Back in early 2007 Red Hat let slip that it was planning to release its Red Hat Network code as an open-source project. In June of 2008, Red Hat officially announced that Red Hat Network Satellite would be open sourced.
Last week, Red Hat posted an update on the project, now called Project Spacewalk.
In the nine weeks or so since the debut of Spacewalk, we've been blown away by the level of interest, the contributions, and the excitement generated by the project...
- spacewalk-list@redhat.com : currently has over 250 members...
- spacewalk-devel-list@redhat.com: currently has about 120 members...
- The first patch from inside Red Hat came within three days of the opening of the mailing list.
- The first patch from the community came within eight days.
I've suggested before that the company that owns the heart of open-source monetization would be sitting on a massive opportunity. Yes, there are alternative ways to monetize open source (e.g., Google's advertising model), but for many years to come vendors will make money by distributing software, not merely advertising around that software.
As such, a community effort around a network service, such as Red Hat's Project Spacewalk, is hugely important. It's important because it provides Red Hat a way to corral the growing commercial open-source ecosystem.
To achieve this more effectively, however, Red Hat needs to reach out to the commercial open-source ecosystem and evangelize the benefits of building on Project Spacewalk, rather than creating silo'd "Red Hat Network-esque" offerings. To date, Red Hat seems to have taken an "If we build it, they might come" approach to Spacewalk. It needs to be a bit more proactive.
Red Hat has been talking about open sourcing its Network for well over a year. Today, it finally did it.
However, code by itself is only moderately interesting. What we need now is a thriving community around "Project Spacewalk," as Red Hat calls the Network project.
Why? Well, because in some ways the commercial open-source community increasingly fragments as it matures financially. What is the first thing that MySQL and JBoss did to add value to their support subscriptions? Build networks. What, presumably, will be the first things that other open-source companies do? Build networks.
What is the result? A swamp of incompatible service-delivery networks.
Now consider the power for Red Hat if its Spacewalk actually served as a gathering point - an integration point - for the commercial open-source community? Powerful.
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Much is rightly made about the quality of open-source software like JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux. These, however, are arguably not the source of the quality of the businesses behind them. Their networks were/are.
JBoss was doing well before it created the JBoss Operational Network using Hyperic's software as a foundation. But it was the Network that dramatically boosted JBoss' renewal rate and ASPs (as JBoss lead investor David Skok noted in his OSBC 2007 presentation). Red Hat was Red Hat before it had Red Hat Network (RHN), but RHN gave customers an easy justification for paying for what they could get for free elsewhere.
The Network, in other words, is the not-so-secret sauce that makes great open-source companies. The principle behind it is to give the "core" software away to lower the cost of sales and marketing, while providing "complementary" services like an RHN to facilitate a purchase.
Which brings me to Mozilla.
... Read moreIt had to happen (and not just because Savio asked when it would happen). Today Red Hat (which seems to be making a lot of noise during Oracle's OpenWorld event :-) and Hyperic joined forces to create a common systems management platform. The ice between the two has thawed at last:
For years, the JBoss Operations Network [JON] team has been developing code on the Hyperic platform. Red Hat will be contributing its updates and enhancements to this new open source project. Both companies will work to maintain, govern and extend management capabilities within the new open source systems management platform project. Additionally, Hyperic and Red Hat will work jointly to include this base in both future Hyperic and Red Hat systems management products....
... Read more
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