Misunderstanding open source #1: Fixate on Linux, Firefox, Eclipse

I have lost count of the number of times that various commentators about open source have fallen into this trap – thinking that every open source project is like, or should be like, Linux, Firefox, and Eclipse.

Certainly those projects are shining examples of the power and value of open source, but over-focusing on their structure, operation, and community is harmful.

Open source spans the continuum from a single-developer hobbyist ’scratching their itch’ up to the global, foundation-guided, multi-layered Linux.

The same continuum occurs in the retail market – everything from a couple of kids with a lemonade stand, all the way up to Walmart.

The problem comes when open source columnists, commentators, and bloggers think that all open source projects are the same. Thinking that ideas, solutions, priorities, politics, motivations, and economics can be applied uniformly along these continuums is nonsense. Its like telling the kids on the lemonade stand that they need to follow Walmart’s example when it comes to marketing or negotiating with suppliers.

The problem is that most of the writers about open source have no actual experience of open source development. All they know is what they read and hear, and most of that happens to be about Linux, Firefox, and Eclipse.

An example of falling into this trap is in one of Dana Blankenhorn’s recent posts http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=4869

What the history of the last few years tells me is that the best home for an open source project is not a company, but a foundation.

Sure, Dana, but there are over 200,000 open source projects. You think we should create 200,000 foundations? This is the kind of nonsense people write when they make this mistake.

I agree that foundations are a great way to govern open source projects. But this approach will probably only ever work for a minute fraction of all projects.

The acquisition and exit costs of open source are not ‘zero’

Michael Tiemann on a blog at opensource.org wrote yesterday about his presentation at the upcoming Open Forum World in Paris.

http://opensource.org/node/471

In this post he talks about the acquisition and exit costs of public procurement processes. In parts he seems to be indicating that the acquisition and exit costs of open source are zero or close to. These statements falls into the ‘free as in beer’ trap.

The acquisition costs of open source software are often be perceived to be higher than with proprietary software. This is because proprietary software companies have squads of pre-sales engineers who they will deploy to provide ‘free’ support and services to a prospective customer. Of course these services are not really free because the pre-sales costs are built into the proprietary license fee. Government software procurement processes are particularly bad at perpetuating this situation because they expect a lot of vendor participation during the process.

The exit costs of open source systems are not zero either. It it true that it might sometimes be easier to get your data out of an open system but most proprietary vendors have migration tools to help move data into their system from a competitors – and of course pre-sales engineers to help out.

I agree that public procurement processes are not ideal. I have blogged about this in the past:
http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2009/05/18/government-procurement-and-open-source/
http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/cancellation-of-13m-cognos-deal-highlights-problems-of-government-software-procurement-process/

Changes to procurement processes definitely would be beneficial, but in order to achieve this we need to provide compelling evidence and arguments that are rational, balanced, and complete. Personally I feel that much of Michale’s post is written in a way that does not produce this effect.

p.s. if anyone are opensource.org is reading this, your commenting system is broken. When I tried to comment about this post I got a JSON string when I hit the submit button.

Microstrategy and Panorama showing signs of stress from open source

A while back Red Hat did a great video called ‘Truth Happens’ based on this Mohandas Gandhi quote

First they ignore you…

Then they laugh at you…

Then they fight you…

Then you win…

The video is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjSDAUykkzQ

MicroStrategy

Earlier this year MicroStrategy released a ‘free’ reporting edition. At the time BI commentators such as Cindi Howson did not see this as a strategy against open source – despite the fact that in the database and middle-ware space Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle all used this ploy. Now, it seems, MicroStrategy is contacting community members and bloggers in the open source BI space to ‘push’ their free offering.

http://twitter.com/josvandongen/statuses/4313121049

This indicates to me that their ‘free’ edition is, at least in part, an anti-open source gambit. This puts MicroStrategy in the ‘then they fight you…’ stage. Only one more stage to go MicroStrategy. We’re cheering for you…

Panorama Software

Further behind Microstrategy in the progression is Panorama. They seem to be moving from the ‘First they ignore you…’ to the ‘then they laugh at you…’ stage – judging from this post on their site:

http://www.panorama.com/blog/2009/09/will-saas-lead-open-source-to-extinction/

I particularly like this quote:

Well, advocates for political correctness will be happy to hear that cloud is chasing open source out the window, especially in the BI space.

This is amusing because, to my knowledge, the only BI companies to go under this year have been, wait for it…, SaaS BI providers – not open source BI companies or on-premise BI companies. First Lucidera and, this week, Blink Logic. To quote Captain Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean:

Think you can outrun the world? You know the problem with being the last of anything, by and by there be none left at all.

So Panorama seems to be firmly in the second stage, with two more to go. Keep going Panorama, maybe you can catch up with MicroStrategy. We’re cheering for you…

Pentaho V3.5 beta available

A beta version (known as ‘Release Candidate 1′) of Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition V3.5 is now available for customers to try.

If you are not a customer and want to evaluate the Pentaho BI Suite Enterprise Edition you can either try the online demo or download a full version of the suite and try it out for 30 days with support.

Microsoft not changing Open Source strategy with GPL drivers

The recent release of some drivers under a GPL V2  license has got some people jumping up and down with excitement that Microsoft is changing its open source strategy.

Given that Microsoft was violating the GPL by not putting the drivers into open source the truth seems a little rosy.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/23/microsoft_hyperv_gpl_violation/

My guess is that, when faced with the situation, they only had a few choices:

1) Withdraw the drivers – and withdraw from that market.

2) Fight the GPL in court. This would directly contradict Microsoft’s stated position and generate a huge amount of negative press.

3) Put the drivers out under GPL V2, and turn it into a PR win. There is probably not much code, and no patented code in the drivers, but they would have checked this first.

Given these three options I think they chose the one that was the least painful. Hardly a change in strategy.

I will be on BlogTalkRadio – Frugal Friday Show this Friday (May 29th)

This coming Friday I will be on the Frugal Friday Show – http://www.frugalfridayshow.com talking about open source-related stuff.

The show is hosted by Ken Hess (an author and consultant and Linux blogger on DaniWeb) and Jason Perlow who is a blogger on ZDNet

The show starts at 6:30 Eastern and I’ll be on at 7pm. I am looking forward to it, should be fun.

You can listen online – http://www.blogtalkradio.com/frugalfriday

Is Microsoft Changing Their Open Source Strategy?

Jay Lyman at the 451 Group put out a post yesterday – Microsoft realigning closer to open source

I usually agree with Jay’s take on thing but not this time.

You can read my full take on Microsoft’s strategy in this post – Microsoft’s open source strategy

Microsoft and the Linux Foundation are aligned against a common enemy in the American Law Institute, it does not change anything between Microsoft and Linux or open source.

Microsoft learned 10 years ago that it is counter-productive to market against open source. Jay is correct that Microsoft is not targeting open source, instead they are targeting the users of open source (like TomTom). They can’t scare open source (code) into paying Microsoft, but they can scare users into doing that.

Microsoft’s ideal situation is for us to either pay to use their software, or pay to use a licensed open source product that pays royalties to Microsoft. The Novell deal is a good example of the latter, and now TomTom. I don’t think Microsoft is trying to ‘hurt’ open source. I think they are trying to find ways to get open source users to pay license fees to Microsoft (by asserting IP violations). That way Microsoft gets paid either way – revenue goes up but sales/marketing expenses stay the same.

Jay says that Microsoft has not made any IP accusations for ‘quite some time’. The TomTom suit only started 4 months ago and ended in March. That is a very short time in legal circles. I think it is very premature to say that Microsoft has abandoned a strategy they spent 10 years building up.

Codeplex does contain some Microsoft code, but nothing core that I could find. For example, from the wording, the Silverlight Toolkit seems to be developed by Microsoft but  – ‘CodePlex is hosted by Microsoft. Microsoft does not control, review, revise, endorse or distribute the third party projects on this site.’

What’s worse Microsoft’s ’shared source’ is for reference only. If you happen to copy any code fragments from it you could be facing a legal battle – ‘You are warned that when you build a run-time image based on an OS design that contains shared source code, your run-time image might contain private code that cannot be released in a product under the terms of the Microsoft EULA’

Microsoft is certainly changing. A few years ago they did not have a discernible open source strategy (but I think they were working on it for years). Since then they have made their strategy known and they started to execute on it (Novell, TomTom). I see no evidence lately that they have given up that strategy. So I expect that we will see more IP-based legal cases against the users of open source.

Government procurement and open source

ZDNet’s Dana Blankenhorn did a post recently about potential changes in the European Union’s procurement process for software – Will European rules impact open source business models? This is an interesting topic.

NOiV, the Dutch national resource center on open source has identified some of the issues in the current procurement process. Rishab Aiyer Ghosh from the United Nations University created a good presentation on the topic: OSOR Guideline on Public Procurement and Open Source Software In it he lists several problems with the current processes including tenders requesting a specific vendor’s technology.

One problem not listed is the cost of tendering. The tendering process is long and expensive for a vendor, in many cases it involves filling out huge RFPs and flying people in to sell and ‘hand-hold’. If you tender for a government project and don’t get the deal, you have to recoup the money you wasted from somewhere else. What governments don’t realize is that when they buy proprietary software the money is recouped from them. All proprietary software companies build the cost of these failed sales attempts into their license fee. As a consumer you are not only paying for the cost of selling to you, you are also paying for a percentage of the cost of failed sales.

Governments are interested in using more open source and commercial open source software because they are expecting a cost reduction. The problem is that they do not seem to understand where this cost reduction comes from.

When you compare proprietary and open source software:

• Proprietary software has an up-front license fee. The revenue from new licenses is mainly used for sales and marketing expenses. Typically sales and marketing expenses are about 70-100% of the license revenue. In other words the license fee pays for the cost of selling software to the consumers.
• Commercial open source (whether pure-services, open-core, or gatherer model) does not have an up-front license fee. With these models the openness, transparency, and distribution mechanisms enable a mass-marketing or no-marketing approach to be used. The basis for this is that the consumer is able to prove to their satisfaction that the software does what they need – they don’t need anyone to sell the software to them.

According to the European Union procurement directives, any paid services related to software need to go through their tender processes. So any commercial open source company tendering is expected to undergo this expensive process. But open source and commercial open source software has no license fee, so there is nowhere to bury this cost.

This creates a illogical system. Governments want a cheaper product but have a process that is still expensive to participate in. It’s like asking for a cheap 5-star hotel. Either:

• You want the vendors to hand-hold and nurse you through the tendering process and will accept that they are going to charge you for this.
• You want a lower priced product and are willing to participate in a process where you prove that the software does what you need.

You cannot have it both ways.

Pentaho / OpenMRS student project at Intel International Science and Engineering Fair

Over the past few months I have been mentoring two students, Zueber Juma and Tej Amin, from Lake Highland Preparatory School. They have been working on a science fair project related to OpenMRS and the PEPFAR aids relief program using Pentaho’s technology. They set out to prove that medical record data from OpenMRS can be transformed using open source software into data structures that can be used to create PEPFAR reports. This system would allow AIDS treatment centers to create their own reports, instead of sending their data to the USA for report preparation.

They placed second at the country and state level and are now in Reno for the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.

Good luck guys.

Open source fanatics – choose wisely

Every once in a while I get a feeling that one of the things holding open source / free software back is the people who believe in it the most. Today is one of those days.

I love open source. I think open source is the best and most efficient way to create software. I believe that in the future the majority of software will be open source. I believe that future is getting closer little by little. But it is still a long way off. I cannot envision a future where all software is open source, at least not in any time-frame that makes it worth thinking about. If you want a future where all or most software is open source you need to accept that businesses large and small must be able participate – and by participate I mean use, create, and make money from open source. Not only should businesses be able to participate, they should be more successful when they do. There is no possible future where open source is predominant and, at the same time, businesses cannot participate.

Open source is very well established in some software domains today. But the roots of the open source movement go back 20-30 years. The rise and adoption of open source has been unstoppable in numerous markets, but it has also been slow and gradual. The adoption of open source operating systems has been slow and gradual. The adoption of open source databases and middleware has been slow and gradual. The adoption of open source applications has been slow and gradual. Look at the adoption of Linux, or Firefox, or OpenOffice, or MySQL – steady and unstoppable, but gradual in every case. Open source has been around a long time, and adoption is ever increasing – we are in a world that is more receptive to open source every day. This is clearly an evolution – any revolution that takes over 20 years is pedestrian by any measure.

Given that we are evolving gradually and that businesses must be able to participate, here is my issue today. We are at a point where one of the world’s largest software vendors (Oracle) is suddenly going to hold some major open source cards (MySQL, OpenSolaris, Java etc). Is this part of the forward evolution? Or is this a set back? Here are two extreme outcomes:

Extreme Outcome #1: Oracle has a great experience with its new open source portfolio. Oracle becomes a true believer. Oracle starts to build new open source software or open source its existing applications one by one. Everyone sees the success Oracle is having with open source. This forces their competitors to create open source offerings. It encourages other companies to create or acquire open source software. It encourages the VCs to fund more open source startups. It encourages more startups to use an open source model. The amount of open source software increases and the percentage of proprietary software in the world decreases. The rate of open source adoption increases.

Extreme Outcome #2: Oracle has a really bad experience with its new open source portfolio. All the projects get forked, even before the deal is formally signed. The employees are actively lured away from Oracle. Everyone that can, clusters around the forks. Oracle gets zero revenue and no community traction. The open source pieces of the Sun deal turn out to be worthless. Everyone sees this. All big software companies assume that acquiring open source companies is really hard. Oracle is one of the best when it comes to buying companies: if Oracle can’t make it work, no-one can. Big companies stop acquiring open source companies. Big companies don’t consider open sourcing their products. Without the possibility of an acquisition,VCs are hesitant to invest in open source startups. Without funding startups choose the safer option – proprietary software. The amount of proprietary software rises, the rate of open source adoption lowers.

I am not a great fan of Oracle. My initial reaction to the news of the Sun acquisition was negative. But if you are a fan of open source Extreme Outcome #1 has to be the better one.

Look at the groups and individuals that are creating alliances, and forks, and protesting against Oracle. Ask yourself what their motivation is. Is it for the long term benefit of open source – or the short term benefit of themselves? Many of the companies involved are MySQL or Sun partners who think they won’t be able to compete with Oracle’s existing partners. They are just looking after the interests of their shareholders. Their actions have nothing to do with open source, nor should they be. They are entitled to act in their own interest. I believe they are not acting in the best interests of open source, but many people seem to assume that they are.

Are you are an open source advocate who has no direct involvement with MySQL or Sun? I encourage you to step back and look at the big picture. Think about the future you want and how we can get there. Make up your own mind. Before you cheer for the alliances and the forks, ask yourself if you are acting in the best interests of open source.