451 CAOS Theory

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.19

2009-06-19T13:07:33Z

Red Hat betas Enterprise Virtualization, partners with HP for SOA. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Red Hat announced that its Enterprise Virtualization portfolio of products is now available for beta testing.

# Red Hat collaborated with HP on SOA.

# David Megginson published mixing GPL and non-GPL: a different perspective. A new take on the MySQL/MariaDB storage engine debate.

# UK Government CIO shed some light on “G-Cloud” plans and how the new open source policy provides an opportunity.

# WAZI: Freedom and Choice in Open Source Licensing - comparing the EUPL v1.1 and the GPL v3.

# Jaspersoft and Infobright announced a bundled Jaspersoft & ICE virtual machine, available immediately.

# InternetNews.com: Zimory Adds to Open Source-Powered Cloud Tools.

# TechFlash reported on how a Microsoft veteran learned to love Linux, and why it matters.

# Mike Hogan asked: is hybrid licensing of open source software hypocrisy? Not if you are open about it.

# Liferay released Portal Enterprise Edition 5.2.

# Red Hat reported that AQA, a UK exam board,had implemented an end-to-end open source architecture.

# The Register reported on increased interest for Microsoft open-source license.

# OpenSAF updated its Carrier Grade Linux middleware.

# Telco 2.0: BT tries to fix Global Sevices with open source. “One hopes no-one will have to be crucified.” Well, quite.

# Roberto Galoppini reported on the establishment of an advisory board for the Enterprise Open Source Directory.

# ParaScale and Alfresco partnered to deliver Content-as-a-Service in the cloud.

# Amazon released the Kindle source code. Sort of. But not really. TechCrunch explained why.

If Microsoft wants its staff to understand the threat it faces from open source it should charge them to use its own software

2009-06-19T11:54:56Z

An excerpt from “After The Software Wars,” a new book written by former Microsoft employee Keith Curtis highlights one of the reasons why the rank and file within proprietary software developers fail to appreciate the potential of open source.

“At Microsoft, I got all the software I wanted for free.”

I’ve been thinking about this issue recently as it relates to the use of open source software within cloud computing environments. Open source software has been used to create most, if not all of the early cloud computing platforms, thanks to its flexibility and low cost.

As previously mentioned “We’ve seen how the use of open source as a business enabler provide the opportunity to lower start-up costs and quickly bring new services to market while focusing on providing unique value services.”

The main exception to this is Microsoft, which is naturally using its own software products to build the Azure platform. Naturally, because it has the expertise and wants to prove the value of those products. But naturally, also, because its developers don’t have to pay for them.

Is there another company in the world that would be able to afford to build a cloud computing platform using Microsoft products?

The fact that Microsoft’s development teams get to use Microsoft software for free protects them from the commercial realities of what it means to develop applications an infrastructure and run business using that software.

Vendors often refer to the use of their own software as eating their own dog food. The fact that staff didn’t have to pay for the dog food will always make it more palatable, however.

And it’s not just Microsoft. I use the company as an example as it is the most prominent software vendor, but the principle applies to any proprietary software vendor that wants to ensure that its staff understand the competitive threat that open source poses.

If proprietary software vendors began charging its development staff for the use of their products would they continue to use them? Probably yes, given that’s where their skills lie, but perhaps if they had to deal with the costs of that software, and the company’s sales team trying to extract ever-increasing amounts of maintenance fees from them, they might also develop a better appreciation of why open source software is becoming an increasingly attractive option for their customers.

Mobile open source and the rest-of-the-market opportunity

2009-06-18T21:41:57Z

As we prepare to publish a new, special CAOS report on open source software licensing, I thought it might be fitting to revisit one of our previous reports, CAOS Report 10 - Mobility Matters, given all that’s going on and all the open source going in smartphones, e-readers, netbooks, and other devices where open source is being used more and more.

Much of the battle at the top of the smartphone market is, as we expected, occurring with continued disruption from Apple’s iPhone, marked most recently by its latest 3.0 software update. As we discussed in CAOS 10, the response, defense and offense from smartphone rival RIM seems to be helping it to maintain its BlackBerry dominance. These two certainly bring a lot of attention, but two Linux-based alternatives — Android and Palm’s Pre — are stealing some of the limelight and perhaps, as we predicted, more of the market.

Open source is also expanding its mobile footprint with the open sourcing of Symbian via the Symbian Foundation. This instantly gives open source more share of the mobile platform market, as Symbian remains popular and is pushing aggressively for new developers.

The bottom line is some real opportunity for mobile Linux and open source software as smartphones continue to grow, device makers continue to innovate and mobile devices converge with desktop and notebook PCs, as well as cloud computing.

Mobile Linux and other open source software aimed directly at the mobile makret now have the right backing in handset makers, carriers and commercialization players. It also has the right timing along with the renewed smartphone category activity and innovation ushered by Apple’s iPhone, RIM’s response and the entry of new players, primarily Google in the case of Android and mobile Linux. This will all serve to help mobile open source software quietly, but substantially grow its share of ‘the rest of the market.’

Actuate “treats” its sales force to open source 101

2009-06-18T16:43:21Z

I had an interesting chat with Nobby Akiha , senior VP marketing and Rich Guth, VP open source strategy, at Actuate, about the company’s ongoing conversion to open source. Having got involved with open source via the Eclipse BIRT project, the company is going through the process of re-archtecting its strategy to address the open source model.

This year has seen the company turn its attention to the direct sales team. And the company took an interesting approach to ensuring that its sales staff shook off some of the traditional approaches to targeting an installed proprietary software base in order to make the most of opportunities generated from the open source BIRT project.

Specifically, Actuate:

gave its entire sales force 2-day study training on the history of open source, licensing, business models, successes, failures, notable personalities

had the sales force complete a series of essay questions to demonstrate they understood the open source model

had them take part in half day interactive discussions to ensure they could communicate their understanding

then trained the staff on being able to hold a feature/function, build versus buy discussion with BIRT users to assess the value of commercial features sold by Actuate that complement the BIRT project

It’s interesting to see a company like Actuate responding to the open source model, and we have written before about the fact that we believe it will become a role model for other companies wanting to learn how to engage with open source.

Certainly the company is a practical example of the fact that engaging with open source is not just a matter of throwing software over the wall and expecting that downloads will turn into paying customers. It takes time and effort to generate revenue from open source, and it takes a different approach to understanding the needs of the customer and proving the value of the complementary commercial products.

In putting together its plan to retrain the work force the company benefited from the experience of its advisory board - including Andrew Aitken, Josh Berkus and Julie Hanna Farris, and also on the experience of its earlier focused sales efforts, involving a much smaller number of telesales staff and technical evangelists.

Additionally, the BIRT strategy is also delivering revenue. Actuate generated BIRT-related revenue of $15.4m in fiscal 2008, up from $8m in 2007, and just shy of its target of $16m. This was before the sales training. Q1 saw BIRT related business exceed $3.5m, up 32% year-over-year.

The commercialisation of Memcached

2009-06-17T10:12:55Z

There has been a significant increase in interest in the Memcached, the open source distributed memory object-caching system, in recent months, as a number of vendors look to exploit its popularity in Web 2.0 and social networking environments.

Like Hadoop, which has become the focus of a number of commercial plays, it would appear that the time is right for commercialization of Memcached. But what is it, here did it come from, and what are the chances for vendors to rake in serious cash? Here are the details.

What is it?
Pronounced mem-cash-dee, Memcached was originally created by Danga Interactive (the developer of LiveJournal, which was acquired by Six Apart in 2005) to speed up the performance of dynamic Web applications by alleviating database load. Memcached has become an industry standard for improving the performance of dynamic websites.

The code is available from the remaining Danga website, as well as from Google Code, and the main server is under the BSD license.

What is is for?
Memcached is designed to speed-up the performance of dynamic web applications by providing a memory cache of frequently accessed objects, reducing the load requirements on the database toer and improving application performance.

What is it not?
Memcached is often associated with improving the scalability of web application infrastructure, but as this post from dormando illustrates, it is not actually designed to enable scale-out architectures.

“What memcached really is, is a giant floating magnifying glass. It takes what you have already built and makes stretch ten times further. I insist on not confusing caching with scaleout as when your little stretch-armstrong of a website hits that tenfold limit, you’re still screwed.”

Other things Memcached is not include a database, a queue system and a proxy.

Who uses it?
Example users include LiveJournal, Slashdot, Wikipedia, SourceForge and Kayak. For an overview of Facebook’s use of Memcached, see here. In fact Facebook claims to have become the largest user of memcached and actively contributes modifications back to the project

Who is supporting Memcached?
Until recently the list of corporate backers was small. MySQL included support for Memcached in its MySQL Enterprise subscription, while in February Sun provided Memcached support as part of its GlassFish Web Stack.

Then the floodgates opened. In April Gear6 launched its Gear6 Web Cache, a Memcached appliance, as did Virident, and Schooner Information Technology. (Subscribers can see our formal assessments of Gear6, Virident and Schooner).

Additionally, EnterpriseDB is using Memcached as the basis for Infinite Cache, which provides a cache behind the database to improve the performance of read-intensive transactional applications (our formal take is here). Meanwhile NorthScale provides Memcached training, services and support, and has plenty of other plans up its sleeve.

All of these vendors, and more, are either already contributing improvements to the Memcached code, or plan to do so, further increasing its relevance.

Other points of interest
Microsoft’s Velocity project has been described by the company as its attempt to replicate Memcached for Windows environments. Terracotta, the Java caching vendor, reports seeing increased usage of Memcached in competitive environments. It arguably faces the biggest threat from the rise of commercial Memcached support providers.

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.16

2009-06-16T17:07:22Z

Open source and SMBs. New funding for Lucid Imagination. And more.

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On open source and SMBs
Savio Rodrigues contrasted Dell’s plans to target SMBs with bundles of hardware and open source with research from Forrester that indicated that SMBs are still wary of open source, while Matt Asay noted that there are significant opportunities for open source vendors if they can work out how to crack the SMB market and suggested that the way to make software easier for SMBs and to monetize it might actually be cloud-based computing.

OStatic noted that the issue may well be one of lack of awareness and that Dell’s initiative, as well as the Open Source Channel Alliance, might tip the scale in favour of open source, an idea echoed by Dana Blankenhorn.

We previously covered the issue of open source and SMBs in our report, ‘CAOS Five-The SMB market opportunity,’. For details on that, and other recent discussion around the opportunity for open source, SMBs and the channel, see Jay’s recent post.

Best of the rest
# Lucid Imagination secured strategic investment from In-Q-Tel.

# Citrix delivered XenServer 5.5.

# SFLC filed an amicus brief in Jacobsen v. Katzer.

# Matt Asay reported on Tim O’Reilly explaining why open source purists trying to answer the wrong question. The original podcast is available here.

# EnterpriseDB released version 8.3R2 of Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

# Scalix implemented ActiveSync as part of expanded Microsoft-Xandros license and collaboration agreement.

# CodeWeavers released CrossOver 8.0.

# Wind River announced the availability of Wind River Hypervisor.

# GroundWork Open Source announced GroundWork Monitor 6.0 beta.

# Jeremy Zawodny - Drizzle: rethinking the MySQL database kernel.

# Pentaho provided details of the world’s largest open source BI deployment - brought to you by Specsavers, Pentaho, and Red Hat.

# Opsera released OpsMailmanager v1.5, which extends Alfresco ECM for enterprise email management.

# SourceForge appointed the former World Wrestling Entertainment COO to its board of directors.

# Mark Logic released MarkLogic Toolkit for Excel under the Apache license.

# Magnolia International announced the availability of Magnolia 4.1 open source content management.

# Mike Hogan reported on MySQL is only as good as its ecosystem, explaining how Oracle could potentially marginalize MySQL as a hobbyist tool.

Call for papers: upcoming European open source events

2009-06-15T09:19:28Z

Two of the biggest open source events in Europe both announced their calls for papers today. Open World Forum 2009 will take place in Paris in October (preceded by the Open Source Think Tank) while Open Source Meets Business 2010 will take place in Nuremberg in January next year.

The theme for Open World Forum 2009 is “Free, Libre and Open Source Software: at the heart of the Digital Recovery”. The organizers are looking for suggestions for the forum, as well as participants for the 2020 FLOSS Roadmap. They are also looking for CIOs, NGOs, start-ups, politicians, and anyone with a radical new insight or viewpoint on economic, technological or social trends, to take part in related summits.

Heise.de’s Open Source Meets Business, meanwhile, is focused on business best practices, technology solutions and future technology. The organisers are looking for case studies of companies and organisations which utilize open source, IT professionals from user companies, and representatives of open source projects - maintainers, committers or companies.

CAOS Theory Podcast 2009.06.12

2009-06-12T19:19:25Z

Topics for this podcast:

*Code consolidation as SourceForge scoops up Ohloh
*Has open source won the enterprise battle? What now?
*Continued clouds for open source with Freedom OSS
*Red Hat’s JBoss Open Choice

iTunes or direct download (27:10, 6.3 MB)

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.12

2009-06-16T17:00:06Z

Yahoo opens up Hadoop distribution. Microsoft and Novell claim customer wins. And more.

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The elephant in the room
Plenty of news emerged form the Hadoop Summit this week, including Cloudera announced support for Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and introduced Sqoop, open source tool for importing databases into Hadoop, while Yahoo! Released! The! Yahoo! Distribution! Of! Hadoop! opening up its Hadoop developments to the wider community. As Savio Rodrigues noted, there has been a surge in the number of contributors for the Hadoop project in the last year.

Best of the rest
# Novell and Microsoft claimed 300 customers for their SLES certificates, more than 100 of which have been added in the last six months.

# Matt Asay presented a Q&A with Accenture about its open source involvement.

# GCN reported on a DHS project that aims to bring more open source software to state & local agencies.

# Mike Hogan provided an explanation of why the “open source + paid support” business model only works for huge markets.

# Pentaho and Vertica partnered for BI/DW in the cloud.

# Giuseppe Maxia revealed that MySQL has a new release model

# Black Duck research indicated the level of savings to be made from open source in health care.

# Vyatta’s Dave Roberts explained Citrix relationship with an investment in the open source networking vendor.

# Bertrand Diard asked Community: hype or enabler?

# The Journal: Indiana District Funds Classroom Makeovers with Open Source Savings.

# KnowledgeTree released new version of its open source document management as well as a Microsoft Office add-in.

# Glyn Moody asked SAP: open source’s friend or foe?

# The eXo Portal project to be migrated to JBoss.org and merged with the JBoss Portal code base.

# SugarCRM expanded its European footprint with a Munich HQ, training partners and customer wins.

# Tom Seidel announced new Eclipse-based open source project for information management.

# Carlo Daffara asked whether it is possible to increase participation in open source.

# Onepoint delivered Project On Demand, open source PPM software as a service.

# Cuba placed its bets on open source software.

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.09

2009-06-09T17:03:08Z

Vyatta raises series C funding. Greenplum launches data cloud initiative. Fedora 11. And more.

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# Vyatta raised $10m in series C round, led by Citrix.

# Carlo Daffara published Horses, carriages and cars an assessment of the shifting OSS business models, and a proposal of what is the optimal model.

# Greenplum delivered version 3.3 of its analytical database, launched its Enterprise Data Cloud initiative.

# Daniel Abadi asked whether betting on the MySQL mass market for data warehousing a good idea.

# Roberto Galoppini reported on open source adoption in Italian public administrations.

# Simon Phipps noted that OASIS protects open source developers from software patents.

# Mark Taylor blogged about on why winning the war won’t secure peace for open source.

# Red Hat introduced Fedora 11.

# Paglo delivered a free SaaS service for monitoring Amazon EC2 instances.

# Jitterbit announced Jitterbit 3.0 for data and application integration.

# Continuent and 2ndQuadrant announced that they are to collaborate on Continuent Tungsten for PostgreSQL.

# MuleSource declared a 350% increase in registered Mule users.

# OrangeHRM announced OrangeHRM 2.4.2 open source HR management software.

# PCWorld reported that Dell is planning to offer SMBs pre-configured bundles of hardware and OSS.

# Open Source Sensing Initiative launched.

# OpenVPN Technologies updated its Access Server open source VPN software.

# Three research organisations joined HP/Intel/Yahoo’s OpenCirrus open source cloud testbed project.

The incredible, expandable Linux netbook

2009-06-10T21:13:57Z

My Acer A1 netbook that I purchased three months ago has already had four operating systems installed and run on it — it shipped with Windows XP, then it had Ubuntu Netbook Remix 8.04, then I upgraded to UNR 9.10, then I went back to UNR 8.04. Oh and I burned an image of Moblin OS onto USB and took that for a test drive, too. I’ve also used the Linpus OS that shipped on my wife’s Acer A1 and felt stunted and limited on both Linpus and Windows XP. So far, my preference is UNR 8.04.

While I installed and run the netbook version of Ubuntu, I typically always switch over to ‘Classic Desktop’ mode (under Preferences and Switch Desktop Mode in either UNR or desktop mode). This offers an environment that’s familiar to my desktop and notebook Ubuntu, and also, I believe, offers a more advanced experience, with multiple workspaces and, after some minor tweaking, access to more tools and applications.

While I’m still discouraged to see some recent developments, such as Eee netbook pioneer Asus turning more forcefully toward Windows, and I’m concerned about market maneuvering from Microsoft, I’m truly excited to hear that Ubuntu and Moblin, probably the best two operating environments I’ve used on my netbook, are coming together, along with other distributions, including Xandros and Red Flag. I’m also getting anxious to have an opportunity to try Android or at least some different applications. All of this software will run on my one netbook, and thanks to free and open source software distribution and licensing, I can make a set of USB keys to have for road trials, share with friends, family and acquaintances and spread. In the end, it seems Linux netbook distributions may start looking like Linux desktop distributions — numerous, tuneable, specialized and broadly supported in hardware and applications when popular.

While all netbooks and hardware may be capable of doing this, Microsoft’s software doesn’t really seem to fit the same way. I also look forward to trying Windows 7 on a netbook, but once I’ve tried it and used it, when can I expect something different — maybe an OS tuned specifically for 3G, or maybe one with practically zero onboard storage for purely Internet or cloud computing, how about a gaming netbook? With Linux the limits seem endless. This doesn’t seem as much the case with Windows, particularly Windows XP, for which the end has already come.

Greenplum and the opportunity for cloud-based data warehousing

2009-06-08T14:50:15Z

I just published a post about opportunities for cloud-based databases and data warehousing over on our Too Much Information blog, which I thought might be of interest to CAOS Theory readers given the involvement of Greenplum.

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.05

2009-06-05T15:42:14Z

Spring forward. Freeloaders, leeches and hermits. Intel buys Wind River. And more.

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A Spring in its step
SpringSource boasted of rapid revenue growth while CEO Rod Johnson claimed that Red Hat’s Open Choice initiative is defensive response to SpringSource, a suggestion that was denied by Rich Sharples.

Freeloaders, leeches and hermits
I already provided my views earlier this week on Infoworld’s report about open source ‘leeches’ and corporate contributions. The debate continued as Dave Rosenberg clarified his position, and Tarus Balog gave his perspective.

The best of the rest
# Intel announced that it is to acquire Wind River for $884m.

# Martin Michlmayr: Corporate participation in open source communities.

# Open Source Initiative’s Michael Tiemann reported that US CIO Vivek Kundra has advocated open source software,

# George Greve encouraged free and open source advocates to reclaim the brand.

# Day Software’s Kevin Cochrane reported on collaborating with competitors on an open source platform.

# SAP increased its commitment to open source and Eclipse.

# Jeremy Zawodny reported on The State of MySQL.

# Enomaly launched ECP Cloud Service Provider Edition.

# Red Hat and Verizon Business joined forces on Computing as a Service.

# Microsoft, NASA and Open Source. Access to data on NASA’s Nebula cloud coming to applications other than Microsoft’s WWT, according to Peter Galli.

# Zack Urlocker posted a video of Larry Ellison on the importance of Java from the Java One keynote.

# A video of Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst discussing the “Federal Open Source Opportunity”.

# Matt Asay asked whether Red Hat’s ambition be circumscribed by its biz model.

# Red Hat released JBoss ON 2.2.

# Red Hat revealed Fedora 11 will include OpenChange, an open source MAPI implementation for integration with MS Exchange.

# Sun updated the Sun GlassFish Portfolio including GlassFish Web Stack and Web Space Server.

# Zenoss updated its Zenoss Enterprise IT monitoring product.

# Continuent rolled out Tungsten Easy Suite database replication and clustering software.

# xTuple announced the launch of the xChange, an online marketplace of extensions to xTuple ERP.

# Freescale, Texas Instruments and MontaVista joined the GENIVI open source In-vehicle Infotainment project.

Open source clicking the channels

2009-06-10T21:14:34Z

We continue to see signs that open source software is growing beyond its enterprise footprint as more resellers, service providers, system integrators and other channel players are starting and expanding their open source use, reliance and offerings.

It wasn’t that long ago that we talked about open source tuning into the enterprise and midmarket channels when we covered the announcement of the Open Source Channel Alliance, led by open source stalwart Red Hat, other open source vendors and enterprise channel stalwart Synnex.

We also heard recently that Tech Data, another large channel player in Europe, may be working to establish and encourage some sort of open source ecosystem body among value-add resellers (VARs). Again it seems the various IT distribution and sales channels are indeed opening up and tuning in to open source.

Other significant market and channel players that are increasing their participation and products in open source software include SAP, which recently upped its membership and leadership in the Eclipse Foundation, and enterprise services provider Accenture, which continues to increase its involvement in open source.

We talked about the growing opportunity for open source software in the midmarket and smaller customers through resellers and other channel players in a recent CAOS podcast. While we highlighted the far greater opportunity for open source software in the enterprise and among larger customers in our report, ‘CAOS Five-The SMB market opportunity,’ we may be seeing that start to change. A couple of examples of open source vendors that are growing their smaller customer stables and service provider relationships include virtual appliance vendor JumpBox and security vendor Untangle.

We had an interesting discussion that reaffirmed some of the changing attitudes and approaches toward open source software in the channel while speaking with communication and collaboration vendor Open-Xchange this week. While the company originally managed to grow among midmarket and smaller end users, it has found greater traction among the largest hosting and Internet service providers, which are now among its primary targets. In this case, we see the vendor moving up in the channel and this illustrates how open source continues its pervasiveness at both the lower and higher ends of the market.

Given all of this actvity among channel players and resellers — along with the continued and expanded embrace of open source software among SIs, service providers and others — it seems open source is now indeed clicking the channels.

Separating the leeches from the potential contributors

2009-06-10T21:14:56Z

Earlire this week Infoworld published an article entitled “the fight over open source leeches”, which I described as “a good summary from InfoWorld of the issues related to (lack of) corporate contributions.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I agree with the underlying theme of the article: that non-contributing open source users are damaging the commercial interests of open source vendors.

A number of commentaters have already debunked that view. In the article itself, Navica CEO Bernard Golden states: “If a license says anyone can use it, that’s what they have to live with.”

Jeremy Garcia of linuxquestions adds: “I see a couple issues with this mindset. First, a project initially has the right to pick any license they like. Later complaining that people who are following that license aren’t giving back seems a little disingenuous. If you want mandatory contributions, pick a license that requires that (keep in mind that as a result it will almost certainly not be Open Source software).”

Jeremy also makes a good point that is not as clear in the original article as it could be: that there is a difference between vendors that make use of open source code without abiding with the terms of the license and users that legitimately make use of open source code without paying for support or contributing modifications.

Examples of the first group are being dealt with one at a time by the SFLC. With reference to the second group it is important to note that contributing doesn’t just mean money or code.

ScaleDB Mike Hogan lists a number of ways in which non-paying users add value without contributing code:

Customers validate a product
Customers become unpaid sales people
Customers become unpaid support people
Customers fuel the ecosystem
Customers define standards
Customers fund open source development
Customers fund open source companies

(Arguably the reference to ‘customers’ confuses the issue since non-paying users are by definition not customers, which negates the last two points, although given that Mike’s larger point is about code contributions I have included the full list).

If we accept that non-paying users cannot be obligated to contribute to a project as long as they abide by the terms of the license, there is also the question as to whether they should be “encouraged” to do so.

Bob Sutor notes that any plan to guilt-trip users into becoming contributors is likely to backfire. “Guilt can be a damaging thing and is not going to make more people contribute. Contribute because you believe it is the right thing to do and you have something of significant value to give back.”

But what about the view, expressed by Michael Sharf in his blog post and the Infoworld article that the lack of contributions back to the community is equivalent to the “tragedy of the commons”.

That theory relies on the shared resource being limited and damaged by individual actions. Users not contributing to an open source project may not be adding to a shared resource, but they are also not taking anything away. As Jeremy notes:

“It should also be noted that a specific individual or group using but not contributing to a particular project does not really ‘destroy a shared resource’. Since that additional usage doesn’t deplete a finite resource, I’m not sure the tragedy of the commons really comes into play here.”

The point that non-contributing users neither add to nor deplete open source software is an important one that has also recently been made by Linus Torvalds, as quoted by Matt Asay.

“The fact is, a freeloader is a freeloader. They are neither evil nor good per se and neither add value nor take it away,” he wrote, before making it clear why open source vendors should be careful not to dismiss such users as ‘leeches’: “but they very much are a potential tester and contributor. So they all have the potential for becoming something more.”

451 CAOS Links 2009.06.02

2009-06-16T17:01:38Z

Cloudera lands funding. SourceForge acquires Ohloh. Novell reports Linux growth. And more.

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Cloudera shows signs of progress
GigaOM reported that Cloudera raised $6m Series B funding from Accel and Greylock and is now looking beyond web applications to wider enterprise adoption of Hadoop. Cloudera also announced its first certification program for Hadoop.

Open source goes mainstream in the UK
There have been signs of change recently with regards to open source adoption in the UK, which has traditionally lagged behind the rest of Europe and the US. CBR Magazine provided an analysis of open source in the UK and the likely impact of the government action plan, while two good indicators of mainstream interest in open source came from The Economist’s evaluation the value of open source software in the recession and a documentary on BBC Radio 4 covering how how the open source model works and how its ethos is being applied to other kinds of business (the latter probably doesn’t work outside the UK).

Best of the rest
# SourceForge acquired Ohloh and published its, disappointing, Q1 results.

# Novell reported its Q1 results, with Linux providing a rare highlight. $37m came from Linux Platform Products in the quarter, up 25%, while total revenue declined to $216m from $236m. As InternetNews.com reported, the company’s focus on using Linux growth to encourage revenue from other products and services means that the Linux business still not profitable.

# Red Hat unveiled JBoss Open Choice strategy for enterprise middleware. More details here.

# Sun updated OpenSolaris, and launched support services for the open source variant.

# Canonical announced deals with SanDisk, and Intel and support for Moblin.

# Alfresco and EnterpriseDB forged a technology and business alliance.

# OStatic reported on the rumour that Amazon is going to open source its web services and cloud APIs.

# Adobe updated its Flash tools and open source Flex framework.

# Jim Zemlin: Canola Project’s GPLv3 Permissions are Worth a Look.

# Infobright and Pentaho delivered an integrated open source da6ta warehousing and business intelligence virtual machine.

# The fight over open source ‘leeches’. A good summary from InfoWorld of the issues related to (lack of) corporate contributions.

# Infobright appointed Bob Zurek as CTO, VP product management.

# Xandros announced that it is developing products based on Moblin Version 2 project for Intel Atom-based platforms.

# MontaVista announced supports for Moblin v2.

# LiMo foundation completed the LiMo Platform R2 specifications.

# Jahia unveiled United Content Bus as part of the new Jahia Enterprise Edition v6. (PDF)

# Hippo launched a product and support offering for Apache Jetspeed 2.2.

# Engine Yard announced JRuby support.

# Zmanda announced that Recovery Manager for MySQL now supports Amazon EC.

# Josh Berkus: PostgreSQL development priorities.

# Matt Asay reported on Jahia’s ‘pay or contribute’ model.

# Mike Hogan compared the numbers on traditional licensing, versus open source support business models.

# SiCortex is in trouble.

# Ntirety expanded its remote database administration services to include MySQL.

# SugarCRM updated its web services and improved mobile CRM tools.

# Ian Skerrett provided the results of the Eclipse community survey; as well as top six insights.

# Mike Hogan on GPL licensing and MySQL storage engines.

# Matt Asay on why open source may prove a more efficient way to find new customers than industry consolidation offers.

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. Then what?

2009-06-10T21:15:38Z

Last week I asked the question, if open source has won, then where do we go from here?

A number of different answers were forthcoming to the two parts of the question from various blogs and Twitterers so I thought it was worth bringing them together in a follow-up post:

Has open source won?
I mentioned in my original post that declaring victory for the adoption of software licensing and development methodologies is futile and as James Dixon mentioned in a comment “You cannot say that open source has ‘won’ without defining what the battle was”.

Clearly open source has not ‘won’ in terms of adoption rates comparable with proprietary software. As Bruno Von Rotz points out, there is still some way to go in terms of open source competing fairly in terms of adoption.

However, like Matt Asay, I believe that a tipping point has been reached “in the sense that it has gone from being the pariah of software to the foundation or a critical element of virtually all software deployed today”.

That may not be the ‘victory’ that early open source supporters were hoping for - and some may see it as a Pyrrhic victory - but it is the way the market has panned out.

So where do we go from here?
“World domination,” stated Kris Buytaert, presumably not entirely seriously, while Tarus Balog maintained that what followed winning, according to Mohandas Gandhi, was “Profit!”

Matt Asay pointed out his belief that the next step lies in applying open source software principles beyond software, adding: “The larger issue is how to apply the principles of open source to other areas of technology and, indeed, beyond technology… it’s now time for the open-source community to start looking beyond simple licensing matters to make the benefits of open source available to the widest swath of humanity.”

Meanwhile Glyn Moody likewise suggested that thoughts should turn towards “open data, open access, open science, open government”.

Sticking with the software industry, however, Bruno Von Rotz also suggested that there is work to be done on the co-existence of proprietary and open source software.

Indeed, while open source is now an accepted part of the software development process for almost all vendors, questions remain about how and why open source should co-exist with proprietary software development and licensing strategies, and how the balance should be maintained. CAOS Theory will continue to seeks answers to these questions, and more.

In the meantime, as The Economist article that prompted the original question pointed out, a more immediate concern is the comparative openness of cloud computing platforms which, despite being built on open source software, pose the threat of platform lock-in.

Microsoft’s open source software strategy and community marketing manager, Robert Duffner, provided a similar answer. Between CAOS and our more cloud-focused colleagues at The 451 Group, that’s another area that we’ll continue to keep a very close eye on.

SourceForge scoops up Ohloh

2009-05-29T07:24:25Z

SourceForge, the venerable open source repository and vendor, just got a shot in the arm by agreeing to acquire the newer, more social networking-minded Ohloh for an undisclosed amount.

We’ll be reporting more on the deal as we learn more about it, but it clearly makes sense. Actually, we saw SourceForge and Ohloh coming together already, albeit from different ends of the open source repository and community spectrum and also more competitively in our reports covering both companies. SourceForge holds the most well known and largest collection of open source software, yet it has lacked some of the newer features — both for open source developers and for enterprise and other users — such as cross-project communication and data on projects and activity. Ohloh, on the other hand, was founded more recently in 2004 and, among a new breed of open source developer and code communities, was still building up the size and sources of its directory. Ohloh has nevertheless managed to build up a community of open source software developers, encouraged cross-project communication and collaboration and perhaps most importantly in terms of commercial open source software, has provided the useful data on open source projects, contributions, developers and activity that enterprise users and vendors have been craving.

So will the joining of these two open source-centered companies deliver the best of both worlds? That will be the challenge for SourceForge as it integrates Ohloh’s technology and code, some of which is open source itself. SourceForge, which announced lackluster earnings and pointed to another ‘new strategy’ with its latest quarterly results, will also have to ensure it embraces and elevates the Ohloh approach, which was successful by serving both the communities of developers that it connects and tracks, but also by serving the enterprise users, vendors and investors that want to deeply investigate open source software and trends.

SourceForge is largely a media and e-commerce company with its Slashdot and ThinkGeek properties, and it has struggled a number of times to translate its immense open source repository and brand into enterprise success. There are some indications the company will look to connect its media and advertising to open source developers. I believe the far greater opportunity lies in taking the Ohloh approach and making money by connecting developers and users and providing insight on open source software. This would give SourceForge a good chance of finally seizing this opportunity and also perhaps serve to bridge the history and success of open source software with its future and potential.

If open source has won, then where do we go from here?

2009-06-10T21:17:44Z

My three-year-old son is currently obsessed with winning. Whether it is walking up the stairs or cleaning his teeth he has to be declared the winner. The interesting thing is, he doesn’t mind not actually being the first up the stairs just as long as he is acknowledged to have “won”.

I mention this because there has been a spate of declarations of victory regarding open source in recent weeks.

“Open source has won. Open source increasingly finds itself in virtually all software, open source or proprietary,” stated Matt Asay recently, prompting a debate with Savio Rodrigues, as a result of which he conceded that “‘we both won’ (we= the overall software industry, oss or traditional vendors).”

Or as The Economist put it today: “The argument has been won. It is now generally accepted that the future will involve a blend of both proprietary and open-source software.”

A victory or the ultimate failure? That is the question that lies at the heart of the recent tension between those that would seek to defend the purity of the free and open source model, and those happy to see open source assimilated into the mainstream. The tension has been simmering for some time.

As I noted in March, with reference to Microsoft’s position paper on open source, “the war between proprietary and open source is over. Its not altogether clear who won however.”

Declaring victory for the adoption of software licensing and development methodologies is as futile as declaring victory in the “race” up the stairs. Winning isn’t the important thing, it’s what you do when you’ve won that counts.

Now that open source is an industry-wide accepted development and licensing strategy, where does open source go from here? What further benefits can open source deliver to the industry beyond merely “winning”. This is the focus that CAOS Theory will increasingly be turning its attention to, I believe.

Supporters of open source are fond of quoting Mohandas Gandhi: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Did he happen to say what happened after that?

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.27

2009-05-27T16:34:40Z

OpenX and Siruna raise funding. Red Hat sues Switzerland. Open source business models. And more.

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Two sightings of the lesser-spotted open source funding deal
VC funding deals for open source vendors have been predictably rare so far in 2009, but this week saw two deals confirmed, as OpenX raised $10m from DAG Ventures, Accel, Index Ventures, Mangrove Capital, and First Round Capital, and QAT-ARKiv invested 4m euros in open source mobile software provider Siruna.

Hogan knows best
I have never seen “Hogan Knows Best” but it seems to be on one of the freeview channels over here 24/7. Anyway, ScaleDB CEO Mike Hogan started a new blog, opening up with a triple-whammy of posts on open source development, licensing, and business models, the last of which includes a handy table for calculating the value of various business strategies related to a variety of business criteria such as margin, scalability, CapEx and OpEX.

The best of the rest
# eWeek Europe: Red Hat Sues Switzerland Over Microsoft Monopoly.

# Dave Rosenberg blogged about the importance of balancing open source community and commerce - why Hadoop and Cloudera are ones to watch.

# The VAR Guy reported that IT distributor Tech Data is planning an open source channel partner initiative.

# OSOR reported the view of Italy’s National Institute of Statistics, Istat, that moving to open source leads to increased cooperation between public administrations.

# Infobright released Infobright Enterprise Edition data warehouse for Windows.

# Compiere delivered Compiere Manufacturing on-premise or on cloud.

# Ingres launched Development Stack for JBoss, including the Ingres Database, JBoss Developer Studio and JBoss Enterprise Application Platform.

# Bruno Von Rotz illustrated how enterprises have to work harder to evaluate open source software.

# Open Mobile Consortium launched With open source mobile tools for health and humanitarian Work.

# Matt Asay pointed out that open source doesn’t have a lock on openness, could learn a few things from open-but-proprietary platforms.

# InformationWeek reported on NASA’s open source ‘Nebula‘ Compute Cloud (we previously mentioned Nebula, here).

# New York Times: With Virtual Iron, Oracle Bought a Big Loss.

# Kickfire’s CEO Bruce Armstrong talked data warehousing (from 30mins), Sun-Oracle (from approx 46mins) and MariaDB (from approx 54mins) in a podcast with Ken Hess and Jason Perlow.

# Percona’s CEO Peter Zaitsev blogged about the (in)compatibility of open development and big splash marketing.

Cisco settles, but why did we go here?

2009-06-10T21:11:22Z

Although we did hear some battle alarms when the FSF sued networking and IT giant Cisco late last year, others (including me) anticipated a settlement along the lines of previous resolutions between free and open source software proponents and users/vendors that needed legal action to prompt compliance.

I was fortunate enough to speak with open source licensing and legal expert Larry Rosen recently (doing research for an upcoming CAOS report on which there will be more to tell soon) and get his take on this recent settlement. First he made the point, as most legal scholars do, that 99% of the time, settlement is the most desired, most effective way to end litigation, whichever end the involved parties are on. This was part of my reasoning that, similar to what we saw with Verizon, we would see a settlement from Cisco. However, Rosen raises the question of how and why it got to the point of a lawsuit in the first place when both parties are surely aware of where things should head?

The FSF and SFLC wish to raise the profile, prominence and recognition of open source licensing and they are effectively doing so with the series of suits they have launched and subsequently settled. However, would there be just as much credibility for open source software if these FOSS-supportive groups came out with announcements that they had avoided litigation with Company X following some fairly simple steps to bring them into compliance. Perhaps that was not possible without legal action, and I must offer my praise for the reasonable approach to settlement we’ve seen displayed.

I do think the FSF and SFLC have done a good job establishing that open source software licenses such as the GPL are not so foreign and are backed up by the law. However, I also wonder if the desire to establish some actual legal precedent in the U.S., as discussed previously on our blog, is contributing to the move to file lawsuits. This also serves to remind us that while open source software and the licenses that govern it have become far more accepted and common in the enterprise, there is certainly still some lack of awareness and need for education. Developers, vendors, users and distributors of open source software would be wise to educate themselves in the ‘classroom’ setting to avoid ending up in a ‘courtroom’ setting.

Q&A: MariaDB and the Open Database Alliance

2009-06-10T21:11:50Z

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance a number of interesting reports were published that examined its role in establishing MariaDB as an alternative development branch for MySQL and as a vendor-neutral open source database collective.

I had a few questions myself, which Monty Widenius and Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona, were good enough to answer for me via email. They also agreed for the exchange to be published here. This is what they had to say:

Q: Monty has stated that the intention is to open up the Alliance to include other open source database projects - any indication of how this would be done given the diverse requirements and different development directions of Maria, PostgreSQL etc?

PZ: I think it is great because the direction for each Open Source databases is different — one size does not fits all - there are cases where MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQLite excel. The vision for the Alliance is to have healthy competition which in the end drives the best solution for the customer. Even in the MySQL landscape there is an overlap - Innodb, XtraDB, Maria, PBXT, Falcon — and each desires to be the leading transactional storage engine. This does not stop most of them from sharing ideas between each other and acknowledging each other’s advantages and drawbacks.

MW: As the Open Database Alliance is business alliance, not a development alliance, there shouldn’t be many conflicts. There is a lot of companies already that give support for both PostgreSQL and MySQL and there is no reason this should change. As Peter pointed out, different databases have different optimal usage cases and one should always choose the best tool for the job. I also envision that the Open Database Alliance will contain developer companies, like Monty Program Ab and PostgreSQL Experts Inc, but these should be able to co-exist inside the Alliance as it’s greatly benefiting the Alliance members to have them there.

Q. What chance is there for vendors of closed source MySQL storage engines to become part of the open database alliance?

PZ: I think there is significant uncertainty about this one. It is unclear if MariaDB will be able to exist in close source version (via licensing fees to Sun/MySQL) or not. It is also not quite clear how GPL will work in this case - In theory with an open interface and plugin infrastructure it may be possible to distribute commercial storage engines (separately from MariaDB) and let users use them with GPL servers same as commercial drivers are used with a Linux Kernel.

MW: This can only be done by buying MySQL licenses from Sun for each copy of MariaDB that is distributed.

Q. Assuming Oracle maintains the development of MySQL (as it has InnoDB) would Oracle’s membership of the Open Database Alliance be necessary for it to fulfill its goal to “unify all MySQL-related development and services”? Will Oracle be offered membership?

PZ: The membership is open to all entities sharing the vision and the goals. When Oracle will be willing to participate is a good question.

MW: Anyone can join if they are prepared to follow the rules of the Alliance. As one of the goals of the Alliance is to promote MariaDB as the community developed version of MySQL, I don’t know if Oracle would want to join. I have, however, offered Oracle a partnership with Monty Program Ab, under which Oracle could get access to some of the critical developer resources Monty Program Ab has available. Monty Program Ab could also help Oracle with their open source strategy and serve as a ‘trust creating’ entity between Oracle and the open source developer community. Oracle has however not yet responded to this.

Q: Can you provide any insight in to the process for creating a formal structure or governance model for the alliance?

PZ: This is under much discussion. It is difficult to speculate until it is ready.

MW: The idea is to initially invite a small group of steering members to the Alliance and together work out rules that we think will make most sense to us and to the Alliance’s future members. This is work in progress.

Q: Will MariaDB attempt stay in lock step with future MySQL updates and developments, or is MariaDB taking a separate development path? (Only directed at MW)

MW: Yes, it will be in sync with all changes in the main MySQL code. MariaDB is what I classify as a branch, not a fork. The difference is that with a branch you keep yourself updated with all changes from the original code while with a fork you forget where you came from and don’t take any updates from it.

Q: Have you considered the options for creating a foundation for the the development of MariaDB. Any thoughts on benefits/risks? (Only directed at MW)

MW: Monty Program Ab is, in effect, a foundation. See the hacking business model. In other words, Monty Program Ab is a company that is owned and steered by its employees and all money we generate is used to pay salaries and the occasional bonus for good work. I think this setup as a foundation works because it is easier to generate money from customers to fund the development work. We can also afford to hire the best people to work on the code and don’t have to rely only on people that are prepared to work for free or almost no pay.

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.22

2009-05-22T11:28:10Z

Open source in central and local government. Open source and cloud computing. FSF and Cisco settlement. And more.

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# Red Hat provided insight to why government agencies are turning to open source software.

# Glyn Moody: Newham and the Prisoner’s Dilemma - how UK local government can save money with free software.

# How the Dept of Defense is benefiting from open source and cloud computing. The Department of Defense’s Defense Information Systems Agency CIO spoke to InformationWeek.

# Red Hat asked Cloud Computing: Vaporware or the Next “Big Thing”?

# Red Hat’s Michael Evans on the confluence of open source and cloud computing.

# The Free Software Foundation and and its compliance engineer, Brett Smith provided more details on the FSF-Cisco settlement.

# Virtual Bridges, IBM and Canonical are delivering virtual Linux desktops.

# Matt Asay: Fitting the optimal level of openness to your business strategy.

# Intalio acquired BPM and CRM companies, launching Intalio|Cloud.

# Likewise Software announced that Likewise Enterprise will ship as part of SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11 from Novell.

# EnterpriseDB has hired former IONA open source exec Larry Alston.

# Dave Neary said no, there aren’t too many mobile Linux platforms (In response to Fabrizio).

# Microsoft Research launched Zentity, an open repository extension to Word.

# Jahia released Jahia Enterprise Edition v6 content management software.

# Openbravo Network is now Openbravo Professional Subscription with version 2.50.

# The transcript of Michael Tiemann’s podcast on open source software for TimesOnline.

Are closed-source MySQL storage engines compatible with MariaDB?

2009-06-10T21:12:25Z

Following the launch of the Open Database Alliance some people have assumed that it is only a matter of time before MariaDB becomes the de facto replacement for MySQL.

That assumes that Oracle will allow the development of MySQL to stagnate, either deliberately or through neglect - something that we have expressed our doubts about, but even if that were the case it appears that the GPL (or more to the point MySQL’s dual licensing strategy) may restrict the potential for MariaDB.

Curt Monash recently raised the question of whether closed-source storage engines can be used with MySQL (and, by extension, MariaDB) without a commercial relationship between the vendor and MySQL/Sun/Oracle.

The issue is particularly relevant because if the answer is “no” it would limit the ability of MySQL storage engine providers (such as Kickfire, Infobright, ScaleDB, Tokutek, Calpont) to switch their allegiance to MariaDB.

Mike Hogan, CEO of ScaleDB, has suggested (in the comments to a previous Curt post) that it is hypothetically possible to link a proprietary storage engine to a GPL database without the storage engine having to also be released under the GPL by using a database-independent “OSS glue layer that makes calls to storage engines”. He referenced the arrangement that enable IBM’s DB2 to act as an engine for MySQL on the the System i as a precedent.

Given that ScaleDB offers its proprietary storage engine for both MySQL Enterprise and MySQL Community without a commercial arrangement with Sun, the company will be hoping that its analysis is correct. However their remains a suspicion that the arrangement with IBM was enabled/complemented by a commercial arrangement.

Certainly, as this FAQ explains, the DB2 as a storage engine for MySQL is not necessarily the same as other MySQL storage engines, stating that “The source code for the IBMDB2I Storage Engine is available under a IBM ‘GPL compatible’ license. However, this storage engine acts as an ‘adapter’ that enables MySQL to talk to the DB2 for i DB2. It is not the source code for DB2 itself.”

Either way, the founders of the Open Database Alliance are not so sure that closed-source storage engines can be used with MariaDB. I asked Monty Widenius and Peter Zaitsev, CEO of Percona via email whether there was a chance that closed source MySQL storage engines could become part of the Open Database Alliance. Their responses:

Peter Zaitsev

“I think there is significant uncertainty about this one. It is unclear if MariaDB will be able to exist in close source version (via licensing fees to Sun/MySQL) or not. It is also not quite clear how GPL will work in this case - In theory with an open interface and plugin infrastructure it may be possible to distribute commercial storage engines (separately from MariaDB) and let users use them with GPL servers same as commercial drivers are used with a Linux Kernel.”

Monty Widenius

“This can only be done by buying MySQL licenses from Sun for each copy of MariaDB that is distributed.”

Which sounds pretty conclusive. With all respect to the expertise of all those mentioned above, it would appear that this issue is not going to be resolved without getting the lawyers involved. I’d be interested to know what the likes of Mark Radcliffe, Lawrence Rosen, and Eben Moglen make of it.

From support services to application services: the evolution of open source business strategies

2009-06-10T21:12:59Z

Late last week Matt Asay argued that cloud computing is the natural conclusion of open source, writing that “while open-source entrepreneurs initially intended… services to mean support and consulting, the industry has taken open source to one logical conclusion and has crowned services as the only important software outcome” and that “the cloud takes open source to its logical conclusion, crowning services (the output of software) as king, rather than fettering us to a discussion of software (the input).”

As it happens this was the underlying theme of the presentation I gave at Cloud Expo Europe today. Entitled “How to make millions with open source, or the evolution of open source business strategies” my presentation was essentially a discussion of the evolution of open source business strategies.

The presentation was based on the results of our Open source is not a business model research report although rather than present the findings of that report in detail I decided instead to reflect on some of the lessons learned and best practices we have observed through existing business strategies around open source.

George Greve, president of the Free Software Foundation Europe, recently observed that free and open source business models “are orthogonal, like the three axes of the three-dimensional coordinate system” and that “their respective differentiators are control (software model), collaboration (development model), revenue (business model).”

In OSINABM we also found that there are three dimensions to business strategies around open source that map directly to George’s control, collaboration and revenue definitions, although we referred to them as vendor licensing strategies, development strategies and revenue triggers, respectively.

We also found that there are six different vendor licensing strategies being used by open source vendors today, as well as six different development strategies and nine different revenue triggers. Even ignoring the use of multiple revenue triggers, that equates to over 300 different theoretical combinations, supporting our claim that open source is not, in an of itself a business model.

In order to fully appreciate an individual company’s strategy it is necessary to take into account the development, licensing and revenue aspects, however, it has become clear that the major combined licensing and revenue strategies can be separated into three major categories:

• Pure open source
• Commercial open source
• Commercial – “open source inside”

To which I would add a further category which was outside the scope of our initial research: “business enabler”.

Looking at each of these categories in turn it is possible to identify the evolution of open source business strategies.

Pure open source

Open source as a distribution model enables the widespread adoption of open source software by a community of users.

In order to generate revenue from that community, early open source vendors such as Cygnus Solutions were formed to provide support for the open source code, as well as make use of the fact that the code is open source to perform custom development, which quickly separated community users from paying customers.

However, Cygnus quickly found that there were problems scaling support and customer development, caused by a small company trying to compete with the needs of widespread open source adoption, and also in terms of a lack of repeatable business, and began to invest in contributing extensions to the core code base.

In order to achieve predictable, repeatable revenue streams, many open source vendors quickly turned to the subscription model, in particular Red Hat, which has been significantly successful through offering 100% open source code, but withholding the binaries for paying subscribers.

The fact that Red Hat generated a profit of $178.1m on $650m in revenue in its last fiscal year disproves the theory that it is impossible to generate revenue with a 100% open source approach.

However, Red Hat has become the exception rather than the rule. When many companies talk about following “the Red Hat model” they invariably mean the subscription model, rather than 100% open source licenses.

And the subscription model itself is not without its challenges. Red Hat’s CEO recently stated that the company’s biggest competitor is not Microsoft or Novell but its own customers deciding they don’t need a support plan.

The model therefore requires vendors to continue to come up with value added services that will encourage customers to renew, and these value added services only being available to paying customers begins to blur the line over what is open and what is closed.

The other 100% open source business strategy is via advertising, although we would see that more as a consumer-oriented strategy that hasn’t been widely adopted for enterprise software suppliers.

Commercial open source

In order to overcome some of the limitations of the 100% open source model, many vendors have moved to avoid confusion over the licensing of value-added services by introducing commercially-licensed extensions that serve to separate paying customers and community users and provide an incentive for enterprises to use the “Enterprise Edition” product.

Known as the Open Core model, this is a more sophisticated take on the dual license strategy whereby a vendor that develops 100% of the code offers both a community version and a commercially-licensed version of the same code base.

Benefits/risks

Overall, 100% open source strategies are easy to establish with low start-up costs and can be quickly profitable as vendors take advantage of development and distribution benefits and establish symbiotic relationships with customers.

However support is highly competitive as there are few limits on competition, and expertise required in order to gain a dominant position. There are question marks over whether 100% open source strategies can scale, certainly to the extent required by VCs to deliver revenue on the scale that will fund a lucrative exit (and certainly in terms of a single-product support strategy, as opposed to a multi-product SI approach), and there is the constant need for additional value to encourage renewals.

If done properly the Open Core approach should make it easier to drive revenue via value-add services and provide a better separation of community and paying customers. That’s the theory, although in practice we have seen some vendors that have struggled to identify the differentiating features and have fallen into the trap of constantly having to deliver new services in order to stay ahead of community demand.

The Commercial Open Source approach has been seen as successful as it balances the best of proprietary and open source approaches – as customers are comfortable paying for commercially-licensed versions of open source code and gain the confidence of a traditional licensing arrangement.

On the other hand, this approach stands accused of contradicting the advertised benefits of open source, as many open source adopters are drawn to open source specifically to avoid traditional licensing. It also restricts the benefits of the open source development approach, as only core the core code is actually open source and benefits from community development.

It is essential that vendors are clear about feature differentiation to avoid confusion. I have expressed doubts about whether maintaining this balance is sustainable in the long-term.

Commercial – “open source inside”

It is not necessary to directly monetize open source code in order to generate revenue from it and some traditional software companies generate revenue from open source software by simply selling additional other products and services.

In practice we see more vendors including open source software within larger commercial software packages, however, benefiting from lowering costs and improving quality by being part of open source development projects such as Apache and Eclipse and embedding that code within their products – either commercially licensed software or hardware.

Almost every traditional proprietary software vendor, including Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and IBM, is generating profits from open source software in this way.

Another emerging strategy, that turns the Open Core model on its head, is to start with commercial software and offer open source extensions on top of the code. Known as the open edge model, it has been used by Microsoft to create a community of partners and users around its customer relationship management software, and I think we may see more of this approach as we see more traditionally-licensed vendors engaging with open source.

Commercial/business enabler

We’ve also seen business taking the open source inside approach and utlising it as part of a software as a service strategy, combining the two to minimize both development and distribution costs.

This is where we begin to see open source software as a business enabler, as vendors are not just building business strategies around open source software, but using open source software to enable new business opportunities.

We have also have seen service providers assembling open source software stacks with which to provide hosting services to customers via which they can create their own web sites.

Beyond simple web sites we also see the opportunity for businesses to deploy multiple open source projects, alongside internally-developed extensions in order to create computing platforms that enable new business opportunities, particularly for social networking applications.

The logical extension of that is the use of open source software to create entire computing platforms for web 2.0 applications and social networking, as well as cloud computing.

When you look at the landscape of modern Internet business providers, from Google to Facebook to Twitter to Amazon, almost all of them have relied on open source software to lower their development costs and speed up their time to market with new products and services, as well as exploring the opportunities for opening up those platforms for use by third parties.

Why open source?

We’ve seen how the use of open source as a business enabler provide the opportunity to lower start-up costs and quickly bring new services to market while focusing on providing unique value services.

With this approach there is no need or desire to directly monetize open source and businesses have the ability to modify the code to suit their requirements.

There is no need to contribute back modifications (depending on licensing), so users can benefit from providing value-added features, although over-time we see that vendors are prepared to collaborate on improving the underlying code and getting the full benefits of open source as a development model.

Additionally, as Red Hat has today pointed out: “open source infrastructure technologies for cloud computing offer transparency and view of code and APIs in an effort to ensure strong interoperability from the start – no hidden APIs, no traps”.

Conclusion

Overall we would observe that a pure open source approach provides quick profitability and a sustainable revenue stream, but there are doubts about whether it scales to deliver the sort of revenue investors are looking for.

Commercial open source balances best and worst of proprietary/open source. It is highly successful today but is still relatively immature and there are question marks over its sustainability.

Meanwhile “Open source inside” provides benefits while maintaining the status quo. Established vendors are adopting open source licensing, development and distribution models. Whether that is seen as a victory or a failure of open source depends on your perspective but it reduces the likelihood of open source vendors over-throwing the establishment.

Open source as a business enabler is creating new business opportunities by lowering start-up costs and decreasing time to market.

While the established open source business strategies are not going to disappear there has been a change in recent years and established vendors have adopted open source and cloud computing has change the rules about how business adopt technology.

The long-term opportunities are not in open source products and services, but products and services that are built on open source.

Microsoft realigning closer to open source

2009-06-10T21:13:31Z

Microsoft is involved in open source software again, most recently continuing its realignment on open source by taking a position on software licenses with the Linux Foundation of all places, and by getting its own CodePlex code included in Black Duck Software’s knowledgebase of open source.

With self-described ’strange bedfellow’ Linux Foundation, Microsoft lobbied the industry and, more precisely, the American Law Institute regarding ALI’s ‘Principles of the Law of Software Contracts,’ calling them a threat to the health and growth of the software industry, which includes open source software, even by Microsoft’s definition now.

I think this is an interesting continuation of the change we saw most dramatically during the Microsoft-TomTom patent lawsuit. Many were critical of my belief that we were dealing with a very different Microsoft, simply based on the fact that the software giant was going out of its way to say Linux and open source were not targets of its lawsuits. Microsoft VP and deputy general counsel Horacio Guiterrez, who figures prominently in the co-opted position with the Linux Foundation, and his company went even further when the TomTom suits were initiated, stating:

Microsoft respects and appreciates the important role that open source software plays in the industry, and Microsoft respects and appreciates the passion and the great contribution that open source developers make in the industry. This appreciation and respect is not inconsistent with Microsoft’s respect for intellectual property rights.

I was struck at the contrast to Microsoft’s other, past dealings with open source software, like the Novell partnership and the inferences that it was an admission of IP infringement in Linux, or the infamous 235 patents supposedly infringed by Linux and other open source software. We haven’t heard anything like that from Microsoft in quite some time, and I believe the latest positioning alongside Linux Foundation further reinforces the idea that Microsoft genuinely respects the IP of Linux and open source software and is also unlikely to pursue a legal strategy that would indicate otherwise.

Moving Microsoft even closer to open source software in terms of actual code, we got news this week that Microsoft’s own open source project destination, CodePlex, would be added to the KnowledgeBase and Koders.com search engine from code scanning and management vendor Black Duck Software. This follows on Microsoft’s work in 2007 to obtain OSI approval for its own open source licenses.

While the deeper involvement from Microsoft may rightfully cause concern from developers and other Linux and open source software supporters unsure what this involvement will really mean, I think the signs continue to point to a changed Microsoft. This does not mean there should be any letting down of the guard to counter FUD, legal and market maneuvering that would be detrimental to Linux and open source from Microsoft or anyone else. It does mean that when open source software vendors, projects, developers and others are dealing with Microsoft, however, they should allow the company’s recent behaviors and positions to play into their perspective on this longtime foe turned sometimes friend.

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.19

2009-05-19T17:24:37Z

Have Cisco and the FSF settled their lawsuit? Red Hat launches business rules management software. Talend goes massively parallel. And more.

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# New Media Law reported that Cisco and FSF have settled their lawsuit.

# Red Hat launched JBoss Enterprise BRMS - business rules management,

# Talend introduced MPx integration suite for massively parallel data integration based on MapReduce.

# Microsoft’s Horacio Gutierrez and Linux Foundation’s Jim Zemlin explain their joint letter to American Law Institute.

# Tarus Balog provided some interesting insight on Nimsoft’s acquisition of Cittio.

# Are government procurement guidelines compatible with OSS? Dana Blankenhorn and James Dixon discuss.

# Matt Asay discussed cloud computing as the natural conclusion of open source.

# Black Duck announced a partnership with Microsoft to provide access to CodePlex projects via KnowledgeBase and Koders.com.

# Roberto Galoppini explained Alfresco’s business strategy while Josef Assad speculated about how greater community engagement would help Alfresco’s adoption in the European public sector.

# Canonical launched Landscape 1.3 now manages Ubuntu Server Edition on EC2.

# Marketcetera has upgraded its open source trading platform.

# Paglo delivers SaaS applications for managing physical and virtual server infrastructure.

# Digium launched Switchvox Developer Central online community.

# Nuxeo announced its highest quarter since its inception in 2000.

# Will the Java Platform Create The World’s Largest App Store?

# Do we really need another OSS mobile stack? Asked Fabrizio Capobianco, not unreasonably.

# Michael Dehaan: Recognizing and Avoiding Common Open Source Community Pitfalls.

CAOS Theory Podcast 2009.05.15

2009-05-15T19:11:00Z

Topics for this podcast:

*Open source among M&A pickup
*SugarCRM – new pricing, strategy and CEO
*Debating what is or is not an open source vendor
*The Icinga fork of the Nagios project

iTunes or direct download (28:06, 6.5 MB)

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.15

2009-05-15T16:58:17Z

Open Database Alliance formed. Oracle buys Virtual Iron. AccesStream reaches version 1.0. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

I’ve just met a fork named Maria
MySQL founder Monty Widenius and Percona CEO Peter Zaitsev announced the launch of the Open Database Alliance - “a collection of companies working together to provide the software, support and services for MariaDB, an enterprise-grade, community-developed branch of MySQL.”

Continuent and Open Query quickly announced their membership, while Monty later clarified that the Alliance will also “include companies and people working on all other open source database”. In a Q&A with Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady, Monty also noted that he would not be surprised the Alliance had more than 10 companies by the end of the month.

Meanwhile James Dixon offered a couple of related posts, one pleading for calm in the face of Oracle’s impending ownership of Sun/MySQL and the other examining different kinds of open source forks.

Best of the rest
# Oracle finally confirmed its long-rumoured Oracle Virtual Iron acquisition.

# Larry Dignan: Is an IBM purchase of Red Hat inevitable?

# AccesStream released version 1.0 of its enterprise open source identity access management solution.

# MuleSource announced a Mule ESB transport for FIX, a community contribution from MuleSource partner Ricston.

# Microsoft announced that it is funding the development of PHP SDK for Windows Azure.

Open source and trademarks - a matter of trust

2009-05-14T10:07:40Z

Last week PC World published a blog post that argued that trademarks are a “hidden menace” that, like patents and copyright, “are a weapon that companies can use to battle each other and ultimately restrict the freedom of their customers”.

The post was (rightfully IMO) slapped down, both in the comments section, and by Tarus Balog: used correctly trademarks are vital in protecting the interests of both the vendor and the user - enabling the vendor to protect its brand and the user to have the confidence that they are using a genuine product.

Which is not to say that trademarking is not without its problems, particularly when businesses or individuals trademark common phrases, but when we are talking about the trademarking of vendor or product names there are genuine benefits for both vendors and users.

Open source is no different - just because a vendor is prepared to hand over rights to its code, does not mean that it could or should hand over rights to its brands. The freedom to use open source code is not restricted by trademarks.

However, given the community aspects of open source distribution and development, the issue of trademarks is perhaps not always black and white when it comes to open source projects.

Nagios creator Ethan Galdstad discusses trademarks in a great post related to the recent forking of the open source systems monitoring software, noting that open source requires a more lenient view of trademark policy - but one that has firm limits and is firmly enforced.

“Would I or Nagios Enterprises attack individuals or groups of individuals that are using (and perhaps even “violating” in a legal sense) the Nagios mark when they have no commercial intent and their usage of the mark actually benefits the Nagios brand and project? Absolutely not. That would be tantamount to insanity. It would kill the project, and as a result, the brand.

But does that mean such usage by individuals will have no regulation or restrictions placed on it? No. We need to ensure the integrity of the brand and how its used - even by individuals within the community. Failing to do so can cause enormous problems for everyone.”

The important issue here is that the trademark is used in a way that establishes trust and enforces the brand, rather than undermines it. That cuts both ways.

Meanwhile an Ubuntu bug report this week indicated that open source vendors also have to be careful about their own use of trademarks in order to avoid creating disharmony. The report relates to Ubuntu One, Canonical’s new file sharing project and finds Tony Yarusso pointing out that the usage of the word Ubuntu in the context of “Ubuntu One” is inconsistent with the Trademark Policy.

Tony’s specific complaint is that “The service is not Ubuntu and… merely runs on and works with Ubuntu, on equal footing with other applications like Apache, Firefox, or an Ubuntu user’s blog.” As such he believes that it is “attempting to capitalize on the brand, which is… explicitly prohibited.”

In response several people pointed out that as Canonical owns the Ubuntu trademark it is not possible for the company to infringe the trademark. While that may be legally correct, clearly Tony sees this as a case of Canonical wanting its partners and users to ‘do as I say and not as I do’.

And he is not the only one. As Corey Burger pointed out “yes, Canonical owns the Ubuntu trademark. However, it is accountable to the larger Ubuntu community for use of that trademark and I think this use violates that trust and accountability.”

The issue has been nominated for discussion by the Ubuntu Community Council and goes to show that while trademarks are not a hidden menace, they are something around which vendors need to tread carefully.

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.13

2009-05-13T11:13:22Z

SugarCRM loses its CEO. Reaction to the Nagios fork. Oracle’s hardware plans. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

Life is not so sweet
SugarCRM announced the resignation of John Roberts as CEO and appointment of Larry Augustin as interim CEO. Larry offered a perspective on his role. The news was widely reported but there were two surprising aspects - that the founder of an apparently successful company should choose to leave despite it being apparently poised for a run at an IPO when the markets recover, and that almost no one publicly questioned why the founder of an apparently successful company should choose to leave despite it being apparently poised for a run at an IPO when the markets recover. The Register was the notable exception but didn’t uncover any answers.

Forking hell?
We previously reported the Icinga fork of the Nagios open source monitoring software. This week Nagios creator Ethan Galstad responded by welcoming the fork and writing a series of posts that dealt with the issues, including trademarks, commercialization and the future of Nagios. Meanwhile GroundWork Open Source, which makes use of Nagios within its products, provided its point of view on the Icinga fork. In a timely post, James Dixon offered a perspective on why, when, and how to fork an open source project.

You say fauxpen, I say potato
Tarus Balog’s post on what he calls “fauxpen source” business models caused something of a stir, most of its played out in the comments to our response. There was more to come, however, with Carlo Daffara, Tarus and Benjamin Reed continuing thje debate about what constitutes an open source business model, and whether vendors with proprietary extensions should be allowed to call themselves “open source”. The debate has simmered for the last 10 years and the latest skirmish settled nothing. Tarus himself was left with a feeling of disappointment about the level of debate.

The potential impact of software liability
The European Commission proposed that software developers should be held responsible for the security of their products, prompting Glyn Moody to speculate on the impact on open source developers. Savio Rodrigues argued that it would specifically damage open source vendors, while Matt Asay argued that the proposal did not match the reality of the vendor-customer relationship.

The best of the rest
# Reuters interview with Larry Ellison on plans for Sun hardware.

# The New York Times reported the behind-the-scenes details on the Sun acquisition saga, including the involvement of a mystery third bidder, thought to be HP.

# Intel and Nokia jointly announced the oFono project, an open source telephony project.

# MontaVista launched MontaVista Linux 6 embedded Linux operating system.

# JasperSoft updated its JasperForge forge with full production capabilities and collaboration features.

# SGI lives on. Rackable Systems to become Silicon Graphics International (SGI).

# New InformationWeek open source survey focuses on desktop adoption.

# Free software makes the Huffington Post. Jamie Love raised timely & important questions for president Obama on free software usage.

# Dave Neary explained why football clubs are like free software communities.

# ComputerWeekly explained how a government-wide Microsoft software deal fits into the UK Government’s Open Source Action Plan.

# xTuple partnered with BitRock to simplify installation of open source ERP.

# Likewise announced that its Open identity management software is now integrated in Citrix XenServer.

# WSJ: Novell plans to create and market a Moblin-based OS for netbooks.

# Zenoss Core 2.4 open source network monitoring now GA.

# Introducing PostgreSQL Experts Inc, Josh Berkus’ new PostgreSQL consulting, services and support company.

# The Linux Foundation: GNU/Linux: The Operating System of the Cloud.

Nagios fork - commercial growing pains, commercial interests

2009-05-27T22:15:17Z

Open source eyes are watching the latest fork, this time Icinga, a new offshoot of the widely-used open source monitoring software Nagios. The fork and its impetus appear to center on a community desire for faster, wider, more open development, but it seems there may indeed be another prong to this fork.

Netways, a German company that supports and contributes to Nagios, is among those behind Icinga. As the new project team’s site indicates, ‘This team currently consists of members of the previous Nagios community advisory board, developers of numerous Nagios extensions and Netways, the organiser of the Conference on Nagios and provider of the NagiosExchange platform.’ Although it is certainly natural and even beneficial to have some commercial backing of a fork, the extent to which this represents Netways’ efforts to establish itself as the German company and community for Nagios seems unclear. I would also add that this is the only reference from Icinga on Netways, other than the team page which highlights three of seven founding members working on Netways-related projects with Nagios. Again, it is good to see vendor involvement, participation and support and Netways has contributed positively to the Nagios community, but there has also been some bad blood between Netways and Nagios Enterprises, the bootstrapped, commercial company based on Nagios and founded by the software’s creator, Ethan Galstad. The dispute centers on trademark issues, both honoring the Nagios U.S. trademark and Netware’s successful move to secure a German trademark for Nagios.

This dispute, along with some perspective on what it all means, is summed up rather objectively and well by Nagios developer Andreas Ericsson here.

While it seems the Icinga fork may have some commercial influences of its own, there is truly a bottleneck issue with the Nagios project, which admittedly was never originally intended for the large, enterprise environments it monitors today. The so-called bottleneck himself, Nagios creator Ethan Galstad, acknowledged there have been holdups in the software’s progress because of his position as sole code gatekeeper. The good news is that Galstad, as well as Ericsson, have recognized the need to change things and plan to do so. I expect we’ll be hearing about some changes in procedures and roles in the Nagios development community shortly. Ericsson has hopes the revamping may bring back the Icinga contributors. While I find this unlikely, I still think the Icinga fork has already served a valid purpose as a form of open source discipline that is forcing project leaders to listen to the community and assess things. I also liken this to Oracle’s Unbreakable Linux, which didn’t hurt Red Hat as much as serve as a necessary check on Red Hat’s Linux business, which was improved with speeded and sharpened support in response.

In the end, the Nagios fork shows how there are certainly growing pains when taking an open source project to widespread enterprise use and business. It also shows that commercial interests are playing a more prominent role, even from the point of inception, in open source software projects and, yes, forks.

What the OSD doesn’t say about open source

2009-05-27T22:14:52Z

Tarus Balog of OpenNMS wrote an interesting post today on the similarities between the four freedoms of Free Software and the Open Source Definition, essentially making the point that “open source software is also free software”.

I would agree with Tarus’s assessment about the way in which the four freedoms and the OSD overlap (in fact I will be using the four freedoms to explain the difference between open source and proprietary software next week) but I cannot agree with his suggestion that vendors with hybrid licensing models (or “fauxpen source” vendors as he puts it) should not be able to call themselves “open source vendors”.

We have covered this ground before, but a debate ensued on Twitter that outgrew 140 characters. Hence this quick post.

Tarus has included a syllogism to explain his reasoning:

Open source is free software.
Commercially licensed software is not free.
Therefore, if your business (main revenue source) is selling commercial software, you are not open source.

I can understand the reasoning that companies like JasperSoft or GroundWork that rely on commercially-licensed editions of their software to generate their revenue should not be able to declare that software “open source”. Clearly it is not.

But those vendors also produce and support open source (free) editions of their software, so therefore they can claim to be open source vendors.

The OSD refers to the software, not the vendor or the business strategy, so while the OSD can be used to determine whether a software product is open source, it cannot be used to determine whether a business strategy is that of an “open source vendor”.

As I previously noted, “given there is no official definition for what makes a company (as opposed to a product) ‘open source’ that is a matter of personal opinion.”

Even if the OSI did want to police the use of open source in such a manner, it would be impossible without an enforceable trademark for the term “open source”, which would appear to be unlikely.

My problem with Tarus’s argument then is not that it is flawed - I think he makes a valid case - but that he is trying to use a screwdriver to crack a nut. It could be done in theory, but it’s not exactly practical. Even if you accept that the industry needs an open source definition for business and development models, the OSD is not that definition.

Which isn’t to say that it couldn’t be the basis for one

Forthcoming webinar on VC funding for open source

2009-05-27T22:14:04Z

Following the recent publication of Open to Investment, the latest CAOS research report, we will be hosting a webinar on Thursday May 14th, from 12pm - 1pm EDT to discuss some of the key findings of the report.

Covering the past, present and future of venture capital investment in open source-related vendors the report contains analysis of the history of venture funding in open-source-related firms between 1997 and 2008, based on The 451 Group’s database of more than 370 funding deals.

It also contains results from a survey of investors from private investment firms, assessing their sentiment toward open source and the likely impact of economic conditions on investment in these vendors.

Among the topics to be covered on the webinar are:

Details of funding to date and historical trends
Details on the 57 vendors most likely to be considering further funding in the next two years
The impact of current global financial conditions on open source adoption and investment
Investor sentiment towards open source business strategies
Drivers for investment in open source
The perceived risks of investment in open source
The outlook for venture funding in 2009
Details of potential IPOs (once the market improves)
M&A opportunities and drivers

You can register for the event here. We hope you can join us.

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.06

2009-05-06T17:36:33Z

SpringSource acquires Hyperic. What is the point of community? Nagios forks. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

SpringSource acquires Hyperic
So at least one of the acquisition rumors from OSBC turned out to be true. SpringSource announced that it has acquired Hyperic for an undisclosed fee, combining SpringSource’s Java development and middleware expertise with Hyperic’s web application and infrastructure management software. SpringSource CEO Rod Johnson outlined the benefits in a blog post as did Hyperic CEO, Javier Soltero, while the companies also provided a handy FAQ. # Bob Bickel provided some historical context.

What is the point of community?
Matt Asay has been challenging some assumptions about open source of late, with the latest being the importance of “community”. Matt argued that “community” is perhaps the most overhyped word in software and that “community is mostly made up of onlookers” who will not contribute to the development of a project.

The response was swift and vociferous with Tarus Balog arguing that “the fact that marketing people can’t squeeze value out of community doesn’t mean that communities don’t have value” and Carlo Daffara pointing out that his research indicated that “under the correct conditions communities of contributors provide a non-trivial benefit to the vendor”.

That “under the correct conditions disclaimer” is important, as is the perspective that the value of community will be different for every vendor depending on the nature of the community and the project involved. This is a point Matt actually raised himself but got lost amid sweeping statements on both sides: “there’s value there, yes, but it’s not what most people think it is.”

The best of the rest
# WSO2 launched Data Services 2.0, now based on the WSO2 Carbon service-oriented architecture (SOA) framework.

# Talend launched version 3.1 of Talend Open Studio and Talend Integration Suite.

# Engine Yard previewed its new Rails in the Cloud service at RailsConf.

# Sparxent announced that it is to acquire open source data integration Company, XAware.

# Glyn Moody reported on the Icinga fork of Nagios Why fork? The Icinga team provided an answer.

# OK Labs and Citrix partnered to deliver mobile access to enterprise and desktop applications.

# Groklaw: U.S. Trustee Moves to Convert SCO Bankruptcy to Chapter 7.

# James Dixon: 12 Ways To Contribute To Open Source.

# Savio Rodrigues: Why do vendors select the GPL license?

# WaveMaker announced version 5.0 of its WaveMaker development platform.

# Six Steps to Building an Open Source Cloud Company, by Enomaly founder and chief technologist Reuven Cohen.

# Robert X. Cringely on Bigtable, HBase, new architectures, Oracle and Sun.

# Economic free software perspectives: a summary white paper on FOSS business strategies, by Carlo Daffara.

# Bob Sutor: So you want to be an open source contributor?

# Dirk Riehle: The Commercial Open Source Business Model.

# The year of the Linux desktop! Net Application reported that GNU/Linux broke 1% share.

# London Olympics says no to open source. Confusing statements from 2012 CIO Gerry Pennell, as reported by eWeek.

Playing fantasy M&A with the Benchmark/Accel open source investment portfolio

2009-05-27T22:13:43Z

Javier Soltero, former CEO of Hyperic, has maintained that the sale of Hyperic to SpringSource was driven by discussion between himself and SpringSource CEO, Rod Johnson, but the fact that the companies shared investors - Accel Partners and Benchmark Capital - no doubt accelerated the deal (and I wonder whether either could have afforded to acquire the other without shared investors).

When examining the open source vendor landscape it is tempting to imagine that the combined total could be bigger than the sum of its parts - that a combination of many open source product specialists could mount a challenge to Red Hat and Sun to claim the title of biggest open source software vendor.

Benchmark and Accel are among the most prolific investors in open source vendors (ranking second and joint-third according to the data in our recent CAOS report into investment in open source vendors).

Between them they could assemble a pretty formidable open source software player. Not only are they both investors in SpringSource/Hyperic but they are also currently invested in:

Terracotta - Both
Aptana - Accel
Alfresco - Accel
Cloudera - Accel
Coverity - Benchmark
CollabNet - Benchmark
Eucalyptus Systems - Benchmark
Engine Yard - Benchmark
Pentaho - Benchmark
New Relic - Benchmark
OpenX - Accel

Not all of these would complement SpringSource but with some others it is very easy to see how they would add value to the company’s development and management capabilities. While we are playing fantasy M&A, consider the vendor that could have been assembled with these former investments:

XenSource - Accel
JBoss - Accel
Red Hat - Benchmark
MySQL- Benchmark
Zimbra - Both

SpringSource-Hyperic not so open source, not so bad

2009-05-27T22:11:26Z

There’s quite a bit of discussion about SpringSource’s annnounced acquisition of Hyperic, with all kinds of speculation on SpringSource’s competitive positioning, its desire to add a management component and, as we report, the importance of Hyperic’s focus on monitoring and managing applications in virtualized and cloud environments. What does not seem to be quite as prominent in the discussion of this deal between two companies we consider open source vendors is: open source software.

Sure, there are technical and cultural reasons that an acquisition and merging of the comnpanies makes sense. Both use primarily GPL-licensed open source software at the center of their offerings. Both offer a variety of proprietary extensions and enhancements in an open core model. Both started around the same time and are at similar places in their evolution along with the commercial adoption of open source. However, as we’ve seen in other cases when open source matters more on an underlying level, open source software is somewhat of an aside in the SpringSource-Hyperic acquisition.

That is not to say, however, that this deal reflects a lack of momentum for open source software, whether we’re talking enterprise Java and SpringSource or applications monitoring and management via Hyperic. Some are arguing that this acquisition represents SpringSource protecting its own viability by saving Hyperic, which is embedded in SpringSource’s products and business. However, given the growth we’ve seen at both companies and the continued acquisition strategy from SpringSource, that does not seem to be the case. As far as the contention enterprise and midmarket organizations are turning away from open source amid difficult economic conditions, we are seeing the exact opposite. The risk/benefit question on open source software is now falling down on the side of trying it out, and open source seems to be passing the test. Those who continue to forbid or resist open source are sounding more unreasonable, particularly when there are most likely parts of all organizations that already know the benefits, including cost-savings.

We believe the main drivers of the SpringSource-Hyperic acquisition and the main value here is not open source software, but rather where open source software has allowed both of these vendors to go: enterprise Java applications, virtualized and cloud computing environments in particular. The fact that these vendors are joining up in the latest virtualized and cloud environments indicates they have the right offering at the right time, and we expect the combined company will leverage this even more now.

CAOS Theory Podcast 2009.05.01

2009-05-01T22:23:42Z

Topics for this podcast:

*Oracle-Sun roundup on open source
*Canonical’s Ubuntu 9.04 hits servers, PCs, netbooks
*New cloud plays look to open source
*Is SMB and midmarket opportunity growing?

iTunes or direct download (26:59, 6.2 MB)

451 CAOS Links 2009.05.01

2009-05-06T17:45:56Z

Is the Apache License better than the GPL? Good results for Sourcefire, Actuate BIRT and Fonality. Ugly results for Sun. Funding for Likewise Software and Eucalyptus Systems. SugarCRM Express. GroundWork Monitor Starter Edition. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

Is the Apache License better than the GPL?
Following Eric Raymond’s assertion that the GPL is either futile or unnecessary (see Tuesday’s Links post), Matt Asay opened up a can of worms with his sudden conversion to the position that the Apache License might be better than the GPL for open-source business. One person happy to see Matt’s change of thinking was Gianugo Rabellino, of Sourcesense, who has been arguing in favor of the Apache License for some time.

Financial results: The good, the bad and the ugly
The good: Sourcefire reported revenue up 36% in Q1 to $18.6m, reduced net loss to $1.1m, while Actuate’s BIRT-related business exceeded $3.5 million in Q1, up 32% year-over-year, and Fonality was cash flow positive in March with a 102% CAGR.

The bad and the ugly: Sun announced a net loss of $201m on revenue of $2.6bn, compared to loss of $34m on $3.3bn a year ago.

Funding outbreak
TechFlash reported that Likewise Software raised another $10m from existing investors, while Eucalyptus Systems debuted its open source private cloud platform, with $5.5m Series A funding (PDF).

The best of the rest
# SugarCRM introduced Sugar Express: On-demand CRM from $7/month.

# OpenLogic positioned latest version of OLEX as open source software governance platform.

# Zend released Zend Framework 1.8, delivering RAD for PHP.

# Wazi published “How to Convince Your Manager to Use Open Source Software”, by Stormy Peters.

# Mike Milinkovich reported on the Eclipse Foundation’s trials and tribulations with the Lesser GPL

# The Belgian and the Dutch administrations agreed to coordinate their policies on open standards and open source.

# Neocleus shipped its NeoSphere client virtualization offering.

# Carlo Daffara provided some resources for public administrations interested in OSS.

# GroundWork launched GroundWork Monitor Starter Edition.

# Open source Magazine: Thoughts on How to Select Between COTS and Open Source.

# Open source vs Microsoft, Glyn Moody vs Richard Steel. The battle of Newham has begun.

# Trend Micro acquired Third Brigade, which owns and maintains OSSEC, the Open Source Host Intrusion Detection Project.

# Xandros’ BridgeWays launched its first cross-platform systems management packs.

# The ODF Alliance welcomed Office 2007 support for ODF in SP2.

The ODF story - one year later

2009-04-30T20:53:27Z

My how time flies when it comes to standards battles. This week brought a flurry of news, issues and opinions involving Open Document Format (ODF), starting with Microsoft’s support for ODF in the latest Office 2007 SP2. This comes a year after Microsoft was criticized for its Office Open XML (OOXML) standardization campaign and subsequent turnabout tosupport ODF in Office 2007.

For its part, Microsoft says its integrated support for ODF, as well as its own OOXML, PDF and other formats is a response to customer demand for industry collaboration and interoperability. It may also have something to do with Microsoft’s efforts to address anti-trust entanglements with the European Union.

ODF supporters are calling Office 2007 native support for ODF a victory and it’s true it represents a true departure from Microsoft’s previous indications for Office 2007. ODF supporters also highlight the fact that Microsoft did go ahead and push for and receive its own international standard status for OOXML. They caution ODF users and organizations to make sure Microsoft’s software will work with other software already using or working with ODF, too, but in general take a positive view of the Office 2007 support. They also indicate ODF continues to win government endorsement and application support.

However there are also those who doubt the significance of Microsoft’s support and even the long-term viability of ODF, which indeed seems to have less momentum now than a year ago. The thinking goes that OOXML has already attained standard status and begun gaining enterprise use, while ODF has been limited to mostly government endorsements and use. Even if the number of governments and agencies supporting ODF continues to grow, it is Microsoft’s standard that is winning adoption in the enterprise.

There is still something of a wild card in all of this: the impact of Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems. The fate of OpenOffice.org (which originated at and has since been sponsored by Sun) is one of the biggest questions I have in regards to the impact of the deal to open source software. There has already been some speculation Oracle could leverage OO.o to work against Microsoft. Following some of my initial thinking on Oracle-Sun, I had feared OO.o would be largely overlooked and left to its own community to continue. I also thought OO.o might make a decent consolation for IBM, which bases its Lotus Symphony enterprise office software on the same code. Now I’m wondering what we might see from Oracle, which has been among the largest and most significant backers of ODF, and IBM together on furthering and promoting both OO.o and ODF. As is often the case with standards, it seems the fight may be continuing even after we thought it was done.

The biggest myths about open source software

2009-05-13T21:43:15Z

I was thinking about the myths surrounding open source software and thought it would be interesting to take a straw poll of @caostheory and @maslett followers to see which were considered the biggest myths.

In no way are the results to be considered scientific (the final two options provide evidence of the informality of the poll), but after 138 votes a picture has emerged that indicates that the biggest myths are:

It’s free - 17%
It’s developed by amateurs - 14%
It’s not for mission critical apps - 11%
It’s not supported - 10%
It eradicates vendor lock-in - 8%

The poll is still live and you can still take part, and see the latest results, below:

451 CAOS Links 2009.04.28

2009-04-28T16:32:17Z

OIN aims to cut the FAT. What is the point of the GPL? Black Duck takes flight. Ingres delivers Salesforce.com appliance. The ongoing fallout from Oracle-Sun. Feedback on the Bee Keeper model. And more.

Follow 451 CAOS Links live @caostheory

OIN aims to cut the FAT
# The Open Invention Network announced plans to review the Microsoft FAT patents at the center of its recent skirmish and settlement with TomTom. have been placed for prior art review on the Post-Issue Peer-to-Patent website associated with the Linux Defenders portal.

What is the point of the GPL?
Eric Raymond presented his “Economic Case Against the GPL, arguing that it is either futile or unnecessary, depending on whether you consider closed or open source software to be more efficient. In response, Carlo Dafarra argued that Eric’s view is based on a wrong assumption that the market is static and that “the set of barriers created by the GPL are vital to create a sustainable market here and now, and not in an hypothetical future.”

The best of the rest
# SpringSource announced the GA of SpringSource tc Server, an enterprise version of Apache Tomcat.

# Black Duck reported 42% growth in bookings performance and 27% growth in services for Q1.

# Ingres announced a new release of Ingres Icebreaker Business Intelligence Appliance integrated with Salesforce CRM.

# The Register reported that Oracle execs have committed to keeping Java open and to not killing MySQL.

# While eWeek published a list of Sun Labs’ lesser-known open source projects.

# OStattic published an interview with Karen Tegan Padir, MySQL VP in charge of MySQL.

# While SDTimes reported on the progress of the Drizzle project.

# David Dennis gave his feedback on the Bee Keeper model for understanding open source development strategies, as did Roberto Galoppini. Our feedback is here.

# Continuent released the beta of Tungsten Enterprise for Oracle, for Oracle-to-Oracle and Oracle-to-MySQL replication.

# rPath’s rBuilder is now a free download.

# Startup Opscode raised $2.5M funding led by Draper Fisher.

# Appscio secured a “strategic partnership and development agreement” with IN-Q-TEL.

# PC World reported that Europe is to fund secure operating system research based on Minix.

# CMS Watch reported on Apache Chemistry, a new project which aims to produce a generic, open source implementation of CMIS, involving Day Software, Nuxeo, Sourcesense and Alfresco.

# inVrastructure, an open source unified computing platform, was launched by Carbon Mountain.

Understanding commercial open source via the Bee Keeper model

2009-05-13T21:43:42Z

Last June I reported on James Dixon’s Bee Keeper model for understanding the relationships between commercial open source vendors and their communities.

Recently James has updated the model, incorporating a number of changes, including some suggested by me as a means by which the Bee Keeper analogy could be applied beyond captive open source projects.

I’m very grateful to James for taking my suggestions on board, as well as linking to our wider research on open source business strategies.

Irrespective of our inclusion in James’ paper I wanted to draw attention to the latest version (PDF) of the Bee Keeper as I believe James has done a great job of improving what was already a very elegant explanation of the development and business strategies adopted by commercial open source vendors.

In addition to the original Bee Keeper analogy (in short 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) James has added:

The Wild Hive Model for Open Source Projects
The Maple Syrup Farm Model for Proprietary Software Companies
The Honey-Gatherer Model for Service/Support Commercial Open Source

The inclusion of the first two of these models is a significant improvement, I believe, in providing a context for understanding the motivations of commercial open source vendors in taking the Bee Keeper approach. I’ll leave it to others to comment on James’ wisdom in incorporating the third, as that was my suggestion.

One suggestion I made that didn’t make the cut was that of the blender model for service and certification providers that do the equivalent of “pick and choose honey from a variety of freely available bee nests and blend it together to produce a more palatable product”.

David Dennis of GroundWork has, completely independently, suggested the Honey Blender as an additional model for vendors, applying the same terms to vendors like GroundWork and Linux distributors that combine code from multiple projects (both wild and domesticated).

Reading David’s suggestion I would agree that the ‘blender’ tag is better applied to vendors that adopt this hybrid production model rather than service and certification providers, which are arguably covered by the Honey-Gatherer model.

In the comments to David’s post, James notes that “I have not included it to date because most enterprise proprietary vendors do the same thing” which I took to mean that most proprietary vendors combine open source code within their own to produce their proprietary products.

This is true, and points to the major model that I believe is missing from the latest version of the Bee Keeper - the use of open source by proprietary vendors in their development processes. I previously suggested the concept of “the brewer” - a vendor that takes honey from various sources and turns it into a completely different product (in this case, mead).

That particular analogy is not the greatest to be honest, and does not take into account the variety of ways in which open source software can be used in the development of proprietary products but I believe there is some scope for expanding the Bee Keeper model further, both for completeness, and to make the distinction with the 100% proprietary “The Maple Syrup Farm Model”.

Through our ongoing research we are engaged in examining the strategies of traditional proprietary vendors in engaging with and making use of open source, so I shall put some more thought into how our observations can be applied to the Bee Keeper model.

Given the variety of possible approaches to using open source software in the development of proprietary products it is feasible that such a model belongs in a related but entirely separate paper.

In the meantime, I fully recommend you take a look at the latest draft of The Bee Keeper and follow James’ blog for further updates.

451 CAOS Links 2009.04.24

2009-04-24T12:25:28Z

Oracle buys Sun. Sun previews MySQL update, makes GlassFish Portfolio, OpenSSO and OpenDS available on EC2. Numerous partner announcements from the MySQL conference. Red Hat maps open source adoption. And more.

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Oracle to acquire Sun
Unless you’ve been living under a rock (or like me you decided to take a few inappropriately-timed days off) you probably noticed that Oracle announced an agreement to acquire Sun this week. Jay delivered our assessment on Oracle’s open source credentials, while I followed up with some thoughts on the impact on MySQL, and its partners.

See also:
# The internal memo to Sun employees from Jonathan Schwartz, Sun’s chief executive.

# Marten Mickos explained to Forbes why Oracle won’t kill MySQL.

# Monty Widenius provided his assessment of the deal drivers and his ongoing attempts to “ensure that there always exists a free branch of MySQL that is actively develop[ed] in an open manner and has that trust and support of the MySQL customers, developers and users.”

# Kaj Arno detailed what has not changed with MySQL as a result of the planned acquisition.

# Brian Gentile explained why the deal is all about “the hearts and minds of the software development community.”

# Larry Augustin calculated that Oracle could sell off Sun’s storage, server and SPARC assets and effectively get MySQL and Java for free.

# Savio Rodrigues wondered what steps Oracle could take to meet its $1.5bn profit target for Sun.

# Matt Asay questioned whether Oracle will let MySQL retain its recently-added enterprise capabilities.

# Ars Technica: Oracle buys Sun: understanding the impact on open source.

# Matt Mullenweg explained why the deal need not necessarily have a significant impact on MySQL users.

# Rich Sands provided a round-up of some of the better analysis on the potential impact for Java.

# Jim Zemlin on what the acquisition means for Linux.

# Tim Bray provided a handy overview of the companies’ business strategies, products and cultures.

# InfoWorld: Ten ways Oracle could make money from Sun.

# Glyn Moody: Who Owns Commercial Open Source – and Can Forks Work?

# The 451 Group’s Steve Coplan on the identity angle.

# Oh, and the deal has prompted a proposed class-action lawsuit.

Business as usual
In other news, Sun made a series of MySQL-related announcements, including the preview release of version 5.4, the launch of MySQL Cluster 7.0, a new MySQL ‘Remote DBA’ partner program for consulting companies and service providers, a new new reference architecture for Glassfish and MySQL, and expanded interoperability between the Sun Identity Management Suite and MySQL.

Additionally:
# Kaj Arno detailed the changes taking place within Sun designed to improve the commitment to MySQL Community users.

# James Dixon noted that for the first time at the annual MySQL conference he “encountered people who understood databases and business intelligence, but did not understand anything about open source”. A sure sign of MySQL’s maturity.

The best of the rest
# Sun also announced the availability of GlassFish Portfolio, OpenSSO and OpenDS on Amazon EC2 Cloud, and a new Sun OpenSSO Express release, providing federated single sign-on for Google Apps Premier Edition.

# Sun and Kickfire announced a joint marketing agreement for Kickfire’s MySQL data warehousing appliance (PDF).

# Zmanda added a visual log analyzer to its Zmanda Recovery Manager (ZRM) for MySQL backup and recovery software.

# Virident announced its two new GreenCloud Servers, for MySQL and Memcached.

# Calpont repositioned as an open source MPP data warehousing engine for MySQL.

# Infobright and Jaspersoft partnered on an open source project to feature end-to-end BI, extract-transform-load (ETL), and data warehousing capabilities.

# EnterpriseDB licensed its Oracle compatibility functionality (which isn’t actually open source, for the record) to IBM.

# Zenoss added former BMC, IBM and Accenture executives to its board of directors.

# Pentaho delivered Pentaho Data Integration 3.2 for the cloud.

# Carlo Dafarra on the procurement advantage test for the “purity” of commercial open source.

# Red Hat revealed its Open Source World Map.

# While Glyn Moody wondered what on Earth it could be used for.

# Matt Asay examined the strength of Red Hat’s business.

# Aaron Fulkerson explained the process for adding new features under the Open-Core Licensing strategy.

# Christopher Keene highlighted WaveMaker’s ongoing successes.

# The Defense Department’s open source software development tool, Forge.mil, may now be used for unclassified work in DOD, FederalComputerWeek reported.

# Microsoft is sponsoring research at the University of Michigan’s Center for Information Technology Integration (CITI) to develop an open source Network File System client for Windows.

# Is the Microsoft-TomTom settlement a wake-up call for GPLv3 migration?

# James Dixon provided his interpretation of Microsoft’s strategy towards open source.

# While ComputerWorld wondered whether Microsoft has lost its war on open source.

# Linux Magazine: Linus on Linux: The Linus Torvalds Interview Part 1.

# Ulteo released the first version of its Open Virtual Desktop.

# Continuent delivered Tungsten Enterprise for database clusters supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL and Oracle.

# ONStor announced that it has integrated the Zettabyte File System (ZFS) and other open source technology into its Pantera LS series systems.

# PrismTech announced the availability of OpenSplice DDS Open Source on OpenSplice.org.

# CodeFutures delivered dbShards, a true shared-nothing scalability offering for open source databases.

Some interesting firsts for cloud OS

2009-05-13T21:44:11Z

One thing that seems clear in cloud computing right now — the combination of operating system, hypervisor, clustering, applications and other cloud infrastructure components in the mix is creating some interesting competition. We’ve written before about the fight over the OS role and its relevancy as hypervisor vendors race to cover the OS parts, OS vendors race to cover the hypervisor parts and so on. We’re now seeing a similar battle in cloud computing, where open source looms large, as other vendors step up to the opportunities.

VMware’s announcement of vSphere, billed as ‘the industry’s first cloud operating system,’ is a good example of how this fight continues. More specifically, VMware says vSphere 4 is ‘the first operating system for building the internal cloud, enabling the delivery of efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service.’ In her report on vSphere, our own 451 Group Research Director Rachel Chalmers highlights the automation and self-service tools of vSphere, but also points out much of this doesn’t really arrive until VMware’s vCenter Suite later this year. In addition, while vSphere offers a good virtualized abstraction layer and tools to build internal clouds on commodity hardware, Xen is free and open source and is broadly used for cloud infrastructure.

In terms of the ‘first cloud OS,’ I think Ubuntu Linux vendor Canonical may beg to differ. The company’s Ubuntu Linux is already a popular choice for cloud deployment thanks to its free availability and lack of licensing royalties that can quickly cancel out cloud cost advantages. With its latest release this week, Ubuntu 9.04, Canonical is doing more to back this cloud deployment of Ubuntu. Its new server version is tuned for the cloud, primarily thanks to incorporation of the Eucalyptus open source clustering and cloud infrastructure software. Similar to VMware, which is offering bits and pieces of full functionality that is yet to come, Canonical offers a ‘preview’ of Ubuntu Eneterprise Cloud in 9.04. For its part, Canonical bills UEC and Ubuntu as ‘the first commercially-supported distribution to enable businesses to build cloud environments inside their firewalls.’ It is also worth noting Ubuntu Server Edition 9.04 will itself be available on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

These are certainly a couple of interesting ‘firsts.’ It is also perhaps the first time these two vendors are competing so directly. We should probably expect to see more of this as a variety of vendors large and small from different software areas push into the clouds.

The potential impact of Sun-Oracle on MySQL, and its partners

2009-05-13T21:44:33Z

“We’re both in the transportation business. We have a 747, and they have a Toyota.”

The comparison of Oracle’s database and MySQL, made by Oracle president Charles Phillips at the 2004 Vortex Conference was undoubtedly meant as a criticism, but it so graphically demonstrated the differing business strategies and selling-points of the two products that MySQL executives began citing it themselves.

It is also a comparison that explains how the two products could potentially co-exist within a single company, as they seem likely to do following the announcement that Sun has agreed to be acquired by Oracle.

Much of the MySQL-related coverage of the impending acquisition has focused on the likelihood of Oracle killing-off the development the open source database. While that is a possibility, my opinion is that it gives neither Oracle nor MySQL enough credit.

As MySQL creator Monty Widenius indicates, Oracle has (at least) three options:

“They are going to kill MySQL (either directly or by not developing/supporting it fully)

MySQL will get sold of to another entity, either because Oracle doesn’t want it or becasue of anti-trust laws.

They will embrace MySQL and Open Source and put their technical expertise on it to ensure that MySQL continues to be the most popular advanced Open Source database.”

Monty is putting his hopes on the third option, which is also the one I see as more likely.

Oracle and Larry Ellison didn’t get where they are today by ignoring a business opportunity and MySQL represents a more significant business opportunity for Oracle alive than dead.

MySQL’s strategy of avoiding direct competition with Oracle and IBM enabled it to establish a substantial business under the noses of the database giants by targeting a market (web applications) that they were not particularly interested in.

That was then, this is now, and the web-based applications market is a lucrative market opportunity that Oracle, IBM and Microsoft cannot afford to ignore. However, they are also well aware that MySQL was successful in this market because it offered something different from the established database choices.

For that reason Oracle will be well aware that it has little to gain from killing off MySQL. Were it to do so MySQL users would be far more likely to run away from Oracle than adopt the Oracle Database. By keeping MySQL alive, Oracle has the potential to up-sell MySQL users to other Oracle products and services, while also using MySQL as a weapon to attack Microsoft’s installed base at the low-end.

Additionally, promoting MySQL gives Oracle access to a new breed of developers. As former MySQL CEO Marten Mickos told Forbes: “They can kill the business. But I don’t think they will. Larry Ellison is smart. MySQL was getting around 70,000 downloads a day when I left. It’s an amazing grip on young developers. Having MySQL makes business sense for Oracle.”

The focus when Sun acquired MySQL in 2008 was all about extending the open source database for adoption in new markets for web-based transactional applications. In comparison, the focus for MySQL under Oracle will likely be on what MySQL does best.

Like Matt Asay I expect Oracle to position MySQL as a web database, and potentially continue the back to basics approach taken by the Drizzle project.

Oracle already has a scale-up database for enterprise transactional applications. Expect MySQL to become the scale-out database for non-transactional web applications.

Of course, maintaining two database products within a company like Oracle is going to be far from easy. In order to do so Oracle would need to keep the two sales teams apart. As Marten explained, one way to mess up the opportunity would be “by slipping it into the database division. Then you’ll see turf wars.”

Then there is the fact that MySQL is currently in something of a state of disarray within Sun, although as Kaj Arno points out, it is in the process of correcting its past mistakes with regards to the community and software engineering. Oracle would be advised to focus on those efforts, as well as managing the sales teams.

In addition, Oracle will also have to work hard to ensure it retains what remains of the MySQL staff. As Monty says, “The biggest threat to MySQL future is not Oracle per se, but that the MySQL talent at Sun will spread like the wind and go to a lot of different companies which will set the MySQL development and support back years.”

So I think it is unlikely that Oracle will stick a knife in MySQL. The likelihood of someone sticking a fork in it is another matter, however (see what I did there?).

The acquisition of Innobase by Oracle in 2005 created a significant business opportunity for vendors to develop products that complement the MySQL database by providing storage engines suitable for different usage scenarios.

Just this month we saw Infobright update its data warehousing software, which turns MySQL into a data warehouse capable of supporting 30TB+, while Kickfire officially launched its MySQL-based analytic appliance (PDF). Meanwhile Calpont repositioned as an MPP data warehousing engine for MySQL, while ScaleDB launched the beta of its ScaleDB Cluster shared-disk clustering for MySQL (PDF), Tokutek delivered its Fractal Tree Indexing-based engine, (PDF) and Schooner Information Technology and Virident both launched MySQL-based appliances.

Oracle’s acquisition of Sun could have a more significant impact on the business models of these vendors than it has on the MySQL database or MySQL users. While Oracle will be happy for an Oracle-owned MySQL to cannibalise its business, the same is unlikely to be true of third-party vendors making use of MySQL to target Oracle.

With the MySQL and InnoBD development teams united under Oracle it seems likely that the company would focus all its attention on InnoDB and MySQL’s in-house storage engines rather than providing a business opportunity to potential rivals, and I would be surprised if we saw commercial relationships renewed with all or any of the vendors listed above (although few would have predicted that Oracle would have renewed relations with MySQL following the acquisition of Innobase, so you never know).

These vendors would appear to have two options:

Turn to another open source database project.

Suppport their own MySQL fork.

Migrate to an official unofficial fork of MySQL.

The first option is probably the easiest given the existence of PostgreSQL and Ingres. However, the reason that these companies chose MySQL in the first place was because the opportunity was to target the MySQL installed base. That opportunity does not simply transfer to PostgreSQL just because Oracle acquired MySQL.

Meanwhile, maintaining a fork of MySQL undermines the point of building a business around a standard, open source project. For that reason it seems likely that these vendors will gravitate towards an “official unofficial” fork of MySQL.

OurDelta provides an opportunity for this, as does Drizzle (although I would think that its self-imposed restrictions makes it incompatible for many use cases). Monty Widenius’ MariaDB would appear to be the most likely candidate, not least since it is run by the creator of MySQL, who has also declared himself willing to take on the role.

“I am prepared to hire or find a good home (either at Monty Program Ab or close to it) for all core MySQL personnel.

I am looking forward to working closely with Oracle (or whoever in the end gets to own MySQL) to ensure that there always exists a free branch of MySQL that is actively develop[ed] in an open manner and has that trust and support of the MySQL customers, developers and users.”

It remains to be seen precisely what Oracle will do with MySQL. Either way it would appear that rumours of MySQL’s demise have been greatly exaggerated.

Oracle buys Sun, but does it buy open source?

2009-05-13T21:45:16Z

The big news to kick off this week was Oracle’s announced acquisition of Sun Microsystems. There is already a lot of discussion of the integration challenges, how Oracle is getting into hardware (or as Matt Asay describes it, having an ‘iPod moment’) and of course, the implications for open source software. What stands out to me is the fact that the world’s biggest proprietary database player — one of few software giants that still sells and supports primarily proprietary software — will own the world’s most popular open source database, MySQL. It is unclear how significantly MySQL figures into the deal, but given Sun spent $1b acquiring it and further invested in its enterprise readiness and use, it must mean something. What is perhaps even more unclear is what will happen going forward to MySQL and the many other open source software technologies — Java, GlassFish application server, OpenOffice.org to name a few — that are under Sun’s moniker?

These questions bring Oracle’s open source citizenship, covered previously on the CAOS blog and in a 451 Group report, into the spotlight. Oracle rightfully deserves credit for its positive participation in the development of the Linux OS and many other open source projects, including Apache, Berkeley DB, Eclipse, InnoDB, PHP, SASH, Spring and Xen.

We’ve certainly emphasized Sun’s open source projects, products and strategy in assessing its value, position and opportunities. Looking across Sun’s assets, the open source holdings have been among the shiniest.

However, this doesn’t really jibe with the view of open source presented by Oracle and its CEO Larry Ellison, a view that I think somewhat misses the point of open source software. Mr. Ellison and his company have showed they value the advantages of open source software development and innovation based on Oracle’s contributions and investments in open source. Still, when asked about having top Linux vendor Red Hat or a similar open source company on his shopping list, Ellison indicated there would be no need to buy an open source company when he could simply take and use their code. In fact, that’s exactly what Ellison and Oracle did with Unbreakable Linux. While it has been taken up by a number of Oracle shops and even some additional customers that see greater value and time-savings in getting their Linux from Oracle, Unbreakable Linux has not exactly broken out. Furthermore, Oracle has always downplayed the commercial and revenue potential for Unbreakable Linux, which has had minimal impact on Red Hat.

So while Oracle has displayed an ability to participate in and benefit from open source software, I think its expectations and aspirations for open source software are limited. You can’t blame a company making billions for not getting too excited about millions, especially when sometimes the millions are simply numbers of users. Nevertheless, Sun is sitting on top of some of the most pervasive, disruptive and popular open source software used in the enterprise today.

With Oracle’s purchase of Sun, we may go from overly high expectations for Sun’s open source software — driven in large part by pressure to right the ship and reward investors — to drastically lowered expectations from Sun’s open source software by an Oracle far more concerned with proprietary software and hardware.

CAOS Theory Podcast 2009.04.17

2009-04-17T19:00:15Z

Topics for this podcast:

*CAOS 11 - Open to Investment
*CollabNet out with new TeamForge 5.2
*Memcached and MySQL appliances abound

iTunes or direct download (25:05, 5.8 MB)

451 CAOS Links 2009.04.17

2009-04-17T16:46:22Z

Open source in government. Sourcefire announces relationships with Symantec and Microsoft. EPL supercedes CPL. The cost and potential savings of open source. The origins of open source. IBM and Sun - back on? And more.

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# OStatic: Why Isn’t Open Source Even Considered at the U.S. State Government Level?

# Simon Phipps: Five Ideas To Get FOSS Into Governments.

# Sourcefire’s 3D system to be bundled as part of the Symantec Managed Security Services offering.

# Sourcefire has also announced a strategic relationship with Microsoft.

# The Eclipse Foundation has collaborated with IBM and OSI to supercede CPL with EPL. Result: one less open source license.

# Bloomberg: Sun Said to Be Willing to Talk If IBM Eases on Terms.

# Black Duck estimated OSS development cost of $387bn, potential reuse saving for US businesses of $22bn.

# Forbes reported on Eclipse: Many Hands, Light Work.

# Zack Urlocker explained how Sun monetizes open source at the point of value.

# OpenX launched an online advertising marketplace.

# Rivet Logic open sourced Alfresco/portal integration. Introducing the Alfresco Web script Portlet rivet.

# John Newton: How did the term “open source” start?

# CBR Q&A: James Gosling on Sun-IBM, cloud, SOA, and of course Java.

# Kickfire officially launched its MySQL Appliance, and partnered with 10 SIs. (Both PDFs)

# ScaleDB launched the beta of its shared-disk OLTP storage engine for MySQL as well as an agreement to created appliances with Dolphin ICS both (PDFs).

# GroundWork Monitor added a cloud management extension from Tap In Systems.

# LinuxInsider took a look at the debates surrounding the Open Core Licensing strategy.

# Yet another open source CMS offering: Concrete5.

# The Election Technology Council issued a report on the viability of OSS for voting systems.

# A list of 10 Individuals who have contributed the most to FOSS.

Is it asking too much to expect corporate contributions from paying customers?

2009-04-16T15:11:43Z

Are vendors that ask their paying customers to also contribute code changes trying to have their cake and eat it too?

The issue of increasing corporate contributions to open source has been bubbling under ever since Jim Whitehurst highlighted the lack of enterprise participation during a speech at the 2008 OSBC conference.

Whitehurst also mentioned the topic during 2009’s OSBC but in the intervening year there has been little in the way of visible progress. Perhaps this is because it is asking too much.

If it is true that there are two types of people, those who will spend money to save time, and those who will spend time to save money then is it not somewhat unfair to expect those that have already spent money to save time to also spend time on open source contributions?

Most open source vendors expect enterprises to be the paying customers rather than the community users but if the software in question is only really of interest to enterprises then it stands to reason that the vendor will struggle to encourage community contributions.

A radical solution to this problem is to not ask enterprises to pay for your software.

This is the approach taken by Funambol, for which enterprises are the community users of its push email and mobile sync software and service providers, carriers and device markers are the paying customers.

The company separated its user base in this way because, as CEO Fabrizio Capobianco explained at OSBC, “in my opinion the community edition should be targeted at the enterprise, as they are more likely to contribute code back”.

Clearly this approach is not going to work for all software segments but the rise of cloud computing, SaaS/PaaS and hosting providers does point to a new target market for software vendors: ask the service providers to pay for the right to build or offer a service based on your software and sell that to enterprises, but allow enterprises to use it for free in-house.

This approach relies on the use of the AGPL license, which ensures that third parties are not able to offer the software as a service without being compelled to contribute back.

Even then there are no guarantees that enterprises would be more inclined to contribute back to the community. There is no way of compelling corporate contributions unless enterprise distributes the modified software beyond the firewall.

A lot of vendors would find it hard to change the habit of a lifetime and not expect enterprises to be their direct paying customers. Fabrizio’s other piece of advice, which is “do not sell anything to your community, do not even sell them support” would be particularly hard to stick to.

But if a vendor is asking enterprises to spend time and contribute code, then a start would be not asking them to also spend money.