communities

A time to reap, a time to sow: A phased approach for open-source businesses

During my morning reading, I happened upon this verse from Ecclesiastes:

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven...a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted.

It made me think of the ongoing debate around open-source business models (illustrated well in a recent post by Savio and perhaps more so in the comments section to that post), kicked up by MySQL's recent decision to offer closed extensions to its core (100 percent open source) database, but one that has been simmering for a long time. MySQL is essentially saying, "We've spent a decade planting. We'd like to reap a little of what we've sown now."

MySQL is doing this right. It has focused on adoption first, and has committed to keeping the source of that adoption open source. But in its next phase, perhaps it demonstrates an ideal open source-based business model. Or rather, a phased approach to growing an open-source business...?… Read more

The community is angry!

Whatever you do, don't rile the community. I posted an innocuous suggestion earlier today that had this as its basic conclusion:

For those in the commercial open-source world (and that's most everyone now), we need to focus on finding ways to draw more people into the cash/code bargain without sacrificing the benefits that derive from fee-free adoption of open source.

Shocking, isn't it? The vast majority of the world would look at that statement and shrug. "The community?" Well, it's apparently a shocking thought to want to find ways to sell more of what one produces. Tarus went on a rampage, discrediting everything in his path...except my argument, which he conveniently overlooked. Dana called it "dumb[]." Benjamin Reed inexplicably calls my post "sensationalist," as if I have something to gain from denigrating open source (??? Benjamin, I work for a 100 percent open-source company - any money from CNET is peanuts compared to my day job).

Guys: Are we reading the same post? I really think you didn't read a single word in my post beyond "free rider." Go back and re-read it. Seriously. I don't think it says what you think it says. I'm honestly bewildered by the responses. They don't seem to comport to the reality of what I wrote.… Read more

Cash, code, or free-riding in open source communities?

Last night Marriott was kind enough to upgrade me to a junior suite. I say "kind enough" but perhaps it was my due: I stay in Marriott-branded hotels over 75 nights each year. While I never pay for this level of room, Marriott occasionally rewards my loyalty with an expensive room type.

The same is true of Delta, on which I fly 125,000-plus miles each year. On domestic flights I nearly always get upgraded to first class, without ever paying for first class. I pay in "loyalty equity."

Open source is a bit the same. There are some who pay for the "full-price rooms/seats," while others pay by sticking with a project for a long time, devoting either small amounts of cash or code. Marten Mickos talks a bit about this when he refers to those who have more time than money (me sitting on the plane for 125,000-plus miles each year) and those who have more money than time (those that buy their seats in first class).

But what do we do about the majority of people in open source who neither contribute cash, code, or anything other than taking up a seat/room?… Read more

Drupal's community is "dangerous"

That's what I took away from CMSwatch's article by guest analyst Apoory Durga, who said of Drupal:

...[Thousands of third-party Drupal] modules could be your biggest problem...because many times, module upgrades do not keep pace with Drupal upgrades. Even though Drupal has released version 6.2, many of the more popular modules are still on 5.x...[which] modules...are necessary for building...social publishing applications.

I suppose this is a problem in a way, but what a great problem to have, especially if you're Acquia, the open-source company founded by Drupal's founder, Dries Buytaert. … Read more

OLPC's capitulation to Windows: A community failure?

Is Nicholas Negroponte's capitulation to Windows last month due largely to a lack of open-source community involvement in the One Laptop Per Child project?

That's what Groklaw is suggesting--following a post by free software guru Richard Stallman.

According to Groklaw:

OLPC hoped for contribution from the community to its interface, Sugar, but this has not happened much. Partly that's because OLPC has not structured its development so as to reach out to the community for help--which means, when viewed in constructive terms, that OLPC can obtain more contribution by starting to do this.

Basically, Negroponte's decision to embrace Windows comes down to a belief that when community fails, default to whatever proprietary vendor makes the best interface. (If this is the case, Negroponte would have done well to choose the Mac's interface, but I digress...)

This is a weak-kneed, wrong-headed way for Negroponte--the founder and chairman of OLPC--to attempt to resolve the problem. It will only serve to perpetuate the very problem OLPC was designed to solve, as Groklaw writes:… Read more

Just what value does "community" provide, anyway?

Pierre suggests that dual-licensing hurts community. Jonathan Schwartz boasts that Java has the world's largest community. MySQL and Sun retreat (a little) from plans to offer closed extensions to the MySQL database because the community gods get angry.

What, exactly, is this "community?" Who gave it so much power? And why do we care about it?

As we'll be discussing on Monday at Sun's Community One conference (note the name?), companies are judged as good or bad based on the strength of their communities. But what is a company's community? In one breath we assume community relates to the number of outside developers that contribute to a project. In the other breath (as Schwartz does in the link above) we suggest that community is all about the gross number of users of a project.

Which is it? Does it matter?… Read more

The difficulty of building community around commercial: The OpenSolaris example

Ted T'so writes an excellent analysis of Sun Microsystems' attempts to build a community around its Open Solaris project. In so doing, he ends up uncovering a much larger issue: The difficulty of getting community development around projects that are hosted and serve corporations.

But first, the critique:

...(I)f you run into a Sun salescritter or a Sun CEO claiming that OpenSolaris is just like Linux, it's not. Fundamentally, Open Solaris has been released under a Open Source license, but it is not an Open Source development community. Maybe it will be someday, as some Sun executives have claimed, but it's definitely not a priority by Sun; if it was, it would have been done before now. And why not? After all, they are getting all of the marketing benefit of claiming that Solaris is "just like Linux", without having to deal with any of the messy costs of working with an outside community.

Probably fair, but let's assume that Sun really, really, really wants to have outside developers contribute to Open Solaris? What's keeping that back (other than apparently poor developer tools, which he describes). As he writes in response to Brian Akers' distinction between "sponsored" (corporate) and non-sponsored communities:… Read more

Back to the future for MySQL

As I'm occasionally reminded, MySQL didn't start out as open source. In fact, MySQL's original license was very similar to what it is trying to achieve today: Free for noncommercial use, but not-so-free for commercial use. It didn't decide to go open source (GPL) until 1999.

So for those of us that get caught up in MySQL's decision to keep some extensions closed to paid subscribers, perhaps a refresher course in MySQL history will make it seem a bit less shocking. (Also be sure to check out the early 2001 brouhaha over trademark violations surrounding MySQL.org. Fascinating stuff.)

With that said, there's an ongoing tension between commercialization and adoption that MySQL (and all commercial open-source projects) have to manage. As a friend noted in an email to me yesterday:

Remember that Monty [co-founder of MySQL] chose to go open source only after the world totally ignored his work. There is a real value that goes along with being open source that lends itself well to adoption. If you have to pay, then that will deter adoption of immature products in ways that it won't with free products.

His take on Monty's reasoning is a bit strong, and I don't agree that MySQL had been ignored, but still he has a point: Open sourcing one's code can lead to far greater adoption in a short period of time than proprietary source.

The question, however, remains for all open-source projects: Is it fair or productive to close off the code after open source has made it popular?… Read more

Between two consenting corporations...

Is proprietary software really that bad? Or is it a fair contract between consulting corporations? The answer is "It depends" and "Not really." Both depend on the strictures a vendor puts in place to inhibit its ability to lock a customer into its software. In MySQL's case, MySQL has no intention to lock customers in, as far as I can tell. It just wants to convince customers to pay so that it can prove its worth.

MySQL is contemplating introducing extensions to its core database that are only available to paid subscribers, for compelling reasons. This is not, as has been suggested, in and of itself proprietary. Red Hat does the same by providing an initial gate to its RHEL code which only a paid subscriber can access unless they get it from an existing customer of Red Hat's.

The question is not the open-source legitimacy of an otherwise open-source binary wrapped in a closed contract. This is simply a way of preventing services (like the Red Hat-provided compilation of that binary from source code) from free redistribution.

The question is one of redistribution of binaries.

There are actually ways to do this that let MySQL balance open source with closed permissions. I've drafted language for a license grant below that I think does this. It's not open source, but might be a way to balance its need for more cash growth with continued emphasis on community growth.… Read more

Random thoughts on the MySQL furor

Watching the MySQL uproar unfold brings to mind an array of random thoughts:

Microsoft really should acquire an open-source company. It would get credit for opening up, even if it closed off some parts of whatever project it acquired. Sun...? It's getting lambasted for no logical reason at all. It's not as if MySQL wasn't actively considering tweaks to its model before Sun acquired them, just as all open-source companies do. No one has settled on the exact right model yet. While Microsoft and other "proprietary companies" move toward opening up, it would appear that there is some movement among "open-source companies" to close off. Maybe we'll meet in the middle?… Read more