Tim O'Reilly
(Credit: Dan Farber/CNET News)Some of us take longer than others. Tim O'Reilly moved on years ago from talking about open-source licenses and instead focused on the importance of data to business success. In the open-source industry, we heard his words but clearly didn't understand them.
We kept selling software through our "awkward teenage years," even as Google, 37Signals, Facebook, and others gave it away.
Years later, as Google pays for mountains of open-source code by aggregating data and selling data-rich services, we're starting to grok O'Reilly's message. It's what makes companies like Path Intelligence so interesting.
Redmonk's Stephen O'Grady notes:
Much has been made of the lack of an obvious revenue model for properties like Twitter, and to a lesser extent, Facebook. But when looking at the organizations' balance sheets...it seems self-evident that the value of the data assets involved is seriously underreported...
The economic value being assigned to data helps to explain why, while being sympathetic to questions about Twitter business models, I've never been overwhelmingly concerned. Where the revenue model for the dot-com era "eyeballs" strategy was equal parts indistinct and aspirational, the Web 2.0 businesses are being built out in an era of customers increasingly predisposed to analytics and data driven decision making. In other words, there's a market for their most valuable asset.
As Microsoft's Windows, Office, Xbox, and SharePoint businesses demonstrate, the real money is in the platform business, which is, or which can be, a data business. The more businesses and developers that build upon your software, the more valuable that software becomes. Even systems like Twitter are being turned into platforms.
But how you build the platform is increasingly important. Microsoft is Platform 1.0. Open source is Platform 2.0. It's a more efficient way to build community around a core, which is why Google and other savvy companies increasingly turn to open source as a fundamental way to entice developers, which developers create more software which invites more adoption which yields more data...you get the picture.
It's also why I believe Google Android, in its platform battle with Apple's iPhone, will ultimately prevail, so long as it can work in peaceful coexistence with the developer community (which has not always been the case).
Unlike many open-source companies, however, Google et al. have the singular benefit that since their business is data, not software, they can shepherd open-source development without taking a heavy hand in community management. More open source leads to more adoption, which leads to more data, which leads to the Googles of the world being able to give away even more software for "less than free."
It's genius. And it's amazing that it took so many of us so long to heed the counsel O'Reilly offered years ago.
In sum, this isn't a suggestion that companies should forgo profits in exchange for mindless popularity contests, as 37Signals' Jason Fried rightly pillories.
Instead, it's a call to look for ways to fund open-source development with rich, data-driven businesses. Most open-source companies focus too much on software, and most Web 2.0 companies focus too much on data. It's the blend of the two that makes a company successful.
Just ask Google.
(As an end note, I think Gartner's Brian Prentice is on to something when he speculates that enterprise applications may increasingly be communally developed by IT end users, though perhaps coordinated by vendors. It's a very interesting prospect, one that will enable even more open-source development in an area where data may not fund it.)
In 2007 Red Hat stood on top of the Linux kernel contributor list with room to spare. At 12.7 percent of the Linux kernel contributed by Red Hat (measured in terms of lines changed), IBM was the runner-up at a comparatively distant 5.9 percent. In 2008, Red Hat slipped a little but maintained the top spot (11.2 percent), with Novell making a burst into second place at 8.9 percent.
In 2009, things get more interesting, with Intel making a serious challenge to claim the top spot in Linux kernel contributions.
Red Hat, Novell, and IBM all have substantial software businesses, with heavy investments in Linux, so it makes sense that they'd contribute heavily to the Linux kernel. But according to new data Jonathan Corbet of LWN.net announced at the Ottawa Linux Symposium on Wednesday, Intel has surged from 2.3 percent in 2007 to 4.1 percent in 2008 to 6.9 percent in 2009.
(Credit:
Jonathan Corbet (LWN.net))
Red Hat still sits atop the corporate pile of contributors with 12.3 percent, but within the next two years it's possible that we'll see Intel top it. Since Corbet last compiled his kernel data in 2008, 2,559 developers added 4.8 million lines of code. Among the 339 employers found in Corbet's data, Intel ranks second.
This really is remarkable. Why is a hardware company, albeit one with significant software assets, making such an earnest effort to contribute to open-source software?
Intel's commitment, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open-source technologist, told me, signals Linux's critical importance to a broad community:
It's a sign of the strength of the Linux community that contributors come from all sorts of places. This shows how important Linux is.
Yes, but why Intel? Suffice it to say, Intel doesn't account for its Linux development as "charitable giving."
Indeed, John Treadway suggests that "at the very least [Intel's kernel development] means Intel-based platforms will continue to have the advantage," because presumably Intel chips inside servers, Netbooks, desktops, mobile phones, and more will run Linux as well or better than they do Windows.
Intel's Linux commitment, in short, could be a hedge on its longstanding partnership with Microsoft.
Or maybe it's more. For years Intel made a fortune buddying up with Microsoft in the so-called Wintel duopoly. The problem with this pairing is that Microsoft's portion of the pie cuts into Intel's to an ever-widening degree. And it's not just Microsoft: the more an original equipment manufacturer spends on software the less is left over for Intel's hardware.
So, as SAP's Dirk Riehle remarks, Intel's Linux strategy frees up more money to spend on its chips, a theme Riehle has touched on before with reference to IBM's commitment to Linux.
Watch for Intel to further increase its commitment to Linux, paying more and more developers like Jeff Dike to give lots of software away.
This makes the developers happy, but it also makes Intel happy. The more great open-source software out there, the more money is available to buy Intel hardware. Microsoft is the casualty, but that's business. One company's complement is another company's core. That's the way open-source capitalism works.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Linux has been growing in importance for years in the darkened server closets. In the server world, Linux's cost and performance benefits have trumped its early weaknesses (Ease of use, etc.), making Linux the heir apparent to the Unix throne.
But that's the server, where geeks write software for other geeks. In the consumer world of personal computers and mobile devices, however, Linux hasn't fared particularly well precisely because the developers of Linux differ so markedly from the vast majority of the user population.
Linux developers, in other words, scratch very different "itches" from those plaguing most would-be Linux users.
It seems clear to me that, as Bill Weinberg astutely argues, the way forward for Linux is not in replicating Microsoft's desktop dominance, but rather in forging a new, consumer-friendly mobile Linux experience, one focused on the youth that are growing up mobile.
This "way" is being paved by Intel, Canonical, Novell, and other companies that have significant experience writing software for normal users, and not merely the alpha geeks of Linux. I've spent the past two weeks fiddling with different variants of Linux-based Netbooks, in particular the Linux Foundation's Moblin Beta 2 (Developed by Intel and Novell) and Canonical's Ubuntu 9.04 Remix for Netbooks, and I believe they are onto something.
The first thing that struck me when using Moblin is how it breaks new ground in defining a new personal computer experience, one designed for the narrow (hardware) confines of a Netbook but offering a limitless portal to social networking and a broad Web experience beyond.
This is perhaps why Acer has committed to Moblin in a big way, and why Canonical is joining up with Moblin, as are others.
As for Ubuntu, it's an even tighter user experience (though, to be fair to Moblin, it's still in beta and so many of its rough edges will be smoothed over by general release, I assume). This isn't surprising given Ubuntu's singular focus on usability. It doesn't require any specialized knowledge of Linux though it does give the user too much information on what's happening under the hood. The lay user simply doesn't care. We just want it to work.
The experience hasn't been without its difficulties. My experience with Ubuntu, for example, was plagued by constant nagging to install yet another package to be able to play proprietary codecs. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols suggests that this problem is going away, but it can't leave fast enough. It's asking way too much to expect consumers to have to work in order to watch a YouTube video.
We are users, after all, not developers.
Slowly but surely, however, vendors are getting the Linux experience "right" for Netbooks and other mobile devices. I've been leaving my Intel-loaned Acer Aspire One Netbook around where my kids, ages four through 12, will open it up and experiment. Each one has quickly managed to find the games in Moblin and Ubuntu, and my older children were quickly browsing the Web and even typing up school reports. In minutes. With no coaching.
To me, this suggests the path forward for Linux is in new, as yet underdeveloped markets like mobile, and for an as yet under-monopolized audience: youth. My kids have grown up with Macs, but they're hardly grown up yet. Their experience with computers has been as much about mobile phones as laptops.
They are the most mobile-inclined generation the world has yet seen, making them an ideal target for new Linux-based mobile devices. As the Bible notes in Proverbs 22:6:
Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.
Children's conceptions of what a computer must look like and feel like have yet to calcify into a Windows mold. They are the audience to win for those vendors interested in dominating the next decade of personal computing.
Old dogs strain to learn new tricks, making the Microsoft-conceived desktop a poor target for Linux vendors. The market is mobile. The market is children.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin talks up Moblin
(Credit: Matt Asay/CNET)For years, Linux enthusiasts have tried to win an unwinnable war: displacing Microsoft's hegemony in personal computers with Windows clones. Though Lindows was perhaps the first to make a serious attempt at replicating the Windows experience, all the Linux "desktop" vendors have tried it, and all with the same result:
Failure.
This isn't because Linux isn't any good as a personal computer operating system. It's because such copycat tactics have doomed Linux to always being a cheap facsimile of Microsoft's idea of what the personal computer should look like and do.
With Moblin version 2.0, the Linux-based operating system Novell and Intel designed specifically for the Netbook market, the Linux "desktop" crowd seems to finally have the right idea: change the game, not simply the price tag.
I spent Thursday working on the Moblin-based Asus Aspire One (AOD150-1165) Netbook. I am still getting used to the somewhat cramped keyboard (with a hyperactive trackpad that is hard to avoid given the lack of space), but Moblin, itself, is pretty impressive, even though it's still very much in beta.
Having used various Linux "desktops" over the years (Canonical Ubuntu- and Novell SUSE-based, primarily), the thing that most impressed me about the Moblin experience is that it's nothing like traditional Linux "desktop" experiences. In fact, it's not really much like Windows, either.
The closest it comes to being a clone of anything is in paying tribute to some of the best Mac OS X features (like Expose), which perhaps isn't surprising given that Ubuntu's Mark Shuttleworth has suggested Linux must outdo the Mac to win.
One of my favorite things is the concept of the M-Zone ("Me-Zone"):
Diagram of Moblin's M-Zone
(Credit: Moblin.org)You can think of it as "home base," as it offers a central place to capture your recent activities (e.g., documents you've been working on, music you were listening to, etc.). Someone that had been using the machine before me had The Pixies geared up on Last.fm, which I simply clicked on and, Voila! "Monkey Gone to Heaven" started to play. Score one for Intel for knowing my musical tastes.
If that sounds business-y and grown up, I suppose it is, but Moblin is about much more than how to get one's corporate job done. Like the Mac, Moblin takes notice that life is more than corporate drudgery, and the UI reflects this. One part that I really liked was the "People" option on the Toolbar panel:
Moblin's People panel
(Credit: Moblin.org)This is a great view into instant messaging conversations and a reflection of Moblin's nod to the real life "work" that we do, and how we do it. Again, very similar to the Mac in its emphasis on "the other work" we do.
Over the next week or two, I expect to spend more time with Moblin, and to give neighbors, co-workers, and family time on the machine to see how they fare. Stay tuned.
Some are projecting that Linux will regain 50 percent of the Netbook market. Perhaps. But if so, it won't come as a result of the clone wars Linux developers have been promoting for years. It will come from the game-changing tactics that Moblin, now under the guidance of the Linux Foundation, and others bring to the personal computer party.
At present there are arguably too many mobile open-source platforms. Based on what I've seen with Moblin, however, it may well be the Linux distribution to beat in the mobile market, at least for Netbooks.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
In open source or in product development generally, one of the biggest mistakes is to take on a deeply entrenched incumbent on its own turf. Almost inevitably, if you play someone else's game, even if you're a little cheaper/faster/better, you're going to lose. Inertia favors the incumbent, and there's a whole lot of inertia involved in switching vendors.
For this reason, I agree wholeheartedly with Bill Weinberg's suggestion that Linux's opportunity in Netbooks is to focus on the mobile side of the market, rather than bringing a traditional, personal computer bent to the market.
Weinberg writes:
...(O)ne strategic error made by purveyors of Linux Netbooks was to covet the volumes of the global mobile telephony market while following the business models and channels of the legacy notebook marketplace. Linux fans--.orgs, Linux ISVs, and device OEMS--unfortunately approached the Netbook opportunity as a downward extension of the desktop and portable PC business, with volumes of 297M units in 2008 (IDC).
Instead, the Linux ecosystem needs to envision Netbooks (and MIDs and tablets) as building on the worldwide mobile handset business, with its 1.28B annual unit shipments (Gartner) the most lucrative slice of which, smartphones, constitutes 14 percent (ABI) with 20 percent annual growth rates.
Microsoft owns the traditional personal computer market, and probably will forever. But don't lose hope: the best strategies going forward are disruptive, in the Clayton Christensen sense. Microsoft is weak in mobile. This is where Linux proponents should focus their "desktop" strategies.
Apple is gaining on Microsoft in personal computers as much because of its iPhone revolution as its beautiful laptops. If Linux wants to win in Netbooks, and it can, it must do so by undermining Microsoft, not by confronting its desktop dominance directly. Netbooks must be more "Net" than "book," just as mobile phones are more about "mobile" than "phone."
If this is true, Google's Android, which is targeting smartphones first and Netbooks second, may have the upper hand on Intel's Moblin, which aims at Netbooks first, and is largely designed as a Windows replacement.
Malcolm Gladwell recently reminded the world that David beats Goliath with a sling, not a sword. Linux-based Netbooks, playing David to Microsoft's Goliath, should approach the market with a mobile bias, rather than with a personal computer bias.
"Hit 'em where they ain't," said Willie Keeler, which is as true in hitting baseballs as it is in competing with Microsoft.
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Google's still-nascent efforts to dominate the mobile market, already reeling from Apple's surging iPhone platform, were dealt another blow on Thursday when Intel and Novell announced that they will collaborate to promote Intel's Moblin operating system, a rival Linux distribution for mobile devices.
Whereas Google is initially targeting smartphones with Android (though an Android-based Netbook has apparently been released), Intel is targeting Moblin at Netbooks.
Additionally, Android and Moblin aren't simply two different Linux distributions, in the way that Red Hat Enterprise Linux and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are. Android and Moblin use Linux in different ways, as Dirk Hohndel, Intel's chief Linux and open source technologist, suggested to me:
Moblin is Linux for mobile devices, (and its) first focus is on Netbooks. Android is an (operating system) for phones that uses a Linux kernel...very different.
Novell's Justin Steinman, vice president of solution and product marketing, said in a follow-up conversation:
Moblin 2.0 is the first open-source Linux software stack and technology framework designed from the ground up for the Netbook device type. Essentially, Moblin plans to start at the Netbook layer of the stack, and then work its way down to the smaller mobile devices. Given Novell's strength in delivering desktops based on Linux, it made sense for us to collaborate closely with Intel to deliver the optimal user experience on Netbooks.
Given Apple's rising dominance in smartphones and Symbian's lingering power in other mobile devices, this seems like a smart, strategic move. The Netbook market is still wide open, with Apple currently disdaining to enter it and Microsoft bleeding cash to hold its ground against Linux.
Though Ubuntu made the first forays for Linux in the Netbook market, could it be Novell and Intel that end up dominating it?
Maybe. Maybe not. The one sure thing, at least for now, is that Microsoft may win the short-term Netbook war, but it still needs a long-term, winning game plan for mobile.
The mobile market is fascinating because it is uprooting long-held beliefs about how and where to compete in software. Intel, Google, and Apple, each fiercely contending for dominance, share a common strategy: they're investing in the operating system but planning to make their money elsewhere (Atom chips, in Intel's case; advertising and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Google's; hardware and revenue-sharing with application vendors, in Apple's).
Such strategies stand in stark contrast to Microsoft, which persists in trying to monetize its mobile Windows platform.
Small wonder, then, that Microsoft is losing the mobile battle. It's fighting with the wrong ammunition.
Back to Google. While it seems clear that Intel's Moblin initiative is an attempt to fend off Google's looming Android threat, there's probably enough time for Intel and Novell to stake out a strong position in Netbooks that Google will struggle to overcome.
Regardless, the one player left out in the cold in all this activity is Microsoft. Google, Novell, Intel, and Apple are each putting hefty resources into winning the mobile market, but doing so in a way that undermines Microsoft's traditional approach of licensing only the software. Microsoft's Xbox experience suggests that it can do hardware right, but will it be able to catch up if it starts chasing its competition?
Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.
Roy Schestowitz pulls some tasty morsels from the exhibits in Comes vs Microsoft, Microsoft's antitrust suit with the State of Iowa. It has long been known that Microsoft leans heavily on its hardware partners to privilege Windows at the expense of competitors, but the emails in Comes give a bird's eye view of how Microsoft thinks (or thought).
Here's an email sent by Eric Rudder, then SVP of Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism team, back on November 20, 2001, to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer:
[Floating point] is a case where we have fallen behind Linux, thanks to Intel's great work w. Linux compilers. They can help us with the Math libraries and some OpenMP stuff. We want access to their benchmark/test suites. it's crazy that we can't get Intel to do Windows first, then Linux (if they must)....
If we don't get Intel off of Linux internally (the failed EDA project) - we will never get the *cultural* alignment that we want. There are simply too many folks at Intel who use/love the stuff [i.e., Linux] and want to improve it. We can *not* stop trying to win this project.
Additional documents in the suit suggest that Microsoft went to great lengths to cajole Intel into taking a Windows-favorable strategy, but ultimately Intel has been one of the few to withstand Microsoft and promote Linux and open source extensively. Intel saw early on that the server business and mobile would heavily lean toward Linux, even if the desktop did not, and ensured it had a credible story there, which required contributing actively to Linux and other open-source projects.
Is there a lesson in this for Dell, HP, and other Microsoft-friendly OEMs?
I have to agree with Mike Masnick's contention that Nicholas Negroponte is way off base in arguing that Intel and Microsoft are to blame for the One Laptop Per Child's problems. Whatever Microsoft's problems, a fervent desire to compete is not one of them. Ditto for Intel. According to Masnick:
While the idea behind creating a super cheap, super durable useful computer for children in developing nations is good, Negroponte has always approached the idea as one where only he should be allowed to see that vision through. When other companies decided it might be a good idea and wanted to target that market themselves, Negroponte flipped out and started attacking them for trying to undermine his project.
Absolutely. While I think there are great reasons for OLPC to stick it out with open source, if Negroponte can't see his way to do so competitively with open source, then neither he nor open source deserve to be at the bargaining table.
Negroponte has suggested that he's a visionary, not an operator. In OLPC, he has proved both. He should be grateful that the vision endures, even if his imprint on its execution does not. Perhaps Intel or someone else will pick up the open-source ball where Negroponte dropped it. I, for one, hope so.
But Microsoft and Intel (or the open-source community, another Negroponte scapegoat) aren't to blame for OLPC's problems. Negroponte is.
This is why U.S. copyright law doesn't allow authors to copyright ideas. An idea isn't a work of authorship. It's just the start of potential authorship, and in most cases it's by far the easiest part. Ideas are easy. Execution is hard.
Whatever happened to that chummy Wintel alliance? You know, the Microsoft Windows/Intel chip cartel that has long helped to cement Microsoft's hold on the industry?
In a significant snub, Intel has decided not to upgrade its 80,000 desktops from Windows XP to Windows Vista.
As an inside source put it:
This isn't a matter of dissing Microsoft, but Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista.
Is Intel a sign of things to come for Microsoft? Will the rest of corporate America discover that Microsoft essentially stopped innovating long ago and has failed to deliver a worthwhile upgrade to XP?
Meanwhile, companies like IBM are actively exploring Windows alternatives like the Mac. Microsoft has competition on its hands for the first time, and it only has itself to blame. If it can't build a compelling reason to upgrade, it can't expect to remain absolute controller of the desktop universe.
SAP announced today its ERP-in-a-box solution, based on Novell's SUSE Linux and Intel processors. It sounds like a cool solution (though why this would be more appealing than SAP's SaaS offering, I don't know). It's yet another proof point that SAP and the global ERP vendors see the SME market as the future...which is right where open source offerings like Openbravo and Compiere compete best.
Through the optimization work it did with Intel and the right combination of software, including SUSE Linux, SAP aims to provide customers with a 45% savings on implementation and a 25% savings on total cost of ownership over what they'd typically spend for a comparable hardware/software combo, said Jans Peter Klaey, president of global SME at SAP, in an interview.
One interesting (and hitherto unasked) question is why SAP would have done this deal with the distant second-place Linux distribution, SUSE, instead of with Linux frontrunner, Red Hat?
... Read more
