Microsoft's embrace of MySQL could kill it
For those who have fret about Microsoft fighting against open source, I have news for you: Microsoft's impact on open source may be worse as a friend than as an enemy.
Now with MySQL inside! Yes, we can.
(Credit: Microsoft)Over the past few years, Microsoft has steadily warmed to open source, to the point that it now hosts its own open-source code repository and has seen its Microsoft Public License used more often than venerable licenses like the Mozilla Public License or the Eclipse Public License, according to new data released by Black Duck Software.
The open-source world should be worried.
After all, as IBM's Savio Rodrigues points out, an open-source-friendly Microsoft no longer has qualms about embedding open-source software like MySQL into its products. In particular, Microsoft supports MySQL as part of its Azure cloud service...without paying Sun a dime for the privilege.
It's a completely legitimate way to offer open-source value to Microsoft customers, and is very similar to what Amazon is doing with MySQL.
However, as Rodrigues notes, it's not necessarily good for MySQL, or other open-source projects that could be used this same way:
The larger point is if Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, HP, Google, Cisco, EMC/VMware, or Oracle/Sun offer a simple and supported cloud service for running MySQL, Tomcat, JBoss, Mule, or Apache HTTP instances, what reason do customers have to acquire "enterprise subscriptions" from the vendors developing these open source projects? Until now, the value of an open source "enterprise subscription" has largely been access to support and access to administration and management tooling. In the case of MySQL, the former is provided by Amazon RDS and Azure SQL as part of the per-hour service. Again in the case of MySQL, the latter is rendered unnecessary or replicated through Amazon RDS and Azure SQL tools.
Consider it a super-friendly, and super-dangerous, bear hug.
For those who think that this affects commercial open source and not community-led open source, think again. Money and open source don't grow on trees.
The explosion of open-source development has directly correlated to the explosion of cash investments into open-source projects, starting with IBM's $1 billion commitment to Linux. MySQL, the database, would be a pale shade of what it is today without MySQL AB, the company that has funded the overwhelming majority of its development.
So, is this cause to castigate Microsoft? No. After all, it's really no different from what Amazon, Google, Apple, and others do with open source.
Rather, Microsoft's move should serve as a reminder to open-source companies that they need to upgrade their business models or risk being rendered irrelevant by the cloud and all that it enables vendors to do with open-source software.
After all, the protections that the GNU General Public License (GPL) and other open-source licenses offer in the traditional software world are essentially meaningless in the networked world, where software is used to create services, but isn't actually distributed.
This is as true for Red Hat as it is for open-source start-ups like Openbravo and Talend. Imagine if Amazon decides to start offering JBoss as a cloud service. Or Red Hat Enterprise Linux, for that matter (minus the trademarks).
It could happen. Actually, I'll go one step further: it will happen. It's just a matter of when.
This is why companies like IBM, Google, and increasingly Microsoft strategically invest in open source, but don't try to directly monetize open source. It's also why the "open-source companies" need to figure out a Plan B before Plan A gets taken from them.
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 chief operating officer at Canonical, the company behind the Ubuntu Linux operating system. Prior to Canonical, Matt was general manager of the Americas division and vice president of business development at Alfresco, an open-source applications company. 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 snaidamast November 23, 2009 7:21 AM PST
- I have always thought of pure open source as a losing proposition in terms of introducing it to the commercial IT world as it increasingly lowered the value of those attempting to making a living on developing software. If you are going to give software away for free than why go into it as a career. And for those of us that want to develop software and sell it, the open source model has hurt this part of the field. For for companies that are developing such software, unless they make a significant profit on alternate revenue sources such development can only be seen as "overhead"...<br /><br />However, open source does not necessarily mean simply giving software away for nothing but that it is an added bonus for a payment for a particular application. This is done for either support services or the actual procurement of an application or both.<br /><br />Now that major corporations are taking open source and implementing it into their own offerings which will yield financial gain what are the developers of such products to do for their own financial rewards? There is not much they can do.<br /><br />Open source was promoted by younger technicians, academia, and scientifically based organizations all who had little need for financial reward at the same level as those more mature technicians that have existing financial responsibilities. However, little thought was given to the actual business model of creating such a new technical implementation in terms of financial survival. And when open source first gained recognition this was a concern for numerous professional developers.<br /><br />As a result, in my view, what the open source community should do is partially reverse their methodologies whereby the developer community can still receive the software freely or at substantially reduced\discounted cost but production implementations and use within business are charged and at different levels based upon whether the purchaser wants the source code or not. A good example of such pricing can be found at www.sqlmaestro.com, a German company that charges different prices for personal and business use of their software tools...<br /><br />You cannot make money giving things away freely and many of us in the technical communities need to put "food on the table". However, there are compromises that can be made to allow for the furthering of the open source model while also maintaining a level of financial independence based upon it...
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- by jeffromiller November 23, 2009 7:37 AM PST
- Hate to tell you @snaidamast, but software development is becoming a commodity. Remember when if you knew how to build a website you could bring in $100 an hour? Now you can find a web developer on every corner - just like a gas station or a McDonalds. I'm not saying this is a good thing - the result is a lot of garbage software out there and a bunch of folks running around saying they are in IT yet they think "state" is California instead of a crucial web development construct.
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<br />Just like the musicians complaining about "free" downloading (not that open source equates to free mind you!), it's only a matter of time before we hear the same whining from software developers. I'm both a musician and software developer and have found plenty of ways to monetize both. It's inevitable...but the trully talented software developers will find a way to monetize software - whether it's open source or not.
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<br />To this article - I wonder if Matt would have written the same article if it was Red Hat's embrace of My SQL ; )
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<br />JM
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