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.
Dana Blankenhorn suggests that add-ons make good business sense for Acquia and other open-source vendors, and he's dead-on. Zimbra climbed to $20 million in just two years on the back of a successful add-on strategy to its open-source Microsoft Exchange killer. SugarCRM is doing well with such a strategy, too.
It's not, however, simply a way to make money. It's also a way to better define and feed community.
Seem counterintuitive? Perhaps it is for those companies like Red Hat, Acquia, and others that are built to harvest preexisting open-source communities (Linux and Drupal, respectively). But for companies like Zimbra, MySQL, etc., an add-on strategy enables a vendor to focus wholly on delivering a quality open-source project while simultaneously creating a robust, scalable business.
SugarCRM's John Roberts has been saying this for years, and Marten Mickos of MySQL (now Sun) has been suggesting this strategy for the past year as MySQL looked for ways to strengthen its revenue while keeping its community strong. The two need not be conflicting strategies.
In fact, they're complementary. It's actually quite difficult to distribute a 100 percent open-source product and monetize it at the same time. Support doesn't scale. Determining how to make a "community" release compelling while also selling an "enterprise" release without selling "just support" is tricky.
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Ask a simple question, get a simple, but subtle answer. I asked Savio Rodrigues, who replaced me on the Open Sources blog but originally blogged here, to comment on the state of open source at IBM. He gave me a bit more than that.
You know, IBM, the company that essentially carried open source into the enterprise on its back in 2000 when it pledged $1 billion to fund Linux. Lately, though, IBM's has been less flashy with its commitment to open source though, as Savio points out, no less involved. As Savio reports, however, IBM's commitment to open source is broader than source code. Open source without open standards isn't of much interest to Big Blue.
In this fifth installment of the Open Source @ Series on The Open Road, Savio gives us much to think about in terms of the power of open source...and what it means in the absence of standards.
Savio writes...
Matt Asay asked the question: What is the State of Open Source at IBM?
Our answer? Excellent!
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