do things stand right now with the Access Linux Platform?

[Didier] Diaz [VP, Access]: What we set out to do is start from Linux and create a complete, commercially great mobile platform. Linux is considered to be the third platform in the mobile industry. Companies such as Orange have said that moving forward they would support all the three main multitasking operating systems--Windows, Symbian and Linux.

When you try to build a mobile platform from Linux components, you find that you have to optimize some of them. Whether it would be for footprint or performance, you actually have to replace entire components sometimes or create components that do not exist at all. In addition, we are adding some key frameworks or subsystems that are not...in the open source area, so things such as telephony framework and messaging framework.

[Tomihisa] Kamada [CTO, Access]: Let's say only 20 percent of the system can be covered by open source. We develop all the remaining portions.

...

Why Linux? Why choose to go forward with Linux as the underpinning for this operating system?

Diaz: It's been quite a journey. When we announced Palm OS for Linux last year, I would say our goals were to a large extent self-serving. What we wanted was not to have to create our own kernel anymore. Why do this? The kernel doesn't differentiate you a great deal. Why spend our engineering resources on that?

Also from an industry perspective, at the time moving to Linux especially at the kernel level allowed us to leverage all these drivers that are written by the silicon vendors as they bring up their systems.

So to begin with, I would say it was a technical reason. What we found, though, as we said "Palm OS is going to be based on Linux" is that the market came to us saying, "Hey, if you are doing this, we would like to work with you."

Kamada: Mobile phone requirements, especially for 3G, are very complicated. So we do features, such as you can check e-mail, (browse) and (at the same time) receive the phone call. Multitasking is a very essential requirement today. There are not so many choices for multitasking operating systems today--Microsoft, Symbian and Linux. It doesn't make sense to develop a new operating system, a multitasking operating system, from scratch. So Linux is a very natural choice for us.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 29, 2006 08:55 AM

August 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

MySQL wins database speed contest

The results are in, and MySQL came out on top. C't just did a comparison of different databases and found that MySQL is the "fastest database application." The magazine's editors held the contest to evaluate database performance in real-world business use by creating a standard online inventory system.

From the announcement:

"The DVD shop created by MySQL is the hands-down winner of the performance crown. It clearly demonstrates the capabilities of a carefully configured MySQL/PHP application.”

The MySQL DVD online store was able to process 3,664 orders per minute (opm). If a second computer had been used, the figure would have gone up to 6,000 opm, indicating that MySQL is business ready. No more of this silly nonsense about it being a low-end utility database. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

(You can see the full results from the contest here.)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 28, 2006 10:15 AM

August 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Apple opens up its kernel

I guess I hadn't been paying enough attention, but Apple recently announced that it is open sourcing several key pieces of software. (Thanks to Tom, fellow InfoWorld blogger (the "Enterprise Mac" blog), for ending my ignorance. At least in this one small matter.)

The open sourcery includes:

The Darwin Kernel. (Yes, the infinite beauty of the Mac operating system is starting to open itself to public view. Not sure how Jobs got this one past his secret Opus Dei network of operatives, but I'm glad it happened. :-).)
iCal Server
Launchd
Bonjour

There are others, but these are the ones that caught my eye. You can track Apple's open source projects on its forge.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 28, 2006 09:53 AM

August 28, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Zend gets $20M investment from Greylock

Zend just pulled down more spending money. Here's the press release:

CUPERTINO, CA – August 28, 2006 – Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, today announced that it has secured $20 million in series D funding. The funding round was led by Greylock Partners [Note: I love Greylock - this is a big win for Zend. I don't know Moshe, but if he has half the integrity and intelligence of Bill Kaiser, Zend scored big], which is making its first investment in the company. Zend’s existing investors – Azure Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Intel Capital, Platinum Venture Capital, SAP Ventures and Walden Israel Venture Capital – are also participating in the Series D round.

“The new funds will enable us to expand faster in emerging geographical markets, accelerate our product development and extend the services organization to meet the demands of our growing number of enterprise PHP customers,” said Andi Gutmans and Zeev Suraski, the co-founders of Zend Technologies. “It is great that a venture capital firm with the stature of Greylock Partners shares our vision for the PHP market and will help us realize Zend’s potential.”

The company further announced the election of Moshe Mor, a partner at Greylock, to its board of directors.

“The transition from traditional software development methods to web based and service oriented approaches is creating enormous opportunities for dynamic languages such as PHP,” says Moshe Mor of Greylock Partners. “Zend is uniquely positioned to lead this transition, and has the talent and depth to make it a reality. I am excited to become part of this team.”

Zend Technologies has gained broad recognition as one of the major commercial drivers behind the success of PHP, which has a profound impact on the way modern web applications are being created. It is the language of choice behind more than half of all Ajax-enabled, highly interactive Web 2.0 websites. It is also the language of choice for companies embracing service oriented architectures, creating and mixing webservices into a whole new generation of sophisticated commercial applications. More than 20 million dynamic websites worldwide are driven by PHP.

In addition to supporting key open source PHP initiatives, Zend offers commercial products and services for software developers and system operators who use PHP. Zend has more than 15,000 customers for its commercial products. In its recent “Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Application Servers,2Q06 Gartner positioned Zend in the Challengers Quadrant.

About Zend Technologies, Inc.

Zend Technologies, Inc., the PHP company, is the leading provider of products and services for developing, deploying and managing business-critical PHP applications. PHP is used by more than twenty-two million Web sites and has quickly become the most popular language for building dynamic web applications. Deployed at more than 15,000 companies worldwide, the Zend family of products is a comprehensive platform for supporting the entire lifecycle of PHP applications. Zend is headquartered in Cupertino, California. For more information, please visit www.zend.com , or call 1-408-253-8800.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 28, 2006 07:56 AM

August 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

$50 billion worth of open source...for free

I'm reading an interesting research paper (to be blogged later) that mentions a fact that I find pretty compelling:

In 2001 Debian included more than 55,000,000 lines of code, with an estimated (COCOMO) value of $1.9 billion.

That's just Debian (and, as Wheeler notes, it grew to 230 million lines of code by 2005, putting its COCOMO price at $8 billion).

What number would we get to if we added MySQL (2M+ lines of code, I believe), JBoss, etc.? I can't even begin to come up with a rational number, but I'm guessing we're north of $50 billion. $50+ billion worth of free (as in cost and freedom) and open source software.

Priceless.

(Keep in mind that there's more to good software than code size. Even so, with that much free software out there, surely there's at least $10 worth of good stuff for you to use. :-)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 25, 2006 03:34 PM

August 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source or proprietary: Which is the ideal platform for innovation?

I'm reading a research paper [PDF] by Nicholas Economides (NYU) and Evangelos Katsamakas (Fordham) called "Linux vs. Windows: A comparison of application and platform innovation incentives for open source and proprietary software platforms." Long title, but the conclusion of the paper is relatively brief:

In our model, firms and developers invest to improve the quality of the platform or the application and expand the demand by users of these software products. When the operating system is proprietary, the platform provider and the application provider invest only in their own product to maximize their profit. When the operating system is open source, there is no platform provider firm, but the users invest in the platform to maximize their user surplus and their development reputation, which depends on the success of the platform measured by its adoption. (2)

Follow that? Well, I had to read it a few times through (academia tries so hard to keep its findings secret with obtuse language. So don't feel bad. (Or maybe I'm just dense.)

Here's the gist. When a platform (like Windows) is proprietary, only the vendor can/will invest in its innovation. No one else will derive financial benefit (or reputational benefit) from doing so. So, the product is as good (or bad) as the proprietary vendor makes it.

With an open source platform, the users of the system may have strong reputational incentives to develop it, potentially leading to much higher levels of involvement and innovation than any one company can generate. But, as the authors suggest, this finding is ambiguous, because the platform may not offer the reputational benefits (See page 15).

What is less ambiguous is the application providers' incentive to help develop the platform, just as IBM, Oracle, Novell, Red Hat, HP, etc. have done with Linux:

The application provider for the open source operating system invests more than the application provider for the proprietary operating system, because the first has a larger marginal profit for all levels of investment. This is because the open source operating system is adopted by users for free, enabling the application provider to set a larger price and capture a larger profit than the application provider for the proprietary operating system.

Put bluntly, the price for Oracle/IBM/SugarCRM is much more attractive to end-users if it's running on an open source platform, which gives these companies ample incentive to co-invest in its development.

This would just be idle academia if it hadn't been shown to work in many instances, with the number (and importance) of these instances growing all the time. Linux. Apache. Eclipse. Xen. MySQL (SAP's investment of money and resources, among others'). Etc. Open source gives third parties the means and the incentives to innovate on others' platforms, be it an operating system, database, content management system, or whatever.

No proprietary platform can match that.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 25, 2006 02:16 PM

August 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Rpath wants to obviate Red Hat

Well, sort of. Billy Marshall, Erik Troan, and the Rpath crew are hell-bent on changing the way the industry thinks about operating systems, as Dan Lyons reports in Forbes. The fact that this involves an Oedipal drive to kill off its father (Red Hat) may just be icing on the cake:

Software maker Red Hat is used to playing the underdog to Microsoft, pushing its distribution of the low-cost Linux operating system as an alternative to Windows. But now the disrupter is being disrupted, as a pack of its top engineers--guys who got in early and made a fortune on Red Hat stock -- have left and formed a company whose mission is to kill off operating systems altogether....

Rpath's big idea is this: Instead of worrying about which applications run on which operating systems, wouldn't it be better if each application came with its own operating system already attached? That way you just plug it in and it runs. Today those software makers have to create multiple versions of every application they sell so that they can run on as many operating systems as possible. This wasteful effort gobbles up 50% of R&D dollars at some software shops, Marshall claims.

So Rpath has created a specialized version of Linux that application developers can attach to their programs instead.

A cool idea, and I like Rpath, but I don't think this spells the death knell for Red Hat or the traditional operating system vendor. There is strong value in having an operating system that supports a wide range of applications, which Microsoft first proved to the world. Red Hat's initial brilliance (well, after its licensing model) was to aggressively push certification of third-party software on RHEL. That, more than anything else, is what drove Red Hat's dominance over SUSE/Novell.

I don't see this changing anytime soon.

Still, there's a lot of value in tightly integrating an operating system to an application, so that you take one vendor/moving part out of the support equation. It will be interesting to see how Rpath plays out....

Posted by Matt Asay on August 25, 2006 09:56 AM

August 25, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source stack providers need new business models (The 451 Group)

The 451 Group is calling for change in the business models of the so-called "stack providers." (OpenLogic, Spikesource, Sourcelabs, etc.) Dave and I have seen this coming for some time, and the vendors, themselves, have, too, as each has been tweaking its model over time.

(Dave has never been a big believer in Spikesource (here is his first assessment), though I've been more sanguine, and I've also skewed pro OpenLogic and BitRock.)

Says Raven Zachary of The 451:

Open source stack providers hoping to win business by providing a single point of software integration and support need to rethink their longterm business plans, according to The 451 Group. A new study shows enterprise users will increasingly look to their application providers or operating system vendors for the assurance of support. The analysts also predict a natural rise in enterprise acquisition of open source talent and ownership of the support process.

This is perfectly in line with what I've seen on the application side, and it's consistent with what I saw before when with an operating system vendor. People are looking for an application, and expect the underlying stack to "just work." Or they're looking for an operating system and expect that ancillary infrastructure (LAMP, for example) to "just work." In neither case are they looking to a third party to make the pieces fit together. They're looking to Red Hat, SugarCRM, MySQL, or whomever.

Raven Zachary of The 451 confirms this:

451 analysts found that it is becoming increasingly common for operating systems to include multiple open source components as part of the installation process. At the same time, application vendors are increasingly looking to deliver a complete package to their customers by bundling required third-party components in with their offerings. Consequently, The 451 Group believes the market for pure-play open source stack providers looking to support enterprise customers directly is limited.

Again, this has been my experience, and I've seen it echoed at other companies with whom I'm familiar.

For this reason, it's not surprising that Spike is becoming more of a "meta-SI." OpenLogic has stayed pretty true to its original focus, which is to provide a certified library of open source components and facilitate integrating and then running them. I'm actually not sure what Sourcelabs and Bitrock are doing (though I do know Bitrock does a great job with creating installers for other open source companies - they're an Alfresco partner).

Enterprises don't buy "open source." They buy Application X, or Operating System Y. They are increasingly happy if X or Y is open source, but they want something that solves a particular business problem, not a vague cloud of possibilities to a vague cloud of problems.

That's going to be the biggest challenge these companies face. They need to come up with direct solutions to direct customer problems, and those solutions have to be best solved by them, not by Red Hat, Oracle. I have confidence that they can, but as The 451 says, it's going to require some change.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 25, 2006 07:04 AM

August 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

The further effects of vendor lock-in (or why I am giving up on Apple)

I lied when I said it was my last post on my Mac problems. With today's news that my 12" Powerbook has a bad news battery I figured it was just par for the course in my techno-hell. I was willing to go down to the Apple store and get a replacement. Sadly it doesn't work that way. It will take 4-6 weeks for a replacement battery.

Question:
How exactly does one take advantage of a portable computer when it has to be plugged in to be used safely?

Realistically, Apple is no better than any other vendor when it comes to lock-in. The fact that all Apple hardware comes from just one vendor presents challenges to all Mac owners. As a user I have no other choice but to buy a new Apple product to replace the malfunctioning one. A 4-6 week wait for a replacement battery is insane for a product that most people use on a daily basis. At least when the Dell laptops started going towering inferno you knew you could switch to HP or Lenovo. No such luck for Mac users.

So what's a Windows hater to do? The not-so-easy answer is Linux. I have been trying again with Ubuntu on a Thinkpad T42 but the power issue is a real burden. I basically end up in the same boat having to keep the machine plugged in all the time. People are trying to make it work, as witnessed in this Ten tips for new Ubuntu users article.

For everyone who is gonna say that I am complaining you should all realize that we need to be vocal about these things or companies will continue to take advantage. Users need to stand up for themselves.

Previously:
"I'm dead" says my MacBook replacement
My new 15" MacBook Pro (Verdict: Disappointing)
My MacBook sucks and I am returning it
Lenovo to preload SUSE on Thinkpad

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 24, 2006 08:57 PM

August 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Great Guy Kawasaki interview with Marten Mickos (CEO, MySQL)

Guy Kawasaki has an interesting interview over on his blog with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL.

Here are a few gems, with my commentary:

In response to the question, "How do you make money with an Open Source product?":

We start by not making money at all - but by making users. The vast community of MySQL users and developers is what drives our business.

Then we sell an enterprise offering to those who need to scale and cannot afford to fail. The enterprise offering consists of certified binaries, updates and upgrades, automated DBA services, 7x24 error resolution, etc. You pay by service level and the number of servers. No nonsense, no special math. Enterprise software buyers are tired of complex pricing models (per core, per cpu, per power unit, per user, per whatever the vendor feels like that day) - models that are still in use by the incumbents.

At MySQL we LOVE users who never pay us money. They are our evangelists. No marketing could do for us what a passionate MySQL user does when he tells his friends and colleagues about MySQL. Our success is based on having millions of evangelists around the world. Of course, they also help us develop the product and fix bugs.

Sorry, Marten, but I'm not (fully) buying that. You might like (or even LIKE or possibly love) them, but LOVE? Nah. The fact is, most MySQL (or name the open source project of your choice) users do not contribute code, cash, feedback, or anything of tangible value to you. And they probably don't even talk about MySQL to their kids or spouses. The only thing positive they do is not use a rival database, and that does have some value to you.

Of course there is value in having tens of millions of evangelists, but I'd be willing to bet you'd trade 69 million of MySQL's reported 70 million downloads for paying customers (leaving you one million to evangelize - how many evangelists does one need, anyway? :-).

Having said this, Marten later riffs on this idea in a compelling way:

Think about the market-leading DBMS company [Oracle]. They have 50,000 paid employees who are working hard to keep their product competitive. We have 50,000 product downloads per day. This means that 50,000 human beings who tinker with our product every day. These people have ideas, suggestions, praises, complaints and although not all of them send us emails every day, the good stuff tends to find its way to the core MySQL team.

That's a great correlation. For every Oracle employee, MySQL gets a download each day. Even if I'm right and most of these MySQL "employees" don't contribute anything back, arguably at least as many MySQL pseudo-employees do as the Oracle employees who aren't coding because they're too busy contributing code or resumes to MySQL. (Just joking, Mr. Ellison! :-)

Moving along....In answer to Guy's question, "Do you compete head to head with Oracle or do you have different customers?", Marten responds:

Most new companies and new projects within existing companies are choosing open source infrastructure such as the LAMP stack. We don't see competition there.

We focus on the new applications and services that are being built for the online world: Web2.0, SaaS, and SOA but also new forms of datawarehouses and business apps. Our customers look for reliability, performance, scalability, and ease of deployment. They don't look for overly complex products that take days or weeks to get going and cost thereafter.

That's why YouTube, Craigslist, Flickr, Habbo Hotel, LiveJournal, Technorati, Second Life, Trulia, FeedBurner, and Right Now are our customers and not Oracle's. We believe the market we have chosen is the fastest growing part of the DBMS market.

I've talked about this before, but MySQL continues to underscore the point over and over again. As Marten notes later in the interview, Omniture is running over 250 billion transactions per quarter on MySQL, Google uses it for AdSense and AdWords, and even the Oracle FAQ runs on MySQL. It is EVERYWHERE, and it's running the most mission-critical application of all time: the Internet.

Marten has other great information in his answers, and I'd encourage you to read the interview.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 24, 2006 12:58 PM

August 24, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Who are the losers, now that open source is winning?

I went through elementary school in the 1980s. As such, I was taught that there are winners and losers. My kids learn that "We are all SPECIAL!!!" but I quickly disabuse them of that notion at home. Kill or be killed. Eat that hamburger or your wily 15-month old sister will. The Asay house is quintessentially Hobbesian as we live out our nasty, brutish, and short lives. :-)

I'm kidding, but my 80s mentality has me wondering: with all the open source momentum (and it is real), who is losing? See, it's not possible for everyone to win together all the time. It's not exactly zero sum, but in a relatively finite market, my success may well correlate to your failure.

So who is losing?

Apparently not Oracle. Not yet, anyway. Jason Maynard of CSFB has ORCL at an "Outperform" rating, writing this morning:

For Q1, we are estimating $3.47B in total revenue ($741M license, $2.0B maintenance, $735M consulting) with EPS of $0.16. Our forecast is at the low end of the license revenue guidance range. While pipelines are strong, the August quarter is always a tough one, especially considering the strong close to the May period....We continue to hear positive feedback from customers around the Siebel integration, and we expect solid maintenance renewals. For Q1, the company indicated that total non-GAAP revenue is expected to be between $3.43-3.49B with license revenue of $740-785M.

Jason is a smart guy, and I trust his analysis. Oracle is clearly still doing well. As is Microsoft. From Jason's report:

From a competitive standpoint, MicrosoftÂ?s server business unit has grown 15% compounded from 2001 to 2005 with SQL server growing significantly faster than the segment average. Microsoft recently launched SQL Server 2005 and should experience a healthy uptake in the new product.

I mentioned this yesterday, as well, in reporting on Sun. Sun had a strong quarter - Microsoft has had a few decades of them.

But as I've reported, MySQL, JasperSoft, SugarCRM, Alfresco, JBoss, and other open source companies are also doing exceptionally well. Most are growing at 100%, quarter-over-quarter. Why is this not eating into the BigCo's of the world?

I think there are a few reasons:

Most obviously, when you start at $0 in revenues, it takes a while for even 100% or even 1000% growth to make a dent in the BigCo's. Give SugarCRM another year, for example, and it will be taking a painful bite out of Salesforce.com. For now, the big CRM vendors can pretend it tickles.
In some cases, open source monetizes a different part of the market. As I've noted before, one of the reasons Oracle isn't feeling a huge amount of MySQL pain is that MySQL is creating and owning a market - the Web 2.0 market - that Oracle doesn't compete in.
Related to #2 above, open source is as much about creating new markets as commoditizing old markets. The average SME is never going to spend $1M on Documentum, but $10K for Alfresco (for equivalent or better functionality, and much better performance) is an easy investment. Open source, in many product categories, is bringing enterprise-grade technology to an audience (SMEs or underserved departments of large organizations) that has never been able to afford it. Heavy market traction in markets that didn't exist in the shadow of the bloated, expensive proprietary products.
Finally, a great deal of open source momentum remains embryonic. There are millions of downloads sitting out there waiting to be monetized. MySQL is reported to have some 70M downloads. It is MySQL's business to lose. They have millions of pre-qualified buyers just waiting for them to figure out the right trigger to induce a purchase. It is largely the same for many other open source companies.

In sum, we still have a few years of "peaceful" coexistence with proprietary software.

Eventually, I believe the industry will carve itself up into Microsoft, open source, and 1-2 other massive conglomerates. The conglomerates will compete based on suites, but customers will eventually see through the "suite" to discover that they tend to be loosely cobbled together bits that hardly talk to each other, much less products from outside the company. Microsoft will find an audience amongst those who foolishly buy into its all-encompassing ecosystem (which only works well, and then not often, with its own technology). They will relinquish IT control to their vendor, and they will deserve the IT they buy.

Open source, for its part, will continue to trod the open source and open standards road, and will provide maximum choice, performance, and cost advantage. Products will naturally integrate well with each other because that is the logos of open source. Customers who buy into this ecosystem will truly be buying into a bazaar - a free market - and will get the best of breed, and will retain control over their IT in the process.

Long term, you can see whom I think will win. It's open source, and by a landslide.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 24, 2006 07:55 AM

August 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Sun on the rebound

For those who may have missed it, Sun appears to be on the rebound. IDC just announced server market share (and a tepid industry growth rate of .6% to $12.3B total), and Sun wonn big. Sun's revenue increased 15.5% year over year, with its market share growing from 11.2% in the second quarter of last year to 12.9% this year. That puts it back in the top three, edging Dell down to fourth place. (This hasn't been a good year for Dell.) (Graphic at right from today's WSJ.)

Impressive growth. Especially in light of Red Hat's continued growth. I remember a Red Hat executive cautioning me not to count Sun out - looks like he was right to do so.

As for Windows, it also continued to grow, with 3.1% growth in revenues, and 11% growth in shipments year over year. That puts it at 34.2% of the server market, with Unix at 35% (which showed a 1.6% decline in revenues and 1.8% drop in unit shipments).

Still, despite Sun's growth, it's happening in a faltering Unix market. The future is Linux and Windows. At some point they'll collide, but there's a lot of Unix market left to carve up before that will happen.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 23, 2006 05:28 PM

August 23, 2006 | Comments: (0)

"I'm dead" says my MacBook replacement

Last post on this subject...

I got a replacement black MacBook last week. I ran all the udpates and the firmware fix for the fan on Monday then last nite it committed seppuku. I believe the death poem was something like "screw you Dave." I have always been a Mac supporter but this is ridiculous.

I left work having closed the lid (assumedly suspending the Mac) but it seems the suspend never happened. Instead the hard drive kept spinning for an hour or so until the machine overheated and wouldn't start up. I pulled out the battery, let it cool off and rebooted but found the spinning icon and the fan were the only things running. I was able to get it to start up later last nite but then it kept shutting down on its own.

I give up. This one is going back and I am sticking with the 12" powerbook until Lenovo sends me a Linux thinkpad (which FYI they claim they will be doing.) Be afraid, I seem to be a in technology Bermuda Triangle lately.

Previously:
My new 15" MacBook Pro (Verdict: Disappointing)
My MacBook sucks and I am returning it

Seems that Harry at PCWorld had similar problems though he eventually got help from Apple.
MacBook Resolution Redux
MacBook Resolution
My Macbook: Still Ailing

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 23, 2006 09:41 AM

August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source location redux

I've come out pretty hard in the past about the location question in open source. I've said that open source companies need not relocate to the Valley in order to be successful. Indeed, the vast majority of the most successful open source companies come from outside the Valley, and have thrived outside the Valley.

Putting the Valley aside for a moment, however, I never gave a satisfactory answer to whether open source companies should be in the United States, given that most open source sales activity is happening in North America. I'm unaware of a single open source company that is an exception to this rule.

Here's a schematic I put together showing a rough composite of which geos are paying the most for open source software. I'm actually being generous to Europe here: I'd probably put Europe at 30% (or less) of open source sales. But I made this graphic back when I was trying to prove a different point. :-)

Why does Europe tend to equate open source software with "free as in beer" when it rallies to the "free as in freedom" banner?

I suspect that this is a momentary glitch. There was a time when North America expected open source to be free (gratis), and we've largely moved past this mistaken belief. I assume Europe will follow suit. But when? Two years from now? Five?

The longer the time horizon for Europe to start paying out the Euros, the less a company should invest its sales and marketing infrastructure in the land of good food and better football.

(Having said that, Alfresco has realized an immediate gain from adding sales/business development people in Germany and France. Suddenly, many downloads that had been inclined toward a free beer discovered the value of paying for freedom. So maybe the real solution to the "problem" is to invest more sales infrastructure in Europe, rather than less? Not sure....)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 22, 2006 03:09 PM

August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Novell's big opportunity

Pretty heavy reaction to my post about Novell's marketing. I am not saying that Novell is a bad company or that recent marketing efforts are not getting better. What I am saying is that it hasn't been clear what exactly the company is pushing.

I can see on the Novell website (and have heard from a number of readers) that the push is now on SUSE. I think that's a good strategy-big market, large embedded Linux user base etc. I just would have thought that the Linux push would have happened sooner considering Red Hat's dominance. For that matter, the SLED press has been great. Novell could make desktop Linux a big market issue with the right approach. Maybe I spoke too soon, but again, it's hard to tell what the strategy is.

And I also think that while the Linux opportunity is large, the open source opportunity is enormous. Novell could essentially leapfrog Red Hat with some clever partnerships and acquisitions. There is no benefit to Novell faltering. The market needs competition and users need great software.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 22, 2006 02:06 PM

August 22, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Dave and his wrong opinion on Red Hat

Dave seems to have muddied his thinking or, rather, his hearing. Red Hat complacent? I've never met a person at Red Hat that would fit that adjective. Matthew Szulik is one of the most intensely competitive people on this planet (and many others), and that competitive streak pervades the entire company.

It may be that Red Hat doesn't see Novell as a big threat, but that's OK: they have plenty of other threats to worry about. Red Hat's biggest partners are also its biggest potential competitors, and the company walks that line every day quite well.

Importantly, Red Hat is actively branching out beyond the operating system today. It's JBoss JiHat, if done well, will pay off handsomely but also breeds a host of new competitors. A complacent company would sit back and milk RHEL revenues. Red Hat isn't doing that.

As for the anecdotal evidence of a few large customers that wish Red Hat would spend more time on them, I used to hear the same thing while I worked at Novell. "We hate Red Hat!" the enterprises would tell me. "So buy Novell!" I'd excitedly reply. "Nah, we've already got Red Hat," they'd reply. And then the conversation would end. Everyone loves to complain about their vendors - no one hates Microsoft as much as their customers do - but the real measure of how much they like/dislike their vendor is how much they pay them. By that metric, Microsoft and Red Hat seem to be reasonably well-liked.

In addition to the things mentioned above, Red Hat is working on a range of things that are exciting, revolutionary, and sure to drop-kick the "complacent" moniker. This is an exceptional company.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 22, 2006 11:27 AM

August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Red Hat's complacency vs. Novell's terrible marketing

In his analysis of Novell vs. Red Hat, Neil McAllister wonders if Red Hat is complacent? He leans towards yes, suggesting that Novell recognizes their challenger role while Red Hat takes a less interested approach in growing their brand and community. And while it may be true that Novell is doing a lot of things to engage users, Red Hat remains a cash-cow.

There is a level of RH complacency in that the company seems to have done very little to engage with end-users. I've spoken to a number of very large RH users over the last year, all of whom have stated they would like to see more competition for their Linux dollars.

Despite Neil's suggestions to the contrary, the "new" Novell remains a disappointment. SLED 10 is very cool, but the desktop marketing push is meager at best. SLES remains an also-ran product to RHEL, not because of technical merit but because of bad marketing.

Can Red Hat screw things up? Definitely. But the Red Hat opportunity is to become not just the Linux leader but the OSS leader. Novell isn't even close to either one.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 21, 2006 10:48 AM

August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

An open source value payment model

Much is made of how open source boosts software value. I've promoted that concept here.

So, while difficult to price in the real world, why not try something like what management consulting firm Trium does? Namely, let customers pay for the perceived value they get from a product.

As the Wall Street Journal reports today [Reg req'd], Trium has bucked the trend of traditional consulting firms by allowing clients to pay based on their "gut" perception of how much value Trium delivered.

Since it opened in 1998, [Trium] has offered clients a different kind of pricing structure. It states a figure and takes on a project if the sum is acceptable. After the project is done, dissatisfied clients can pay as little as half the quoted amount. Happy customers pay up to 35% more than the quote.

...[J]ust 5% of [traditional] consulting projects are priced based on performance -- and those that are...have only small fluctuations in the fee, typically 5%.

Further setting Trium apart from the rest of the pack are its ground rules: While the fee differential at firms offering variable rates is usually determined by objective, quantifiable results, such as reducing costs or inventory, Trium lets clients pay based on their gut reaction. The bonus or penalty can amount to tens of thousands of dollars on projects where quoted prices typically range from $150,000 to $400,000.

Frightening for the vendor? Yes, but also a little for the client, which is why

...[M]ost Trium clients opt from the start to pay a fixed fee, to assure budget certainty. Among those who choose variable pricing, Trium says 76% wind up paying more than the quoted price. Only one client in eight years has paid less than the quote.

I would assume that it would be no different in the software world. Most customers would opt to pay a fixed rate. Those that did not, and opted for variable pricing, would almost certainly end up paying more than the baseline amount for the better projects/products - the value of the software is highly disproportionate to the price of the software. There's a lot of room in there to reward open source vendors while simultaneously saving money that would have been wasted on proprietary software licenses.

Anyone care to give the model a spin?

Posted by Matt Asay on August 21, 2006 10:40 AM

August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Ohloh: Cool service for monitoring open source projects

Leon Gommans (of the Holland Open Source Conference) sent me a link to a great site today: Ohloh. Ohloh estimates the value of open source software (measured in terms of lines of code and the cost it would take to pay someone to write that code - so, not the value one derives from it, but rather how much it would cost you to write it from scratch), highlights licenses used in a given project, and tracks developer and project activity over time.

It's not a perfect tool, but it's quite interesting. (I think Ohloh used a decent way to measure software value, but often it can be more expensive to pare down your code base than it is to "ramble" in your code. But I don't have a better suggestion of how to do it.)

Here are a few sample projects I pulled:

Mambo
JBoss Portal
SugarCRM
Alfresco
Liferay Portal
Struts (The factoids on this one are interesting)

This is a great service and, as Leon noted to me, reiterates the fact that open source projects can't lie. An open source project can claim something (the language it's written in, the strength of its community, the number of outside developers, or whatever), but the code doesn't lie. It's all there, and Ohloh captures much of it.

Thanks for sharing, Leon!

Posted by Matt Asay on August 21, 2006 06:39 AM

August 21, 2006 | Comments: (0)

My deodorant lies...my open source software can't

That was the promise my Ban deodorant made to me today. It lied.

Consumer products often lie to us, or stretch the truth (also known as lying). We buy this toothbrush because it will give us "brighter, whiter teeth," drink this drink because it will give us energy, or whatever.

One of the things I love about open source software is that it is lie-proof. I can say what I want about the product, hyping its benefits and obscuring its failings to convince you to use it. But at the end of the day, you can download it and immediately know if I'm lying.

To be frank, this can be frustrating. With proprietary software, you buy before you try. You write the check based on media, references, and a salesperson's word that her product is as close to divinity as you'll get on this earth. You rarely get to actually use the software in any meaningful way. It therefore matters a great deal how persuasive the salesperson is, and not nearly as much how good the software is.

Which is why the industry is rife with stories of enterprises buying software and then paying multiples over the purchase price to actually make the software work.

For open source companies, the software really does sell itself...to a point. That's not to say that good salespeople aren't important. They are. But they fill a different role in open source. They're more about helping to demonstrate how to maximize value with the software, and less about how to maximize their commission from a bloated license price.

To the extent, then, that an open source salesperson exaggerates the benefits of her software, she hurts her company because open source companies only get paid for delivering constant value/service. If the customer never manages to get the exaggerated promise to materialize, their support contract will last the first year and then the customer will invest in other software. No lock-in beyond customer service.

Open source is a more honest way of doing business. It keeps you honest and customers happy. They get what they pay for, not empty hype. When you're selling it, you sometimes wish they'd shorten the sales cycle even further by buying a little hype upfront, but I'm happy to trade a little instant person gratification for long-term customer satisfaction.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 21, 2006 05:53 AM

August 20, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Weekend fun: Top 10 most beautiful cellphones

I am finding myself incapable of writing anything of interest so I will continue my Mac notes. I am typing this post on a replacement MacBook, which seems to be working pretty well. I still don't love the keyboard and it runs a bit hot but it's mostly OK otherwise. It's taken me a few hours to get used to the keyboard, I wonder how difficult it would be to use if I didn't know how to type. Battery life seems a bit questionable. I will get about 3 hours on "Normal" setting.

I also dropped my Razr this weekend (it was either the phone or my chocolate mousse cake from Boulangerie bakery) and it now looks like something out of Mad Max, hence my search for a cool new cell-phone.

Link: Top 10 most beautiful cellphones on Fosfor Gadgets

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 20, 2006 11:44 PM

August 18, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Fedora and the need for product segmentation

Slashdot has an excellent interview with Fedora Project Lead Max Spevack. It's great on a number of different levels, talking through the technical aspects of Fedora and what-not, but is particularly interesting when it hones in on the Fedora vs. RHEL question. Spevack responds to the contention that Fedora is simply beta-ware for RHEL, as follows:

I'm really glad this question was asked, because it gives me a chance to try to bust the NUMBER ONE MYTH about Fedora -- that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL" or that "Fedora only exists to make Red Hat money" or "Red Hat doesn't care about Fedora, it's just a dumping ground for half-tested code". I hear all of those things from time to time, and *none* of them are true.

Let's back up for a moment -- the Red Hat Linux/Fedora Core split took place in 2003. And while I wasn't at Red Hat during that time, I think it's fair to state that there were some unfortunate choices made internally about how Fedora was positioned [Asay: Well, Max, that all depends on whether you want Red Hat to have $300M+ in revenues this year or what it was likely to do without such a split...], and because those statements were made with a Red Hat voice, it helped to create a very strong perception that Red Hat abandoned the community, and that Fedora wasn't "good" for anything, or was a rejected part of Red Hat....

I think there were some people within Red Hat who were afraid that the "admission" that Fedora was production-quality, or that Fedora was anything more than beta-quality, would cause difficulty for the people trying to sell RHEL....

The real story of Fedora, of course, is entirely opposite from the "beta code only, not production worthy" stance.

Our mission statement is clear, and is one that I think any open-source developer would appreciate.
Fedora is about the rapid progress of Free and Open Source software.
That's it. We strive to produce a quality distribution of free software that is cutting-edge, pushes the envelope of new open source technology, and is also robust enough that it can be relied on for server or desktop use. One of the terms that I really like, and that I think we're doing better and better of making a reality is that of Fedora as an "open development lab". As a user, if your priorities are cutting-edge technology (without the nicks and cuts of a blade) and freedom, Fedora is a great disto to use....

Anyone (Red Hat or non-Red Hat) who tells you that Fedora isn't suitable for a production server is wrong. If someone tells you that Fedora is "just a beta for RHEL", they too are wrong.

I think Max is being earnest and forthright on this. I also think he's overlooking the point that the only reason he can make the points that he's making is that, three years later, RHEL is strong enough to survive on its own precisely because it has three years of being the enterprise option for Red Hat customers. Red Hat would not be where it is today - the de facto choice for enterprise Linux - without its wise segmentation of Fedora from RHEL. Period.

So, while I'm glad that Fedora can stand on its own today (with "nicks and cuts" as Max points out, which is precisely what enterprises don't want), there's no sane business reason that Red Hat could have allowed that perception to persist back in 2003 when it was trying to get its business flying.

In an open source company, there must be segmentation. SugarCRM does it with its "on ramp" model. JBoss did it with its Network offering. MySQL is increasingly doing the same (finding that the commercial license isn't quite enough to take it to the next level of revenues) with its own Network product. Those companies that segment best will win. Those that can't effectively separate their free products from their paid-for products will be cannibalized by their free products.

The only exceptions will come from those that find ways to make money around their service (like Google with AdWords), rather than directly from the bits and support thereof. Guess what? There aren't many (any?) enterprise software products that can or will be ad-supported. That means segmentation of the bits and the support that backs them.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 18, 2006 08:47 AM

August 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IBM moving beyond Linux

And about time. At Linuxworld today, Scott Handy said that IBM will begin to invest more heavily in open source client-side middleware, development tools, Web application servers, data servers, systems management, open hardware architecture, grid computing and technology services businesses. That about covers it all, doesn't it? :-)

Scott also said:

"We plan a major expansion beyond Linux into open source....It's poised to be a more disruptive force in the industry in the next three years than Linux has been in the last 15 years. With open source beyond Linux, we'll be as aggressive and leapfrog right to the injection stage."

I would have thought IBM would have become more widely involved in open source some time ago, but better late than never. It was the catalyst for Linux. Its involvement in the wider open source community should also be helpful, though we are no longer in need of IBM's validation.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 17, 2006 03:29 PM

August 17, 2006 | Comments: (0)

ECM consolidation is helping no one

John Newton is back from vacation, and is back on his blog. Thank goodness. It's good to see a considered perspective on the various ECM mergers from the man who created the industry in the first place (when he co-founded Documentum in 1991). Seth Gottlieb also weighs in on ECM consolidation, but I can't agree with him that Red Hat will be buying Alfresco any time soon. We're not for sale, for one thing but, more pertinently, I can't see Red Hat getting into the applications market anytime soon. (Yes, ECM is arguably infrastructure, but still....)

Anyway, John calls out the consolidation trend, but points to a problem that consolidation doesn't solve: non-standard and proliferating repositories:

What do these acquisitions mean for the ECM industry? It means that consolidation is truly on its way, regardless of what happens to Hummingbird. FileNet was the leader in imaging, which is the area where IBM got started in ECM. IBM is now the undisputed leader in ECM and by far the dominant force in imaging and records management. OpenText potential merger with fellow Canadians Hummingbird brings a similar dominance to document management. Supposedly according to Gartner Dataquest, OpenText is the leader in ECM with a 13.2% market share. If so, they have a very poor market cap to prove it. The merger, however, should help to sustain them toward that market position.

From a practical perspective for the companies themselves, this exacerbates an on-going problem that all the ECM companies have had - too many repositories that don't interoperate. OpenText already have a problem with their existing iXOS repositories and will have a bigger problem with the more overlapping capabilities of Hummingbird as well as Hummingbird's Red Dot acquisition. OpenText’s announcement that it will incorporate Oracle’s repository can only increase the complexity. IBM also has multiple repositories, especially if you count Notes and Domino. Oracle too has said that they need to rationalize their various content repositories. EMC also has issues of multiple repositories, although they seem to be collapsing them all into the Documentum repository.

Clearly, the reason for these mergers is not for technology, but for market share and customer base. With the level of overlapping technology in these systems, the problems inherent in consolidating the repositories must be outweighed by the desire to consolidate customers. This is very similar to what happened in the late 80s and early 90s in the relational database industry when Oracle took on DEC's RdB products and IBM purchased Informix.

One would think that consolidation would trend toward fewer repositories, but that has yet to evidence itself. Instead, we get fewer companies with the same volume of confusion.

Consequently, we find composites of formerly separate companies internally struggling with what was formerly just te customer's problem. Vignette is juggling with its v7 repository and its old v6 repository. Documentum has several. Hummingbird and OpenText will have to duke it out over which one wins out (with the likely answer being "neither").

This is why it's so important to adhere to industry standards like JSR-170 (which none of the companies above do). Only Alfresco, Day (Apache Jackrabbit), and some few others do. So, if you're an enterprise that doesn't want to have its content locked up and owned by a vendor, why would you ever entrust your content to a proprietary repository? It's foolish. And it's by no means necessary.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 17, 2006 07:13 AM

August 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

My new 15" MacBook Pro (Verdict: Disappointing)

After my fiasco with the MacBook I upgraded to the Pro and this one is even more annoying because the space bar squeaks with every touch. I am using it for the last time right now to type this and tell everyone that clearly Apple can do wrong. Besides the keyboard issue the machine doesn't wake up when I press the keyboard.

Two machines, two serious quality problems.

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 16, 2006 10:24 AM

August 16, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Money and happiness

Jonathan Clements, who writes the "Getting Going" (Personal Finance) column in the WSJ, is one of my favorite columnists. Today is no different, as he records the results of a survey I encountered a few months ago, but didn't have time to blog. The survey/research analyzes personal incomes and how they relate to happiness.

The verdict? Money can't buy you love (thus spake the Beatles), nor can it buy you happiness.

Darn.

As the article notes:

...[H]igh-income earners often express greater satisfaction with their lives. In a 2004 survey, 43% of those with family incomes of $90,000 or more reported being "very happy," versus 22% for those with incomes below $20,000.

But the truth, it seems, is messier than such surveys suggest. Yes, if you live in poverty, more money can bolster your happiness.

"But once you're safe and warm and fed, it makes surprisingly little difference," says David Schkade, professor of management at the University of California at San Diego. "Once you get to the lower-middle class, then it takes a lot of income to make a difference. Income does matter, just not as much as people think."

So if the affluent are so happy, what's their secret? What is it that they do all day that guarantees them bliss? Several professors in a June 30 article in Science have an answer:

The five professors analyzed data for 374 workers who were asked every 25 minutes during the workday about the intensity of various feelings. Those with higher incomes didn't report being any happier, but they were more likely to say they were anxious or angry.

The five professors also studied government data detailing how folks divvy up their waking hours. They found that people with higher incomes tend to spend more time working, commuting and engaging in obligatory nonwork activities, such as maintaining their homes. All of these are associated with lower happiness.

In fact, as the study goes on to note, the Bureau of Labor has statistics on how people of varying incomes spend their time. Men making more than $100,000 per year spend 19.9% of their time on passive leisure, compared to 34.7% for men making less than $20,000. Women making more than $100,000 spend 19.6% of their time on passive leisure, compared with 33.5% of those making less than $20,000.

Maybe that "passive leisure" sounds better on paper than it does in real life, but while I'm not rich by any stretch of the imagination, I could do with a great deal more "passive leisure" at Arsenal matches with my family, watching Arsenal on TV with my family, or pretending to be Cesc Fabregas with my kids.

All of which is why, as News@Princeton quotes the professors' conclusion,

"The belief that high income is associated with good mood is widespread but mostly illusory," the researchers wrote. "People with above-average income are relatively satisfied with their lives but are barely happier than others in moment-to-moment experience, tend to be more tense, and do not spend more time in particularly enjoyable activities."

So, what can we do to be happier, we open sourcerors of the world? Jonathan Clements has some good ideas:

Keep your commute short. While we often adjust amazingly well to life's hardships, commuting is an exception. "You can't adapt to commuting, because it's entirely unpredictable," says Daniel Gilbert, author of "Stumbling on Happiness" and a psychology professor at Harvard University. "Driving in traffic is a different kind of hell every day."

Choose time over money. Cutting back the hours you work will likely leave you happier, even if it means less pay.

Think carefully about how you spend your dollars. While a new car may not boost your happiness for long, maybe a trip to Europe would....The car might seem like the better purchase, because it has lasting value. But, in fact, it sits in the driveway, slowly deteriorating. "Experiences don't hang around long enough to disappoint you," Prof. Gilbert says. "What you have left are wonderful memories."

Use your leisure time wisely. Surveys show that leisure is better for your happiness than work. But much also depends on how you spend your leisure time.

Passive activities like watching television usually don't make folks as happy as eating. [Unless you're watching Arsenal spank Juventus.] A good meal, in turn, doesn't rank quite as highly as active leisure activities, such as socializing with friends.

"Going to a dinner at a nice restaurant, where you're going to see friends and eat good food, is one of the best combinations," Prof. Schkade says. "The French know what they're doing, when it comes to how to enjoy a good meal."

There you have it. The secret of happiness, and all you had to do was read this blog for five minutes to find it.

Posted by Matt Asay on August 16, 2006 06:27 AM

August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

FiveRuns announces General Availability

FiveRuns announced the general availability of their namesake FiveRuns systems management platform today. They call it Web 2.0 systems management which in addition to core functionality means slick user interface.

Vp of Product Management Dave Wilby says that response to the beta has been outstanding--1500 beta signups with 300 activated by the company.

Previously:
Five Runs-Open Source Systems Management

Posted by Dave Rosenberg on August 15, 2006 04:28 PM

August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

Open source your WiFi (FON)

I just came across FON today, and think it's one of the coolest ideas I've seen in some time. Basically, FON enables your WiFi router/access point to securely share your connection with other FON users. They share, you share. This means that you give up a little bandwidth on your box, but gain a world (literally) of free access points.

You can choose to pay cut-rate prices and share nothing (making you an "Alien"). Or you can rent out space on your router (a "Bill"). Or you can go "GPL" and give and take for free (i.e., you become a "Linus"). Ingenious, really, and highly useful. Whenever I'm on the bus in London, I "wardrive" for open connections (hoping for the bus to stop at the light long enough for me to snag a few emails). Next time, I'm going as a FONero, and using these open access points.

Check it out. And become a FONero.

(Btw, if you haven't guessed, it was Danny Rimer who funded FON. Danny has the most interesting portfolio of any VC I've seen. And successful, too.)

Posted by Matt Asay on August 15, 2006 04:05 PM

August 15, 2006 | Comments: (0)

IDC rolling out a new service: open source strategy

I met with Matt Lawton of IDC this morning. Matt is heading up a new group at IDC that will cover software strategy, specifically related to open soruce business strategy. Finally, an analyst group that aligns well with the Open Source Business Conference. The group will be working on strategies for successfully monetizing open source.

The