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's a big disconnect between what the media likes to write about and what the enterprise likes to buy. I suspect this is largely because the future is a much more interesting topic. Enterprise software might be a great topic for advertisers for Lunesta or Ambien, but it's woefully dull for everyone else.
So, the media talks about PHP and other Web-scripting languages, but stodgy chief information officers continue to buy Java and .Net.
The money is still in on-premise software for Microsoft and others.
And while cloud computing is one of the hottest topics in technology media, the vast majority of IT decisions center on which on-premise software solution to buy.
This is Microsoft's big problem ("We're not sexy! We're addicted to on-premises software!"), as well as its opportunity ("We're not sexy! We're safe!"). Microsoft makes great enterprise software. No, it's not perfect. But Microsoft more than any other company has made great strides to lower the cost of computing for enterprises.
Microsoft is now getting squeezed by open source, but I suspect it would rather compete against Google Apps than open-source software, because Microsoft has one huge advantage over Google, one that Microsoft doesn't have over open source:
Data security.
Google has gone on an advertising blitz to knock off Microsoft Office, as CNET reports, but it faces an uphill battle because the heart of enterprise computing is security. Security is boring, yes, but as ZDNet's Larry Dignan writes, "If you're in a heavily regulated industry you're not going to be e-mailing Google's help desk trying to track a 2006 e-mail to satisfy a Sarbanes-Oxley requirement."
It's possible that this is just a transitory issue that will dissipate with time as the benefits of cloud computing (fungibility of the computing experience with data following users from device to device) overcome its perceived shortcomings.
Google CEO Eric Schmidt told the San Jose Mercury News that Google has not traditionally had much collaboration with Microsoft, but perhaps it would do well to figure out how to tie Google cloud offerings into Microsoft on-premise solutions, as it's starting to do with its Gmail service that ties into an Outlook front end.
The reality is that Google and Microsoft may have more to gain from stasis in the near term than disrupting each other's businesses.
Regardless, in the short term, no matter how much the media and Google sell the cloud, it remains an add-on to corporate computing, not a replacement strategy.
I'm a believer in the cloud, as there's plenty of evidence that it's growing. But I think Microsoft has near-term threats like open source, and longer-term threats, like Google's cloud strategy.
Google is a threat. But Microsoft has time to improve its Azure story (cloud plus on-premise computing) before it hits the panic button.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer had some provocative prophecies to share with the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival in France, declaring that within 10 years all content will be online.
There won't be newspapers, magazines and TV programs. There won't be personal, social communications offline and separate.
But will there be Windows?
After all, the trend Ballmer spots in the media world is almost exactly the same thing that is roiling the software markets as software shifts to subscription-based cloud computing, a weak area for Microsoft but a strong one for Google.
Yes, Microsoft has Azure, an attempt to blend cloud services with on-premise software. But its cloud story remains a bit complex and the company doesn't seem overjoyed to be telling it.
After all, it has billions of dollars of revenue tied up in the old world of on-premise software installations. Who can blame it for dragging its feet on the way to the cloud?
Ballmer correctly noted at the conference that media companies have yet to figure out how to make money online. I guess it takes one to know one.
However painful it might be, Microsoft, like the print media that Ballmer eulogizes, must change. Microsoft must get online, and much faster than is comfortable. Otherwise it stands to lose to Google which has no built-in dependency on on-premise deployments.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
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