proprietary

Microsoft's Jekyll and Hyde moment with open source

Last night I finished reading Robert Louis Stevenson's excellent Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. I've known about the story since I can remember but this was the first time that I had actually read it. For those who haven't, Stevenson's allegory follows a London scientist in his discovery of a way to separate the two sides of his personality (the good side and the bad side), in the process of which he unwittingly liberates his evil side (Mr. Hyde) to his and others' detriment.

It's not unlike the opportunity and struggle that Microsoft has before it. As with any company, Microsoft brims with both good and bad intentions, as variegated as the employees and financial pressures placed upon it. Proprietary licensing is one tool it uses, a tool which is neither good nor bad, though there is nothing in proprietary licensing that is actually good for customers. Customers derive exactly zero benefit from a proprietary license.

Proprietary licensing is 100% in the vendor's favor and serves only to lock out competition and lock in customers. There is no other reason for it.

This, in itself, is not necessarily a bad thing (vendors need to sell or they won't be able to continue selling product), but it tends toward Mr. Hyde in purpose and is especially dangerous for a company like Microsoft given its market power.

This is why I believe open-source licensing is so critical for Microsoft and other companies who sell software. It protects us from our own worst intentions. Consider what ultimately broke Dr. Jekyll's determination to protect the world from his Mr. Hyde nature:… Read more

Making MySQL pay: A question of core and complements

Jeff Gould has written an excellent piece on the big question arising from Sun's acquisition of MySQL: how will Sun make enough money on the deal to justify the $1 billion valuation? Gould's analysis is generally solid, but he misses a few key points.

First off:

Only time will tell. But in my humble opinion, MySQL's open source business model will make Sun's road to payback a lot steeper than if it had bought a software company with conventional revenues and profits.

Ah, the good old days! Just one problem: those days are gone. Pining for an acquisition of the old way of selling and distributing software is like pining for Mayberry: you can want it, but those days are never coming back. VCs aren't investing in proprietary Mayberry anymore. Except from the consolidators of 20th-century software (Oracle, IBM, SAP, Microsoft), customers aren't buying into the false Mayberry that left them destitute of innovation and options.

Open source is the way forward. But that doesn't make it an easy road, as Gould suggests. Here's where his analysis becomes relevant.… Read more

Is software becoming more or less proprietary? Look at the data

Reading Marc Fleury's post on the subject of open source and proprietary software (a response to my post on Benchmark's investment in Engine Yard), you'd be tempted to believe that the world is growing more proprietary. Reading InfoWorld's response to Marc, you'd be certain that yes, the world is definitely closing off.

Unfortunately, the data suggests the inverse.

It seems quite clear to me that the software industry is rapidly, in some cases, and gradually, in others, opening up. Very few can get away with foisting a heavily proprietary model on the market anymore. Were a startup to launch today with a great new idea for a proprietary database/application server/etc., they'd probably fail to get funding and would certainly fail to find a great deal of customer traction. (I should know - the founders of my company, Alfresco, attempted to do just that before starting Alfresco.)

Even Marc's words fail to convince because his example (100% open) speaks much louder than his belated blog entry on the subject. The blog isn't paying his bills. Open source is.

I think the reason for the disconnect between reality and words is because we're looking at the same data in different ways. Let me explain.… Read more

The dangers of proprietary software

I loved this post over at OpenLogic about the risks of proprietary software. All those risks some persist in seeing in open-source software? They're twice as bad when you can't access the code.

Here are my two favorites that OpenLogic lists:

Proprietary software we use could be really buggy and break down, making it impossible for anyone in the company to get any work done.… Read more

The software industry doth not live by myth alone

My neighbor across the street is a medical researcher and pediatric hospitalist. While talking with him yesterday, he mentioned a research report that was recently published that debunks seven myths that most of us have heard...and probably perpetuated. The researchers found that the myths (see below) have been passed down for generations, in some cases, with little questioning of the "evidence" to support them.

People should drink at least eight glasses of water a day We use only 10% of our brains Hair and fingernails continue to grow after death Shaving hair causes it to grow back faster, darker, or coarser Reading in dim light ruins your eyesight Eating turkey makes people especially drowsy Mobile phones create considerable electromagnetic interference in hospitals.

In every case, robust and multitudinous evidence actually exists to contradict these health myths, yet even doctors continue to propagate them.

It is therefore not very surprising that the software industry has its own myths about open source that it spews irresponsibly, even in the face of compelling evidence to the contrary. It's worth noting a few.… Read more

The proprietary problem with innovation and scale

Glyn Moody takes Dave Weinberger's Harvard Business Review article on the difficulties singular organizations have with scale and runs with it, arguing:

It is deeply ironic that once upon a time Linux - and Linus - was taxed with an inability to scale. Today, though, when Linux is running everything from most of the world's supercomputers to the new class of sub-laptops like the Asus EEE PC and increasing numbers of mobile phones, it is Microsoft that finds itself unable to scale its development methodology to handle this range. Indeed, it can't even produce a decent desktop system, as the whole Vista fiasco demonstrates.

This flies in the face of Jaron Lanier's ill-advised attempt to discredit open source as an innovative force. As with so many, Lanier completely botches his understanding of open source, which is surprising since he should understand it well. What Lanier fails to recognize is that the "source" part of the equation doesn't change with open or proprietary source - not the initial seed, anyway. It's what happens afterwards that matters.

Hence, Lanier can write:… Read more

Open source's "new" commercial model (?)

InfoWorld has an odd article/"expose" that addresses a supposedly sneaky new way of making money in open source: selling subscriptions.

No matter what you call them, open source companies have been steadily integrating parts of the hated commercial software subscription model into their business. First it was support, and now it is software access.

Now, for anyone actually involved in open source, this will sound curious, since this is precisely how most open-source businesses have always made money. Witness Red Hat, for example. InfoWorld just described its model.

So, this "new" model isn't so new. It's also incorrect to suggest, as Savio Rodrigues of IBM has, that such models make open source proprietary in the traditional sense of the word. Proprietary software means that you can't look at or use software unless you get a license to that software. Last time I checked CentOS was shipping something that looks an awful lot like Red Hat Enterprise Linux, minus trademarks. Same with Oracle.

Every open-source company that I know can be forked. Ergo, it's open source.… Read more

Radiohead, open source, and the problem with free

What a short, strange trip it was, but it's now over. With little fanfare, Radiohead has stopped its free promotion of In Rainbows via its "pay whatever the heck you want, we're rich already!" model. The band's manager hardly gave a ringing endorsement to the effort:

This was a solution to a series of issues. I doubt it would work the same way ever again.

Faint praise, indeed.It's too bad, but perhaps it's not surprising. I paid $20 for my copy (and yes, I have the receipt to prove it) but the music is worth far more to me. It is one of the best albums I've ever heard--I listen to it almost daily. But human nature is to try to get something for nothing, and most Radiohead so-called fans did just that.

Interestingly, this same phenomenon is as true of software/IT as it is of music. Give an IT buyer the option of getting something for nothing, and she will, nine times out of 10. Not because she's evil, but because when it comes time to fork over the cash, it's always easier to retain that which we're not compelled to give up.… Read more

Are proprietary maintenance fees worse than open-source maintenance fees?

Gartner has gone on the warpath, smacking down proprietary vendors' practice of discounting upfront license fees in order to lock customers into lucrative, ongoing maintenance contracts. The ironic thing is that it sounds somewhat similar to how commercial open-source companies price their software, except that there is no upfront license fees.

The difference is that open-source vendors aren't using inflated license fees to set the maintenance price (typically around 22%, on average) and don't force customers to pay extra for the right to updates. Customers subscribe to the open-source vendor's services, which include maintenance, support, and updates/upgrades: Not so in the proprietary world:

[Gartner] said upgrade cycles can push contract costs up by as much as 50%, with an average rise of 35% for SOA deals....

Maintenance and support costs are the surreptitious money spinners of software contracts, according to Disbrow. She said vendors will drop software costs by more than 20% or bundle 'free' software to lock customers into mandatory support maintenance and upgrade cycles....… Read more

Dredging memories: Tim O'Reilly on the "Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors"

It has been five years since Tim wrote this impressive piece entitled "The Strange Case of the Disappearing Open Source Vendors." Tim notes how the open-source market bubbled over in 1999 (Red Hat and VA Linux skyrocketed in their IPOs) and then crashed later, leaving a wasteland with few open-source vendors.

This, declared Tim, was a sign of open source's strength, not its weakness:

In many of its recent attacks, Microsoft has argued that open source is bad for business, but you have to ask, "Whose business? Theirs, or yours?" The answer to that question is very different if you're an end user rather than a software vendor....… Read more