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I was reading the latest issue of Mac|Life tonight (I liked it better as Mac Addict, by the way), and it struck me how dependent Apple is on Microsoft. For all the cool things that come with Mac hardware and OS X, a large swath of the Mac user population would be crippled or wiped out if Microsoft decided to stop supporting Office for Mac.

The Mac faithful (of which I am part) won't like to hear this, but it's true. OpenOffice is an excellent program (It actually is now--three years ago it was rubbish), but many of us simply couldn't use it "in production." Sure, I could run Office for Windows in Parallels' coherence mode (and almost certainly would), but that's an unnecessarily roundabout way of solving something best done directly.

This is a relatively small problem for Mac users, right? I suppose so. The same thing, however, is true in the enterprise. Many prefer to run Linux for an increasing array of server-based applications. But they don't want to be stranded, just as I would be on my Mac without Office. Net net: interoperability is a Very Good Thing. It's good for open source, but it's also good for Microsoft (and everyone else, because no one has a complete lock on any particular area of enterprise software).

All of which makes me wish we could, as an industry, talk about interoperability with more candor. More honesty. This isn't a dig at Microsoft, though it has been guilty of conflating patents (a desire to get paid) with interoperability (a desire to get along). The two don't necessarily go together.… Read more

Scott Davis came to work for Alfresco a month ago, and the open source air seems to be getting to him...in a positive way. A recent blog entryreveals that there's more to open source than just a development methodology. In fact, that actually may be one of the lesser attributes of open source.

Having been in the industry for 17 years -- the last 10 working for vendors -- the notion of "transparency" that comes with applying an OSS style to one's business model makes for more than a slick marketing slide. It permeates … Read more

I'm not talking about open source here, though open source is as guilty in this as any other software. Indeed, sometimes more so (e.g., developers writing code for other developers). I'm talking about all of the software world, and particularly enterprise software, though not exclusively so.

I started thinking about this during lunch with my grandmother on Thursday. We were talking about ways she could communicate with my parents down in Argentina (Skype, iChat, etc.) and she said:

I can hardly use a computer anymore. It's constantly changing. I'm just too dumb to use it.

Of course, that self-deprecation is probably exactly what the digerati would encourage, but the truth is, it's not my grandmother's fault. It's the software world's fault, largely building tools for itself that only "the elect" outside Silicon Valley can comprehend.… Read more

I just took the time to read through this interview with Phil Costa, director of Product Management for Flex at Adobe. (Many thanks to Dave McAllister for his link.) You may remember that Adobe announced in April its intention to open-source Flex.

Now, the company is talking about why. It's very interesting to see that the decision to open-source a product is somewhat universal in the considerations that go into it. It brings back memories of early 2003 when we (at Novell) were giddy about releasing the company's UDDI server as open source...

I particularly found Phil's thoughts on the LGPL (i.e., why Adobe opted not to go with LGPL and instead used MPL) fascinating.

At its core, Adobe's decision to open-source flex stemmed from a desire to make the project bigger than the company. That is, independent of the company. Something you could embrace without embracing the company, too. This is precisely the same reasoning that went into Alfresco's decision to GPL our enterprise content management system, so Phil's comments resonate with me.

In response to How Software Is Built's question as to why Adobe decided to open-source Flex, Phil replied:… Read more

Wow! I come back home after attending some 4th of July parties in Chapel Hill, and I find there are more flames on my recent blog posting than in any fireworks show I've seen. How did this happen? And what does it mean? And what am I going to do about it?

The answer is pretty simple. I wrote a long and convoluted blog posting about identity theft, its epidemic proportions, and the challenges of raising children in such a hostile environment. I then explained how the unthinking act of supplying one's Social Security number (SSN) to any agency not directly connected with Social Security is a violation of the original design of the SSN, a violation of instructions printed on the card (until 1972), a violation of consumer protection and privacy laws passed as recently as 1974, a violation of expert testimony presented to Congress in 1992, 2000, and as recently as last month. Based on these facts, I argued that the reason identity theft is epidemic in this country is precisely because people have either ignored these facts or have been simply unaware of them. I then finished with a twist, noting that the iPhone activation procedure asks customers to do precisely what the security experts agree you should never do, which is to supply a Social Security number as personal identification information. And if you have been following the blog, you know that my wife Amy is going to be getting an iPhone, so I was using the blog to share with her (and all the other parents reading along) some friendly family advice informed from my 20+ years as a computer scientist.

Well, when she picked her jaw back up, she said "You buried the lead!" I turned my article upside down, putting the most important stuff up front; CNET then (re)published the blog in their big news section, and the fireworks began!

That is how it happened.… Read more

I spent a half-hour this morning talking with Lance Walter, VP of Marketing for Pentaho, a leading open source Business Intelligence vendor. I wanted to see if Pentaho's experience in the market matches up with what other open source application companies are seeing.

Indeed. The good news of open source goes well beyond any one particular vendor.

Question: I hear good things about Pentaho all the time. Can you give me a high-level update?… Read more

I love Marten Mickos, and it is quotations like this in a Computerworld interview that reinforce my respect for him. Asked whether MySQL would ever go partially proprietary in order to get a higher download-to-sale conversion rate, Marten replied:

We've had that debate many times. I think we might win a few new customers, but we would lose 2 million users. We're not ready for that kind of compromise. We also look at other companies who have built closed-source products on top of open-source ones. They don't seem successful.… Read more

One of the first people I thought of when thinking up this In the Trenches series was Chris Harrick of SugarCRM. I've known Chris for a year or two, and have always been impressed. He's the sort of employee that any company would want, whether proprietary or open source. Fortunately for the open source world, he left Siebel to join SugarCRM.

When you talk with Chris, you don't get the sense that he spends much time mucking around in the ideological side of open source. He cares about customers and figuring out how to make them happy. And, as you'll see below, he thinks a lot about this and other issues that affect an open source business.

Name, company, title, and what you actually do

Chris Harrick, director of Product Marketing, SugarCRM. My team is responsible for communicating the benefits of SugarCRM products to open source users, prospects, customers, analysts, partners, and the media. Responsibilities include creating product messaging, competitive positioning, supporting sales, developing demos and webcasts, briefing analysts and the media, and authoring lots of collateral (White Papers, Datasheets, Press Releases, Web Site, Customer Case Studies).… Read more

Luis Villa has left a placeholder for a larger discussion on artificial scarcity. He has a problem with:

creating artificial scarcity, either through the use of patents, copyrights, or trademarks, or by allowing others to use trade secret and SaaS (software as a service) tactics to take data from the commons and then "proprietarize" it (make it proprietary).

I see his point, and agree, but any business depends on artificial scarcity of some kind. Or, rather, I should say instead that successful businesses are good at creating the appearance or reality of scarcity. Why? Because otherwise, the customer will take forever to buy something, even if they want it today. Right now.

This is actually one of the weaknesses of an open-source business model.… Read more