matt on SWiK

Open source: assimilate and thrive

Thu, 07 Aug 2008 12:09:11 -0700

Matt Asay writes today about the prospects for open source vendors going public or, more likely, being acquired, and wonders whether open source vendors should “hold out for an IPO” or “capitulate” and be acquired.

The latter seems far more likely, especially in the current economic climate. We have written before about the open source vendors most likely to go public in the next couple of years.

Looking at the list of contenders again it is easy to imagine that they could all be snapped up before they make it public thanks to the fact that 1) open source vendors are very attractive investments 2) it is difficult for open source vendors to build the momentum to do so.

I spoke recently with Bernard Dallé at Index Ventures, which has previously invested in the likes of MySQL and Trolltech.

Bernard made the point that while the open source distribution/subscription model is a great way of reaching potential new customers and generating predictable revenue, revenue is on average three times lower than a traditional licensing approach. The result is that it takes more time to build the momentum required to go public.

I previously wrote that for open source vendors patience is a virtue, noting that it took MySQL 12 years to grow to the a position where it was preparing to go public - and even it couldn’t avoid the lure of Sun’s lucre. The open source vendors that have followed MySQL’s example barely get the chance to build a meaningful revenue stream.

There is also the issue that the pure play open source vendors like Red Hat do not have the financial clout to compete with the likes of IBM and Sun and Oracle when it comes to potential acquisitions. You can read a little more about our view on that here.

In his take Matt writes that “I’m coming around to the idea that everything will be a blend of open source and proprietary software or services, at least for the foreseeable future.”

I can’t go in to too much detail but I’m doing some research on this right now and the fact is that the future is now. There is very little money being made out of open source software that doesn’t involve proprietary software and services.

Which is not to say that open source won’t survive and thrive, but if you’re waiting to see pure play open source vendors replace the current crop of industry giants you’re going to be waiting a long time.

On open source and piracy

Fri, 25 Jul 2008 07:51:18 -0700

Dana Blankenhorn asks whether open source is hurt by piracy, prompted by comments made by Louis Suarez-Potts, Sun’s community manager for OpenOffice.org at OSCON.

Dana is unconvinced that open source supporters should necessarily be doing anything about piracy, noting that “There is no direct financial loss to Open Office when someone has a pirated copy of Microsoft Office. To the extent that BSA enforcement actions cause fear in the market, that just benefits open source, so why join it?”

He also notes that “On the other hand if we helped Oracle enforce its license terms we might accelerate the move to MySQL and Ingres.”

However, one need only remember these comments from last year made by the president of Microsoft’s business division, Jeff Raikes, to understand why piracy is bad for open source:

“Our number one goal is that we want people to use our product. If they’re going to pirate somebody, we want it to be us rather than somebody else. And that’s because we understand that in the long run the fundamental asset is the install base of people who are using our products.

What you hope to do is over time you hope to convert them to licensing the software, legally licensing it, so on, and so forth,” he added, neatly - and presumably accidentally - describing the method by which commercial open source vendors benefit by making their core code available free of charge.

So it’s always a delicate balance, because what you want to do is you want to push towards getting legal licensing, but you don’t want to push so hard that you lose the asset that’s most fundamental in the business.”

Additionally on our recent virtual tour of Europe we saw how piracy was seen as a barrier to further adoption of open source in countries like Greece and Romania.

Supported by government, open source can be used as a tool defeat piracy. Louis explained, ComputerWorld reports that: “By cracking down on software piracy, nations around the globe are starting to see that they can help themselves dramatically by encouraging innovation and creativity — as well as job growth and richer economies — through open-source development.”

An example of this is Russia, where Microsoft’s bungled attempt to crack down on software piracy resulted in a decision by the government to reduce piracy and encourage local business by encouraging the use of open source software.

iFund Has Invested in 5 Companies So Far

Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:57:27 -0700

I am hanging out at the MobileBeat conference in Sunnyvale, Calif., today, watching Erick Schonfeld grill panelists on the “Bang or Bust” panel. One of the panelists is Matt Murphy, head of the $100 million iFund at Kleiner, Perkins Caufield & Byers. “We have invested in five companies so far,” he told the room.

He named iControl, which brings home automation to the iPhone, as one of the fund’s investments, and said the names of three more would be revealed sometime between September and November. Given that the iFund was only announced back in March, I am surprised by the number of startups they’re investing in already. I have heard that VCs are currently sifting through business plans for iPhone-related startups. Tapulous is one of the hot iPhone startups out there and has already raised venture capital from well-known angels in Silicon Valley.

More information later after I wrap up my panel, which kicks off in a few minutes.

If this story interests you, check out our upcoming conference:
Mobilize — Mobile Web Today and Tomorrow

On open source and cloud computing

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 05:50:40 -0700

Last week I wrote about whether Google’s potential acquisitions might be stifled by its focus on its own infrastructure software projects but noted that by releasing App Engine the company was encouraging a wider ecosystem of applications based on its platform.

What I didn’t discuss at the time was the potential risk of application vendors finding themselves locked-in to the App Engine platform. Of course Amazon also has this issue, the potential impact of which was revealed this weekend.

It is with this in mind that it was interesting to see the debut of 10gen, a new open source cloud computing start-up founded by Doubleclick veterans and backed by Union Square Ventures.

Over at The 451 Group’s Cloud Cover blog, Vishy Venugopalan has the details:

“10gen offers an open source stack consisting of an app server and object database; developers can write apps in server-side Javascript or Ruby (experimental) and host it on their own computing clouds,” he writes.

“It?s also striking that many platform-as-a-service companies deviate from the standard Web server-app server-relational DB trio, of which the LAMP stack is an example. Google App Engine uses BigTable for its storage whereas 10gen wrote its own MongoDB database.”

10gen also has it own application server and file system, and the whole lot is available under open source licenses.

Of course 10gen isn’t the only open source cloud enabler/provider. There’s also Enomalism and Joyent among others that boast their ability to reduce vendor lock-in. Then there’s the likes of Eucalyptus, Puppet, Hypertable, Hbase, and Hadoop.

While Amazon and Google have first mover advantage when it comes to the cloud, could concerns over lock-in and portability mean that open standards and open source are the long-term platform for cloud computing?

How To Build A Web App in Four Days For $10,000 (Say Hello To Matt)

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:47:23 -0700

Article has realworld account of attempting to launch a web app in 32 hours. Has lots of practical tips on tools, processes, architectures, languages, hosting frameworks etc. to get the job done.

The vocabulary of open source development models

Thu, 26 Jun 2008 05:07:38 -0700

James Dixon has given the thumbs-up to my stretching his Bee Keeper analogy to explain open source development models (which is nice) and in doing so has suggested a new term to help quickly explain the difference between vendor- and community- dominated development projects.

The debate about the difference between the two approaches, and the language used to describe them, has been simmering for some time. For some background on it, and an explanation about why it matters, see Ted Ts’o’s post from April.

While the debate may seem like a matter of semantics I agree with Ted that it is important in terms of framing a user’s expectation and understanding of an open source project/product and its potential relationship with the vendor.

This is not to say that one approach is better than the other, but that for some adopters (both corporates and individuals) it is important to know that MySQL is the majority contributer to the development of its database and has the rights that go along with that, while other adopters may be more comforted in knowing that PostgreSQL has a broad and vibrant community.

My perspective is that it is important for (some) customers to be able to understand the distinction, and for that an agreed vocabulary is essential. For an example of why vocabulary is important, consider the role of Cathedral and the Bazaar in providing the industry a vocabulary with which to explain open versus closed development models.

It has occurred to me recently that open source is missing an agreed vocabulary for discussing both development and business models (I’ll leave the business models for another time). The problem, of course, is coming to an agreement.

In his initial post on the subject Ted used the terminology “organic” and “non-organic”, which does work, although as he discovered, some found the term non-organic a little pejorative.

An alternative, suggested by Alex Leverington and originally used in a Harvard business school paper (PDF) is “organic” versus “synthetic”.

While that terminology is probably more accurate it too has some potentially negative connotations. I personally have used the phrases “captive” and “community”, of which the former has obvious negative connotations as far as vendor-led projects are concerned.

In his post referenced above based on my stretching of the Bee Keeper analogy, James Dixon suggests “wild” versus “domestic” could potentially be considered derogatory as far as the community-led approach is concerned. Meanwhile, Ted’s request for suggestions generated a number of possibilities.

Here’s a list of the potential candidates I’ve identified. Take your pick, or feel free to suggest any others:

Organic and Non-organic

Organic and Synthetic

Community and Captive

Wild and Domestic

Communal and Centrist

Marketplace and Castle

Organic and Managed

Organic and Directed

Independent and Dependent

Open and Closed (just kidding)

Red Hat?s other open source management project

Mon, 23 Jun 2008 02:58:37 -0700

Matt Asay is excited about Red Hat’s Spacewalk project to release the code behind its Red Hat Network Satellite product under an open source license (as he should be, he’s been waiting over a year for it). As well as anticipation, Matt’s excitement can also be attributed to the potential for Spacewalk to become the default management platform for open source software.

As he writes:

“What is the first thing that MySQL and JBoss did to add value to their support subscriptions? Build networks. What, presumably, will be the first things that other open-source companies do? Build networks.

What is the result? A swamp of incompatible service-delivery networks.

Now consider the power for Red Hat if its Spacewalk actually served as a gathering point - an integration point - for the commercial open-source community? Powerful.”

It is a powerful opportunity, but is Spacewalk (a Linux management platform) the right tool for the job? As Bob Bickel notes in the comments to Matt’s post, Red Hat’s RHQ project with Hyperic is a broader project that is possibly more suited to operational management. Indeed he reveals that Ringside Networks is using it for an upcoming release of Ringside Networks Social Application Server.

Of course now both RHQ and Spacewalk are open source projects there may the opportunity for cross-pollination and, as is stated on the RHQ website: “The new project will provide a common set of management services, which will be incorporated into future editions of Red Hat products such as JBoss Operations Network and Red Hat Network, as well as Hyperic HQ.”

It will be interesting to see if and how the two projects align. Watch this space(walk).

Applying the Bee Keeper model beyond captive open source projects

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:18:03 -0700

I?ve been reading The Bee Keeper (also here in PDF), an explanation of the relationship between professional open source software (POSS) vendors and their communities, written by Pentaho?s CTO James Dixon. It is a very elegant explanation of the development/business model employed by the POSS vendors such as MySQL, Pentaho, JBoss and Alfresco.

James uses the analogy of the Bee Keeper to explain the model. It?s worth reading the paper in its entirety to understand just how appropriate this is but to put it very simply: the vendor is the bee keeper; the community is the bees; the open source project is the honey; and the customer is after processed honey (supported open source software). In order to be successful the bee keeper must satisfy the customers but also the bees, to ensure that they do not leave the hive, or sting him.

The analogy goes much deeper than that but you get the idea. One of the limitations of the Bee Keeper model, as admitted in the paper, is that it applies only to vendor-dominated (some would say captive) open source projects. As James writes: ?This model does not apply to POSS companies with service/certification models such as Optaros, SpikeSource.?

I?ve been thinking about that, and while the Bee Keeper model does not apply, I think the analogy of bees and honey can be adapted to fit both the service/certification models and hybrid/proprietary extension models, as well as explain the approach taken by vendors that support or build on community-led projects such as Apache or PostgreSQL.

The answer comes from the fact that, as well as man-made hives, wild bees also produce honey in bee nests, from which the honey is available to everyone who fancies trying to extract it.

If we assume that there is an abundance of bee nests (and I would describe 179,979 SourceForge projects as an abundance) and that many of these nests are both mature and highly productive (like PostgreSQL and Apache) then we begin to see how a business model could develop based on the collection and processing of wild honey, rather than man-made hives.

There are some consumers (adopters) that might prefer the taste (and low cost) of wild honey and are happy to go to the effort of collecting it and processing it for themselves. However, if they do not want to take the time or the risk to do so instead they might pay a honey collector (support provider) to do the job for them.

While the honey collector does not have responsibility to look after the bees that a bee keeper has he will have to take care not to disrupt the nest and may well choose to make an effort to nurture the nest and encourage honey production. Of course, as these are wild bees there is also always a risk that the bees will leave the nest or production will dry up.

The collector is also aware that any improvements resulting from his efforts are available to everyone and rivals can easily set up alternative honey collection businesses. A solution to this problem is to add more value beyond the pure honey and/or use the honey to create something else, with the honey collector adding some proprietary know how of his own to create a related product.

If we accept the accuracy of Wikipedia?s statement ?most commercially available honey is blended, meaning that it is a mixture of two or more honeys? then we begin to see how there is a role for honey collectors to become blenders (service/certification providers) that pick and choose honey from a variety of freely available bee nests and blend it together to produce a more palatable product.

Taking this a step further there is also an opportunity to create a completely different product. An example would be a brewer of mead. A brewer could of course choose to develop his own honey using man-made hives or acquire honey from a bee keeper, but by exploiting wild honey he lowers production costs and focuses on the additional value he brings to the production process.

EnterpriseDB is a great example of these models in action. The company is a honey collector - offering technical support for existing PostgreSQL deployments for those that want some extra peace of mind, while its Postgres Plus and Postgres Plus Advanced Server products are based on the community-developed PostgreSQL database.

EnterpriseDB is also a blender. Postgres Plus includes the core PostgreSQL database, as well as additional free and open source packages, such as open source database migration tools, grid capabilities and geo-spatial support. These technologies are also available for free, but customers are prepared to pay a fee to have the company combine and support them. Other examples of open source blender companies would include Optaros, OpenLogic and SpringSource/Covalent, or even larger services providers.

Meanwhile it is also a brewer ? adding proprietary extensions such as migration tools, Oracle compatibility and dynamic tuning to create Postgres Plus Advanced Server. These technologies are only available from EnterpriseDB and come at a price. Other open source brewer companies include IBM, Greenplum, Netezza, and Datallegro.

As EnterpriseDB shows, it is possible to follow more than one model at the same time.

Does that make sense or have I stretched the analogy too far? I am really thinking aloud here so it is quite possible I?m talking out of my a?nyway, let me know what you think.

By the way, in The Bee Keeper, James also writes: ?I don?t know how applicable it is to POSS companies with distro models such as Red Hat Linux and SuSE Linux.? I?m with him on that one. The Linux kernel/Fedora/RHEL model introduces a two-tier hive/nest and whichever way I think about it, the analogy doesn?t seem to fit.

F|R Crib Sheet: How to Source Good Offshore Developers

Sat, 14 Jun 2008 17:21:36 -0700

If you’re bootstrapping your startup, offshoring your web development is a great way to save money. But it’s also fraught with risk. Working with remote contractors makes it far harder to manage project development and communicate ideas. Taking proper steps to protect yourself is crucial.

I’ve been bootstrapping my e-commerce startup, Aroxo, for the last year and blogging about it for Found|READ and on my own site. My previous post explained how to use your network to build a quality list of prospects. Today I’ll tell you how to vet the list to select the right offshore developer.

Step 1: Send a “Request for Information” to Prospective Vendors:

The RFI is a questionnaire you will draft to help you determine which developer can deliver your project within your price range (here’s a sample). Your RFI should produce the following data:

Vendor’s vital statistics: years in business, number of employees, rates for all billable staff.

Currency the developer will use to invoice.

Confirmation or denial of a fixed cost for your project (which you want)

Description of the vendor’s typical projects (How big are they? How long do they last?)

Vendor’s technology certifications and other technologies they can support.

Source of the vendor’s development design (in-house or sub-contracted?)

3-5 customer references.

Additional RFI Tips:

Include a hypothetical “technical problem” relevant to your project and ask the developer to show how they would solve it. For customer references, ask for projects similar to yours that were completed for clients physically near to you so you can arrange to meet them in person.

Worried about your IP? Don’t discuss the specifics of your business in the RFI. Describe the type of business that you’re launching in general terms (e.g. e-commerce), or refer to similar companies by way of description.

Give the vendors two weeks to respond, and an opportunity to ask you questions. Include your deadline(s) so the developers have a timeline. Not every vendor will respond to your RFI. Some will, but won’t answer all your questions. Others will will send you “documentation packs” that contain all the answers, but not in the format you requested. All of these companies should be dropped from your list.

Step 2: Vetting Your Vendor Prospects

Two weeks after you’ve issued your RFI, you will have all the responses you’re going to get. (Don’t bother chasing companies that don’t reply.) Now you must work through the list until you have at least four — but no more than seven — prospective developers. This is an important yet difficult step. First, think about who your ideal vendor is. Identify the criteria by asking the following questions:

Do you want to work with a small company, or do are you looking for a larger company with ISO or CMM certification?

Do you have a particular development methodology in mind?

Do you want your system built with a particular technology?

Now you’re ready to start “the sift.” First, remove any companies that don’t fit the criteria established above. When I read through my RFI responses I arrange them into three piles: Yes, No, and Questions. I then put my additional questions to the vendor again, and update. I continue this until I have complete Yes and No piles.

When in doubt, go to their references. Don’t just ask if the developer delivered on time and to budget. Also ask: Have they given the vendor any new work? Will they in the future?

The reason I recommend getting to preferably four and no more than seven potential vendors is that you don’t want to take too many through your bidding process because you don’t want any more of them than necessary to know what you’ll be building.

If you don’t end up with four candidates, don’t go back through your pile. Approach new developers until you do.

Matt Rogers is co-founder of Aroxo.

Hauppauge Computer Works : MediaMVP

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 16:53:32 -0700

The Consequences of Being an Open Source Company

Tue, 13 May 2008 12:14:59 -0700

No Matt, my brain definitely wasn't idle.. I've been thinking about these problems for the better part of the last decade. And it seems like I`m not the only one who wants this discussion.

Dries told me that as a follow up to my previous post I should write a post with solutions to the problem. Difficult as I don't have the solutions yet.. If I had them .. well :)

Fact is that different types of opensource products might require different approaches Alfresco to my knowledge has little to no contributing community , Linux distributions tend to have a big one, if not just in the form of the different open source projects they pacakge. The MySQL community is more one of documentation, helping out and bugsquashing. So my ideas aren't valuable for everybody, which is maybe why Matt Asay can't understand me, he might be looking at only one side of the picture.

There are some little things that I can suggest however.

Open Source works because of people contributing to projects, Open Source companies should recognize that and figure out a way to return more business the partners that also contribute to their code , this way they can contribute both on commercial and financial level. If you keep sending business to non contributing partners at the loss of the ones that actually commit code, some people will be unhappy. Those contributing shops might not be bringing the big revenue for the vendors, but they sure are contributing.

The other part is in the support model, Matt somehow thinks I`m in the "everything must be free" camp. Wrong, I`m in the right price for the right product/service camp.
Which means that if I`m escalating a support issue of a customer of mine to a vendor, my time must also be paid for. However that's a difficult sale, my client already paid for his support contract , to the software vendor.

So my suggestion, back when RedHat came to the Bemelux, was to have different types of support contracts, a customer could get a direct contract with a vendor where no integrator could log the calls. Then with another contract type if the a partner actually logs a call for his customer he must get some kind of kickback for that...
One of the advantages there are that more first line calls can be tackled by local partners, partners that might know their customers better.. but they still have a backup if they can't solve the problem. Therefore less investments are to be made in a support organization by the vendor.

And last but not least , don't tell your partners what they can't do. They should be listening to their customers, if their customers choose for the open source version it's the customers choice, and the partner should be able to help his customer, the last thing you need to do is punish them for listening to their customers needs rather than the vendors. This is how the proprietary world works.

Oh and Matt, next time you are in Belgium, let's do another round of Buytaert vs Asay :)
Maybe we come up with some better ideas than the above ones.

MySQL licensing redux

Wed, 07 May 2008 05:12:18 -0700

After all the fuss it appears that MySQL will be remaining open source after all. As Kaj Arno and Monty Widenius report, Marten Mickos announced at CommunityOne that the MySQL Server will stay open source, as well as the forthcoming encryption and compression backup features, which MySQL had considered making available only to paying customers.

“The change comes from MySQL now being part of Sun Microsystems. Our initial plans were made for a company considering an IPO, but made less sense in the context of Sun, a large company with a whole family of complementary open source software and hardware products,” writes Kaj.

“My hope is that the experiment when it comes to closed source extensions developed by Sun is now ended. As far as I know, there is no existing plans for any closed source extensions to the MySQL server,” adds Monty.

While that seems pretty clear cut, there is still room for a little confusion. Kaj writes: “To financially support MySQL?s free and open source platform, we have a business model which allows both community and commercial add-ons, and we remain committed to it.”

Monty clarifies: “I interpret this, in the context of Mårten’s and Jonathan’s announcements, that we will continue to support and make available commercial addons to the MySQL server from third party, like the Infobright storage engine. Things that we develop ourselves at Sun, at least on the server, will continue to be open source.”

UPDATE - The phrase “at least on the server” is revealing, however. Matt Asay points out that MySQL will continue to develop commercial add-ons above the server, which is the direction as I understand it, and - as I noted two weeks ago - has been the direction for some time. - UPDATE

While we’re on the subject of MySQL (again) it’s also worth taking a look at the slides (PDF) from Monty Widenius’s “Future Design Hurdles to Tackle in the MySQL Server” presentation at the recent MySQL Conference and Expo.

The slides provide a fascinating insight into the technical challenges Sun and MySQL face in positioning MySQL for wider adoption, as well as evidence of the intention to be more open, both about the nature of the challenges and in accepting more contributions from outside the company.

As slide 18 states, the fact that the MySQL community is not currently contributing to development means that the project is not benefiting from the experience of real-world users and that the user base is growing slowly.

The suggested solution is to open up the development process to give outside developers commit and decision rights and to learn from how PostgreSQL is developed. I previously wrote that “if MySQL does choose to develop closed source extensions to the GPL code it will probably have to find some way of balancing that with providing more value to the community.”

It would appear that the development of close source extensions is no longer an issue, but that providing more value to the user community remains a priority. Sun has gained a lot in acquiring MySQL, but one thing it hasn’t gained is an understanding of building a wider developer community. In fact, MySQL has a lot to learn from Sun in that regard - both its successes and its failures.

Doesn't Matt Asay want Open Source integrators to earn a living ?

Tue, 06 May 2008 13:13:42 -0700

Or, why the Inuits won't partner on selling Ice from Alfresco unless they change their strategy.

I usually agree with lot of the things Matt Asay writes but today in Closing an open-source deal trough your systems integrator , he thinks the way to work with partners in an opensource environment is to force them to sell the commercial solutions of your products.
He also thinks you should block them from starting an implementation before the end customer has signed a purchase order.

Whew.. this must be the most stupid idea he had since he started his opensource career. The sad part is that I haven't seen a commercially backer of an opensource project dealing correctly with its contributing partners. He isn't solving the problem , he is creating a bigger one :(

Integrators and consultants are often the bigger contributors to a project because they are integrating new features for their customers, You know, their local , we speak your language , customers. So now Matt wants to force them not to sell services around GPL software anymore but sell the commercial versions ?

As lots of commercial opensource versions do not allow you to make changes to the code if you don't want to loose support your hands are tied again. And yes I have been in this situation before multiple times, a situation where , a commercially backed opensource project, required a couple of small changes to fit with a customer, because of these changes the commercial vendor would drop support , so the customer decided not to buy the license. Should a local integrator capable of helping such customer loose that deal because of a partnership ? Off course not .. It's perfectly understandable that a software vendor can't support every different patch. Shouldn't an integrator have the freedom to assist a customer in making these choices, and give him valuable advise ?

Forcing the integrator to sell the commercial version brings them back to the proprietary software vendor situation , where they couldn't solve issues either.

Mind this is a Category "C" user ,(an organization that has more money than time), which should be an easy win for the commercial opensource vendors.

Then there is the issue of Paying twice where a customer both pays for the time the integrator spends on solving his issue and the support contract. I`m stil looking for a solution for this one.

In the past we invested in different partnerships , some requiring certification, with different Open source vendors before, never got a dime back from these investments.

While our shop was a small but specialist expert knowledge center most deals that those other vendors had in our area went to the incompetent boxmovers that did volume, often totally screwing up the actual implementation. Whether we had contributed to the project, or in the case of Linux distributions were probably equally skilled to support the environment as the vendor itself didn't matter.
We didn't sell enough boxes , so we never got any deals back. Our business is advising people on how to implement open source , implement it for them and support them. We are working with both type A,B and C customers. But the commercial opensource vendors want to force us to go back to the old proprietary boxmoving model, sell licenses, don't sell solutions, Oh and No you can't fix that .. you'll have to wait for the next commercial release or lose support.

So how many of the opensource benefits should the customer give up ?

No Matt, this time your idea stinks,

This way skilled consultants that care about open source and contribute to the community are being punished for doing so, whereas they should actually be getting business back from the vendors, so they can earn money and contribute more on your product you force them to waste more time on the sales side. While the people that just move boxes, don't care if its an open source application or a proprietary package gain more. For them its just business as usual .. selling boxen.

It just doesn't make sense

This concept is just bad for opensource in general, motivated people will stop contributing to products they implement, as they see that their efforts aren't appreciated by the vendors.

Jonathan Schwartz has the last word on MySQL

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:31:30 -0700

It is perhaps fitting that the last word on the recent MySQL licensing row should belong to Sun’s CEO, Jonathan Schwartz. In a twitter Q&A with Web 2.0 Expo attendees, courtesy of Tim O’Reilly, he states that:

“we have no plans whatever of ‘hiding the ball,’ of keeping any technology from the community. Everything Sun delivers will be freely available, via a free and open license (either GPL, LGPL or Mozilla/CDDL), to the community.

Everything.

No exception.”

Which would appear to be pretty conclusive, despite his additional claim that “leaders at Sun have the autonomy to do what they think is right to maximize their business value - so long as they remember their responsibility to the corporation and all of its communities (from shareholders to developers). Not just their silo.”

Jonathan also revealed that “the MySQL team just closed the single largest deal in the history of MySQL, a $10m deal to a global technology company”. So expect some positive spin on the deal from Sun’s earning announcement later this week.

Trying to keep the customer satisfied

Mon, 21 Apr 2008 09:19:43 -0700

I was just reading Fabrizio Capobanco’s take on the MySQL excitement (”this move is clearly into the right direction”) when it occurred to me that the situation is related to the comments recently made by the former CTO of Kaplan Test, Jon Williams, at the recent OSBC conference.

As I wrote at the time: “Another point Jon made was that the subscription model helps keep open source vendors on their toes as every year he gets to decide whether they will received another payment.”

In other words, as Matt Asay put it: “the more happy he is with his commercial open-source software, the less likely he will be to pay for it. Why? Because his developers will acquire the expertise over time to support themselves and because the product will mature to the point that support will be less necessary.?

Is this the challenge that MySQL faces? A lot of attention is placed on its circa 1:1,000 conversion rate from Community users to Enterprise subscribers, but I wouldn’t mind betting MySQL and Sun are more concerned about retaining that one existing paying customer than they are chasing the 999 who will most likely never pay.

That does not mean the company should - or can afford to - turn its back on its Community users, of course, but it does make it hard to balance the two communities. Ultimately I believe that a lot of the really negative reaction has been based on a misunderstanding that the company was going to remove features from the open source version, which is clearly not the case.

The company needs to move quickly to decide and explain how exactly it is going to license the new functionality. Once it has everyone can make up their own minds and get on with (or without) it. Until then, the confusion is likely to grow.

MySQL?s storage engine program picks up steam

Tue, 15 Apr 2008 08:20:51 -0700

The solidDB for MySQL database engine for MySQL may have lost its sponsor following IBM’s acquisition of Solid Info Tech but events at this week’s MySQL Conference and Expo prove the certified engines program is alive and well.

Not only has Oracle announced that its Innobase subsidiary has updated InnoDB transactional storage engine, but there is also a new member of the certified enginesprogram.

Kickfire has recently emerged from stealth mode with its data warehousing appliance based on MySQL, column-store software, data compression, and a proprietary SQL processor.

Additionally, another potential new storage engine partner emerged in the form of ScaleDB, which is promising to deliver its new scalable storage engine for MySQL in the fourth quarter of this year.

Then of course there will be MySQL’s own Falcon engine, which entered beta testing in March and will be available with MySQL 6.0.

Broken Promises Behind BT CEO Exit

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 23:47:28 -0700

In 2006 I had traveled to London to meet British Telecom (BT) CEO Ben Verwaayen and his team, hoping to get a first hand look at how Verwaayen and his team were trying to overhaul the company well known for its iconic phone booths.

They had put in place a strategy to diversify into IP services, build a brand-new 21st CN (UK broadband network) and, to cap it all, plans to become the carrier of choice for large multinationals. It ended up as a long feature in the August 2006 issue of Business 2.0.

The 56-year-old former Lucent executive Verwaayen resigned earlier this week after six years at the head of BT. He is being replaced by 43-year-old Ian Livingston, who until recently ran BT Retail and was seen as the maverick to make BT Retail a force to reckon with.

Livingston, before joining BT, was group finance director at electrical retailer Dixons and had helped set up Internet service provider Freeserve, now part of Orange. Livingston was part of Verwaayen’s attempt to hire folks from outside of telecom industry and bring some consumer-savvyness to a stodgy company struggling to stay competitive with pesky upstarts. He will have his work cut out for him — the company is still too big, too lumbering and too bureaucratic. The 21CN is still nowhere close to delivering its promise. At the same time, BT is facing increased competition from upstart broadband providers like Carphone Warehouse and Virgin. The company has no consumer mobile service, and it continues to lose consumer lines.

Those were the very same issues that put Verwaayen on the hot seat. On his watch, BT had a mixed record. A lot of promises were made, but never fully realized. The only stand out was the Global IT services business. It now accounts for about 40 percent of BT’s total revenue. But that’s about the end of it.

Fierce Telecom points out that “Verwaayen’s decision to leave comes not long after BT reported poor financial results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2007.” In recent months, several executives have left and there are questions about “execution and expense of its 21st Century Network project,” FT goes on to say.

So what’s next? Job cuts, according to some analysts who point to Livingston’s track record. I wonder if one of those will be company CTO Matt Bross, who came to BT at the urging of Verwaayen.

What are your thoughts on BT and its future?

Additional reporting by Irina Haltsonen, who is spending the summer with the GigaOM team.

Code modification: the open source database straw man

Thu, 03 Apr 2008 05:50:26 -0700

It is interesting to read RedmondDeveloper News’s take on Oracle’s attitude to open source this morning, especially this paragraph quoting Monica Kumar, Oracle’s senior director for Linux and open source product marketing:

“”We haven’t seen our customers asking for open source databases,” she told me. “Not many customers are interested in looking into the code and mucking around with it, and making changes to it. All they care about is ‘give me the best support, give me the lowest price of entry’.” For that Kumar pointed to Oracle Express.”

It is difficult to disagree with the second part of Monica’s statement. Cost savings are routinely cited as the biggest driver for open source database adoption, while the lack of robust support is the biggest barrier to open source adoption.

Certainly these were the findings of our survey of executives responsible for database purchasing, details of which were published in our recent CAOS report “Turning the Tables? ? The impact of open source on the enterprise database market” (more details here).

However, the first part of Monica’s statement is a straw man that we also addressed in the report - specifically in Section 5.6 “Who wants access to code anyway?”:

“The open source database vendors themselves admit that few customers actually want to view or modify the code,” we stated. “It is worth noting, however, that the third most important reason for deploying open source databases, according to the survey results, was avoiding vendor lock-in.

“This freedom from lock-in is a benefit of open source that the Express products cannot replicate,” we added. “In fact, they could actually be seen to do the opposite…. Proprietary vendors insist that this is not the case, and that the Express products provide freedom and flexibility equal to that of the open source products. They are advised to invest in articulating the relative benefits and use cases of the Express products.”

I also tackled this issue back in December, noting that for customers that understand the value of open source, access to code is important whether they want to modify it or not, for the following reasons:

* Open source adopters understand that it the open source model creates, at least in theory, a contestable model for support and services, freeing them from lock-in.

* They also understand that open source code increases the potential for innovation. Even if they don?t want to modify the code themselves, they can pay someone to do so to make it better suit their requirements.

* They are also reassured that should the vendor in question go belly-up or be acquired, the code will live on an continue to be developed by the community.

One of the key findings of our report was that open source database adoption has been widespread but shallow (the “glass half empty” finding). However, we also noted that open source database adoption will continue to grow, and that “the Internet application space… has been more or less ceded to the open source databases”.

It is no wonder Oracle hasn’t seen customers asking for open source databases - it has been busy looking the other way. We also advised that proprietary vendors need (among other things) to be aware of the open source competition, pay close attention to the service and value they provide to existing customers, and avoid arrogance. The last of those could be the most difficult.

On the Road This Weekend

Sat, 23 Feb 2008 05:46:34 -0800

I’ll be "on the road" this weekend, traveling out-of-state for a family gathering. It’s my niece’s first birthday party, so we couldn’t pass on that invitation. We don’t usually attend all of our niece’s and nephew’s birthday parties, but the first one is always special. I’ll be catching the California Auto Club 500 on the radio [...]

Companies Can Make Money With Widget Ads

Thu, 21 Feb 2008 00:45:41 -0800

Selling advertising on entertainment-focused widgets such as Scrabulous or Zombies is about as easy as spinning straw into gold, yet there are plenty of people trying. And there are ways of generating revenue through specially focused widgets designed solely to sell rather than toss sheep. Brand and comparison advertising done through ad-focused widgets is emerging as a viable way of using the ubiquitous applications. Widgets’ interactive features, their ability to be virally distributed and potentially be placed on a target’s own page makes the creations appealing to advertisers.

Where that leaves startups such as RockYou and Slide, which develop entertainment widgets, and the ad networks that cater to those applications, is still unclear. I’m waiting to see if enough users buy into ads shown on their fun widgets or click through enough transactional widgets to make a viable business. However, existing online ad networks and possibly a few new widget creation and advertising firms are already proving that widgets aren’t just fun and games.

WidgetBucks is one such widget-creation/ad network company making money with this approach. CEO and Chairman Matt Hulett says the company sees click-through rates of 0.5 percent to 1 percent with its ads, which resemble interactive, dynamic banner ads. The company expects to pull in $10 million in sales this year. The company’s approach, however, has come with its share of drama, as some publishers have complained about WidgetBucks’ rates and practices.

When it comes to making his widgets a success for advertisers, Hulett based his design on the theory that people using widgets for fun aren’t expecting to be engaged in commerce, but people in other venues (such as those reading a product blog, for example) might welcome widget advertising that shows the latest deals on a device.

“It’s kind of like pre-roll advertising,” Hulett said. “It’s really hard when the context is around having fun. People do not like monetization in front of those platforms and the CPMs are awful.”

A similar approach to using a widget as a more interactive ad rather than entertainment is Toyota’s new campaign for its Scion vehicles, which launched on Tuesday. This is an example of widgets as brand advertisement, which can be spread virally around the Internet. The idea is that consumers use the widgets on social media sites as an identification of their aspirations, much like one might wear a Nike shirt.

Adrian Si, an interactive marketing manager for Scion, says the firm is using widgets as an extension of the rich media banner ads it runs through Interpolls. Si is hoping to achieve the same 1 percent to 2 percent click-through rate Scion sees using Interpolls’ rich media banners. That translates to a 4 percent to 5 percent engagement rate. Scion will measure both click-throughs as well as the number of times the widget is installed on someone’s site.

“This could be more valuable [than banner ads],” says Si. “Obviously, it shows they have a lot of interest in the brand. On their MySpace pages they can put a whole bunch of stuff, so it must have meaning to them. It’s also an opportunity to get our brand in front of them every day.”

Listening to these two companies I realized that widgets aren’t a new business, but rather a new form of advertising and entertainment. Those focused on advertising are making money; the question is, will the ones focused on entertainment do so, too?

A Comparison of Eclipse Extensions and OSGi Services | Eclipse Zone

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 06:36:13 -0800

Free, Open-Source software for OS X

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:03:01 -0800

nice list of shiny icons and good programs

YouTube - samba remixed

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:55:52 -0800

Fan Bendymixer tries to help Alesha and Matt's "worst" dance out by re-mixing it and making it less camp and a little cooler?

YouTube - Alesha Dances the Samba - Strictly Come Dancing - BBC One

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 18:55:51 -0800

The original samba that Matthew Cutler and Alehsa Dixon danced in Series 6 of Stricty Come Dancing to Gloria Gaynor's "(Reach Out) I'll Be There"

Home | Matt Woodward's Blog

Fri, 09 Nov 2007 09:41:36 -0800

Chris Duckett, "One virtual machine to rule them all", 18-Oct-2007, Builder AU

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 11:22:04 -0800

Interview mit Matt Thompson (Director of Sun Developer Network) über die Java Plattform für Skriptingsprachen wie Ruby und PHP, die Position von Sun im Markt in Bezug auf Adobe und Microsoft und ein Absatz über<sep/>

Open Source Windows - Downloadpedia

Mon, 29 Oct 2007 05:02:11 -0700

Aqualine Joomla Template Demo - SlideshowPro

Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:17:52 -0700

Matt's SOA Blog: Using Email to initiate a BPEL Process

Fri, 12 Oct 2007 05:02:52 -0700

Mustech.net! | ...Musings about music, technology and education!

Thu, 11 Oct 2007 23:05:36 -0700

Mustech.net Offers Current Music Education And Music Technology News Through Custom Syndication