Open-source integration: No vendors required
Over the Christmas break, I've watched one of the basic powers of open source in action. Two employees from my Alfresco team did something that is largely impossible in the proprietary world:
They wrote integrations to third-party open-source software, the Apache Hadoop and Drupal projects. No contracts changed hands. No NDAs. Just code.
Open source, of course, is a great way to get one's code in the hands of would-be customers, and then sell them support or other add-on services or software. But it's also a fantastic way to collaborate with would-be partners. Not a single lawyer need get involved until the code is working, and then only to divvy up responsibilities and revenue, if you so choose.
Try the above integrations between two proprietary companies. First you get contacts from both companies (probably the executives, depending on the size of the company, because who has authority to make that kind of a decision?) to start talking about the integration. Then, before any real work happens, the lawyers need to get involved. (While at Novell, I had one of the most distressing experiences in my life trying to negotiate a partnership with Siebel. It's not an experience I'd wish on my worst enemy, much less a partner.) Further work will then need to be done to define the integration, marketing teams will need to get involved to define the go-to-market strategies and whatnot. And so on, until eventually code actually gets written, a year or so later.
With open source, you just need one guy and a week or two of downtime over Christmas. With proprietary software, you need a small army. Which do you think is the more efficient model?
Matt Asay brings a decade of in-the-trenches open-source business and legal experience to The Open Road, with an emphasis on emerging open-source business strategies and opportunities. Matt is vice president of business development at Alfresco, a company that develops open-source software for content management. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure. You can follow Matt on Twitter @mjasay. 
- by bluescott December 31, 2008 12:50 PM PST
- yes, it's cool that 2 vendors that make their code base available can do integration without having to forge a legal agreement. However, I would think that an agreement would still need to be forged to manage revenue sharing, go to market strategies, support and other such business issues as you briefly mention. I'm guessing the hair pulling with Siebel when you were with Novell had less to do with how the code would be integrated and more to do with the business terms around the deal. I'm not sure how that piece goes away.
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- by russ danner January 1, 2009 10:50 PM PST
- Well at least in the case of Hadoop the spoils go to Alfresco because of the Apache License. And for Hadoops part.. I think they got what they wanted as well. Adoption.
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(4 Comments)Your licenses set the semantics for the game and it's clear in cases just like this one that yes... those choices really do matter. What is your goal.... In the case of the apache / alfresco partnership whereby alfresco takes from ASF (and where it matters and when it can, gives back) and ASF gets adoption everyone wins.
No.. if Hadoop wanted to embed Alfresco? Well then they need to discuss the matter with Alfresco or comply fully to the GPL.
I love the open source system dynamics - it's well balanced for the most part (with the introduction of AGPL.)