The Open Road

Open source has long been an important development methodology. The biggest surprise of 2009, however, was just how quickly it took center stage as a business strategy in the larger software economy.

The secret is out: open source is big business.

It's not as if open source as a business strategy is anything new. After all, the industry has been chattering about the business benefits of open source for nearly 10 years.

But not on Google scale. And not with the cachet and brand of Google blessing the idea. Despite the impressive sales and profits that Red Hat and other traditional open-source companies consistently deliver, the industry needed Google to take open source out of the realm of geekdom and into the boardroom.

Even Google needed Google. The Mountain View software and advertising giant has been involved with open source for years, running its Summer of Code and hiring up the best and brightest open-source developers, like Guido van Rossum and Greg Stein.

In 2008, however, Google stopped treating open source like a cute science project and source of cheap raw materials to power its search business, and instead started to actively court developers.

Open source stopped being a sideshow for Google and instead became the main event.

The developers were needed to create a groundswell of support for Google products like Android, and to dismantle the house that Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer built.

It's working. In fact, I suspect it's working far better than even Google suspected it would. It's certainly working at a scale that I never imagined we'd see in 2009.

All of which makes me think that 2010 will be the year that the rest of the industry follows Google's lead and starts to use open source as a fundamental business strategy, and not simply a plaything to placate "the community."

So, instead of Microsoft experimenting with fringe products like its open-source CMS Oxite, perhaps we'll see Microsoft open source an ad server (or acquire OpenX?) in an attempt to open-source Google's core, just as Google has been opening up Android, Chrome OS, and other products that undermine Microsoft's profit centers.

Perhaps we'll see SAP open-source software that kidney punches Oracle, while Oracle finally gets its way with MySQL and uses it to sucker-punch Microsoft's SQL Server.

And so on.

The big surprise of 2009 was how open source stepped up its game to become Google's primary business strategy, and not simply a sideshow developer strategy. The big news of 2010 will be how quickly other technology vendors will follow its lead, making 2010 the year of mountains of new, open-source code...and a hugely entertaining spectacle.

Lost in the flutter over Google's hymn to openness is an intriguing factoid on open-source licensing:

Though many of the programs hosted on Google Code are licensed under the GNU General Public License (GPL), when Google wants to open-source its software, it turns to the Apache Software License version 2.0.

Why?

Google's Jonathan Rosenberg elucidates:

When we open source our code we use standard, open Apache 2.0 licensing, which means we don't control the code. Others can take our open source code, modify it, close it up and ship it as their own. Android is a classic example of this....

Control. Apache is a signal that a company is prepared to fully remove its hands from a software project's steering wheel. The GNU General Public License (GPL), a more widely used open-source license, tells a different story.

Glyn Moody correctly articulates that "the GNU GPL gives a disproportionate advantage to the company that owns the copyright." Bingo.

In fact, as I wrote back in 2006, the GPL is the closest thing to traditional copyright ever devised in open-source licensing:

Please keep in mind that the supposed paragon of software freedom [GPL] is also the license that most tightly imposes a distinct lack of freedom on downstream users. If you're a capitalist like me, you probably like this fact. But if you're a software developer...?

Google, at the top of its game (and with its profits firmly secured by a very proprietary revenue stream), doesn't need to constrain its development community with the GPL. Indeed, doing so would be counterproductive, given the persistent privacy concerns that hover over its every action.

Google needs to demonstrate a lack of control. Apache helps it do so.

This shouldn't be underestimated. Microsoft, having lived on the regulator's rack for so long, may be anxious to ensure Google gets to know U.S. and European regulators, too. Apache licensing could help.

Apache licensing is one of the cards played by MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius with European regulators recently: Apache puts original developers and downstream developers on equal footing, so why not keep Oracle from snuffing out MySQL's life by relicensing it under Apache instead of the GPL?

It was a jaundiced card for Widenius to play, but it would be a decent card for Google to play against claims that it's too dominant. (Competition is "just a click (or a fork) away....)

Rosenberg writes that because of Google's open-source licensing, "others can use our software as a base for their own products if we fail to innovate adequately." True. Google is clearly betting on its ability to innovate fast, which is incidentally also the very thing that makes the prospect of seeing its code forked so remote.

Even if competitors are technically and legally capable of taking Google's code and using it to create competing products, the truth is that it's very hard to fork fast-moving code, especially if you're not an active contributor to that code. Google understands this. It's the savviest open-source company around.

Can you find the openness in Google Search?

Google is perhaps the world's largest open-source company. That does not, however, make it the most open. Not even if Google says it's so.

The company is fond of believing itself different. And perhaps it is. For all of its stumbles over privacy concerns, it's still the company that insists it will "not be evil." I give its executives the benefit of the doubt that it really does want to be open, as revealed in a blog published Monday by Senior Vice President Jonathan Rosenberg.

But the irony of Google's position is that it's very open...until it needs to make a buck. Or a billion of them. At that point it's just as closed as its competitors. Perhaps more so.

Rosenberg doesn't shy away from the inconsistency, arguing that Google is closed when it's for its customers' own good:

While we are committed to opening the code for our developer tools, not all Google products are open source. Our goal is to keep the Internet open, which promotes choice and competition and keeps users and developers from getting locked in. In many cases, most notably our search and ads products, opening up the code would not contribute to these goals and would actually hurt users. The search and advertising markets are already highly competitive with very low switching costs, so users and advertisers already have plenty of choice and are not locked in. Not to mention the fact that opening up these systems would allow people to "game" our algorithms to manipulate search and ads quality rankings, reducing our quality for everyone.

Am I the only one that just had Napoleon of "Animal Farm" flash through their minds while reading that statement? Some animals are more equal than others, and some companies know better than others when to keep code closed.

It's not that Rosenberg is wrong. It's just that his embarrassment at admitting Google likes the revenue that results from closed systems ties his arguments up in knots, as Gartner's Brian Prentice highlights:

I don't think Rosenberg is making any attempt to mislead. I think he's thinking out loud and trying to reconcile the paradox he's created for himself--that open systems win even though Google's success is so clearly the result of being strategically closed.

Prentice adds further color:

The truth is that closed systems still win. Open systems, practically speaking, are basically good for making others lose.

The art of business in the 21st century is figuring out how to open up your suppliers' and competitors' business while keeping yours tightly sealed. And in that endeavor Google has proven highly successful.

From Red Hat to Facebook, from Google to Microsoft, from MySQL to Oracle, the same lesson applies: openness is exceptional for creating developer interest, lead generation, and many other things, but some element of proprietary still pays the bills. The big ones, anyway.

No exceptions.

Google is a fantastic company that groks the strategic benefits of openness better than most, and certainly better than its lumbering counterpart in Redmond.

But it's not exceptional in understanding open on-ramps and closed exits. Other important businesses like IBM have been leveraging such principles for years (even before Hewlett-Packard's Martin Fink explained the strategy in "The Business and Economics of Linux and Open Source").

Google isn't original with the business strategy. It's just better at it than most. It's open...until closed takes over to pay the bills.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Microsoft is in significant disarray, fettered by its destkop dominance as the world goes mobile. Would this have happened anyway, or is Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to blame?

Developers! Developers. Developers? Developers!?!?

Ballmer, after all, knows how to sing to developers, but he doesn't really speak their language. Former Microsoft CEO and co-founder Bill Gates did. Now, more than ever, Microsoft needs to get in front of developers but finds itself playing catch-up.

Gates announced his resignation back in 2006 and formally discarded his full-time Microsoft duties in 2008. But it has been a long time since Gates' hand was full time on the steering wheel.

That's a problem for the world's largest software company. It was Gates who saw the threat (and opportunity) the Internet posed for Microsoft--drafting his excellent "The Internet Tidal Wave" (PDF) memo in 1995--and alerting his troops to an array of threats that saved Microsoft from ruin...while helping it to ruin many others on its path to billions in profits.

Gates oversaw Microsoft's early, largely successful forays onto the Web. Ballmer has shepherded Microsoft to vanishing mobile market share (now just 7.9 percent of the market), a hesitant tiptoe into software as a service, and a general sense of retreat in emerging markets.

Hence, while former Microsoftie Don Dodge talks up his new employer, Google, with its food perks and 401(k), it's really the company's vision that has him jazzed:

Google has made three big bets on the future of computing; Chrome (browser), Google Apps (cloud), and Android (mobile). The trends are pretty clear. All the exciting new applications are running in the browser, with application code in the cloud, and the cell phone as the platform....2010 will be the year that enterprises of all sizes start their transition to Gmail and Google Apps, and take their first steps towards the vision of the future.

Dodge couldn't sell this sort of vision at Microsoft.

Microsoft has been playing catch-up for many years, but at least did so successfully under Gates. With Ballmer, there's a sense that Microsoft is always a half-decade too late on critical initiatives like search, open source, and mobile.

So is the problem Ballmer, or is Microsoft simply doomed, blinded by its own success with personal computers--a blindness that no CEO could overcome?

I hate to ascribe so much importance to any one person, but just as Steve Jobs is the soul of Apple and its revolutionary leader, so, too, was Gates the heart and mind of Microsoft. He understood developers, and they rewarded his belief in them by making Microsoft the world's largest software company.

Microsoft is the poorer for Gates' departure.

Even as I type this, Google keeps moving into the future while gouging Microsoft's past. TechCrunch is reporting that Google is acquiring DocVerse, which enables people to collaborate on Microsoft's Office documents. Microsoft is under siege.

This is just the beginning.

Developers are coding for Google projects, Twitter, and other new-style Web applications. Morgan Stanley is predicting the mobile market will be twice the size of the "desktop" market. Will Google someday dwarf Microsoft in size and influence?

Unless Ballmer can discover his recessive developer gene, the answer my well be yes.

Update at 2:10 AM Pacific on Tuesday: Newsweek predicts the ouster of Ballmer in 2010, but ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley cautions "not so fast."

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Despite all the handwringing about Microsoft's market clout in the European browser war, the real threat to Firefox may be Google, not Microsoft. Even as Microsoft's browser market share deflates to 64.36 percent, Google has upped its game with its increasingly extensible Chrome browser.

Chrome to crash the IE/Firefox party

For those of us who cling to Mozilla Firefox because of its library of excellent add-ons and extensions, suddenly we have another viable, open-source choice.

Internet Explorer remains a viable threat to Firefox due to Microsoft's heft in operating systems, which helps to create enough inertia that most Windows users who start with IE simply never discover that they have browser alternatives.

But while IE plays catch-up to Firefox in sheer extendability and third-party innovation, the real contender could well be Google Chrome, which marries open source with a strong developer/extension story and bests just about everyone in performance.

I love Firefox, but mostly because I love the third-party innovation that Firefox enables. Add-ons like ForecastFox (in-browser weather updates), AdBlock Plus (blocking ads), and so on make my browsing experience awesome.

Such add-ons, however, tax the resources of my MacBook Pro. Considerably.

As I type this, I have 15 tabs open and have 22 add-ons installed. As a result, Firefox is eating up roughly 30 percent of my CPU, even beating resource hog Java.

(Credit: Matt Asay)

That's a lot of juice to power my browser, even when considering that most of my work is done within the browser (from common browsing to Zimbra e-mail to Google search to...you name it).

According to TechCrunch, development of add-ons for Google Chrome is much easier than it is for Firefox, and those add-ons apparently no longer constrain Chrome's performance in the same way that Firefox add-ons do for Firefox.

If true, then Mozilla needs to be doing a lot more than simply opening up a Firefox add-on marketplace in 2010, as The Register reports it will. Instead, Firefox should be heads down on improving browser performance.

A marketplace makes sense for enriching the Firefox developer community and, hopefully, diversifying Mozilla's revenue sources so that it's not so heavily dependent on Google.

But given that Google Chrome's improved extensibility is aiming squarely at Firefox, Mozilla has more than a monetary problem. It has a serious competitive threat looming, one that will only be won by significantly improving performance while maintaining its excellent track record with developers.

I'm confident that the Firefox team can do it. I'm equally confident that it must. Yes, Mozilla marshals a more diverse and robust open-source community around Firefox than Google does for Chrome. But users arguably won't care.

The Google train is coming, and it's not going to stop...not even for a longtime ally like Firefox.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Once a monopolist, always a monopolist? Not in Microsoft's case. While no one will accuse Microsoft of being a forlorn Tiny Tim, it's also no longer the Ebeneezer Scrooge that it once was. In fact, Microsoft seems haunted by the ghost of monopolies past, to the point that it has lost its ability to fight on equal terms for new markets.

Look at the markets the U.S. government sought to open by suing Microsoft for monopolistic practices. Microsoft's market share in media players, Windows, etc. remains largely unaffected by the government lawsuits.

I miss the smell of monopoly in the morning

Where Microsoft has lost market share (as in Web browsers and mobile), the competition hasn't relied on consent decrees and the like to win. Firefox wins because of its community development and distribution. Apple's iPhone and Google Android are trouncing Windows Mobile because they significantly change the rules of engagement for mobile while providing a better experience.

Government, in other words, probably solved little. But what it did was create a culture of caution within Microsoft that stultifies its ability and desire to compete. (We should note that just today, the European Commission formally ended its browser-focused antitrust pursuit of Microsoft, following concessions by Redmond.)

Microsoft's competitors, like Google, thrive in the wake of this fear, uncertainty, and doubt that plagues Microsoft. Ironically, competitors like Google do many of the same things that got Microsoft into hot water with the U.S. Justice Department.

Google et al. are free to compete. Microsoft is not.

Granted, this constricted freedom may be more psychological than real. As a journalist friend said to me on Tuesday, "Everybody thought Microsoft laughed off the antitrust thing. But I think it really did take the wind out of their competitive sails."

I do, too. In fact, a few years ago a friend and I set out to start a business delivering Microsoft Office-like functionality to mobile phones, which we ultimately abandoned. We didn't worry about Microsoft suing us for patent or copyright infringement. My friend had successfully sued Microsoft for anticompetitive practices in the Caldera litigation. We knew Microsoft's hands were tied by its antitrust settlement.

Microsoft is not the same company it once was. It's under siege, and seemingly incapable of responding. I think we're the poorer for it.

No, this isn't a paean to Microsoft monopolies. Rather, it's a plea for a Microsoft that competes vigorously to win.

Not one that repents in sackcloth and ashes for the "sin" of competing with open source. Not one that is continuously constrained by various antitrust authorities even as it erodes market share for the products in question.

I don't want a monopoly. I understand the important competitive principles that Mozilla and others are fighting for in the ongoing browser/etc. wars.

But I want a competitor again. Microsoft has lost its fight. This should concern us.

It should bother us because companies like Google need to be kept on their toes. It should nag at us because Microsoft writes great software that is comparatively easy to use, and we need its influence on the market.

I hardly use Microsoft software, preferring Apple and Google and open source. But I'd still like Microsoft's influence on the market, and not as a milquetoast competitor too afraid of antitrust shadows to thrash a competitor. Man up, Microsoft.

Google Android adoption--both that which is publicly announced and that which is still under wraps--is amazing. Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently declared that Android adoption is set to "explode." This is good news for Google, of course, as well as the wireless carriers and handset manufacturers that support Android.

Even as the mobile telcos seek winning alternatives to the controlling grasp of Apple, that same industry is simultaneously enthusiastic and leery about Google: enthusiastic about the operating system, but leery about tying all of their customer data into Google's cloud services.

Enter Funambol, the open-source mobile cloud sync and push e-mail.

Funambol ensures mobile operators maintain control over customer data, rather than sacrificing it to Google. E-mail, social networking features, contact information, etc.: Funambol can sync it all, with the mobile operator and its end-customers retaining ownership.

The fact that Funambol is open source doesn't hurt. Not only does it nicely complement Google's open-source Android strategy, it allows mobile operators, handset manufacturers, software vendors, and others to tailor Funambol's Java software to suit their particular needs.

Small wonder, then, that ten of the top mobile companies use Funambol, a list that includes companies readers of this blog use every day...in just about any developed nation (and others beyond). Such customer traction is translating into greater than 100-percent sales growth every quarter.

Recession? What recession?

In fact, as Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco told me on Wednesday, it is the recession that has accelerated Android adoption and, by extension, Funambol's adoption. Mobile operators don't want to pay hefty royalties for Windows Mobile and need software that sets them apart in a crowded, competitive market.

If this sounds like a perfect storm for open-source Android, that's because it is. But it's also creating an exceptional opportunity for Funambol, and could well establish beachheads for a range of other open-source products that sit within the Android ecosystem.

Activists worry about the environmental cost of discarded mobile phones, personal computers, and other technology. Perhaps they should also worry about the swelling graveyard of start-ups and tech titans gone bad.

As Le Monde points out (in French), though businesses fail in all areas of the economy, technology ventures, and especially Web start-ups, prove particularly short-lived.

Joseph Schumpeter

(Credit: Wikipedia)

It's Joseph Schumpeter's creative destruction...in overdrive.

Le Monde suggests three reasons: the speed of innovation/evolution (AOL's walled-garden approach meets Yahoo's open-portal approach), the ability of incumbents to crush nascent competitors (Netscape meets Internet Explorer), and the shortcomings of business models (Skype: only $500 million out of more than 520 million subscribers).

These are good points, but perhaps there's another: technology companies are increasingly disposable because they're so darn cheap to create.

This affects start-ups and incumbents alike. For the latter, perhaps the negligible cost of starting a new company fosters the comparative disposability of such start-ups. As Bernard Dalle, a general partner with Index Ventures in London, notes, start-ups need only rent essential infrastructure like hardware and software, and that rent is dirt cheap.

Ideas that couldn't survive a $5 million to $10 million capital-raising process might well weather a friends-and-family round of $50,000...and expire shortly thereafter when the idea proves barren.

But it's also true of the incumbents: Gulliver-esque Microsofts can fight off most of the Lilliputians, but an increasing array of the pesky imps sprout into adulthood (e.g., Google, Salesforce, Facebook).

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on your market position), this process of creative destruction may well be accelerating, and open source is one of the primary fuels.

The Linux Foundation's Jim Zemlin insists that the pace and price of innovation today requires open source, a communal effort that isn't bogged down by the bureaucracy or cash constraints of any one company. He may be right.

That certainly seems to be one lesson to take from the success of Linux, Firefox, and other open-source projects, particularly those that are community-led, as opposed to company-led. It's hard to compete with a group of self-selected, highly focused developers who can focus on good code, not good financial quarters.

Now that virtually every technology company depends upon and contributes to open-source software, we may well be laying the foundation for even more industry innovation...and corporate bankruptcies.

Guess what? There's nothing we can do about it. Nor is there anything we should do about it, except focus on building long-term customer value rather than short-term start-up goofiness. That's the way to thrive in the fast-evolving world of technology, because it's the one thing that never changes:

Customers pay for value, and companies that consistently deliver real value acquire the most customers.

Tim O'Reilly points toward this in his call for developers to "work on stuff that matters." It's a reminder but also a warning.

Microsoft is still with us because it has delivered an amazing amount of customer value in its 30-plus years. The same is true of IBM, Oracle, SAP, and other industry incumbents.

But it's equally true of relatively new companies like Salesforce, Red Hat, and Google, which have eschewed gimmicky software and flimsy business strategies to give customers tangible, ongoing value. None of these companies sought an early exit through acquisition. None of them were content to build for the quick flip.

So, yes, technology may be a veritable boneyard of failed companies, and essential ingredients like open source may accelerate the demise of start-ups and incumbents alike. But those companies that use such ingredients to deliver above-average customer value are going to endure...and thrive.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Open source, like digital media, doesn't suck money out of hitherto profitable industries. Instead, the opening up of software and information simply changes where the money gets made.

This is obvious to the Googles of the world. It's probably equally obvious to the Microsofts of the world. The difference is that the latter can see the train coming but is powerless to stop it, and the former is driving the train.

The evidence for this is increasingly clear and is driven by a shift in how content is sold and consumed. The problem is neatly summarized by Google CEO Eric Schmidt in a Wall Street Journal op-ed piece directed at the newspaper industry:

[T]he Internet has broken down the entire news package with articles read individually, reached from a blog or search engine, and abandoned if there is no good reason to hang around once the story is finished. It's what we have come to call internally the atomic unit of consumption.

That newspaper was "the package," but is increasingly too slow and out-of-sync with how people prefer to discover news content. New packaging is rising, including Google News, that will shift who makes money on news content.

Reporters will still get paid. They'll just have a new employer on their payroll check. Maybe it will be Google.

News isn't dead. Paper is.

Think about what is happening in music. I could download New Order's "Regret" for free using LimeWire, but I bought it on iTunes because of the "packaging" which makes my experience easy, high-quality, and legal.

Still, the primary drivers are ease and quality.

Such packaging is worth a lot of money--and to an entirely new breed of vendor--as a quick look at Google's latest income statement suggests.

It's happening in software, too, particularly in open-source software. Red Hat is an example of a company that does a great job of turning software license into an ongoing service contract that enterprises buy. It does this by packaging the power of others' development in the form of a subscription, as Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst recently highlighted.

But Red Hat is just Open Source 1.5. Open Source 2.0 looks more like Google or IBM. For every dollar Red Hat makes selling subscriptions to use open-source software like Linux and JBoss, both Google and IBM make multiples of that dollar using open-source software to sell something else, something they've packaged in hardware or Web-based services.

The hardware is running open source. The services are based on open source. The money is made in the packaging of open source.