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Archive for: November, 2008
November 28th, 2008
How open should your open source business strategy be
Running an open source company is not like running a proprietary company.
But how different should it be? Does the difference include publicly beating your breast about mistakes both real and imagined?
Sridhar Vembu is not afraid to find out. The CEO of AdventNet, creators of the Zoho online suite, has quickly become one of the industry’s biggest advocates of total transparency.
The SaaS provider publishes its status logs in real time. Vembu himself is an active blogger, often ranging far afield of his company’s business.
He’s also not afraid to confront himself as well as others, which he revealed in a recent note to this blog.
I suffer from a tendency to go swimming in tar. I start out trying to solve a specific problem. I become frustrated with the obvious deficiencies of the tools, and before I know it I’m sketching out ideas for platforms, frameworks, and architectures to solve a whole class of similar problems.
Vembu was responding to criticism from Paul Greenberg that Zoho has lots of tools but little integration, arguing that much of the integration work is taking place “under the hood” and out of sight.
I think the whole exchange illustrates a larger point, the amount of transparency it takes to succeed as an open source start-up.
We are accustomed to the idea that open source means you can see the code.
What Vembu and others are showing is that success in open source also requires transparency in other areas, even when it comes to development strategy, and a willingness to acknowledge what others may see as mistakes in that strategy.
This goes beyond merely engaging with your community, but treating critics as adults rather than as adversaries, and questions as opportunities to provide insight.
A willingness to listen and even change your mind in response to criticism is not something we see in many entrepreneurs. Is it an essential part of the open source business toolkit?
November 28th, 2008
What might end Apple's open source pass
Apple has replaced Microsoft as the chief foe of open source. (Picture from a student assignment sheet at Bodine High School in Pennsylvania.)
This was in part a matter of necessity. Apple had to put DRM on its iPod or it would get nothing to sell. It had to become a big advocate of the DMCA to keep its suppliers.
But now those suppliers have learned the only real beneficiary of DRM technology was Apple. It cemented their monopoly and control over the suppliers. Some are rebelling, in small ways.
Apple has embraced those moves, yet it continues to use the DMCA as a cudgel, aiming to kill open source competitors with claims of copyright violation.
Will the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s latest slam of Apple, over its attempt to kill a BluWiki thread with a DMCA order, mark a turning point?
For those unfamiliar with the story, Apple began “protecting” its iTunesDB file (necessary for syncing) with a checksum hash in September 2007. This kept people from using other music programs like Winamp and Songbird, alongside iPod files.
The hash was quickly hacked. Apple created another. When a BluWiki group called iPodHash arose to find a workaround, Apple slapped BluWiki with a DMCA takedown.
Get it? Apple had a near-monopoly on music players over a year ago, and is now using encryption and the DMCA to make competition a crime.
It does not surprise me that those in the open source movement, or the free Internet movement, would protest Apple’s actions.
What surprises me is the silence of the music industry. If this breaks that silence, then we will have a turning point. My guess is they no longer love their Cupertino overlords. Time to show it.
November 26th, 2008
Why engage in open source FUD?
Whether or not Gartner Group really is engaging in FUD regarding open source, there is a good reason for it.
There is big money in FUD. (Elmer Fudd did not become really dangerous until Warner Brothers gave him a gun.)
There is, in fact, more money in a software industry that requires FUD than in open source, which frankly doesn’t.
Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt thrive within an absence of information. They exist to justify “the leap,” the faith you must have to sign a big contract on limited information.
Entire industries, including market research, have existed for years to manufacture and dismiss FUD. To some degree this is one of those industries.
But FUD is one of those things forced out in the open source profit press. You can test the code, you can look at it, you can see if it is right for you, you can apply it, before you sign a contract for open source services.
Now in that press analogy above what is forced out may be oil or wine, fine products in their own right. And what is forced out by the open source FUD press may be the jobs of many people.
But analogies are just that. They are not reality. They are attempts to explain something hard in a way people will understand and relate to.
Marketing does that. Advertising does that. Market research does that. Journalism does that. We all try to find a hook to bring the customer back.
But in open source the customer can try before they buy, and enter any vendor relationship with their eyes wide open.
Which means a lot of people are going to have to find new ways to justify what we do, as the market moves decisively to open source in the next several years.
I don’t know what those things are, but I have faith we will find them. Even the good people at the Gartner Group. You’ll just have to excuse us as we go through a grieving process for what was before embracing what is and will be.
November 26th, 2008
A future so bright Tux needs shades
To hear Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin tell it, the operating system war is over and Linux has won. (Rockies Brewing makes other fine beers, too.)
“Linux represents the ultimate flight to safety in troubled times,” he said while offering some predictions for 2009.
“People want a platform they trust, that’s low cost, that allows them to consolidate infrastructure, and that’s Linux.
“Everyone uses Linux. It’s in the TV, it’s in your TiVo, it’s in all the settop boxes, it’s in your Sony camera. Make a trade on the NYSE and it’s there, search on Google and it’s Linux. Linux owns 85% of the supercomputer market. I’ve seen Linux in a milking machine.”
If Linux were a corporate effort its CEO would be into champagne wishes and caviar dreams. As it is, however, Zemlin is just looking for steady growth next year.
“The Foundation will continue to focus on the core things we do well. We’ll continue to support Linux and the kernel development. We’ll continue to work on the trademark.
“In April we’ll hold our Collaboration summit in San Francisco. We invited the Consumer Electronics Linux Forum to attend.
“We’ll expand the events we offer, including the first Linux Kernel Summit in Tokyo. We’ll be hosting the LinuxCon in September, and expect it to be successful. We’ll have content there for all communities. There will be rich training opportunities there.
“We’ll have more content on the Web. Expect more original research out of us. We authored ‘How to Participate in the Linux Community‘, a white paper.”
But there will be no big offices, no Linuxplex, and you won’t see Linus Torvalds on the cover of Forbes. “No one is expanding.”
So, I asked, what happened in 2008 to make 2009 look so bright?
November 25th, 2008
No surprise: Firefox 3.1 beta 3 planned for early January
It’s no big surprise that the Mozilla team decided for sure to release a third beta of Firefox 3.1 before moving to release candidate mode.
That was all but voted on at last week’s meeting (I thought) but Mozilla “corporate” PR folks informed me that no decision was made. The formal proposal for beta 3 was only issued today.
With that, beta 2 is now expected to be available in early December and beta 3 in early January, according to information available on the Mozilla web site. 
“After that discussion, the decision was to propose that we add a third beta milestone for Firefox 3.1,” lead developer Mike Beltzner wrote in his blog.
Aside from fixing the remaining “blockers,” a third beta will give testers more time to test recently added features debuting in beta 2 such as Private Browsing Mode, Worker Threads,
Speculative Parsing and TraceMonkey …. with wide-reaching changes like those listed above, it was felt that this was prudent, especially if it could be done without major impact to schedule,” Belzner wrote.
Mozilla said the code is essentially frozen and no new features will be added to Firefox 3.1. “Beta 3 code freeze will be scheduled based on the results of the triage, but is expected to be in early January 2009,” Beltzner summed up in the group’s meeting notes.
November 25th, 2008
A great time to start an open source company
Think of a redwood forest after the fire.
Great time to be a seed. Or imagine being an alligator after the peat in your swamp is burned out. Life is good.
In that same way, now may be the best time to launch an open source company. Especially if, as in the case of Mark deVisser, CEO of Sonatype, you have a technology with a ready market and competition that is easy to fend off.
Apache Maven is the project Sonatype is commercializing. Maven is a project management tool that is already strong in many enterprises, with 70,000 binary files for use with Spring, AJAX and other things.
It’s a great fit for customers, and a great fit for the times.
“We’re going beta with our professional version next week, and we’ve got 20 significant clients signed up who have seen that. We’re getting ready to do an Eclipse plug-in. There’s a lot of interest in that. And we have 7 more products lined up.”
Now is just the right time to launch this open source project into the commercial world because it can save enterprises money in project management, and the hard times let deVisser start with the project’s chief committers on-board.
“You have to have committers and you have to have product,” he said. It also helps if that product is popular. The Maven database was linked to 250 million times in September alone.
“I have 20 of the world’s best engineers on my payroll. They are now working full time to make Maven a better ecosystem.
“Open source projects are strengthened with a commercial company behind them. And for a large corporation, they want to know the vibrancy of your ecosystem and what committers you have on board.
“If you have the right names they are happy to sign contracts.”
Notice that deVisser didn’t brag on his salesforce. In fact, he has hired just one salesperson, someone who knows how to send out invoices. “They were productive within a week.”
Maybe this is a unique opportunity. The alternatives to Maven cost millions of dollars, and it’s already used by companies with up to 1,500 developers, in multiple locations, juggling 15 projects at once. You can’t do that with a spreadsheet.
“There are dynamics to Maven that make further growth likely,” he admitted.
“It’s a model for describing projects. It’s a language. And it’s in the interest of the people who speak that language to get others using it.” It’s a professional tool, and building professionalism around a community of professionals is simple logic.
So maybe this isn’t the best time to be launching a company, unless you’re an alligator or a redwood seed. But when disaster strikes the business forest it opens up new niches.
That’s an important lesson to remember at times like this.
November 24th, 2008
Microsoft releases Singularity under unapproved license
Microsoft has released some important code under an open source license — psych.
As with the image of blind justice to the right, you can look but you better not touch.
Singularity is the name of the project, a microkernel in which the kernel, drivers and applications are all under managed code. But the Microsoft Research License (MSR-LA) under which it is offered is not approved by the OSI.
The license allows only academic twiggling and any improvements go back to Redmond. Businesses can neither use it nor incorporate it in what they do under the license.
Had Microsoft wanted to make an open source release it has pushed two such licenses through the OSI process — the Microsoft Public License and the Microsoft Reciprocal License. It chose not to do this.
Instead it’s using MSR-LA, which as Palamida’s GPL3 blog notes is “free as in beer, not free speech.”
It is certainly intended to keep all creative work produced under it within the scope of the Singularity research project and also within Microsoft itself. The restriction on the code being “subjected” to the various terms of other licenses effectively isolates the code from being used with seemingly anything outside of this particular project. If the goal is to experiment and do research to develop new techniques and tools, the possibilities here seem unusually limited.
It is true that some academics who like to play with Microsoft code, and support Microsoft technologies like .Net, will find value here.
But everyone else needs to be wary. Lawyers bite. And Microsoft’s are hungry.
November 24th, 2008
Is the era of open source legal stupidity over?
I would love to go through 2009 and never have to use the tag “legal” on an open source blog post.
Wishes do come true. SCO has lost, to the tune of $2.54 million, plus interest. The era of obvious business method patenting may also be over, along with Microsoft’s patent threats, thanks to the decision In Re Bilski.
Some SCO partisans still don’t believe it, and lawyers like to get paid, but at some point in the economic cycle such arguments become an unaffordable luxury and we may well be at that point.
The legal status of open source and Linux now seems clear. The contracts are legal, the software is legit.
Where does the law go from here?
My hope is that it goes back to basics. New inventions deserve protection, but only for themselves, not for the idea of invention. And not every great idea must have someone with a hand out behind it.
Some ideas are just a hand up.
November 24th, 2008
Where value lies in open source
In the proprietary world software is seen as a capital good.
It’s like a truck. You invest in making the truck, and you expect others to pay you for using the truck. (This truck, as we noted in January, 2007, contains a data center.)
As Slashdot noted over the weekend, some open source executives still believe this myth. But the nature of the code disproves the myth.
Since everyone sees the code, anyone can fork the code. Thus anyone can profit from the code. It’s like a truck with the key sitting in the ignition.
But there are other ways to make money. Knowledge of the code can bring you money. Knowing how to make money with the code can bring you money.
This is a bit like fixing the truck or being a really good driver of the truck.
There are many more ways to make money with open source software than with an open source truck:
- A regular update service and security check.
- Integration services, tieing your software into larger systems.
- Selling what the software does as a service.
- Teaching people how to use, or extend the software.
- Putting your software into a piece of hardware and selling it.
None of these routes to profit is as easy as just selling a license and taking someone’s money without having to legally promise that the software will work.
What writing open source software does is give you an opportunity to use your time to make money. Selling the software itself, in the long run, is a losing proposition since anyone can just take it. But that’s the old world.
Welcome to the new one.
November 22nd, 2008
Open source and health care reform
Computing is said to be the “secret sauce” enabling health care reform.
But after over a year covering the field for ZDNet, I sometimes feel I have been transported to the late 1980s.
There are a host of proprietary, incompatible standards. The leaders in the hospital IT field are archipelagos of information, and woe to the customer who finds gear on the wrong island.
Acesis has found a way forward. Seeking a way to automate the process of peer review, in which outside doctors check cases looking for better ways to do things, CEO Kevin Chesney created a glue to solve even bigger problems.
It’s an open source stack. SQL at the bottom, Java in the middle, Adobe Flex in the application, and XML tieing it all together.
The product meets a specific need that has not been met before, but the underlying solution addresses “a problem that exists across all health care,” the capture and guiding of data toward a common result.
The profit potential here lies in the fact that reviews aren’t just used for best practices but (as the chart shows) to direct reimbursements or, to put it another way, make sure the hospital gets paid.
On my personal blog I have made big assumptions about the implications of all this. The main point is that open source and Internet-based technologies can become the glue that fits all these archipelagos together.
It will take real leadership to make this happen, and create what I call the Health Internet. But the way to do it is now clear.
And with Acesis, we have a proof of concept.
November 21st, 2008
Ulteo offers server based computing solution for Linux desktops, apps
Ulteo is now offering what Microsoft and Citrix will not: a server based computing solution for the Linux desktop and Linux applications.
The company, which late last year launched the first OpenOffice open source desktop online, has announced the availability of the Open Virtual Desktop (OVD), which is essentially the server installable and free version of its online desktop.
Unlike Microsoft’s and Citrix’s respective terminal service solutions, Ulteo’s Open Virtual Desktop serves up the Linux desktop to any web browser including Firefox and Internet Explorer. The company plans to serve up Windows applications in early 2009, making it, its CEO says, an ideal solution for companies with mixed Linux and Windows workloads.
“In essence, we have just released a Microsoft Terminal Server (MTS) solution for Linux. MTS is the foundation on which any traditional
Server Based Computing solution like Citrix is based. So neither Microsoft nor Citrix has a solution like us for Linux. And by
the end of Q1 2009 we are going to offer the mix of Linux and windows applications, or each separately, which is going to be a very appealing
proposition that again these guys are not addressing the way we do,” wrote Thierry Koehrlen, CEO an vice president of product development.
Ulteo was founded by Gael Duval, also founder of MandrakeSoft and its popular Linux desktop.
By definition, OVD requires no client software installation. The Open Virtual Desktop provides an administration console, which can be linked with an Active Directory or a LDAP
user directory, and uses CIFS fileservers such as Windows or Samba to allow users to access their docs from applications running on the Virtual Desktop layer.
Ulteo offers a free community edition and a commercial edition for enterprise use with various levels of professional support.
Ulteo plans to offer a full Virtual Desktop Infrastructure solution sometime next year, but sees cash on the table for traditional desktop delivery models right now. “Our VDI solution, the new paradigm, will come out mid next year because the whole current offering is rather immature …. but the traditional Citrix business is very mature and
there is a big need and actual demand right now.”
Ulteo’s online open source desktop offering has been available for one year and the company claims to have delivered 140,000 user sessions to date.
November 21st, 2008
Can open source sustain a talent agency?
I hesitated to comment on the Dan Lyons contretemps because it seemed so common and it seemed there was little to add.
It’s a story very familiar to me. You have a job as a reporter but you insist on drawing outside the lines. The boss slaps your hand.
It’s the old dispute between corporate and personal credibility that open source has found such interesting ways to deal with.
As I have mentioned here before, most of us on ZDNet are not drawing a salary, as Dan Lyons is. We’re paid on performance. Our bonds are thus looser than Dan’s are as a salaried employee.
But we still follow the golden rule. He who has the gold makes the rules.
The corporate will is fueled by advertising. In exchange for having someone else market me, I accede to that will. If we can’t sell ads against it, we can’t do it.
Very few writers have found a way to replace that corporate will. If we sell ads against our own stuff, or spend time on SEO, on design, or on other traffic-boosting measures, we’re working on our business rather than in it.
We become, in short, businessmen. Like the chef who opens a restaurant, we wanted to cook but find ouselves merely providing employment to other cooks.
Writers, by their nature, are cooks. Not restauranteurs. Our route to freedom is made for us by agents, who market what we most want to do, leaving us free to do it.
Trouble is, open source business models have not yet found a way to fund such people. Especially in journalism. We’re all free agents, if freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.
So, want to start an open source talent agency? Not an employment agency, a talent agency. Seek talent, represent it for projects, and pass the work off for a cut of the money.
You probably won’t wind up as Michael Eisner. More likely you will be Broadway Danny Rose.
But there is an opportunity here. And when the economy is at its worst isn’t that all we’re looking for?
November 21st, 2008
Metrics of open source success
Matt Asay has a great chart up today, showing traffic to open source project sites increasing throughout the year. With his ear to the ground he can detect no news drought, either.
Then he concludes with a provocative question: “The traffic is increasing to open-source sites. Will the money?”
For two generations now those who work with or on computers have seen money as the main metric of success. By “money” we mean “big money” — IPO money, Robin Leach money, bling-bling-my-daughter-could-become-Paris-Hilton money.
Bill Gates money.
In traditional business models money is the end product, the measuring stick, the reason we’re doing it.
Not that there is anything wrong with that, but the message of both FOSS and open source has always been that is not the only metric.
There is such a thing as enough money. And there are other drives, equally vital, that open source can satisfy. Some are drives felt keenly by people with lots of money, while with others money is irrelevant.
Altruism, for instance. Money people speak of altruism as though it were akin to communism, but this drive is common to all religions, and even felt by people with no religion at all.
Accomplishment. Validation. These are what drive my own career. When I have enough money to keep a warm roof, an open broadband connection, and a cup of warm tea beside me, I think of these as being far more vital than a few extra dollars.
What’s great about open source, in my view, is how it can satisfy all these drives.
Linus Torvalds has long been the avatar of the open source movement, much as he dislikes the attention. He is not rich. He is comfortable and, by all accounts, happy. He does work he likes, has interesting problems to solve, and he can buy a micro-brew in a Portland bar without being surrounded by sycophants.
Or consider my late father-in-law. Through hard work he saved plenty of money. But his life was about the kids he educated, the people he helped, and the support he could give to others. That’s why they called it The Greatest Generation.
Anyone can do that, in this generation or the next. We can’t all be Bill Gates, but we can all be Linus Torvalds, or Bennie Steinhauser. With open source we can all be successful.
You may not get rich, but you can do important work which helps people and could bring you a decent living.
Show me the money? Maybe not. Show me the validation? Yes, often.
November 20th, 2008
An open source fundraiser for the ages
Let me admit up-front that I am a big fan of Bruce Kushnick.
A market analyst by trade, his Teletruth has been giving the phone monopolists truth for nearly a decade — they just think it’s hell.
When an analyst is telling the industry what it wants to hear, or looking where it wants him to look, money comes easy. When he comes to be seen as an enemy — as Kushnick is — the industry’s answer is to starve him out.
Thus Kushnick’s New Networks Institute lives a hand-to-mouth existance. He’s like Richard Stallman without the fame and glory.
But he does have something Mr. Stallman hasn’t got. A piano. And the chops to make some good music on it.
So he’s doing a fundraiser. Specifically he’s planning a concert, next month, at a New York club called The Duplex. Paying customers get a copy of his album, “Late Night with Kush.” (That’s the cover art at the top.)
I have heard of telecoms doing fundraisers for music before, but have you ever heard of it going the other way?
November 20th, 2008
Some open source attacks on Windows may be unfair
Pingdom recently did a comparison of uptime for the home pages of major OS distributors — 16 Linux distros, Apple, and Microsoft. (The image is a reduced screen grab of their chart — see the whole thing.)
Over the course of a month Apple’s downtime was 2 minutes, putting them in the middle of the pack. Microsoft’s? An hour and 19 minutes.
This proves what, exactly? That we all need to switch to Knoppix, whose home page experienced zero downtime? That Arch Linux really stinks?
Microsoft’s corporate home page is a favorite target for script kiddies and no-goodniks everywhere. The page is complex and constantly changing. And no matter how big your budget the page, in the end, is always the work of a small team.
I can’t imagine Microsoft has someone whose job it is to sit in front of a terminal with the home page in front of them and jump or ring an alarm bell if it goes down.
Now, I have to give Red Hat credit. Both their corporate and Fedora home pages were bulletproof during the test period. But what if the power goes out tomorrow? Is their software suddenly bogus?
There are a lot of ways to compare operating systems in a Web environment. One is how your own home page holds up, and the pages behind it. Another is to look at faults over a period of time and count only those tied to software.
But this comparison, to my way of thinking, is unfair and silly.
Let me end on a humorous anecdote. My son, who is in high school, has a running gag. He wants us to give him a grant so he can create a “time machine,” based on an experiment in which he throws rocks at our house until it goes back in time.
Should I send him to Pingdom for the grant money?
November 19th, 2008
Can database lock-in be broken
Once again the folks at Ingres are out with a version of their open source, enterprise-class database — Version 9.2 this time.
It’s filled with nifty new features and buzzwords. Best of all you can download it right now.
Ingres is based on an implementation of PostgreSQL, which itself was first conceived under the code name Ingres. Moving data between the two is not terribly hard.
Still, the continuing difficulty which Ingres and mySQL have had in gaining market share (Oracle’s dominance continues to grow) leads me to ask, once again, whether the lock-in of a database vendor can ever really be broken.
It’s no longer a question of price, or really of value. Oracle is knocking the stuffings out of free and nearly everyone else — save SAP, IBM and Microsoft — have gone away.
Once a scaled enterprise goes down the Oracle road — or down any road leading to Oracle — the “Oracle tax” becomes like a rounding error, eminently fair.
You can argue all you want that this is unfair, but you can’t argue with numbers.
Oracle has lost one-fourth of its value in the stock market’s collapse — but that’s a fraction of what its rivals have lost. Widows and orphans have a friend in Uncle Larry (above).
It seems to be an Iron Law. As a database structure grows more complex the cost of shifting vendors becomes prohibitive. Free becomes expensive and expensive nearly free.
November 19th, 2008
Will identity be open source?
The release of ArisIS, a Version 1.0 identity framework from Open Liberty, could be a milestone in corporate identity.
It could be Sun’s second biggest contribution to open source, second only to Java in importance.
It combines two projects formerly code-named Aristotle and Wakame, the first a governance framework, the second a client library.
Classics scholars may remember Aristotle as the first Greek to take identity seriously. Try the wakame with sake and some rice crackers before the sushi comes out — yum-o.
The release follows six months of relative radio silence from Liberty, which last posted news in May. One of the last missives before this announcement began as follows:
I am in Mountain View, surfing on google’s ubiquitous wifi, finishing up preparations for my IIW demo. It has been a very busy (yet somewhat behind the scene) couple of months for OpenLiberty
It’s fun to imagine that right after this the monolith got him.
Seriously this may have been one of the the toughest jobs open source has yet attempted. Not from a coding standpoint, but from a political standpoint.
Not only have project managers had to explain and defend the need for secure identities to a consumer audience which thinks it Big Brother, but they had to navigate among the interests of several big-name vendors — Sun, Oracle and IBM among them.
The biggest achievement was to implement CARML (Client Attribute Requirements Markup Language), a sort of HTML for identity management, over existing protocols like LDAP, SAML, WS-Trust, ID-WSF, and others.
Client code is simplified in what are called ArisID-Beans, based on CARML declarations created at the top of an application — so it takes the skills of a web developer, not a programmer, to make it happen and follow the work.
That’s important because following the work, not just that of the people on a project but the person who set up the rules, is an essential element in achieving transparency.
Transparency, it turns out, may be the key that unlocks the use of secure identity to the world. Watching the watchers is as vital as watching what the watcher watches.
November 18th, 2008
Open source journalism goes local
ZDNet is a good example of open source journalism applied to a vertical market.
(To respond to the graphic at the right click here.)
We use open source tools. A small staff works with a large group of writers who are paid based on performance. The key is to monetize pages enough so income equals outgo with a bit left over.
The New York Times reports that something along these lines is starting to happen in local journalism. The story focuses on the editorial effort, young reporters in an office talking on telephones.
This is a bit like analyzing a bull from the rear end. It’s the wrong way to go about it. The right way to evaluate an open source enterprise is through the business model. The output is a byproduct.
In the case of local journalism the job is to organize and advocate the market. Just as ZDNet organizes and advocates tech for you, a local newspaper should do the same for its community.
In business this is done through a directory. Each business you mention is a push pin on a Google map, linked to the story, and linked to its Web site. They don’t have a Web site? Sell them one.
By building an organized Web presence for businesses large and small, you build the continuing revenues any editorial effort rides on.
The key metrics are links and traffic. Keep building the former, monetize the latter, and you can build a business online. Even if you’re doing local news.
November 18th, 2008
Open source is not all about the money
Dave Rosenberg is worried about Sun, a question discussed here last week.
“If it fails,” he writes, “Sun will be the harbinger of sorrow for the rest of the open source world.”
The open source business, yes. The open source world? Not so much.
Open source is a fact of life. Gartner Group estimates all large businesses will be deploying it within a year. Linux is extending its reach from the server to the client. Open source applications like Firefox are highly competitive.
On the other hand, the open source business model is not doing so well. It’s not bringing in the green. When given something for free and then asked to buy support, most customers say “thanks, but no thanks” especially when times get tough.
But there is a lot more to the open source story than the vendor’s perspective. There are savings for the entire economy. There is transparency. There is cooperation among companies which depend upon software to run their businesses.
Most important is the work done by the software. That work can still make money, in many ways. We have really just scratched the surface of how to do this. Support contracts are just one of many routes to profit.
You can embed open source into hardware. You can sell what the software does. You can use the software to make yourself more productive and sell your work. Many routes.
Then there is the code. When closed source businesses go under their code usually dies with them. That’s not true for open source. That is very important for users and for those who follow the failed company in the market. They build from a higher base.
Or consider Sun itself. It was circling the drain when it committed to open source. Other companies in similar straits just crashed and burn, leaving a greasy mess behind. Now we have Java, Solaris, a real legacy.
No matter what happens to Sun open source is not going away. Financially it may find its level to be lower than its boosters first thought, but there are many more ways to compute value other than the change in your pocket.
Such as the change all around you.
November 17th, 2008
From Windows Capable to the Linux laptop
I think you can draw a straight line from the Vista Capable brouhaha to recent introductions of laptop Linux by HP and Dell, once Microsoft’s most loyal OEMs.
(That is the HP 1000 to the right, from the screen of our own Erica Ogg.)
Up in Seattle, TechFlash is gleefully poring over court filings related to Microsoft requiring a specific graphics chipset in order for OEMs to get what it thought was a coveted designation.
But I think the more important result came about without the use of lawyers. That designation became less coveted.
Windows advocates will argue that the netbook form factor was inevitable. They will point to growing support for the form factor within Microsoft itself. They will call Linux alternatives el-cheapos, even spin all this as a threat to Linux.
What’s great is we don’t have to argue about it. No politics, not even corporate politics, will determine the outcome. (Oh, goody.)
The market will decide.
In line with that, HP’s efforts deserve special attention. When you put a famous designer’s name on it, you’re targeting consumers, not those geeks at ZDNet. And, to keep prices low, these will be all-Linux models.
(I can’t wait for the ad where a model falls on the runway, Chris Berman screams “Down Goes Frazier,” but her Linux laptop still works.)
Just as important as HP’s efforts to make a true mass market Linux laptop is its effort to make a profit at it, even using the old mobile phone business model of bundling wireless service with the device. This has already worked in Europe.
When you’re talking about PCs retailing at $4-600 each, it’s easy to see that price being under $200 with a two-year wireless contract. Works for Apple. Can it work for Linux?
Personally I find something touchy and silly in some of HP’s efforts in this direction. Women want the same things from their laptops as men, for instance. But the key point is they are serious here, not just about the engineering but the marketing.
Can we build a serious market for the Linux laptop in 2009? Yes we can.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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