Lost in the news that Nokia has finally released its Ovi application store, akin to the iPhone's App Store, is what this means for Symbian, the world's most widely used (and most easily overlooked) operating system for mobile devices.
Symbian, as an open-source operating system, should be mobile developers' darling. Instead, it continues to be an afterthought.
Symbian has been talking up its open source plans for roughly a year now, plans that should put it at the heart of an iPhone-beating application store. But that hasn't happened. Instead, Symbian has stood on the sidelines as Apple's App Store goes from strength to strength and even Google, whose Android platform is still in its infancy, entices developers with its Android Market.
Symbian, through Nokia's Ovi Store, ostensibly now has its own store, too, but it's branded by Nokia and will help Nokia far more than it helps Symbian (not the least reason being that the Ovi Store apparently doesn't distinguish between Java applications and Symbian applications).
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source leader Funambol, suggests that Nokia may struggle to make its Ovi Store pay, given that it's a hardware company at heart. I'm sure this is true, but it overlooks the larger issue: why isn't Symbian launching an application store, rather than Nokia?
I asked Capobianco, who gave a very reasonable response: Symbian already has its hands full:
Symbian is busy. I do not think they have time to breathe: trying to pull a full open source operating system is not an easy thing. Imagine building cloud services (like an application store) at the same time. No chance.
It's a good point, but not one that will likely placate members of the Symbian community, who have been clamoring for a Symbian application store for some time, but with little response. Symbian's David Wood suggested in December 2008 that it would take time to unleash its full power, but he may not have the time.
Symbian seemed so far ahead of the game when it announced in June 2008 that it was going to open source its software. Since then, it has apparently been heads down delivering on that promise.
Unfortunately, the world keeps moving, and Symbian risks getting left behind.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
If the market's response to the Affero GPL is any indication, I was 100 percent wrong to suggest that open source would suffer without closing the so-called "ASP loophole."
That, at least, is the feeling I'm getting reading Stephen O'Grady's excellent summary of open-source licensing, and particularly the GPL, and how it works (or doesn't) in SaaS, cloud, and other instantiations of network-based computing. Despite the fact that the Open Source Initiative approved the Affero GPL--which explicitly shuts the door on free-riding on open source in network-based computing without contributing back--few have adopted it.
This could be because we need to raise awareness of the AGPL. Or perhaps it means no one really cares.
Yes, Fabrizio Capobianco, a personal friend and CEO of Funambol, an open-source mobile company, is right to suggest that Google has profited handsomely from open source while giving commensurately little back, but I'm starting to wonder, along with O'Grady, if it matters. General Electric uses Alfresco's software throughout the company while paying us nothing...and yet we're having a banner year.
Perhaps this is just the cost of doing business in open source? I definitely believe that open-source companies derive far more value from free distribution than we lose.
I also believe that Google contributes open-source code where and how necessary for it to compete effectively. Google has become very active in a wide range of open-source projects. Perhaps it's less important to worry about its paltry contributions back to Linux, and instead take a more holistic view?
And perhaps the lack of uptake on the AGPL is a recognition that the value in open source is less about contribution and more about distribution and adoption. The reality is that very few open-source projects can command any outside contributions of note, but many are able to become widely used by lowering the barriers to adoption through free downloads and light restrictions on use.
In sum, perhaps Richard Stallman was wrong. Perhaps open source's cardinal virtue is not freedom to modify source code, but to get it in the first place.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
I don't have any scientific proof of this, but it strikes me that open-source CEOs are different. Not just because some sport ponytails (Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz), or some speak with a light Southern drawl (Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst), or even that some swear in Italian (Funambol CEO Fabrizio Capobianco).
No, what really makes them different, at least as compared to their enterprise software counterparts, is their cutting-edge adoption of technology.
In this they're no different (and probably a bit behind) the Web 2.0 crowd, but compared to an HP, IBM, or SAP CEO, the CEOs of open-source companies set new standards for connectedness and communication transparency. Perhaps it's the relative youth of open-source CEOs, but perhaps it's also a love of technology that stems from having to live so close to source code in an open-source company.
I first thought of this when I received notice that Whitehurst is following me on Twitter. I can't imagine Steve Ballmer following anyone on Twitter. Then I thought to how actively Schwartz blogs, providing useful information on Sun and its place in the larger enterprise computing ecosystem.
It also reminded me that I get text messages as often as emails from Whitehurst, and the same used to be true of Marten Mickos, former CEO of MySQL, as well as others (except Capobianco at Funambol, because his company does email sync, so he's not a big SMS user :-).
Enterprises should take note. I think company leadership has a material impact on the kind of technology that gets created within a technology vendor. If your vendor's CEO is stuck in the Stone Ages of technology, perhaps its products are, too?
This can only be taken so far, of course, but I wonder if there's something to it....
As Microsoft allegedly searches for open-source NetBSD developers to work on its Sidekick mobile phone, acquired along with maker Danger last year, the furor is kicking up that Microsoft finally is getting deep into open source.
This, however, is the wrong furor. Microsoft's move into an open-source operating system means little, given that Danger was almost certainly headed down the NetBSD path well before the Microsoft acquisition, as Fabrizio Capobianco of Funambol points out. Microsoft is simply fulfilling the strategic trajectory that Danger had already plotted out.
The real buzz should center on the fact that this is going to happen again and again and again, as Microsoft joins the 21st century of software. Microsoft will find it increasingly difficult to acquire companies that don't have substantial investments in open source.
Take its attempt to buy Yahoo, for example. Acquiring the Internet company would have propelled Microsoft into a Web infrastructure heavy on open-source technologies such as PHP, MySQL, and Linux. There was no way that Microsoft would have been able to move all of Yahoo over to Windows, .Net, and SQL Server.
This is the shape of acquisitions to come for Microsoft and, indeed, for all traditionally proprietary software companies. The best new companies all use open source in some way, as do more and more old-guard software companies.
In sum, expect to see Microsoft getting ever deeper into open source, regardless of whether it wants to.
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of open-source mobile leader Funambol, has more or less declared that Windows Mobile is dying. Indeed, it's arguably the case that the proprietary software model, generally, is largely dead in mobile.
Why is mobile computing shifting to open source? Because the mobile world has learned from the desktop wars with Microsoft, Capobianco argues:
(Hardware) vendors have seen what happened to them in the PC world. Totally marginalized. They won't let Microsoft or anyone else do it in mobile as well. They are much smarter now. They know they have to control their destiny and differentiate on the (operating system) as well. They know the answer is open source.
While it is true that Apple and Research In Motion seem to be doing quite well with their end-to-end, proprietary-everything models, those two companies represent a small slice of the overall market for embedded software on mobile devices.
From mobile phones to Wi-Fi routers, open source increasingly dominates because, ironically, it doesn't dominate. Open source cedes control of the software to the hardware vendors, a fact they appreciate and embrace.
So although I expect to see Apple and its kind thrive by resolving complexity for consumers, I also suspect that we'll see rapid uptake in open source by hardware manufacturers desperate to distinguish themselves from the pack.
The easiest way to do that? With software. The easiest software to modify and customize? Yep, it's open source.
Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO and founder of mobile open-source company Funambol, has posted a great presentation on how to walk the line between cash and community in open source. Teaser? You need both, but the road to getting both is not the same.
The secret, as Capobianco suggests, is to provide compelling, separate value to each group, community and customers (or would-be customers).
(Credit:
Fabrizio Capobianco)
Often in the commercial open-source world we talk about finding value to upsell one's existing community. This, in Capobianco's mind, is wrong, and I think there's a lot of truth to that contention.
Once we stop trying to pitch upgrades and such to community members, we remove much of the ambiguity in our open-source product/project strategy, and provide clear differentiation between the "community" product and the "enterprise" product.
For Capobianco, the clearest way to do this is to make one's enterprise product SaaS-based, with the community product remaining an on-premise installation. I generally agree with this approach, but some markets (like mine - ECM) have not bought into SaaS yet, and may not be the right approach...yet.
One of open source's biggest failings has been to extend its relevance into the Software as a Service world. The OSI has finally corrected this with the approval of the Affero GPL.
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source company Funambol, has been the most ardent crusader for development and approval of a license like the AGPL. In a blog posting, he talks through the importance of the AGPL, and identifies perhaps its biggest opponent: Google.
In GPL v2, those who ran open source software in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) environment, and modified the open source code, were not required to return the changes back to the community....For me, this has always been one of the worst risks for open source oblivion. If you can take and you do not give back, defeating the copyleft concept, you kill open source. The ASP loophole is the cancer of open source.... ... Read more
Capo has style
I was fortunate to spend some time skiing today with Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of mobile open-source company Funambol and a good friend. Fabrizio sees a side of open source that few of us get to see, and so has a different take on many of the issues than the enterprise open-source players do.
First off, I wanted to get a health check on some ideas that he'd suggested a little over a year to me at a dinner (again, here in Utah - for loving the Valley so much he sure spends a lot of time on my turf ;-).
The answer is "Yes." Yes, Funambol continues to succeed by not trying to upsell its community, but rather selling to a different demographic that doesn't want to bother with the "risk" of open source.
While the rest of us chase enterprise dollars, Funambol gives his product away for free to enterprises (and gives any support dollars for that market to its partners). The real market for Funambol is the service provider, for a few very good reasons:
... Read moreIn this fifth installment of the Open Source CEO Series, I talked with Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO of Funambol, the mobile open source company. In one of my only happy moments as an Arsenal fan, I watched Arsenal (my club) beat Juventus (Fabrizio's club) in the Champions League quarter-finals at Fabrizio's house. I'm not sure he has ever forgiven me for this....
Fabrizio brings a very different perspective to open source than those I've interviewed up until now. His company, Funambol, is focused on the mobile space - think an open source Blackberry server. Very cool stuff, and it couldn't have happened to a better person (with worse taste in football :-).
Name, position, and company of executive
... Read more
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO, Funambol
- prev
- 1
- next
