- More Patents and New Business Models
- Is Red Hat Exchange DOA?
- Asay: "Community Capitalism" presentation online
- Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
- Zend Framework 1.0 due out on Monday
- GPL v3 on the way...Palamida trying to help make it easier to understand
- Intellectual Dishonesty
- Red Hat Announces Solid 1Q08 Results - Stock down?!
- Guest Post: Stuart Cohen, Collaborative Software Initiative
- Off-topic: Someone needs to invite me to the Cisco Networkers Event
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
More Patents and New Business Models
David Kline left a comment regarding my blog on Intellectual Dishonesty. The ideas that David promotes in his comments deserve a little more exploration and I’d like to attempt to answer his question as well as invite others to do so.
There are a few points that David makes to which I’ll respond and then I’ll touch on his invitation to show “…any evidence at all…” that supports the view that the patent system is being used to stifle innovation.
First, the comment that “Microsoft has NEVER unilaterally sued another company for patent infringement in federal court. Never. Not once.” deserves a little exploration. It is not necessary for Microsoft to sue anyone in order to have a chilling effect on their competitors and innovation.
The patent business has evolved to a point that it is far more efficient to threaten to sue than it is to sue. If one sues then one has to prove the validity of the patent as well as infringement. If one threatens to sue then one only has to negotiate. The business model of intellectual property negotiation is well-founded. The first parties who agree to pony up the dollars typically get the best deal. This is because the first ones to acquiesce are used as an example to convince others to fall in line.
The reason that we open-source people don’t like software patents is because there are so many examples of poorly issued patents. It should trouble us deeply whenever a software patent is ridiculed as an obvious evolution of technology rather than an innovative new idea. The society of software developers, both closed-source and open-source, acts as an unofficial peer-review body. We don’t see an environment with software patents where the peer software developers say, “Wow, I wish I had thought of that.” Instead we often see the peer-reviewers say, “What a croc!”
I would even be happy if there was a serious divergence of opinion among the developer society as to whether or not a particular patent was innovative, advanced the art or was non-obvious. It seems to me that the software patents that are discussed the most are dismissed by the society of developers as being unworthy of the label non-obvious or even innovative.
The defenders, on the other hand, of these patents are those in the business of intellectual property.
Show me the critical mass of developers defending one-click shopping as an innovative, art-advancing technology and I'll re-consider my position. Many of us are still waiting for any software patent to come along that has a critical mass of other software developers willing to defend it.
Don’t ever confuse the patent/intellectual property business with the business of innovation. Today, they are distinct entities and that’s a shame.
Now, for the invitation of providing any evidence at all that the patent system is being used to stifle innovation. Allow me to cover the zero-sum game of the software business.
Any dollars in a software development business that are diverted from innovation cause innovation to suffer. For start-ups, each and every dollar is a precious commodity as they race to get product to their prospects. Today, the intellectual property system is causing dollars to be spent defending against nothing. SCO’s claims against IBM have cost millions of dollars and slowed the adoption of open-source software. We were seeing the erosion of the SCO speed-bump when Microsoft issued its claim that open-source software violates 235 of their patents.
Now, one may wish to argue that Microsoft is only looking to be rightfully compensated by those using clever Microsoft inventions. I, for one, think that position is naïve. I firmly believe that Microsoft’s intellectual business division is executing a well-thought out plan – monetize where possible (Novell), implicitly threaten where monetization is not possible and sow enough uncertainty to slow down those who don’t acquiesce, directly or indirectly, to Microsoft’s licensing pressure.
These actions, by their very definition, divert dollars from, and slow down, innovation.
Posted by Dave Dargo on June 29, 2007 02:43 PM
June 29, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Via Dana & Matt, The Register reports that the Red Hat Exchange (RHX) "roars like a muted lamb". The Register's point is that RHX has met with a lukewarm reception to date.
After reading the following comment from Matt, with his VP of business development at Alfresco hat on, I wonder if The Register story is missing the point.
"So, again, in terms of traffic, it's not yet on par with Sourceforge and other avenues for us," Asay said. "But it has been surprisingly fruitful given the number of downloads and trials we've had through it. If we had this same ratio of download to trial to conversion on Sourceforge, we'd be IPO'ing tomorrow."
The open source community really doesn’t need another arena for projects to live and be downloaded from. There are plenty of players in this space (Sourceforge, Apache, Google, Codehaus, etc.). RHX isn't intended to drive 1M downloads a day, or hundreds of project ratings. These are functions that developers generally do. Enterprise buyers and decision makers are less likely (not unlikely) to play this role.
RHX appears to be where projects graduate to after they've proven their chops at Sourceforge et al.
As I see it, RHX is intended to serve the needs of an enterprise decision maker that is already using RHEL and wonders: "okay Red Hat, what else do you recommend I try?" or "what CRM app should I use with RHEL?" Try answering either of these questions at Sourceforge.
The higher conversion rate that Matt alludes to on RHX should be the key metric for evaluating the success of RHX.
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 29, 2007 11:46 AM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Asay: "Community Capitalism" presentation online
I recently keynoted the JA-SIG Conference in Denver, CO. For those who don't know (as I didn't), JA-SIG is a Java organization focused on the Higher Education industry, with a strong open source bent (Sakai, uPortal, etc.).
As such, I talked about "Community Capitalism," focusing on how non-profit organizations can get involved in open source, both corporate and community open source. I firmly believe that non-profits are particularly valuable to open source, because their motivations and needs differ from the corporate world. In short, they can contribute somewhat less selfishly.
You can download the ODF file here . Yes, I'm being intentionally difficult by only providing it in ODF format. ;-)
Jason Shao open source guy currently suffering from Carpal Tunnel Syndrome. Carpal Tunnel is a Repetitive Strain Injury (RSI) typically caused by too much typing combined with bad ergonomics. Not only do heavy-duty computer users suffer from this, but it also affects musicians quite frequently. In my case, the onset was a combination of too much typing (and why did I agree to a new blog?) bad desk setup and too much guitar playing. Admittedly, I am a novice guitar player but I was spending too many hours learning scales while seated in a cramped office chair on weekends.
So in case anyone else is dealing with RSI, I thought I would share some thoughts and remedies I've learned. Ok, learned would imply I'm following all of this advice, which is not entirely true. But I'm trying to follow it and I'm making progress.
First of all, if you are feeling any pain, tingling or loss of sensation STOP IMMEDIATELY. If your body tells you to stop, pay attention. In fact, you ideally shouldn't do repetitive tasks like typing for more than 15 minutes at a time without getting up and stretching.
The next most important item is about the ergonomics of your desk area. You absolutely need to make sure that you are not bending your wrists upward while typing. Laptop keyboards are not great in this regard. If you have to type at a laptop, use a wrist pad to raise your hands to a neutral position. If you have a detached keyboard, it should be angled downward which means you should never use the rear keyboard feet to raise the back of the keyboard. In fact, you should have a riser at the front of your keyboard. I switched to a Microsoft Natural keyboard years ago, and found this helps somewhat. The newest model, the Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000 or the wireless version the 7000 are well designed in this regard. In fact, I picked up a new 4000 keyboard for use at home to replace my old Dell branded Natural keyboard and I noticed it had the legs at the rear, which is completely wrong.
You want to make sure that your arms are basically level and that your wrists do not need to bend in uncomfortable ways when you type. I learned to touch type in high school and although I do not usually type completely properly using all 5 fingers, I am trying my best to do so now. It makes a huge difference. If you're of the two finger hunt-and-peck school, consider learning how to type properly so that you are not stretching your hands in unnatural ways. For me, I especially need to make sure I'm not attempting to use the same hand for two simultaneous keystrokes. That is, when you shift, you should be hitting the shift or control key with one hand and the appropriate letter with the other. This takes some retraining if you have bad habits ingrained after many years. The worst is the Alt-Tab combination in Windows. I'm also experimenting with a Kinesis keyboard at work, which is an even more extremely shaped keyboard than the Microsoft Natural keyboard. (It also costs more, but I figure its cheaper than surgery.)
The mouse is a frequent culprit in RSI. You may wish to try just switching hands to see if that helps. Or alternatively using an ergonomic mouse like the Logitech Trackman or Marble Mouse, which is sort of a mouse and trackball combination. I'm also trying out a Kensington trackball.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is an inflamation, so taking Ibuprofen (note to self: should that be iBuprofen TM Apple?) will help. Also warming up your arms (before a lot of work) and icing after is a good idea.
I have also found that padded wrist splints such as those by Futuro or Imak can be helpful. You can find them in most drugstores. Plus if you get them in black, grow your hair long and and wear a studded leather jacket, they look kind of heavy metal. These splints can help keep your wrists straight while typing which is important.
When I was in the most pain, I tried using the Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software. It works pretty well, but its not easy to get used to dictating. Its definitely a lot slower than typing.
Oh yeah, and blogging or email from a Treo? That's got to be one of the killers. I can't say I've cured myself of that habit, but I'm trying.
Let me know if you have any ohter ideas that are helpful here. Also, take a look at Wikipedia, the Effective Ergonomics site, as well as these articles for other ideas: Ergonomic Problems with Mice, Cornell's Ergonomic Guidelines for Computer Workstations.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 28, 2007 03:22 PM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Zend Framework 1.0 due out on Monday
It's based on PHP 5, limiting its use by the majority of PHP developers who don't like/understand OO programming, or simply, are happy with PHP 4 thank you very much. But the audience seems to be enterprise developers that want to take advantage of the speed of development & productivity that PHP provides. So, PHP 5 was definitely the right choice.
Zend Framework 1.0 will not be the only PHP development framework around as it will share the scene with frameworks like Cake and Prado. But Zend's is the first framework with support from a corporate entity and relevant contributions from companies like IBM and Google, Zend said.
Gartner's Mark Driver is quoted:
"The positive aspect [of the framework] is it this is exactly the kind of thing mainstream IT developers are asking for," Driver said. But traditional PHP developers already have been satisfied with what has been available, he said.
Will the introduction of this 'enterprisey' framework have an impact on the adoption of PHP in the enterprise? Peter Yared, based on his previous post, likely thinks it'll be an uphill battle. And to be honest, so do I. But hey, let the market decide!
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 28, 2007 07:37 AM
June 28, 2007 | Comments: (0)
GPL v3 on the way...Palamida trying to help make it easier to understand
Palamida announced that it has enhanced it's IP Amplifier product with the addition of the GPL v3 analyzer functionality. The company has also created a comprehensive GPL v3 online educational resource repository, gpl3.palamida.com, to assist organizations looking to implement software licensed under GPL v3.
I think this is a cool idea and would like to see some more data about the relationship of v2 and v3. It would also be great to see someone clearly bullet out the differences in the versions. For that matter, I would like someone to explain how things like the Java classpath and FLOSS exception work, and how someone might go about creating their own exceptions should they need to.
Links:
gpl3.palamida.com
Free Software Foundation GPL v3
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 28, 2007 05:51 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Open source is about new beginnings for me. While many write about the end of closed-source and the intellectual property racketeers, I’m more interested in the end of the beginning for the new model that will displace the intellectual property monopolists.
The funny thing for me is that intellectual property is, often, intellectually dishonest.
Intellectual property laws were created to promote innovation by granting a market monopoly to the innovator. Remember, society bears the cost of granting a patent monopoly resulting in higher costs as a trade-off to promote innovation. Patents aren’t a natural, free-market right; they are a privilege granted by society for the long-term benefit of society in general.
Intellectual property laws were created at a time when, compared to today’s standard, it took forever to create a market. Inventions were mechanical devices that had to be created, perfected and manufactured. In the eighteenth century, seventeen years seemed a reasonable amount of time to exploit one’s new patent and a relatively small price for society to bear to promote innovation.
Today, entire industries are conceived, developed, deployed, exploited and made obsolete within seventeen years. I’ve been in the software business since 1979. In that time I’ve seen block-mode terminals, character-mode terminals, client-server and, now, web-based application deployment. Web-based deployments themselves have seen multiple generations. Does anyone remember the promising lucrative field of artificial intelligence (AI)? I remember being sold AI solutions back in 1983 that never materialized.
I was pitched a clever new database model last year that “turned rows into columns.” I didn’t really understand the pitch until they drew it out on the whiteboard. As they drew the diagram they referred to the non-disclosure statement I had signed as well as their newly minted patents for this fantastic, new database idea.
What they drew was a hierarchical data model. This was something I first started programming in back in 1982. I asked when their patents were issued, “Last year,” they replied. Good grief, someone has re-discovered IBM’s IMS and has received a patent. The sad thing was the patents were an asset with which this company attempted to raise funds from venture capitalists. The equally naïve/inexperienced VCs probably didn’t have an institutional memory of IMS either.
What’s the point of this rant? It’s pointless, I guess. It’s difficult to witness the insane point that our intellectual property laws have reached. Microsoft claims that Linux violates 235 of their patents yet they claim it would be burdensome to actually identify those patents.
The intellectual property racket must end. Intellectual property laws were designed to promote innovation, not to allow monopolists to stifle it. We have an entire generation that has been taught that new ideas have to be “protectable” to be worthy of consideration. Whatever happened to being faster and better than the competition? Do these companies really need a seventeen year head-start? Does Microsoft really need a government-sanctioned sledge-hammer with which to intimidate smaller companies?
Do we, as a society, still need to grant monopolies to companies in order to promote innovation? I’ve never felt I needed a monopoly to be successful; I just needed to be faster than the other guy. I’m a pedal-to-the-metal kind of guy and I’m convinced that I can move forward faster with my own ideas than anyone else can move in trying to copy me.
Posted by Dave Dargo on June 27, 2007 10:18 PM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Red Hat Announces Solid 1Q08 Results - Stock down?!
Red Hat announced results for its Fiscal 1Q08 quarter ended May 31, 2007. Pretty solid results.
Revenue rose 41% to $118.9 million from $84.0 million. The analyst consensus was $117.12 million.
GAAP net income rose 17% to $16.2 million, or 8 cents a share, from $13.8 million, or 7 cents a share, a year earlier. The analyst consensus was 6 cents a share.
But the stock is down in after hours trading, so here's the (funny) explanation:
The company reported $52.25 million in non-GAAP cash-flow from operations. Jefferies & Co. analyst Katherine Egbert said that fell short of her forecast of about $55.5 million.In addition to the shortfall, investor may have been spooked by the fact that the results were otherwise just about in line with expectations, she said.
Red Hat shares have climbed 13 percent since the beginning of May amid hopes it would post strong quarterly earnings.
"The business is healthy. But you just get the sense that there is nothing exciting here," Egbert said. "There is no explosive metric you can point to. It is boring."
To add some balance to this post, don't forget that Oracle grew revenue by 20% in their fourth quarter. We're talking about growing from a multi-billion base ($4.85B). Not to take anything away from Red Hat's 41% growth, but as Oracle's results indicate, Traditional software is doing alright, thank you very much.
PS: My friends in the DB2 side of the business would strongly dispute Ellison's comments about "taking share from DB2", especially since the IBM Information Management software division grew 20% in the most recent quarter (1Q07), but hey, who's counting?
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 27, 2007 07:31 PM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Guest Post: Stuart Cohen, Collaborative Software Initiative
Stuart Cohen, former CEO of OSDL launched a new company in May. The Collaborative Software Initiative offers a comprehensive set of services to take a project from the assessment phase through its lifecycle and beyond.
The practice of collaboration
I hear a lot of people talk about collaboration. It kind of makes us all feel warm and fuzzy, right? No one is going to tell you they don’t want to collaborate in today’s market. The problem is "collaboration" is so overused that it has come to mean many different things to many different people.
For the latest generation of 20-somethings, it's the buzzword for building social networks online. For the Linux community, it's about all the ecosystem stakeholders truly working together. But for a growing number of business and IT managers, it’s a tool for completing non-core software projects that meet compliance and regulatory requirements.
What's even more interesting is that these IT professionals are collaborating with competitors within their own industries (i.e., financial services or state governments) in order to get the work done, split the cost and gain the efficiencies from everyone using the same code. We are finding that there is a class of applications that better serves everyone in a business ecosystem where shared code translates into shared data and simplified compliance.
This is why I’m excited about the company I founded a few months ago – Collaborative Software Initiative - and want to thank Dave for letting me share that passion here. We are really bringing to market a whole new way for building software among like-minded companies. We think it will change the way software is developed and subsequently the economy of software. We're looking forward to announcing our first project in the coming months, which will provide a vivid example of this evolution.
Something I also want to mention here is that CSI is not an open source software company in the traditional sense. We start with the customers to understand shared issues that can best be addressed with a collaborative approach, versus the creation of a single open source project that needs to be enhanced or supported. Due to my history, many people have gotten that confused. But the approach most definitely borrows best practices from the open source development model by bringing together stakeholders with a common need to build "community" software that uses an open source development stack but can run on any user's operating system of choice.
The bottom line is we're on the verge of a market transition for enterprise business and IT managers. A very good market transition.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 27, 2007 02:25 PM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Off-topic: Someone needs to invite me to the Cisco Networkers Event
Seems that KISS is playing at the Cisco Networkers event. Someone hook me up. I will bore you with tales of open source and trade you a Mule T-shirt for an invite/ticket/whatever.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 27, 2007 11:12 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Marten Mickos on living in the "modern online world"
Computerworld has Marten Mickos on the hot seat about the growth of MySQL and what happens next. As always, Marten is insightful and rational. I am jealous that I am not as clear-headed.
I am very passionate about open source. And I do believe that it is a superior method. But at the same time, I must be pragmatic. So when they say being dogmatic is very important for the Free Software Foundation — well, they should be. That’s what we respect them for. But running a business is not about dogma. We are not judgmental about our customers or partners. We are happy to partner with closed-source companies. We believe that in the long run, open source will win anyhow.
This quote is a perfect example of "pragmatic open source"--that there will be other ways of developing and distributing software but that OSS has all the makings of a winner.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 27, 2007 10:22 AM
June 27, 2007 | Comments: (0)
A few weeks ago Slashdot was abuzz with the question Does GPL v3 Alienate Developers? The question was partly driven by William Hurley's post that questioned the value of GPL v3 in an age where developers seek permissive licenses.
I haven't thought a great deal about whether developers seek permissive licenses. Although, I'm sure the devil is in the details. Developers that just want to get stuff done may want the freedom to utilize code without GPL-viral worry, while developers seeking to build "the next JBoss" may seek GPL-protections.
In any case, I was thinking about "The next Red Hat or Sell to Oracle" strategy that a VC and I had discussed some time ago. I was also reading up on interesting vendors in the middleware market. Then it hit me, will the GPL help or hurt the chances, or size of, an acquisition by a traditional IT vendor?
I can make a case for both sides, and like everything, the answer will likely be "it depends".
We've already seen that the biggest IT vendors can run afoul with their use of GPL'd code. When you consider the generally risk averse nature of larger IT vendors (i.e. larger targets), one could consider GPL'd code as being "more risky" during the acquisition process.
Let's not forget that the majority of software vendor acquisitions are integrated into the product line of the acquiring vendor. Not only is the product simply added to the product line, often, technology is shared between the acquired product and the products that the acquiring vendor already had. But, integrating GPL'd code (or for that matter, LGPL'd code) with proprietary IP may have a viral impact on the proprietary IP; emphasis on may - I'm not a lawyer and much of this stuff hasn't been tested in court.
I've been told that VCs prefer the GPL over more permissive licenses because the GPL protects against forks, thereby protecting the VC's investments. I haven't heard of (m)any OSS vendors changing their license to satisfy a VC's requirement. But maybe OSS vendors choose the GPL from the get-go with, amongst other things, future VC conversations in mind. Thoughts?
I guess some of the GPL-fear can be circumvented if the OSS vendor has 100% copyright ownership of the GPL'd code. This would require asking 3rd party contributors to assign joint copyrights to their IP. In this scenario, the acquiring IT vendor could license the OSS product under whatever license they'd like.
The fun times that lie ahead for corporate lawyers during due diligence work with OSS vendor acquisition candidates.
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 27, 2007 04:08 AM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Off-topic: CIA Family Jewels (The Mafia was hired to kill Castro?)
This CIA "family jewels" data dump is completely nuts.
Top Ten Most Interesting "Family Jewels"
Released by the CIA to the National Security Archive, June 26, 2007
1) Journalist surveillance - operation CELOTEX I-II (pp. 26-30)
2) Covert mail opening, codenamed SRPOINTER / HTLINGUAL at JFK airport (pp. 28, 644-45)
3) Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt requests a lock picker (p. 107)
4) CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett "thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program" (Sidney Gottlieb's drug experiments) (p. 213)
5) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) reflecting Agency employee resentment against participation (p. 326)
6) Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba (p. 464)
7) Report of detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko (p. 522)
8) Document describing John Lennon funding anti-war activists (p. 552)
9) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) (pp. 591-93)
10) CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. (pp. 599-603)
Noah Shachtman at Wired is blogging the good stuff. I love that the Mafia was brought in to eliminate Castro. You really can't make this stuff up.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 26, 2007 07:59 PM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Sun's (Re-)Emergence as a Performance Leader
While many in the industry have written off Sun at one time or another as a has-been of the dot com era, it's interesting to see that some of their bets in the last few years are starting to pay off. Although I'm not quite ready to say that Sun is winning back customers because of its open source strategy around Java, Solaris etc, I think it is fair to say Sun is far more open a company under Jonathan Schwartz than they were in the past. And by open, I mean they are listening to their customers, being more transparent about their goals, and working with other leading companies in the industry to deliver better combined solutions. A blogging CEO? Sun working with Intel? Open source version of Solaris? Who'da thunk it?
There are two good articles in the press recently worth reading. The first is an article titled "Billionaire Thinks in Trillions" in the New York Times and describes Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim's efforts to achieve even higher performance supercomputers with a scale-out architecture based on 13,000 AMD processors. Bechtolsheim returned to Sun a couple of years ago after Sun acquired his company Opteron-based server company Kealia.
The second article, the unfortunately titled "Dawn of the Dead" is in FastCompany magazine and descibes Sun's "Blackbox" initiative to deliver an entire data center with 250 rack mounted servers in a shipping container requiring less power and cooling than competitors. While the idea is not necessarily unique to Sun, it's still impressive.
Both of these articles highlight that Sun is once again doing the kind of innovation that made them such a hot company in the 1980's and 1990's. Combined with an open source stack running Solaris or Linux, Sun has put together a very attractive platform for some of the biggest and most compute-intensive companies in the world.
What do you think of Sun's moves? Can they recapture the old Sun spirit? Let me know what you think. Or better yet, tell Jonathan. He genuinely wants to hear from the open source community.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 26, 2007 03:23 PM
June 26, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Reading Dave's post on MySQL's IPO range of $600M - $1B, I started to wonder what type of revenue we're talking about.
If you have access to IDC's massive pivot table with Software Vendor revenues (license & support only - services are excluded) split across the 100+ software markets they cover, you can follow along. I can't use the actual figures because I'd get in trouble with IDC's copyright office.
But, if you take IDC's estimate of 2006 Microsoft revenue in the operating system market and divide that by Microsoft's market cap you get 5.3%. If you do the same for Red Hat, you get 5.8%.
Next, take IDC's estimate of 2006 Oracle revenue in the DBMS market and divide by Oracle's market cap and you get 7.5%
A lower % means $1 of revenue drives a larger market cap than for a company that has a higher %. If market caps were strictly tied to revenue, you'd see an equal % across all companies. This isn't the case because market caps are driven by current revenues, expectations of future revenues, brand, cash on hand, the cuteness of the company logo, and phase of the moon.
In any case, if you use $800M as MySQL's projected market cap (in the mid-range of their IPO range), and the ratios calculated above, you get between $40M and $60M in 2006 database revenue (from licenses & support).
Not chump change (driven by a 747 vs. Toyota approach)
What's that Zack? Dinner and drinks on your tab? :-)
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 26, 2007 07:13 AM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I wrote in my last blog about the massive economies that companies such as Microsoft and Oracle have created. I also wrote about the massive tolls those very same companies take in the form of overhead in the procurement and licensing processes.
What I find interesting are the parallels to other industries that can be drawn, most notably the oil and gas industry. When oil was first drilled in Pennsylvania it heralded a revolution and enabler of massive new industries never before seen. People celebrated the certain doom of the whaling industry which had acted as a major source of oil for lubrication and fuel. It caused the United States to have an explosively successful oil-based industrial revolution rather than one like England’s which was fueled by coal.
Entire economies were created around the oil-industry to extract, refine, distribute and consume this fuel. Every time you drive your car you are using a machine that was fine-tuned to provide you comfortable, safe transportation while most efficiently using the fuel for your desired needs – power, speed, higher mileage; whatever you sought. You were at the end of a supply chain that sought to keep you, the consumer, ensnared within the economic infrastructure of oil.
Now, think about our current need to move away from oil. Think not about global warming or dwindling oil supplies. In fact, for purposes of this argument, let’s assume that there is no global warming from using fossil-fuels and that there is an endless supply of oil. Many people would be very happy and content to continue using oil. But, what if your goals could be achieved more efficiently by using something other than oil? Wouldn’t you want to have that option?
This is the very question that we face with closed-source vs. open-source software. Open-source software and its dependent business-models represent a number of opportunities at gaining greater efficiency. But there’s an opposing force. It’s the force that created closed-source software, the force that refines closed-source software and the forces that distribute and service closed-source software. Just like the oil companies that have a very large constituency that makes money off of oil, there’s a very large constituency that makes money off of closed-source software.
Ultimately, the efficiencies of open-source software will win out over closed-source. But to get there we need to overturn an entire economic infrastructure dedicated to keeping the status-quo. The incumbents fear innovation and wish to squelch it; the new players bask in innovation and seek to create it.
My money’s on the innovators every time. My money’s on open-source.
Posted by Dave Dargo on June 25, 2007 10:49 PM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Savio's not the first person to tell me I'm wrong and I'm sure he won't be the last. Somehow, though, this makes me think of that line, "I've been thrown out of better places than this."
My comments had to do with the inefficiencies introduced over the years from closed-source vendors. Savio compares cost of spending in categories such as marketing, sales, etc. to help point out how I'm incorrect in my claim that the closed-source vendors have institutionalized overt and covert costs in such a way that they provide drag to innovation.
Allow me to clarify/correct/elucidate my point. This clarification is especially important given that Savio uses Red Hat as the open-source benchmark against which to measure the issues I raised.
I should have probably used the phrase incumbent rather than closed-source vendors. It's just that most of the incumbent players are closed-source and it's easy to link the two phrases together. I often say, "...the closed-source, legacy vendors..."
My main issue isn't how a company does business or accounts for their spending. The fact that Red Hat spends a larger percentage of revenue on marketing vis-a-vis IBM, Oracle or Microsoft isn't the issue. The issue is that companies like Oracle and Microsoft have put practices in place that create unfair and unnecessary burdens on their customers.
The example I used had to do with the extra layers put in place to protect the technical decision makers from themselves. In particular, I find it appalling that a large company would need a procurement official to interrogate a software vendor to determine how to count CPUs. But that company intending to license software has to do that because of the business practices the incumbent players have established.
What I want to expose for discussion is the inefficiencies imposed by the incumbent players. Every time that potential customer has to ask how to count a CPU or what happens to unused licenses they are, in effect, increasing their cost of purchasing software. These extra dollars spent in the procurement process are dollars that are unavailable for innovation.
Think about how this unfolds when a company like Oracle decides to change how they want to count CPUs. Oracle writes a new policy that they publish, is then reported on by news organizations, analyzed by analysts who then sell the analysis to their subscribers, read by their subscribers who need to figure out how to count the cores in their CPUs so that when the Oracle sales rep shows up they can figure out how much they owe in license charges, which then serves as the basis for their support charges.
I can't be the only one who thinks it insane that there is a market for consultants to help companies buy and license software.
Such a market exists because the incumbent players invent increasingly complex business practices designed to maximize the dollars they can collect from a captive customer base. Those complex business practices increase costs and increased costs reduce dollars available for innovation. Now, that's a drag.
Posted by Dave Dargo on June 25, 2007 09:59 PM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
BusinessWeek: The Worth of Open Source? Open Question (MySQL)
BusinessWeek asks: How much is MySQL worth?
MySQL, a fast-growing maker of database software used by some of the Internet's most recognized brands, is preparing to file for an initial public offering, perhaps as soon as late 2007. The offering could value the company at between $600 million and $1 billion, according to sources, and inject some pep into a tech IPO market that's seen only a handful of successful offerings in the past year.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 25, 2007 09:42 PM
June 25, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Matt and Dave D. are good guys that I respect, but they are also wrong. There, I said it. We Canadians aren't known for being so blunt, but this needed to be said. I may get a few eggs directed at me, but so be it. You can argue with me, but you'll have to use your data to argue with my data.
Neanderthal proprietary past. It's not that this model is bad in some religious sense. But it is bad in how it treats the customer (as a would-be criminal who will steal value if she can). And it is bad in its inefficiency (expensive sales and marketing costs, higher than necessary development costs because it reserves all development - even tertiary development like language backs and "last-mile" configuration/customization, etc.).
For how much longer will we continue to pay the taxes, both overt and covert, imposed by the closed-source vendors and their inefficient methods?
Can you accept that all OSS vendors dream of growing to be the "Red Hat" of their respective market?
If so, let's spend a second using Red Hat to test the truths that Matt & Dave D. tell you to expect. And here's the thing, it's not just Matt or Dave D., it's the whole OSS movement that tells you "this be true".
I believed these "obvious truths" at one time. Then I had the fortunate experience of working on the Gluecode acquisition, and being the product manager for WebSphere Application Server Community Edition (WAS CE). I had the good fortune of managing WAS CE in the same team that manages the rest of the WebSphere Application Server family of (Traditional software) products. I/we learned a few things. I am still a believer in OSS, but I've resisted the second helping of that Kool-Aid (however thirst quenching it may appear).
Do OSS vendors spend less on selling their products than a Traditional vendor would? Yes and no. Yes, when the OSS vendor is working on building its customer base and trying to become a vendor with "tens of millions of dollar" in revenue. No, when the OSS vendor is trying to scale their business to "hundreds of millions" or greater.
The problem with most OSS "obvious truths" is that they are true at a point in time. But when you generalize to the time that the OSS vendor matters in a marketplace to the degree that Red Hat does, the truths don't hold any longer.
Think I'm a brainwashed IBM lackey (or insert appropriate description)? Okay, then please explain why Red Hat spends more of their total revenue on Sales, General & Administrative (sales, marketing, advertising, etc), 54% than IBM's 23%, Microsoft's 31% or Oracle's 26%. Next, Red Hat spends 3.1x more on SG&A than they do on R&D. This compares to 3.6x for IBM and 2.1x and 2.0x for Microsoft & Oracle respectively. Oh, and counter to conventional wisdom of OSS not requiring advertising, Red Hat spends nearly 5% of their revenues on advertising, while Oracle spends 0.7% and Microsoft spends 2.8% of their respective revenues. And best of all, since OSS benefits from all this "free work from the community", it may come as a surprise that Red Hat spends 18% of its revenue on R&D. This compares to 15% for Microsoft and 11% for Oracle.
So there you have it, my data. Bring yours to the table and let's chat. Or if you want to tell stories of strawberry fields, bliss and OSS "obvious truths", then let me know so I can pick up a book of childhood fairy tales. We'll have great fun!
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 25, 2007 06:17 AM
June 24, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The software industry evolves...
I wrote an article yesterday comparing proprietary software vendors to the shadow-watchers in Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." Thinking through the idea further, I'm increasingly convinced that we are at a critical juncture in the evolution of the software industry. Mike Olson (Sleepycat, now Oracle) and I will be debating this at O'Reilly's upcoming Executive Radar at OSCON. Should be fun, though I'm sure we'll each try to paint the other as Cro-Mag. :-)
The industry is clearly moving toward service-based software models. Open source, enterprise SaaS (e.g., Salesforce.com"), consumer/Internet SaaS (e.g., Google, Digg, Yahoo!, etc.), etc. are tangible examples of the move away from "tangible" licenses to lock-in value and lock-out competition. The old world is fading, though it will take a long time for it to fade to the point of irrelevance, as Savio is fond of pointing out.
My (fool's) hope is that as we move out of the world of proprietary license competition the level of competition will become both more fierce and collegial, because it will be more focused on serving customer needs and less on clubbing competitors. But that's my naive hope, and I'm not expecting us to move out of a Hobbesian existence anytime soon.
It's time to evolve. There are better models available for serving customer needs than our Neanderthal proprietary past. It's not that this model is bad in some religious sense. But it is bad in how it treats the customer (as a would-be criminal who will steal value if she can). And it is bad in its inefficiency (expensive sales and marketing costs, higher than necessary development costs because it reserves all development - even tertiary development like language backs and "last-mile" configuration/customization, etc.).
We can do better. We should do better. And, regardless of the old guard's protestations, we will do better. (To that point, it's fascinating to watch the old guard experiment with open source. Some are doing highly interesting things with open source, as I'll be highlighting this coming week.)
Open source is an unstoppable force at this point.
Posted by Matt Asay on June 24, 2007 07:15 AM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I’m reading an otherwise unremarkable book by Kevin Phillips titled American Theocracy, and I’m struck by a phrase he uses, “Yesteryear’s Success,” where, speaking about world economic powers, he writes, “The infrastructures created by these unusual, even quirky, successes eventually became economic obstacle courses and inertia-bound burdens.”
I wish I could have so articulately described the quirky success of not world economic powers but of Microsoft. I can’t imagine anything much quirkier than Microsoft and the path they trod to become a huge monopoly. What’s more interesting is the seemingly confused strategy they’re attempting to implement and follow today.
These “economic obstacle courses and inertia-bound burdens” haunt not only the vendors but also the consumers. In fact, the consumers are put at an even larger disadvantage having done continuous business with these dinosaurs.
I remember when I was at Ingres and visiting one of our potential large-scale customers. In the initial meeting the head of procurement was there. I thought this odd for a meeting about technology and innovation until I heard their questions:
“What is a CPU?”
“How do you count multi-core CPUs?”
“What if I pay for licenses that I no longer wish to deploy?”
I realized that the questions I was hearing were representative of the economic obstacle courses the consumer faced in dealing with their then-current software vendor. This was an eye-opening meeting for me. Before we were permitted to present technology to the technologists of this company we had to explain licensing terms to their procurement office.
How did we get ourselves into a situation where innovation within a company is hampered by the obstacle course created by an unrelated vendor? Companies like Oracle and Microsoft speak about the economies they’ve created. It’s true; these companies have created huge economies that have resulted in untold numbers of jobs being created and huge amounts of realized efficiency.
At what point, however, does that economy no longer represent improved efficiency but, rather, increased drag? I believe that we’re reaching another tipping point where it is less efficient to do business with the large closed-source vendors. These vendors continue to create ever more complex business models and more convoluted reasoning on why they should be the vendor of choice in order to sustain yesteryear’s successes.
I want to be part of tomorrow’s successes and the smaller, nimbler open-source companies will help bring about this needed change. For how much longer will we continue to pay the taxes, both overt and covert, imposed by the closed-source vendors and their inefficient methods?
Posted by Dave Dargo on June 22, 2007 09:35 PM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
WSJ: Linux Shoots for Big Leagues
A Wall Street Journal article "Linux Shoots for Big Leagues" (subscription required) by Chris Lawton discusses how open source continues to make inroads in IT departments. The examples show Linux and open source providing cost savings of 50-90% compared to traditional closed source architectures. That's a pretty compelling number, and likely to get the attention of any CIO who's trying to manage a budget. Lets face it, if you can save money on hardware and software and spend it on people or projects, it's a no-brainer.
But the significance of open source goes beyond just the cost-savings. A more significant benefit is the ability of organizations to easily scale-out their operations rapidly.
Open source adoption typically goes hand-in-hand with adoption of a scale-out architecture based on commodity x86 Intel or Opteron servers. This gives companies an ability to easily accomodate growth by adding more servers as opposed to doing a "forklift upgrade". That's a common scenario in high-growth companies like Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, Zappos, Booking.com, Zillow or other online businesses. We featured a few of these scale-out examples on the MySQL web site recently, for those who are interested.
And as the Wall Street Journal notes, Windows is still ahead of Linux in server adoption. But with the backing of companies like Dell, HP, and IBM, I would expect that Linux still has a lot of growth ahead of it given how much desire there is for companies to scale their operations.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 22, 2007 10:26 AM
June 22, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Is money a good measure of OSS success?
This comment from Stacey (Hyperic) got me thinking...is money a good measure of OSS success?
Before I go on, let me clear something up. My 1.8% comment was not meant to minimize the importance of OSS to the software market or to customers. I disagree with the "world view" that OSS is going to completely revolutionize the software market and lead to the death of Traditional software as we know it. I'm an advocate of OSS & Traditional software living happily together to meet the varying needs of customers. I completely believe that all major software vendors will have an OSS story and a Traditional software story. It's not a "them vs. us" situation. It's a "we are them" situation. I'll fall back on Marten Mickos' comments from OSBC claiming that there is no OSS business model. That we are all participants in the software market.
Is money a good measure of OSS success? In our free market society, I believe it is. This does not minimize the importance of other measures of success.
Let's look a little deeper at OSS impact on software spending. I can think of 3 situations:
1. OSS vendor revenue from using OSS with support/license
2. OSS usage erodes Traditional software revenue
3. OSS usage creates new users because of minimized barriers to adoption
Clearly, software revenue shifts from Traditional software to OSS when customers decide to use OSS with support/license. This spending would be counted in the 1.8%.
Next, I accept Stacey's point about the importance of market spending that OSS erodes from the Traditional software market. But if you ask CIOs about their IT budgets over the past 5 years, most will tell you that they've grown. Few will tell you that their budgets have decreased by 26% (i.e. in line with OSS vendor revenue growth predicted by IDC). When a customer decides to use, say MySQL for free over Oracle DB, the savings are generally spent somewhere else in the IT department. In the above example, Oracle loses some revenue, but a large portion of those savings are spent on the backlog of projects that haven't been funded to date. As a result, another vendor, maybe an OSS vendor, but more than likely (as the size of the software market will attest), a Traditional vendor gets new revenue. This could actually be a situation where the use of OSS drives further spending on Traditional software. I can tell you that we've seen this in spades with WebSphere Application Server revenue. Customers like choice, a one size fits all model is really only for sock vendors.
Now, let's deal with the situation of OSS creating new users who have access to software they previously didn't have. Again, MySQL users are a great example. Heck, I'm a great example. I would never have used Oracle or DB2 (b/c of complexity, fear, costs - remember, I'm a "hello world" programmer at best), but I do use MySQL for pet projects. Does my use of MySQL represent revenue loss to Oracle, DB2 or SQLServer? One can make the argument that my familiarity with MySQL represents a potential future customer for MySQL. I doubt that is the case, but if I play along, then my potential future spending with MySQL would be represented in the 1.8% also. (Hey, don't ask me how IDC or other analysts can predict what I, or others, will do in 5 years!)
What's my point? OSS is very important to users, customers and software vendors. It is however, one component of the software market. Software vendors that accept this reality and build strategies to leverage OSS and Traditional software are the "future" (p=0.8). Gartner customers will recognize this form of pontification :-)
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 22, 2007 02:58 AM
June 21, 2007 | Comments: (0)
During the opening day SpringOne keynote yesterday Interface21 explained how they plan on using the funding they recently secured. Later in the day, I spent a few minutes with Neelan Choksi, COO at Interface21.
Neelan explained that for Interface21, the use of an open source license (Apache License 2.0), an open development model and a free product with paid support business model is about one thing, developing software. Yes, Spring is open source software, but that was a pragmatic choice. A choice born out of the market landscape at the time, not from an ideological love of all things open source.
Keeping this in mind, it shouldn't surprise you that Interface21 announced they'd use their funding to, amongst other things:
1] Rod & business functions are setting up shop in Silicon Valley to be closer to partners, investors and advisors
2] Setting up small, but growing, product development centers in the UK (Southampton), US (Melbourne, Florida) & Canada (Vancouver) because they feel co-located employees speed product development
3] Hiring seasoned Sales reps to go after larger enterprise deals
4] Hiring seasoned Marketing professionals to market to VPs and CXOs
5] Continuing collaboration with Microsoft to bring Spring to .NET developers
Clearly, Interface21 is going to do a lot more with the funding. I wanted to highlight these 5 because they are counter to "conventional wisdom" we hear from OSS visionaries.
Moving key staff to Silicon Valley, co-locating development teams, hiring professional sales teams (i.e. the expensive professionals driving Porsches), spending significantly on marketing and working with Microsoft are steps you'd expect from a software vendor. Good to see Interface21 acting like a software vendor and leaving others to play the part of an open source software vendor.
One other thing that Neelan mentioned that gave me the warm and fuzzies. He spoke about the funding process and how many VCs came to Interface21 explaining that using open source meant they wouldn't have to spend much on sales or marketing. These VCs were, shall we say, excluded from the shortlist, because as Neelan and Interface21 understood, that's a piece of conventional OSS wisdom that doesn't hold when you're trying to scale the business.
Interface21 is pragmatic about building a viable software business. Good on them.
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 21, 2007 01:26 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Open Source, SOA, and the Next-generation Data Center (Panel from OSBC '07)
Cote posted the video of our OSBC session about open source and SOA. I believe I was asked "what does SOA mean to you?" and my response was something about "SOA being a unicorn, magical but rarely seen in real life."
On the panel:
Akash Garg (CTO, hi5 Networks,
Dave Rosenberg (CEO and co-founder, MuleSource
Dr. Sanjiva Weerawarana, founder WSO2
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 20, 2007 08:40 PM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Open Source CEO Series: Mickos, Rosenberg, Powell, Soltero, and more
I'm running an Open Source CEO Series on my new blog, trying to get into the minds of the brave (and still few) open source business leaders who are turning downloads into dollars. So far, I've had Marten Mickos, our very own Dave Rosenberg (MuleSource), John Powell (Alfresco), and Javier Soltero (Hyperic) profiled.
Over the rest of the week, I expect to add profiles of the CEOs of Funambol, Zimbra, Vyatta, Magnolia, SugarCRM, Zenoss, and more. I've actually found it highly interesting to read the challenges and surprises open source has brought them, and to hear their advice on newbie open source CEOs.
For each CEO, I asked for the following information:
- Name, position, and company of executive
- Year company was founded and year you joined it
- Stage of funding and names of venture firms that have invested
- Background prior to current company (Positions held and/or something that led you to open source/where you are now)
- Biggest surprise you?ve encountered in your role with your company
- Hardest challenge you?ve had so far at your open source company
- If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently?
- Top three pieces of advice for would-be open source CEOs
Posted by Matt Asay on June 20, 2007 08:45 AM
June 20, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Dell: Freedom to choose Ubuntu...but only if you don't have a job
Hopefully, this is just one person's experience, but a would-be Ubuntu buyer was denied by Dell when he informed Dell that he wanted to buy his Ubuntu-on-Dell machine for (gasp!) a business. Perish the thought....
I called the Home office department. I asked the representative if I could buy one of the ubuntu computers for my company. She said (and I quote), "these Dell computers are designed for personal use only, as long as you use it for personal use, you can purchase one."...Answer: a lame one.Next, I tried to buy it on our business credit card. They would have none of that. She told me that I had to buy it through a personal card....
I really wanted to support Dell and I am just blown away that they would REFUSE MY MONEY because I was buying it to use for a business. What company goes around telling its customers how they can use their products? What business model does that fall under?
Now, to Dell's credit, it's at least selling Ubuntu (if only for Home and Home Office use). It's ahead of the pack on this.
But why not let the market decide where Ubuntu will go today? Or was that part of some agreement with Microsoft? "We'll only let individual Linux freaks buy Ubuntu - we won't let corporate Linux freaks buy it." Muppets.
Posted by Matt Asay on June 20, 2007 08:39 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
NetworkWorld charts open source systems management
NetworkWorld compared the OSS system management products from Zenoss, Hyperic and Groundwork.
NWW results:
1. Zenoss-4.0
Pros: Excellent discovery of network resources; intuitive user interface.
Cons: Needs a visual design environment for customizing reports.
2. Hyperic-3.6
Pros: Impressive, complex thresholds; good reports.
Cons: Remediation is a very manual process.
3. Groundwork-3.1
Pros: Good, basic network monitoring.
Cons: Lacks dashboards; no ability to track Service Level Agreements.
One potentially interesting factoid is that each of these products has a different technology behind it. Zenoss is Python, Hyperic is Java and I think Groundwork is Perl with a bunch of PHP and Java. FiveRuns (not reviewed) was all written in Ruby so I guess you can solve the same problem in many different ways. (Apologies if I got those programming languages wrong.)
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 19, 2007 08:58 PM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
By now you've heard that I'll be joining the Open Sources team. It's a shame that Matt Asay is moving on to bigger and better things (you can follow him at CNet). I'm sure we'll continue to disagree about an item or two related to open source :-)
I'm pretty excited about joining the team. A key reason for this, (aside from being in the company of a few open source stars) is because I don’t work for an OSS vendor. I told Steve Fox, Editor in Chief at InfoWorld, that bringing in a voice from the Traditional software world to the Open Sources team was a forward-looking move on InfoWorld’s behalf*. The views from 1.8% of the software market have historically been, and will no doubt continue to be, amply represented at Open Sources. I'll do my best to bring in a complimentary viewpoint from the other 98.2% of the software market (with a lot of help from friends & colleagues!).
OSS commentary and analysis from an OSS & Traditional vendor lens is another example of the idea that Redmonk’s Cote coined "pragmatic open source" (definitely more on this soon). In keeping with the pragmatic storyline, as JBoss’ Sacha Labourey likes to close his correspondence with:
"Onward"
--
*I believe credit mainly goes to Matt & Dave R. for making this happen behind the scenes. Wow - did I just call Matt & Dave visionaries?!? ;-)
**Disclaimers:
- The postings on this site are my own views
- I am an IBM employee
- IBM does not necessarily agree with the views expressed here
Posted by Savio Rodrigues on June 19, 2007 07:12 PM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
While there are a lot of good things happening with respect to opportunities for open source software and IT in general in China, there are many reminders that it's still evolving. In many ways, China is "the wild, wild east" where the rules are being made up or challenged on a regular basis.
Despite all of the modernization in the last 30 years, China is not an open society and the freedoms or rights that we take for granted in the west are not necessarily in place. Yes, things have improved, but its not yet where it needs to be.
Take a simple example like writing this blog. The idea of Freedom of Speech is ingrained into western culture and guaranteed in the US in the First Amendment of the Constitution. (I recently became a US ctizen and, yes, this was on the test.) So I take for granted that I can write pretty much whatever I want in this blog, and that InfoWorld or other online sites or print media can publish whatever they want. (Yes, there are some areas limited by libel laws, obscenity laws and the like.)
Those freedoms are not in place in China. While they do have bloggers in China, most newspapers, radio and TV are government controlled. Magazines and web sites are subject to government censorship. Don't expect open discourse on topics like religious freedom, democracy, Falun Gong, Tibet or Taiwan. Its easy to forget that the Internet is censored in China, so you can't visit subversive sites like playboy.com, bbc.com, LiveJournal.com, or even Wikipedia.org. The so-called "Great Firewall of China" limits what you can and can't see on the Internet.
I was in China during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square protests of June 4th, 1989. In Hong Kong there was a candle-light vigil with over 20,000 people commemorating the event. But there was no press coverage or memorials in mainland China. You won't find articles, photos, or videos on the Internet about it either. In fact, you'd be hard pressed to know anything had happened. And that's the way the government wants it.
The censorship is not foolproof though, and people I spoke with did not seem particularly bent out of shape about it. There is an increasing network of proxy servers that makes Internet censorship into a bit of a cat and mouse game. And most people appreciated that there is more freedom now than there was 10 years ago, so as long as things continue to evolve, they seem to respect the government's position. Admittedly, the penalty for not accepting things is likely a prison sentence, so maybe that explains things.
Meanwhile, there continues to be uneasy cooperation between the Chinese government and US-based companies. After all, who do you think is supplying the technology for censorship? What ever happened to "Do no evil?"
Lets hope that open source does more good here than harm.
Posted by Zack Urlocker on June 19, 2007 10:21 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I had dinner with a close friend from Novell (and his family) last night. He's been there for over 10 years, and continues to believe in the company. I respect that. Whatever his thoughts on the patent deal and product direction (I didn't ask - I wanted us to enjoy our meal :-), he's committed to the company, yet also to the open source development community, as his role is directly tied to development. You can count on him to balance community interests against corporate interests.
It's called integrity.
Mark Shuttleworth has also evidenced his integrity recently by proactively declaring that he's not interested in a Microsoft patent deal. You can't buy Mark's opinion, and I'm convinced that this statement would be true regardless of how much money he had in the bank.
It's called integrity.
At times, I believe the integrity of these two men could cause them to go in opposite directions, but the important thing is that they're reliable and consistent in their actions. (Btw, this article from Keith McFarland about human consistency is very interesting on this topic....) I think that's the thing that riles most in the open source community with the companies that have capitulated to Microsoft's patent demands: it's out of keeping with the ethos of the community.
I'm willing to concede that it may not be out of keeping with the ethos of the management of these companies, but is that an excuse for management or does it instead beg for different management? Not necessarily better management (as I think highly of Ron Hovsepian and others at these companies), but different management, more attuned to the communities they serve?
Or maybe it simply calls for better information. As noted above, my friend may well be a fan of the patent pact - I didn't ask. But I know that if he went down that road, he'd be bending over backward to ensure that people understood the full rationale, and would also be sensitive to the fact that it's an unpopular decision, and why.
For example, a friend of mine in our neighborhood is considering selling his house. We've been looking for a bigger house (4 kids + small house = too much familial love) and so I asked him about his. His response?
As for the house, we are still on the fence a bit, but if we do sell it we will overprice it a bit. We've had a few people come through and check things out, and the general consensus is that we could sell anywhere from $xxxx or more. We are thinking $xxxx [+$xxx] just to push our luck. I really don't want you to buy the house though because I think we are overpricing it and I would feel very guilty.It's not the decision I'd like ("Matt, we'll give it to you for free because you've been a good friend!"), but it's candid and open. We don't all have to agree, but candor helps ease the friction from disagreement.
Net net: I would like greater clarity in the market as to which way vendors are going to turn. With many, I already know the answer because I know the people involved. Their integrity is not for sale, or even where their integrity might not prevent them from signing such a deal, they also understand the community ethos.
But for the others, it would be good to know where you stand.
Posted by Matt Asay on June 19, 2007 06:43 AM
June 19, 2007 | Comments: (0)
I'm enjoying my new blog over on CNET, but I admit I'm missing Dave. Especially now that he has turned into Jane Austen, penning blog entries by the thousands. I was clearly holding him back. :-)
I just noticed for the first time today that Michael Tiemann (founder of Cygnus and VP of Open Source Affairs at Red Hat) and his wife, Amy, have joined me. They have a blog about parenting in the high tech world. How cool is that? I would love to write this blog:
Today's parents may live and work on the cutting edge, but we didn't grow up in a digital era. (parent.thesis) brings you the latest news and musings about life raising kids in today's 24-7, hyperconnected world. MojoMom.com creator Amy Tiemann and open-source software pioneer Michael Tiemann are a 21st-century couple. They take a leap of faith as parents and build their parachute on the way down, living by the motto, "We aren't raising our children for the world we live in, we're raising them for the world they'll live in.This is actually the sort of blog that I like to read: one that captures the humanity of the writer but still provides mostly topical content. InfoWorld should have a blog or two like this. Blogs like this remind us that we're not alone in the universe; that there are other parental failures just like us. :-)
Anyway, check out Michael's new blog. I want to see it followed up by the Dave, Karen, and Kiki Rosenberg blog on mixing CEO-hood with a month-old terror.
Posted by Matt Asay on June 19, 2007 06:29 AM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Webware 100 vs. PC World 25 Web Sites to Watch
Where the hell did all these Web 2.0 companies come from? I am flabbergasted by the sheer volume. Anyway, today appears to be the day of Web 2.0 rollups.
Webware 100-The category distinction makes it easy to figure out if you have any interest in these sites. The likely answer is you sort of do, but you will lose interest quickly.
PC World 25 Web Sites to Watch--same deal, just not represented in one page and therefore made me even more confused.
I can't figure out how the majority of these sites will make money, but who cares...onto some fun graphs from Swivel. Please enjoy this graph by some guy who counts his Linux commands.
And how could we not enjoy this Bird Flu Death Chart?
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 18, 2007 10:13 PM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Hyperic blazes ahead with HyperFORGE
The team at Hyperic just announced their HyperFORGE site to provide developers with an easy way to create plug-ins to Hyperic HQ. They also started a plug-in of the month program to reward contributors.
Good for the Hyperic team for getting HyperFORGE into place and keeping the communication between in-house and outside developers going. Of all of the OSS systems management vendors I believe that Hyperic has the best technology for the broadest array of systems management and have become the clear innovator in the space. The Forge is starting with quite a few projects and I look forward to seeing more come down the pipe.
Hyperic is at an inflection point in the state of their business growth along with the growth of open source in general. These types of communal development projects help to bring in a wider audience and prove that there is a large number of educated users--both of which create confidence for buyers. We've seen the Forge approach work well for SugarCRM, Zimbra, JasperSoft and Alfresco as they have expanded their partner networks and made it easy to contribute.
Side note: I can tell you that it's a big pain in the neck to get a good Forge system setup. We'll be launching the MuleForge in early July to allow contributions and extensions to Mule and it's been a huge grind. I fear that we have over featured by a long shot.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 18, 2007 12:36 PM
June 18, 2007 | Comments: (0)
DOD SoftwareTechNews Open Source - The future is open
The DoD SoftwareTech News June 2007 (subscription required) is devoted to use of Open Source Software in DoD. A few of the most interesting facts and figures:
The US Army is the single largest install base for Red Hat Linux
----As Brigadier General Nick Justice, the Deputy Program Officer for the Army's Program Executive Office, Command, Control and Communications Tactical (PEO C3T) observed at a recent conference, "Open source software is part of the integrated network fabric which connects and enables our command and control system to work effectively, as people's lives depend on it. When we rolled into Baghdad, we did it using open source. It may come as a surprise to many of you, but the U.S. Army is the single largest install base for Red Hat Linux. I'm their largest customer."
OSS use in U.S. government is pervasive.
----Including the Linux kernel, Samba, Apache, Perl, GCC, GNAT, XFree86, OpenSSH, bind, and sendmail.
Government contractor devIS reports that it "saves its clients a minimum of $100,000 per contract by using OSS."
Government users are often unaware when a program they are using is OSS
US Government policies mandate that government acquisitions
consider OSS approaches, through the FAR and OSS policies (i.e.,
http://oss-institute.org/Navy/DONCIO_OSS_User_Guidance.pdf
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 18, 2007 09:37 AM
June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Dave Linthicum outlines six steps to follow to make a build vs. buy decision. (Spoiler: Ultimately you will probably need to do both.)
With service-oriented architecture (SOA), Ajax, the enterprise service bus (ESB) and other new technologies maturing, application architects and business analysts have tough decisions to make about whether to buy packaged applications, build them, or more likely, do some combination of the two.The buy-versus-build question is even more important now that we have infrastructure to support the mixing and matching of applications and services. Best practices are beginning to emerge, and sources for applications and services are rapidly multiplying, including open source, new SOA interfaces for traditional packaged enterprise applications and SaaS offerings. The SaaS vendors, in particular, are making new and innovative applications and services available at price points that were previously unheard of.
So, how do you know when to buy and when to build? There are no hard-and-fast rules, but this article presents a six-step approach to make sure you're making the right calls.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 17, 2007 10:22 PM
June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Why Do People Write Free Documentation? (ONLamp Survey)
Andy Oram posted his survey write-up on why people contribute documentation. Pretty interesting, but still a bit hard to quantify (says Andy himself.)
I tend to think that people who write documentation for their own work tend to do it as habit, maybe even more so when working on public/communal projects.
A unique survey ran on O'Reilly's web site during the first three months of 2007, aimed at people who contribute free documentation to online mailing lists, web sites, and other forums. The survey garnered 354 responses, which in itself indicates the thriving state of free documentation and the dedication of the people who write it.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 17, 2007 04:23 PM
June 17, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Deep insight into Dell sales process
Consumerist is running a great piece "22 Confessions Of A Former Dell Sales Manager" that proves you're not crazy for thinking Dell pricing is arbitrary and random. We used to play a game at GLC where I would make everyone try and order the same item going down the SMB, Home, and Mid-size business to see who would get the best price. In the long run the best pricing always came from the Dell reps.
Not surprisingly, Dell has asked for them to remove the post.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 17, 2007 11:32 AM
June 16, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Ubuntu says "No Deal" to Microsoft
From Mark Shuttleworth's blog--No negotiations with Microsoft in progress
We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements.Allegations of "infringement of unspecified patents" carry no weight whatsoever. We don’t think they have any legal merit, and they are no incentive for us to work with Microsoft on any of the wonderful things we could do together. A promise by Microsoft not to sue for infringement of unspecified patents has no value at all and is not worth paying for. It does not protect users from the real risk of a patent suit from a pure-IP-holder (Microsoft itself is regularly found to violate such patents and regularly settles such suits). People who pay protection money for that promise are likely living in a false sense of security.
Posted by Dave Rosenberg on June 16, 2007 04:43 PM
June 15, 2007 | Comments: (0)
Conspicuous consumption (or Babies make you poor)
Two weeks into this baby adventure I can't believe how much money we have spent and will continue to spend on our precious little monkey. Admittedly, I have used the baby as an excuse to buy a new LCD