In a new series, Matt Asay of the CNET Blog Network interviews top CEOs about surprises and challenges they've faced running open source companies.
Check out his interviews with MuleSource's Dave Rosenberg, Hyperic's Javier Soltero, MySQL's Marten Mickos, Alfresco's John Powell and more at The Open Road.
And keep up on open source and other topics in posts from industry leaders, pundits and experts at the CNET Blog Network.
If you're looking for heavy open source adoption, apparently the place to go is the Fatherland, at least according to this article in Heise. Citing zero licensing fees, access to source code, freedom from lock-in, and other factors, the Germans are on an open source binge:
In a survey of IT procurement officers from Germany, Great Britain, and the US/Canada, 59 percent of those in Germany said that they use OSS in their companies. The figures were far lower in Great Britain and the US/Canada at 48 and 38 percent, respectively.
Nicht schlecht! While I'm glad … Read more
Sometimes popularity isn't worth the trade-offs it may require, it would seem. Anyway, not for Joomla!, as Linux.com highlights in an article yesterday. The Joomla! team had apparently allowed proprietary extensions to its GPL code base as a way to grow in popularity, but the effect has been to breed mistrust and confusion.
Joomla's original intention was arguably a good one: be very "open" to outside development - of proprietary and open source kinds - so as to serve a more diverse community:
It seemed that Joomla! had created a thriving economy for developers, arguably because its tolerance for proprietary extensions attracted entrepreneurs who discovered an audience hungry for inexpensive but useful add-ons. Further solidifying the third-party developers' position that they were within their rights to develop non-GPL addons, Landry and others explicitly stated in Joomla! forums that the decision about whether to allow proprietary extensions was up to the copyright holder. In a June 2006 topic entitled "1.5 licence change clarification," Landry wrote that the Joomla! license in version 1.5 would "make sure that commercial third-party developers that use Joomla! as a platform can do so without fear of having to release GPL."
The problem, however, is that it's hard to serve two masters.… Read more
For the fourth installment in the Open Source CEO Series, I walked over to the next virtual cubicle of John Powell, CEO and Co-founder of Alfresco. I've worked with John for the past 1.5 years (Disclaimer: He's my boss), and have greatly appreciated the perspective he brings to the company. John is perhaps the most experienced of any of the open source CEOs out there, with a strong background with several leading (proprietary) software companies.
But as John intimates below, sometimes that experience can be a curse as much as it's a blessing:… Read more
For this third installment in the Open Source CEO Series, I caught up with Marten Mickos, CEO of MySQL. Marten is one of my favorite people anywhere, and has been a great addition to the MySQL team. Marten is a fantastic speaker and incredibly adept at turning a phrase ("As if you could kill a dolphin by swallowing the ocean" or, my favorite, "Yes, MySQL will be part of a larger company, and that larger company will be MySQL").
I'm sure Marten has flaws, but I've yet to discover them. He certainly has some great insight, as found below:… Read more
I took a look at Mindquarry today, a new open source collaboration company funded by Hasso Plattner Ventures. The company is based in Germany. Mindquarry licenses its software under the MPL.
Mindquarry's core product is a collaboration server that allows teams to collaborate on documents, as well as via wikis and shared tasks. It's an interesting product now, but should get much better with the release of its email integration, due out this summer according to the company's roadmap. All in all, it feels like a simple alternative to Sharepoint or Basecamp, a comparison the company has made.… Read more
For the second installment in the Open Source CEO Series, I caught up with Javier Soltero, CEO and Co-founder of Hyperic. Javier is a highly pragmatic open sourceror, fully buying into the open source ethos but not forgetting that customers buy value, not source code.
Name, position, and company of executive Javier A. Soltero, CEO and Co-founder, Hyperic
Year company was founded and year you joined it Hyperic was founded in 2004. Coincidentally, I joined that same year. :-)
Stage of funding and venture firms that have invested Series B (closed 6/07). Investors: Accel Partners & Benchmark Capital
Background prior to current company I was Chief Architect at Covalent in charge of developing products to help manage Apache and its related technology stack (Tomcat, etc.). We built the first version of what later became Hyperic HQ at Covalent in 2003 and prior to that shipped a number of management technologies for Apache/Tomcat including a configuration and provisioning system. Before that, I was senior engineer at Backflip.com (a 5-years-ahead-of-its-time high-profile bookmark sharing/social network founded by ex-Netscape people). It was at Backflip that I had my first brush with the problem of managing a large scale online service business. I also met two of my co-founders (Charles and Doug) while at Backflip. Prior to that, I was at Netscape, helping create the internet infrastructure technologies that most people today take for granted :)… Read more
I asked a range of open source CEOs to comment on some of the surprises and challenges associated with running an open source company. I figured it would be an interesting exercise since many of them came from proprietary software companies, and so would have a good idea of whether the grass is, in fact, any greener on the open source side of the fence.
In ease case, I asked for the following information:
Name, position, and company of executive Year company was founded and year you joined it Stage of funding and names of venture firms that have invested Background prior to current company (Positions held and/or something that led you to open source/where you are now) Biggest surprise you?ve encountered in your role with your company Hardest challenge you?ve had so far at your open source company If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently? Top three pieces of advice for would-be open source CEOsI got a wide variety of responses, which I'll be showcasing here at The Open Road over the next few days.
I decided to start off the series with my good friend and former co-blogger (at InfoWorld's Open Sources blog), Dave Rosenberg, CEO and co-founder of MuleSource:… Read more
True, he told us five years ago that he was moving on, but then he didn't. But now, I think Larry has left the free culture movement "for real," as he announced today. Larry was my mentor and thesis advisor at Stanford Law School, and someone for whom I have a tremendous amount of respect (though he hated me when I took Open Sources from him - I contradicted every point he made, as I was heavily skewed toward proprietary open source back then).
What will he be doing now? Focusing on reducing "corruption," as he defines it:… Read more
Stefano Comino and Fabio Manenti have written a useful paper [PDF] on dual licensing in open source. It's a decent resource for helping developers and vendors figure out why, if, and how to dual license their software. (See here for a useful explanation of what dual licensing means, and Heather Meeker's piece is a must read for anyone interested in the legal ramifications of the practice.)
I found myself agreeing with much of the authors' conclusions, but not necessarily the tone or conclusion, because they seem to see dual licensing as a way to drive sales. Of course, it sometimes undoubtedly is - for some time a large percentage of MySQL's, Sleepycat's, db4o's, etc. sales were motivated by a proprietary license waiting to "rescue" the OEM/customer from an open source license.… Read more
Politics and Law
Internet & Media
Microsoft
216Facebook Likes
435Tweets
113Google Plus Shares
CNET's Galaxy S4 giveaway spectacular!
CNET's publishing another supercharged e-book. "Mastering the Galaxy S4" is almost here, so we're celebrating with a huge S4-related giveaway.
Manage updates with the Download App