Strategy

Google competes for the future; Microsoft, the past

Google was born on the Web and is increasingly giving Microsoft fits by forcing the decades-old software giant to compete on Google's terms. Like open source. Like cloud computing.

Microsoft may shore up its fortunes in the short term with a successful Windows 7 launch. But in the long term, its very success with outdated "desktop" products threaten to cede the market to Google.

It's not really fair to Microsoft. Microsoft is a victim of its own success, needing to cater to its existing clientele with each new release, in true "Innovator's Dilemma" … Read more

Open-source hardware, start-ups, and land wars in Asia

Had Vizzini of "The Princess Bride" lived to relate a third "classic blunder" beyond land wars in Asia and competing with Sicilians, he might have urged start-ups to avoid hardware-dependent strategies. Hardware, after all, can be expensive to build and can't match software for ease (and cost) of distribution.

So, is hardware a bad idea for start-ups? Or are we just thinking about hardware in the wrong way?

Gadi Amit of NewDealDesign suggests that the hardware business, long shunned by Silicon Valley VCs for its costs and complexities, may be getting easier due to ready-made … Read more

Stallman: GPL doesn't guarantee software freedom

The freedom to fork is the essential right of open-source software. Until Oracle's attempted acquisition of Sun/MySQL, however, few realized just how important it would be to retain the right to fork one's own code.

After all, just because you have the letter-of-the-law right to fork doesn't mean you have a meaningful ability to do so. So long as you're not the primary copyright holder, you're always going to be second place, with second-place commercial opportunities in the software.

MySQL co-founder Monty Widenius hints at this in his letter to the European Commission, citing … Read more

Google Android: More than just a cheap date

For years, Oracle, Hewlett-Packard, and IBM have used Linux to lower the cost of their hardware and software-based solutions, while keeping profit margins fat and healthy. Google, ever the quick learner, is now doing the same with Android.

The mobile market will never be the same.

Just as Google and others are using open-source software to lower barriers to adoption of their proprietary cloud offerings, so, too, is Google using open source to reduce the cost of mobile computing in order to drive uptake of its proprietary search-related advertising business in mobile.

Google CFO Patrick Pichette said as much in … Read more

Oracle and Novell Linux: Caught between a Red Hat and a CentOS

Novell has been positioning itself as the Avis of Linux, a distant but gaining Red Hat competitor that "tries harder." Like Oracle, Novell argues that it can give customers Red Hat value at a lower price.

There's just one problem with this marketing spin: the "low-cost alternative" to Red Hat isn't Novell. It's CentOS. And CentOS is free as in $0.00.

It's true that adoption of unpaid Linux like CentOS is booming, and that this no-cost alternative to more expensive solutions like Red Hat is a real threat to Red Hat. … Read more

Google Android needs both control and community

To beat Apple in mobile, Google is going to need more open-source developers. But it's also going to need more Google.

It's tough to balance corporate interests with developer interests, and particularly in open-source development. TechCrunch's Michael Arrington suggests that Android developers are frustrated over having to support multiple code bases to cover the diverse handsets on which Android runs, which is indeed a problem. Basically, these developers are asking Google to exercise more control over Android to ensure it works seamlessly on a range of different devices.

Such developers, however, also want more choice than Apple … Read more

How the U.S. funds open source abroad

President Obama gets a lot of credit for his pro-open source policies, but the United States has been funding open source well before he took office.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which describes itself as the principal federal agency for extending "assistance to countries recovering from disaster, trying to escape poverty, and engaging in democratic reforms," has been in the habit of funding open source abroad since at least 2007.

As but one example, USAID kicked off its Open Source Development 2.0 challenge last fall.

The contest and other USAID activities led to a … Read more

In mobile, open source is a winning strategy

Symbian has the market share; Apple's iPhone has the mind share. The future of mobile, however, will be owned by the company or project that best appeals to developers, especially open-source developers. Microsoft, with its long-standing interest in developers, also needs to reach out to open-source developers, if it wants to succeed.

Part of this reason is cost. As IBM's Savio Rodrigues suggests, Research In Motion could reduce its cost and improve the reach of its platform through open source:

RIM should be utilizing R&D investments more effectively by leveraging existing open-source projects. RIM could have … Read more

MaxiScale and the emergence of software-defined storage

For the last two decades, RAID (redundant array of inexpensive disks) controllers have ruled the storage world. RAID has been required for data protection in disk arrays. RAID schemes (RAID 0,1,6 10, etc.) reside on RAID controllers baked into disk arrays with many billions sold to date. But perhaps more important from the standpoint of making money, the RAID controller has also delivered differentiated value for storage vendors. Data copy and migration, snap shot, deduplication, and the list of controller-based functions goes on--all have been loaded on to the RAID controller.

It's becoming increasingly clear that the … Read more