The Open Road

Ars Technica's Ryan Paul wants to know, "Can a [truly open smartphone] be done?" But the real question is, "Should we care?"

I ask because some within the open-source ranks can't see the forest (choice) for the trees (freedom). For them, Freedom (with a capital "F") has but one meaning (free and open-source licensing), and is the end itself, not the means to an end (user choice).

Hence, Bradley Kuhn of the Software Freedom Law Center expresses anxiety about the future of freedom in mobile...

We are in a very precarious time with regard to the freedom of mobile devices. We currently have no truly Free Software operating system that does the job.

...when he really should be concerned with choice in mobile. Right now, we're spoiled for choice in mobile, what with Apple's iPhone, Google Android, Symbian, LiMo, Moblin, etc., which suggests that users are free to move between devices.

In this case, it's not the license that makes users free. It's the market.

Open-source software plays an important role in ensuring user choice, but it's not the sum total of the freedom/choice equation. It's just one factor. As Tim O'Reilly reminds us, it's not even necessarily the most important factor, either.

Kuhn and other free-software advocates worry that the nuts and bolts making up the software on mobile phones be free, but this is surprising given the increasing irrelevance of single-node freedom when it's tied into a network. This is what I've described as "the Hotel California of tech," and it suggests we should be far more concerned with freedom between nodes than freedom of the nodes themselves.

In other words, the real concern should be over open data, not open phones. No matter how open my phone's software may be, it's meaningless if I can't move my data between devices or wireless providers.

Even here, there's cause for hope. For example, Funambol's open-source mobile cloud synchronization and push e-mail software is in use by 10 of the leading mobile service providers, as identified in a new report, which arguably should be more relevant to the Freedom fighters than whether Bluetooth is open source.

Glyn Moody, a journalist with strong free-software leanings, understands this. That's why he makes the case for an open cloud, and not simply "open node in the cloud":

Ideally, what we need is a completely open source cloud computing infrastructure on which applications providing people with things like (doubly) free email and word processing services could be offered....The trick here is not to fight the battle on the opponents' terms, but to come up with something completely different.

For example, how about creating an open source, *distributed* cloud? By downloading and running some free code on your computer, you could contribute processing power and disc space that collectively creates a global, distributed cloud computing system. You would benefit by being able to use services that run on it, and at the same time you would help to sustain the entire open source cloud ecosystem in a scalable fashion.

One can quibble with the feasibility of this approach, but at least Moody is thinking at the right scale. Those who are still stuck in the Open Source 1.0 of isolated, client-side software are not.

I suppose someone has to fixate on upper-case Freedom above all other priorities. Like usability. Or ubiquity. Or...well, anything.

But most of us don't think this way, because the world is a lot more complicated than Freedom on one hand, and Slavery on the other. Also, the focus of freedom has evolved in our networked world, though some free-software advocates seem mired in Freedom 1.0.

It's time to upgrade. Freedom is more than a license. It derives from a competitive market, one that is assisted by open source but not exclusively or even primarily defined by it.

Open source, despite its community roots, often doesn't become mainstream until corporations get involved. There are notable exceptions--Mozilla Firefox and the Apache Web server being just two--but often it is corporate self-interest that provides the mechanism to deliver the value of community-developed open source to a mainstream audience.

While the mobile market remains highly fragmented, therefore, I take it as a very encouraging sign that Google has thrown its considerable heft behind Android, its open-source mobile operating platform.

Sure, we've had mobile open-source companies for years. I was part of one of the first: Lineo, an embedded Linux vendor that distributed an optimized Linux distribution for PDAs like the Sharp Zaurus. More recently, Funambol has proved popular as a mobile application server, specializing in synchronization technology.

But just as Linux's big moment on the server came with IBM's $1 billion commitment to fund its development and marketing, so, too, will the mobile open-source market come into its own with Google Android.

Android has recently pulled ahead of Microsoft's Windows Mobile in the smartphone market, according to data from AdMob, hitting a global 5 percent market share (in terms of access to mobile ads, not units shipped), while continuing to grow 25 percent month over month.

While Microsoft dominates on the desktop, with even its not-yet-released Windows 7 beating Linux, according to W3C data, Linux, and increasingly Google's Android flavor of Linux, is making a big push on smartphones.

To fuel this, Google has been upping its commitment to developers, most recently with an upgrade to its Android Market, but also pushing its handsets into an ever-widening array of handset manufacturers and wireless carriers, most recently Sprint.

I've suggested that the only way to beat Apple's iPhone is with a big commitment of resources. Google appears to be doing this, but in an intelligent way: it is trying to attract a wide community of developers to share the burden of beating the iPhone.

InfoWorld's Neil McAllister thinks it's not working, but I'm more sanguine. So long as Google invests marketing and development resources to Android, the open-source operating platform has a good chance.

And, importantly, so long as Google remains committed to mobile, there's a very good opportunity for other mobile open-source players to draft on its momentum. An entire open-source industry has grown up in the shadow of IBM's original $1 billion commitment to Linux.

The same can happen in mobile, and this time it will be Google's turn to lead.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Over the past 10 years that I've been involved in open source, one thing has become strikingly clear to me: there are no real predictors of open-source success. There are, of course, general principles that contribute to the creation of successful open-source projects, but serendipitous "right project, right time" circumstances often matter most.

I was therefore intrigued to read two articles that crystallized my own thinking around critical components of successful open-source projects.

The first is from BusinessWeek and details the mechanics of Mozilla's Firefox community. Mike Beltzner, Mozilla's director of Firefox, reveals that while 40 percent of Firefox is contributed by outside developers, what and where they contribute may not be what many would expect:

There's structure in (how Firefox is developed). But at the same time you allow people to innovate and to explore and (give them) the freedom to do what they want along those edges--that's where innovation tends to happen in startling and unexpected ways (emphasis mine).

This may be easier for the Mozilla Foundation, given its nonprofit status, as you'd expect developers to more willingly build around a product if they trust the foundation (pun intended) upon which they're building.

But the general principle holds: most open-source development and, for that matter, most development around proprietary software, happens at the edges. Whether it's Microsoft Windows or Mozilla's Firefox, developers generally don't touch the core: they create add-ons, complementary products, and so forth.

So, principle No. 1: Open-source projects that create a strong, valuable, easily extensible core that developers have the ability to build upon, as well as the pecuniary or reputational interest in extending, are more likely to succeed. No one works for "free."

The second principle is related to the first, and deals with ownership of add-ons. While some people are motivated by peace, love, and open source, others (rightly, in my view) see open source as a means to an end, and not the end itself.

As such, the license used for an open-source project matters a great deal. I've long been a proponent of the GNU General Public License (GPL) because it enables vendors to bless customers (free code!) while cursing competitors (we just open-sourced your entire value proposition and you won't dare touch our code!).

But lately I've been seeing the role Apache-style licensing can play in fostering vibrant open-source communities. Daniel Jalkut, founder of Red Sweater Software, describes this well:

As the developer evaluates communities to participate in, they must evaluate the legal impact such participation will have on their own project. The closed-source communities are, by definition, uninviting to outsiders. GPL communities are open and embracing of other GPL developers, but generally off-putting to liberal-license and closed-license developers. Only the liberal-license communities are attractive to developers from all three camps.

It's your party, and you're entitled to write the guest list. But take a look around the room: not as many folks as you'd hoped for? Liberally licensed projects are booming. Speaking for myself, a developer who has been to all the parties, I'm much more likely to pass through the door that doesn't read "GPL Only."

If you want maximum participation whatever the cost, Apache/BSD is probably the right way to go. Most companies and project owners, however, have to make a living, so it's reasonable that they measure the costs of going Apache, which likely means they'll trade a liberal license to some of their code for a proprietary license of the rest of their code.

IBM is an example of this strategy on a big scale, but so are Day Software, Microsoft, SpringSource, and others.

Principle No. 2, broadly stated, is this: Your odds of encouraging adoption of your product go up if you use a liberal license like Apache, but your ability to directly monetize Apache-licensed code vaporizes.

This isn't a bad thing. It just means you have to separate community creation from customer creation, as Funambol's Fabrizio Capobianco has stated. The two aren't necessarily the same, and are sometimes inimical to each other.

As noted above, however, you don't have to license your software as open source to encourage community around it. Microsoft, with its vibrant partner ecosystem, demonstrates this, as does Apple with its amazing iPhone ecosystem.

Developers will flock to the platforms that offer them the most return, whether financial or in reputation (which eventually translates into money). Liberally licensing of your code might tip the scales in your favor if you lack the largess of Apple or Microsoft. But no guarantees.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Lost in the news that Nokia has finally released its Ovi application store, akin to the iPhone's App Store, is what this means for Symbian, the world's most widely used (and most easily overlooked) operating system for mobile devices.

Symbian, as an open-source operating system, should be mobile developers' darling. Instead, it continues to be an afterthought.

Symbian has been talking up its open source plans for roughly a year now, plans that should put it at the heart of an iPhone-beating application store. But that hasn't happened. Instead, Symbian has stood on the sidelines as Apple's App Store goes from strength to strength and even Google, whose Android platform is still in its infancy, entices developers with its Android Market.

Symbian, through Nokia's Ovi Store, ostensibly now has its own store, too, but it's branded by Nokia and will help Nokia far more than it helps Symbian (not the least reason being that the Ovi Store apparently doesn't distinguish between Java applications and Symbian applications).

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source leader Funambol, suggests that Nokia may struggle to make its Ovi Store pay, given that it's a hardware company at heart. I'm sure this is true, but it overlooks the larger issue: why isn't Symbian launching an application store, rather than Nokia?

I asked Capobianco, who gave a very reasonable response: Symbian already has its hands full:

Symbian is busy. I do not think they have time to breathe: trying to pull a full open source operating system is not an easy thing. Imagine building cloud services (like an application store) at the same time. No chance.

It's a good point, but not one that will likely placate members of the Symbian community, who have been clamoring for a Symbian application store for some time, but with little response. Symbian's David Wood suggested in December 2008 that it would take time to unleash its full power, but he may not have the time.

Symbian seemed so far ahead of the game when it announced in June 2008 that it was going to open source its software. Since then, it has apparently been heads down delivering on that promise.

Unfortunately, the world keeps moving, and Symbian risks getting left behind.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Even as the global economy tanks, open-source companies continue to soar. A range of open-source companies reported sales and community growth this past week, including:

• Funambol: As announced on its Web site, Funambol's mobile open-source community has grown 2,000 percent, downloads are up 34 percent, and the number of active Funambol servers is up 42 percent in the past three months alone.
• Actuate: While business intelligence vendor Actuate's overall license revenues grew 15 percent last quarter, its BIRT (i.e., open source) revenue grew 32 percent.
• Linux Desktop: While there's no one company behind Linux for personal computers, it's significant that Linux just broke through to 1.02 percent market share for personal computers, the first time it has ever risen that high, according to data compiled by Net Applications. (Meanwhile, even in beta, Windows 7 continues its march, now hitting .25 percent market share.)
• Red Hat: Despite a bruising economy, Red Hat has been on a hiring binge, adding 600 employees to its now 2,800-strong workforce. The company isn't stopping there, noting in SEC filings that it plans to continue to add to its headcount in 2009.
• Sourcefire: Albeit quiet for the past year, Sourcefire has been keeping busy, increasing year-over-year first-quarter revenues to $18.6 million, a 36 percent gain.
• Firefox: According to Net Applications data, Firefox continues to gain market share at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, rising to 22.48 percent market share in April. Google's open-source Chrome browser also grew to 1.42 percent, while IE tumbled to 66.10 percent, a drop of more than 1.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009.

In other words, it's a great time to be in the open-source market. I advise more than 10 open-source companies, and I'm not aware of a single one that is seeing anything other than growth through the downturn.

This is the right time for open source: a time when enterprises care more about the right functionality at a compelling price than clinging to 20th-century brand names whose idea of CIO value seems to be the software audit.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

I don't have any scientific proof of this, but it strikes me that open-source CEOs are different. Not just because some sport ponytails (Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz), or some speak with a light Southern drawl (Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst), or even that some swear in Italian (Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco).

No, what really makes them different, at least as compared to their enterprise software counterparts, is their cutting-edge adoption of technology.

In this they're no different (and probably a bit behind) the Web 2.0 crowd, but compared to an HP, IBM, or SAP CEO, the CEOs of open-source companies set new standards for connectedness and communication transparency. Perhaps it's the relative youth of open-source CEOs, but perhaps it's also a love of technology that stems from having to live so close to source code in an open-source company.

I first thought of this when I received notice that Whitehurst is following me on Twitter. I can't imagine Steve Ballmer following anyone on Twitter. Then I thought to how actively Schwartz blogs, providing useful information on Sun and its place in the larger enterprise computing ecosystem.

It also reminded me that I get text messages as often as emails from Whitehurst, and the same used to be true of Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, as well as others (except Capobianco at Funambol, because his company does email sync, so he's not a big SMS user :-).

Enterprises should take note. I think company leadership has a material impact on the kind of technology that gets created within a technology vendor. If your vendor's CEO is stuck in the Stone Ages of technology, perhaps its products are, too?

This can only be taken so far, of course, but I wonder if there's something to it....

While Google is storming into the mobile market with its open-source Android platform, Research In Motion has declared that open-sourcing its own software would be "a pretty big leap," as reported in EE Times:

"We do have an open-source management team that is investigating this," said Cassidy Gentle, a senior RIM software developer. "I would expect some of our Eclipse or Mobile Tools for Java could be made available on an open-source basis, but as for our APIs or other software--that's a pretty big leap," Gentle said.

It's perhaps not surprising that RIM would stick to its proprietary guns while they're still firing, but it is news that the company has an open-source management team. What does it do?

Meanwhile, other executives, including CNET blogger Dave Rosenberg, see open source playing a key role in the mobile market. Part of the reason lies in the ready-made community: every developer has a phone and, as is demonstrated by Funambol's success in mobile, many are willing to participate:

• Active Funambol installations growing more than 50 percent year-over-year, and downloads have grown 30 percent since the start of 2008 alone;
• Three million downloads, with huge uptake in China after translating the Funambol Forge into Chinese;
• 1,500 new developers registered in the last month alone

Funambol has been accelerating its community efforts with a cool new localization program called Lion Sniper. It's a way to make Funambol's mobile-sync software even more relevant for disparate geographies.

RIM, of course, has only a few models, and Apple has even fewer. Do these companies need open source to power their businesses? Perhaps not. But most of the world doesn't use a BlackBerry or iPhone, which leaves plenty of room for Google, Funambol, and others to make mobile fertile ground for open source.

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO and founder of mobile open-source company Funambol, has posted a great presentation on how to walk the line between cash and community in open source. Teaser? You need both, but the road to getting both is not the same.

The secret, as Capobianco suggests, is to provide compelling, separate value to each group, community and customers (or would-be customers).

Often in the commercial open-source world we talk about finding value to upsell one's existing community. This, in Capobianco's mind, is wrong, and I think there's a lot of truth to that contention.

Once we stop trying to pitch upgrades and such to community members, we remove much of the ambiguity in our open-source product/project strategy, and provide clear differentiation between the "community" product and the "enterprise" product.

For Capobianco, the clearest way to do this is to make one's enterprise product SaaS-based, with the community product remaining an on-premise installation. I generally agree with this approach, but some markets (like mine - ECM) have not bought into SaaS yet, and may not be the right approach...yet.

Apple's MobileMe problems are now well-documented, most recently by Walt Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal. So much promise...so little delivery. A great idea that could be a great product, if it just worked. (I am a longtime Apple .Mac customer and am certainly not happy to see the service prove so incorrigible.)

So, what's the alternative? As you might imagine, open source provides a compelling answer.

Funambol has been offering its open-source "MobileMe" service for a wide variety of devices, not just the iPhone. In fact, Funambol now supports over 1.5 billion devices worldwide. It's called myFunambol and it's a great example of what open source can do. It's true push, works over-the-air (OTA), and doesn't require an "@me.com" email address.

In other words, Funambol brings MobileMe-esque sync that actually works, and works on a huge array of devices and services. It's a way for Yahoo! or any other service provider to create a valuable, connected experience with its customers.

Funambol is a also great way for service providers to build out their own MobileMe experience, without hitching a wagon to Apple. I love Apple, but I also love choice. You can get a glimpse of what Funambol is like by giving myFunambol a spin. If you're a service provider, download the source code and start building your own service.