If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. That popular aphorism never seemed truer than today when reading The Wall Street Journal's analysis of Wikipedia's declining volunteer base. Despite countless articles extolling the virtues and seeming omnipotence of "community" over the past several years, the technology industry seems to be settling back into old habits:
Command and control.
It's not that the "wisdom of crowds" idea hasn't influenced the way technology is developed, or how news and information are gathered and distributed. It has.
It's just that the promised sea change has proved to be far less disruptive than we expected.
Take Wikipedia. As the Journal calls out, volunteerism has declined as the ease of contribution has waned. The easy topics are taken. Rules for upping the quality have proliferated. Wikipedia is becoming...corporate.
Nick Carr has been pointing this out for years, but it's only now becoming self-evident. Wikipedia has grown up and, in so doing, is looking more and more like the encyclopedic world it sought to displace.
Nor is it alone. Open-source business models increasingly look like proprietary software models, as the Software Freedom Law Center's Bradley Kuhn suggests.
Even uber successful open-source communities like Joomla have discovered that reliance on volunteers falls short of what a few good paid developers can do.
That's a positive discovery by Joomla. A more worrisome discovery is that Mozilla remains far too dependent on Google to fund development of Firefox. Mozilla has lots of community, right? Yes. As Mozilla CEO John Lilly has said, 40 percent of Firefox's code comes from developers not employed by the foundation.
But that still leaves 60 percent, and virtually all of the core development work, that relies on "company," not "community," which is how much of the world's best open-source software is developed: funded by IBM and other "community" members.
For those who think "community" is a euphemism for "everyone else doing my work for me," think again. It just doesn't work that way.
Of course, companies can go to the opposite extreme, too. Apple, for one, gets beat up for a heavy-handed approach to its App Store approval process. Apple, in other words, doesn't seem to care one iota what "the community" thinks.
But then, this is the same App Store with more than 100,000 applications and 2 billion downloads to date. No wonder Apple isn't apologizing: it's clearly benefiting most people most of the time, or the application developers would take their complaints to a different platform.
But they haven't, and this calls out the problem with deifying "community." It's accepted wisdom that one shouldn't "anger the community," as if it's some unknown god that demands the occasional virgin to be thrown into the volcano. But the truth is, "community" is not really much different from the "customers" and "partners" the industry has sought to satisfy for decades.
So, yes, by all means seek to work with your community of users and partners, but don't expect "the community" to do your work for you. Guess what? "The community" already has a day job, and can't afford to work full-time for you unless you pay it.
All of which leaves us largely where we started. The most successful software companies don't rely on some vague "community" to build their products. Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Google (Android, anyone?), and even, increasingly, Red Hat (JBoss, KVM, etc.) build great software based on their own, internal plans and expertise and "the community" buys it (or resells/embeds/etc. it).
The big shift, however, has been in the transparency of the feedback loop, which has been a welcome change in the industry. So, to the extent that "community" simply implies a more open way of developing and distributing software, then, yes, it has been significant.
But it hasn't changed the world. It has only changed the way the dominant technology companies...dominate.
For those who have fret about Microsoft fighting against open source, I have news for you: Microsoft's impact on open source may be worse as a friend than as an enemy.
Now with MySQL inside! Yes, we can.
(Credit: Microsoft)Over the past few years, Microsoft has steadily warmed to open source, to the point that it now hosts its own open-source code repository and has seen its Microsoft Public License used more often than venerable licenses like the Mozilla Public License or the Eclipse Public License, according to new data released by Black Duck Software.
The open-source world should be worried.
After all, as IBM's Savio Rodrigues points out, an open-source-friendly Microsoft no longer has qualms about embedding open-source software like MySQL into its products. In particular, Microsoft supports MySQL as part of its Azure cloud service...without paying Sun a dime for the privilege.
It's a completely legitimate way to offer open-source value to Microsoft customers, and is very similar to what Amazon is doing with MySQL.
However, as Rodrigues notes, it's not necessarily good for MySQL, or other open-source projects that could be used this same way:
The larger point is if Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google, Cisco, EMC/VMware, or Oracle/Sun offer a simple and supported cloud service for running MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss, Mule, or Apache HTTP instances, what reason do customers have to acquire "enterprise subscriptions" from the vendors developing these open source projects? Until now, the value of an open source "enterprise subscription" has largely been access to support and access to administration and management tooling. In the case of MySQL, the former is provided by Amazon RDS and Azure SQL as part of the per-hour service. Again in the case of MySQL, the latter is rendered unnecessary or replicated through Amazon RDS and Azure SQL tools.
Consider it a super-friendly, and super-dangerous, bear hug.
For those who think that this affects commercial open source and not community-led open source, think again. Money and open source don't grow on trees.
The explosion of open-source development has directly correlated to the explosion of cash investments into open-source projects, starting with IBM's $1 billion commitment to Linux. MySQL, the database, would be a pale shade of what it is today without MySQL AB, the company that has funded the overwhelming majority of its development.
So, is this cause to castigate Microsoft? No. After all, it's really no different from what Amazon, Google, Apple, and others do with open source.
Rather, Microsoft's move should serve as a reminder to open-source companies that they need to upgrade their business models or risk being rendered irrelevant by the cloud and all that it enables vendors to do with open-source software.
After all, the protections that the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open-source licenses offer in the traditional software world are essentially meaningless in the networked world, where software is used to create services, but isn't actually distributed.
This is as true for Red Hat as it is for open-source start-ups like Openbravo and Talend. Imagine if Amazon decides to start offering JBoss as a cloud service. Or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for that matter (minus the trademarks).
It could happen. Actually, I'll go one step further: it will happen. It's just a matter of when.
This is why companies like IBM, Google, and increasingly Microsoft strategically invest in open source, but don't try to directly monetize open source. It's also why the "open-source companies" need to figure out a Plan B before Plan A gets taken from them.
There was a time when Microsoft could skimp on Internet Explorer innovation. Having trounced its Netscape rival, Microsoft rested on its IE laurels for years, barely updating the browser.
In part this is due to rising competition. The open-source Mozilla Firefox browser, for example, now tops 24 percent market share and it, along with the Google Chrome browser, and Apple's Safari browser, regularly push well beyond IE's comparatively glacial development.
However, the biggest challenge to Microsoft's IE development inertia is Microsoft itself. As Mozilla's Asa Dotzler posits:
That [IE] team has some really strong people and they're not going to let another release go by where they're still seen as badly trailing. Not with Office moving to the Web. Not with Search and other web services becoming huge revenue opportunities.
Falling short with IE 9 would be the last straw for Web developers' little remaining faith in Microsoft and so they won't miss this opportunity.
The browser used to be a sideshow to Microsoft's Windows and Office cash cows. In the future, however, the browser is the gateway to the next generation of Microsoft dominance...or irrelevance.
As the world moves online, how well Microsoft delivers an innovative browser experience will largely determine the future of the company.
At the same time, how well Mozilla delivers a neutral, innovative Firefox is the industry's best defense against Microsoft and Google too tightly coupling their browsers to their Web services.
It's therefore time for Facebook, IBM, Oracle, Salesforce, and others with a vested interest in an open gateway to an open Web to put their development resources where their mouths are. Contribute to Firefox. Microsoft (and Google) has an interest in building a better browser, yes, but to ensure that browser runs others' services as well as Microsoft's, Microsoft must be kept honest.
Firefox is the best way to accomplish this.
Justin Erenkrantz, President, Apache Software Foundation
(Credit: Matt Asay/CNET)There's something different about the Apache Software Foundation. While Apache hosts some of the world's most important software development, its members seem more concerned with good code than good politics.
It's no secret that I've become enamored lately with the Apache License, but it's less well-known what first attracted me to the license: the wonderfully nice people affiliated with Apache. From Greg Stein to Geir Magnusson to Brian Behlendorf, it's hard to find a jerk at Apache. I'm sure they exist, but they hide pretty well.
In fact, in a presentation today I attended at SAP in Walldorf, Germany, Apache Software Foundation President Justin Erenkrantz called out the importance of good manners to good governance at Apache:
There are going to be people on an open mailing list who are idiots, or maybe they're just having a bad day. Don't feed the trolls. Don't become a poisonous person.
It seems like reasonable advice, but it's discouraging to see this basic rule of polite society regularly broken within the wider open-source community. Some feel that a license to code is a license to shout others down. It's not. At least, not at Apache.
Perhaps this is particularly important to Apache because of the way it manages project development. It's one thing to be open source but, as I've written recently and as Erenkrantz highlighted in his presentation, open source doesn't necessarily equate to real openness:
You see a lot of people doing open source, but not a lot of people doing open development...At some open-source projects [Erenkrantz mentioned Mozilla], all of the technical decisions, even if the license is open source, are not subject to public comment. At Apache, everything is done in the open over public forums.
Or, as Day Software's Roy Fielding says, "If it doesn't happen on-list, it didn't happen."
Such transparent development creates great software, given that it fosters a true meritocracy. You know exactly who's doing what at Apache: it's all on the mailing lists.
Erenkrantz also noted a few other interesting aspects of Apache:
- Each Apache project is independent, which means that status on one Apache project is not fungible to another Apache project. I can be a core committer on the Apache HTTP project and it won't get me any brownie points with the Apache Cocoon project.
- Microsoft was a sponsor before it was a contributor. Its sponsorship was meant to send a message to Microsoft internally that it was OK to contribute to Apache projects.
- Erenkrantz stressed that Apache developers tend to believe that code, not licensing, should motivate contributions. Apache doesn't believe in forcing contributions through licensing or other mechanisms.
It's a great way to do development and, as Day Software and other companies have discovered, it's also a great way to do business. Open-source development, done openly.
And no jerks allowed.
Some open-source software may not be open enough. While "open source" refers to software's underlying license and its adherence to the Open Source Definition, there are numerous examples of open-source projects that offer an open license but a relatively closed development process.
But is it open enough?
(Credit: Open Source Initiative)Java is one example people cite of "fauxpen-ness." SAP CTO Vishal Sikka on Monday called for a more open process for Java development, arguing that Sun too tightly controls Java's development. It's a complaint that has plagued the Java community for years.
Not that Java is alone. While Google gets plaudits for its open-source investments, some are quick to allege that Google maintains a closed Android community. The same sort of complaints have arisen over Google's management of Chrome and Chrome OS.
Even Red Hat, the quintessential open-source company, is primarily known for what it distributes, not what it develops. Red Hat, of course, works alongside IBM and other corporate and unaffiliated developers to write the Linux kernel, and scrupulously releases its software under open-source licenses.
But when it comes to development of its Red Hat Enterprise Linux distribution or development of its JBoss middleware or other technologies (e.g., KVM), good luck finding many significant external contributors.
MySQL? It's largely the same. The company (now Sun Microsystems) does virtually all of its own development, which is true of every commercial open-source company of which I'm aware. This is one reason Richard Stallman can unblushingly worry about MySQL's openness despite the fact that it uses his preferred GPL license.
Open source, but not necessarily open process.
There are very good reasons that Google, Red Hat, MySQL, and others keep a tight grip on their open-source development efforts. They are responsible--fiscally and legally--to their customers, and have to be able to guarantee quality and security. Understandably, they exercise some control to ensure the products they ship protect the integrity of their brands.
But such corporate open source indicates a real divide between "open source" as a license and "open source" as a wholly transparent way of developing and distributing software. The former is now common and relatively easy. The latter, quite simply, is not.
The companies that seem to do it best are those that don't rely on direct monetization of open-source software. In other words, if you aren't selling open source, it's easier to be open. Doc Searls captures this brilliantly by arguing "you make money because of [open source], not with it."
Examples abound. IBM is a good example. So is Google, though I agree with its critics that it can do better. Facebook, Oracle, and others also provide examples.
In the future, I think we'll see this "fauxpen-ness" fade as companies clearly separate their open-source efforts from their revenue models. Open source can provide a platform for monetization, but it isn't the best way to actually generate cash. Not for most companies, anyway.
Together we can figure this out
Despite Apple's tremendous success with the iPhone, we're still in the early innings of mobile adoption. As such, a strategy of "throwing-lots-of-things-against-the-wall-to-see-what-sticks" makes a lot of sense.
It's true of platforms like Google Android, but it's also true of applications.
Even on the iPhone, which reportedly drives $2.4 billion worth of applications in annual sales, very few application developers appear to be making much money. Zynga, creator of Farmville, is an exception, as BusinessWeek notes, doing more than $100 million in annual sales.
This isn't to suggest that developers should stop trying. Quite the opposite. Now is the time to try a range of applications to see what sells.
Google is following the same strategy with its Android platform. The company is happily promiscuous with its code, allowing and even encouraging fragmentation to see where the industry will take Android. Fragmentation enables handset manufacturers and others to find the best fit for Android in the market, rather than going the Apple route. ("If we build it, they will come.")
It's very possible, as Bill Weinberg notes, that such fragmentation and experimentation will result in Android getting greater play beyond mobile than it does in the smartphone market.
I suspect Google won't mind. As in other areas, it's using the broad-based, open-source approach to increase adoption of its services like Search, services which generate more than $22 billion each year.
It's an approach that works particularly well for a fast-follower: someone tracking the progress of an early market leader. An open-source strategy basically enables the industry to determine, by itself and for itself, what the market leader is missing and how to resolve the voids.
However, it's also a good way to generate developer interest and, hence, modifications and add-ons. Application developers might be well-served by open-sourcing their applications to encourage adoption and make their road maps a community affair.
There are over 4 billion mobile phones on the planet, with virtually no one outside of the wireless carriers and handset manufacturers making money from this extensive device reach. The market is ripe for software businesses, but first we need to experiment to discover what sells. Open source just might be able to help with that.
Google's biggest threat is no longer Microsoft. It is itself.
As the company harvests copious quantities of personal data, it becomes dramatically better at serving customer needs...
...and at freaking them out over privacy concerns.
In other words, Google gets stronger with every Google Doc created, every Google Voice call dialed, and every Gmail e-mail sent. It becomes stronger because data is the heart of the Web's biggest businesses, as Redmonk analyst Stephen O'Grady implies.
But in so doing Google also becomes more threatening to the very consumers it is trying to serve.
Google Dashboard is meant to change this by putting consumer data back in the hands of consumers. It's a move that follows on Google's earlier pledge to "open data" and its Data Liberation Front.
As CNET reports, Dashboard lets people review the personal data Google has stored for them, delete it, and alter future collection policies. It's a great way for Google to mollify concerned users, putting control back in their hands.
Still, it's almost certainly never going to be used by the vast majority of Google users. Ever.
Why? Because for all our hand-wringing over privacy--and for good reason--the reality is that most of us, most of the time, really don't care. Or, rather, if accessing useful services or getting work done more efficiently requires some privacy concessions, we gladly concede.
It's not that we don't value our privacy. It's just that in many contexts, we value other things as much or more. We weigh the risks versus the benefits, and often the benefits trump the privacy risks.
It's the same thing with file formats. For years we've been agonizing over Microsoft's lock-in of customers through proprietary file formats (.pst, .doc, etc.). Now Microsoft is opening up the specifications for file formats like .pst (Outlook file format), and yet it will almost certainly change little to nothing in what products most people use most of the time.
People don't use Microsoft Office because they're forced to. They do so because it's convenient. (Yes, an argument can be made that it's convenient because Microsoft has forced network effects through lock-in.)
This, incidentally, is exactly the reason that Wednesday night I declared a ban on Microsoft Office in our family in favor of Google Docs--and didn't opt for OpenOffice (which we also use). I got sick of having to recover documents and perform other IT tasks related to a locally installed office suite, open source or proprietary. And I find it easier to let Google handle the back-end IT operations.
I wasn't trying to evade lock-in. I was trying to increase personal happiness.
Am I concerned about Google snooping on the documents we write and store in Google Docs? Let's just say I worry more about my time fixing Office than whether Google gleans any information from my 12-year old's seventh-grade essay.
Dashboard leaves Google in the prime position of being able to honestly say that it doesn't control user data, while still delivering increasingly beneficial services based on that data. It will not change the way that the vast majority of consumers use Google, but it just might change the way they think about Google.
A very smart move by Google, one that all data-driven businesses should emulate.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
"Skype is going open source!" screamed the headlines over the weekend. If only.
While Skype has acknowledged an interest in making its Linux client open-source, this may not mean very much in practice.
I love Skype and use it daily for both instant messaging and voice calls. Its quality is superb and the Skype team continues to enrich Skype's functionality (now including the ability to screen-share and video chat).
We've decided to open-source this logo.
Open source won't help with this. Not in the way Skype means.
As ZDNet captures, Skype isn't planning to open-source its underlying protocols, and certainly not its back-room server technology. Instead, it's just talking about open-sourcing the Skype graphical user interface (GUI). And only for its Linux client, apparently.
Snore.
First of all, why only Linux? Open source long ago stopped being the exclusive province of Linux, if it ever was. Without Mac OS X and Windows support, Skype is actually locking itself out of the vast majority of the market for software developers.
And then there's the question of what is being open-sourced: GUI code? Really? That's it? No protocols? Does Skype think developers simply want to add fuzzy dice to the UI?
It's not really Skype's fault, as ZDNet explains, because its source code is in legal no man's land right now. You can't open what you don't own.
But maybe it doesn't matter. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols believes an open-source Skype is unnecessary, given that there are credible open-source alternatives that are already available. Perhaps. But they lack the adoption that Skype has, and in communication the network is everything.
But, again, this is probably the biggest reason to yawn at the news of a Linux-based Skype GUI being open-sourced. The magic of Skype is not in the client. It's in the cloud/server, and that's remaining closed because, as TechCrunch posits, Skype doesn't want its competitors to free-ride on its services.
In sum, despite the euphoric greeting of the news of Skype going open-source, there's actually very little to celebrate. This isn't good for developers, and it's not good for Skype. In open source, it's generally worse to contribute too little than too much, because the community's first (negative or positive) impression tends to last a very long time.
Tim O'Reilly
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News)Some of us take longer than others. Tim O'Reilly moved on years ago from talking about open-source licenses and instead focused on the importance of data to business success. In the open-source industry, we heard his words but clearly didn't understand them.
We kept selling software through our "awkward teenage years," even as Google, 37Signals, Facebook, and others gave it away.
Years later, as Google pays for mountains of open-source code by aggregating data and selling data-rich services, we're starting to grok O'Reilly's message. It's what makes companies like Path Intelligence so interesting.
Redmonk's Stephen O'Grady notes:
Much has been made of the lack of an obvious revenue model for properties like Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Facebook. But when looking at the organizations' balance sheets...it seems self-evident that the value of the data assets involved is seriously underreported...
The economic value being assigned to data helps to explain why, while being sympathetic to questions about Twitter business models, I've never been overwhelmingly concerned. Where the revenue model for the dot-com era "eyeballs" strategy was equal parts indistinct and aspirational, the Web 2.0 businesses are being built out in an era of customers increasingly predisposed to analytics and data driven decision making. In other words, there's a market for their most valuable asset.
As Microsoft's Windows, Office, Xbox, and SharePoint businesses demonstrate, the real money is in the platform business, which is, or which can be, a data business. The more businesses and developers that build upon your software, the more valuable that software becomes. Even systems like Twitter are being turned into platforms.
But how you build the platform is increasingly important. Microsoft is Platform 1.0. Open source is Platform 2.0. It's a more efficient way to build community around a core, which is why Google and other savvy companies increasingly turn to open source as a fundamental way to entice developers, which developers create more software which invites more adoption which yields more data...you get the picture.
It's also why I believe Google Android, in its platform battle with Apple's iPhone, will ultimately prevail, so long as it can work in peaceful coexistence with the developer community (which has not always been the case).
Unlike many open-source companies, however, Google et al. have the singular benefit that since their business is data, not software, they can shepherd open-source development without taking a heavy hand in community management. More open source leads to more adoption, which leads to more data, which leads to the Googles of the world being able to give away even more software for "less than free."
It's genius. And it's amazing that it took so many of us so long to heed the counsel O'Reilly offered years ago.
In sum, this isn't a suggestion that companies should forgo profits in exchange for mindless popularity contests, as 37Signals' Jason Fried rightly pillories.
Instead, it's a call to look for ways to fund open-source development with rich, data-driven businesses. Most open-source companies focus too much on software, and most Web 2.0 companies focus too much on data. It's the blend of the two that makes a company successful.
Just ask Google.
(As an end note, I think Gartner's Brian Prentice is on to something when he speculates that enterprise applications may increasingly be communally developed by IT end users, though perhaps coordinated by vendors. It's a very interesting prospect, one that will enable even more open-source development in an area where data may not fund it.)
The day open source became big business is the day that open-source development exploded. Yes, open source predates the moneyed interests hankering to use it to competitive advantage, but it really wasn't until IBM dropped $1 billion on Linux that companies began paying employees to write free software that the movement saw broad adoption.
That's when open source became more than an efficient way to develop software, and also became a great way to build a business.
However, adding open source to one's business is not magical pixie dust that guarantees its viability. As IBM's Bob Sutor explains:
The basic principles around revenue, profit, loss, taxes, payroll, overhead, accounting, sales, incorporation, health care, and human resources all apply. You can be a starving open source software entrepreneur as easily as a starving proprietary software entrepreneur. No one will excuse basic business failures and screw-ups just because you use open source. Make sure that you will produce a product that people want and in some way will pay for, no matter how indirectly.
Sutor's counsel applies to any company or individual that wants to build a business around open-source software, but arguably some of the industry's best projects are not the product of any one company, but rather of several. Linux, Mozilla, Apache Software Foundation, Eclipse, and other collaborative communities represent an interesting way to use open source to competitive advantage.
In many ways, open source has become a critical component of the software industry because the market has largely moved from vertical businesses (i.e., companies controlling all aspects of production, distribution, etc.) to horizontal markets (i.e., companies focusing on their core competencies and depending on others for complementary functions).
Linux: Peace, love, & squeezing Microsoft
But this business control system has a inherent risk. Should an organization monopolize a specific segment of a value chain system they can extract a higher percentage of its total proceeds. If the product, or service, in question is price elastic than those additional proceeds will come from other participants in the value chain system.
Case in point? Windows. By owning the operating system, Microsoft threw a wrench into the collective cogs of horizontally oriented software firms like Intel, IBM, and others.
The industry's response--Linux--is a classic example of the open-source approach to mitigating individual choke holds within an industry, as Prentice goes on to write:
What then does a CEO do when facing a squeeze on their profits because a direct, or downstream, supplier is dominating a segment of the value chain system? Besides negotiating a better deal - if they can - they've been left with little choice but to get directly into that segment of the value chain system themselves. But by doing so their organization is distracted from focusing on its own core competency.
The risk of such an undertaking can be mitigated if there is a collective response by similarly affected members of the value chain system. After all, it is usually a shared problem. But collective responses have always had an inherent, and often fatal, flaw. Who owns the resulting assets? Either organizations enter into complex joint venture agreements to sort this out or run the risk of shifting the distortion in the value chain system to another organization.
Again, Linux offers the perfect example. IBM, Intel, Red Hat, and others aren't investing in Linux because they're all chums at the country club together, but rather because they're looking for ways to reduce Microsoft's hold on their own businesses through its control of personal computer and server operating systems.
As an added benefit, it's a great way for companies to collaborate without running afoul of antitrust laws. It's collusion without the collusion.
Intriguingly, even Microsoft is getting into this game. Microsoft's partnership with open-source ad serving company OpenX indicates that Microsoft, too, is figuring out how to use open-source complements to loosen strangleholds competitors like Google may be hoping to throw in its way.
This is why open source is growing so much faster than the rest of the industry, as IDC finds. It's not because we love each other more. Quite the opposite. It's because proprietary vendors have figured out that open-sourcing key complements to their core businesses can be strategically decisive in hurting competitors while helping themselves.
