In 2006, I took Google and Yahoo to task for not open-sourcing more of the code that makes them tick, given that much of it derives from open-source software that these Web companies modify.
Jeremy Zawodny, then at Yahoo and now at Craigslist, riposted that there are all sorts of legitimate reasons for not contributing back code, but the arguments largely centered on two primary themes: it would be hard, and it might not actually help anyone outside Yahoo to contribute code back.
This was a valid response, but as I said then, those same arguments apply to any company interested in getting involved with open source, and they are the same arguments used by enterprise IT not to contribute to open-source projects.
But there's hope for enterprise IT because, guess what? Two years after Zawodny described why open source may not be the obvious route for Google and its ilk, Google is open-sourcing things like its Open Google Servlet Engine (OpenGSE), announced this week.
OpenGSE fits Zawodny's description: it was hard for Google to open-source for legal and other reasons, and it normally would be considered code that is both strategic to Google and potentially not very useful to companies outside of Google. Google, however, describes how it might be useful to outsiders:
The "toy" servlet engine supplied with the test suites would have the same core HTTP processing code (as far as possible) as the servlet engine which powers Gmail, etc.
For folks outside of Google, there's really no compelling argument to drop Apache Tomcat/Jetty, etc., in favor of OpenGSE's reference servlet engine, but anyone interested in servlet engine and servlet spec compliance would have a fantastic learning resource available to them.
With OpenGSE, in other words, Google is not giving me the ability to be Google, per se. But it is giving me the opportunity to learn how Google manages HTTP processing, and thereby to improve how my own product manages this.
It's not that Zawodny was wrong. It's just that over time, the big (and small) Web companies have discovered that there are significant strategic benefits to participating more fully in open-source projects.
Google is a leader in this area, and I suspect that it will become a real differentiator in encouraging outside developers to write code for Google's platforms, including the enterprise developers that it is now targeting with its Google I/O conference.
As with Microsoft, developers are the key to Google's future: not the developers it employs, but rather the developers that congregate around Google's code. Open source is critical to making that happen.
For anyone interested in seeing just how different and game-changing open source can be, there's really no need to look beyond MySQL, the open-source database leader. Jeremy Zawodny, formerly of Yahoo, and now of Craigslist, takes a hard look at the changing face of MySQL, reaching some surprising conclusions about MySQL in the process:
Nowadays MySQL has a much slower release cycle than it used to. It's still available in "commercial" and free ("community") releases. There's still a company behind it--a much larger one in fact. But one that also has a vested interest in showing how it works better on their storage appliances or 256 "core" computers and whatnot...
Meanwhile, all the cutting edge stuff (at least from the point of view of scaling) is happening outside Sun/MySQL and being integrated by OurDelta and even Drizzle.
Zawodny details the importance of these forks to MySQL ("The single most interesting and surprising thing to me is both the number and necessity of third-party patches for enhancing various aspects of MySQL and InnoDB"), and it's here that one sees the strength of the open-source model, but also the potential fragility of open source as a business, as I've written before. These forks provide a robust MySQL database...for free.
This is good, right? Well, it is, but perhaps not if you're MySQL (or, rather, Sun), the company. For all the benefits such forks and additions provide to MySQL, they absolutely depend on Sun doing the core development on the MySQL database, core development which becomes ever more difficult to fund if such peripheral projects siphon away Sun's return on the MySQL investment.
It would seem to me that the best way for this vibrant community around MySQL to become good for the corporate MySQL would be for the community to become so active and diverse that the MySQL database begs for standardization at the core again. Sun can provide that, making enterprise customers happy and, in turn, making Sun happy.
One thing is clear: Sun needs to immediately start releasing its own "fork" of the MySQL database, one that is tuned to enterprise requirements, and one that includes functionality/tools that customers can't find elsewhere. If it's fair for Drizzle, OurDelta, Percona, etc. to enhance and extend the MySQL experience, then it's fair that Sun do this, too. Only as Sun creates differentiated value will it ensure an ongoing, rising revenue stream that will enable it to fund MySQL development, development upon which these forks critically depend.
I once took Jeremy Zawodny, technical director at Yahoo!, to task for not contributing enough back to open source. Today, Zawodny made it clear that openness and open source are in Yahoo!'s DNA. It is a trend that started long ago, Zawodny writes, and will only accelerate over time:
We've been on the openness road for a long, long time at Yahoo. And we take it rather seriously. Some times it hasn't been as visible as others, but believe me, the trend is quite clear when you look at all the data. The Open Source adoption and work. The APIs. The way we communicate with users and partners. The Blogs. The RSS feeds....
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