The Open Road

The European Commission has a bold plan for improving software quality: make software developers liable for their code. The purported reason? Consumer peace of mind, according to the European Union commissioner of consumer affairs, Meglena Kuneva:

If we want consumers to shop around and exploit the potential of digital communications, then we need to give them confidence that their rights are guaranteed. That means putting in place and enforcing clear consumer rights that meet the high standards already existing in the main street. [The] internet has everything to offer consumers, but we need to build trust so that people can shop around with peace of mind.

Because, you know, the Internet has really struggled with consumers due to the poor quality of code. Google has a wide range of products in beta that really struggle to find users because who could possibly trust the beta version of Gmail, News, etc.?

What tripe.

I'm personally not against software liability, but have yet to discover a software vendor, open source or proprietary, that tries to evade responsibility for the quality of its products. In other words, I think this is a case of regulators seeking to justify their existence, not a plan for actually improving anyone's software experience.

On that note, the EC should be careful to avoid hurting the software industry, and minimizing its benefits, even as it seeks to help consumers of that industry by ensuring those benefits. For example, one of the reasons that software remains comparatively inexpensive is that the cost of legal liability is not baked into the purchase price. The EC's action could well result in pricing software beyond the reach of many current consumers and businesses.

Don't worry, some may claim, there's always open-source software! It's free and high quality!

Well, yes, but oddly enough, it also comes with absolutely no warranties, indemnification, etc., at least when used without commercial backing. It's a good thing, too: imagine releasing your software free-of-charge onto SourceForge.net, only to get hit with a lawsuit because some company's business was hurt because your software allegedly failed to work as expected. Talk about a raw deal.

On this point, Glyn Moody quotes security guru Bruce Schneier, who suggests that open source could get a free pass because open-source software is distributed without contracts. Open source, in other words, might be the ultimate get-out-of-EC-regulation-free card.

If this free pass works as advertised, presumably we'd see more software companies distributing software under open-source licenses, and only taking the blame for the proprietary add-ons/extensions that complement this open-source software. It's unclear how this would be helpful to the consumers the EC is straining to protect, but it's the stance I'd take if I were a vendor.

In this way, the EC's proposed changes to software liability could end up leaving businesses and consumers with less protection, not more, with open source providing a convenient escape hatch. Perhaps this is good as it means more software released under open-source licenses. But the idea of open source used as a means to evade legal liability doesn't sit well with me, and likely would ruin the positive connotations that currently attach to open source.

As noted, the Web seems to have thrived despite (or perhaps because of?) the lack of software-liability regulation. Open source, too, has fared exceptionally well, and has yielded significant benefits to companies and consumers...despite offering exactly zero software liability.

But this is the problem when bureaucrats, not common sense, rule. Subscription-based business models protect commercial customers, and open-data policies protect consumers, far better than any software-liability regime can. The freedom to change software vendors is a far better antidote to poor software quality than some EC bureaucrat.

In short, despite getting a lot of bad press lately, the market remains the best way to protect customers. If the EC would spend more time ensuring open markets, instead of trying to regulate closed markets, European consumers and businesses would find much better software protection.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

Thursday I blogged that I'd like to see Google (or someone...Apple, Mozilla, someone else?) aggregate social Web applications so that I don't have to trip all over the Web checking what so-and-so is doing on Facebook, then sprinting back to LinkedIn to help someone else on a job search.

Judging from the comments, quite a few people disagree, to a great extent due to mistrust of Google with their data. I can appreciate that, though Google has expressed a desire to open up social-networking applications with open-data policies.

Regardless of promises, many mistrust Google because it's so darned big. This, as James Stewart reminds us in The Wall Street Journal, is not a problem in itself: there is nothing illegal and much to love in a natural monopoly.

Me? I don't have a problem with how big Google is. I just wonder if any of us work for anyone else anymore.

I find myself tweaking headlines and my initial paragraphs to accommodate Google News. As important as Digg, Slashdot, and other content aggregators can be, I find they drive less traffic than top placement on Google.

I'm not alone in this. The newspaper industry is up in arms about Google's power, yet is incapable of cutting Google off because so much of its traffic comes from Google, as CNET reports. Google's Marissa Mayer recently advised the newspaper industry on how to optimize its content for Google, which strikes some as galling given that Google may not be all that efficient at monetizing content.

And yet we cater to Google. We write news and blogs (and tweets and wiki updates and...) for Google. Even dead writers apparently write for Google. We write open-source software that Google consumes. We craft our Web sites to ensure they show well on Google.

Google started by offering a way to search the Web. It now effectively owns the Web because it's such an efficient way to make sense of the Web's noise. Lest we become riled up, Google is trying to make us feel better about its heft with a new charm offensive, as CNET reports.

But we don't really need Google to change. We need competitors to compete. We need Microsoft to start competing in earnest (Yikes! Did I say that??). Microsoft talks about being disruptive in search, but I've yet to see it. Let's hope it's not another tired retread of Google search as both Yahoo and Microsoft have tried before.

Or how about this for disruptive? Perhaps we need Mozilla to step into a role as the Web's primary platform, and really change the rules of the game for Google. For those interested in bludgeoning Google, perhaps there's a way to do that by contributing to Mozilla's Firefox project, and helping to steer it in a way that is beneficial for a non-Google patrolled and controlled Web?

Regardless, we don't need a crippled Google. Instead, we need serious competition. We also need to stop trying to look back to the past of content monetization and instead learn from Google, without necessarily capitulating to Google. Content creators need to change, even as Google's competitors need to change.

Google? It should just keep doing what it's doing.

Follow me on Twitter @mjasay.

I admit that I nearly got caught up in my former colleague James Urquhart's excellent analysis of Canonical's Ubuntu 9.10 release, code-named Karmic Koala. I saw the word "open" laced heavily through the post, and given Canonical's commitment to fully open-source Ubuntu experience, I played along.

Ubuntu in the clouds

(Credit: Ubuntu)

But something doesn't quite fit in Canonical's story.

It's called Amazon.com. Yes, Ubuntu 9.10 will give users an option to build its own Elastic Compute Cloud-style service, using open-source Eucalyptus (or another cloud provider), but the intent certainly seems to seamlessly plug users into Amazon's closed cloud:

Ubuntu aims to keep free software at the forefront of cloud computing by embracing the APIs of Amazon EC2, and making it easy for anybody to set up their own cloud using entirely open tools...During the Karmic cycle, we want to make it easy to deploy applications into the cloud, with ready-to-run appliances or by quickly assembling a custom image...Wouldn't it be apt for Ubuntu to make the Amazon jungle as easy to navigate as, say, APT?

Or is Ubuntu simply making it easier to navigate one's way into the Amazon jungle but not to get out of that jungle?

This isn't meant as a criticism. After all, I've increasingly seen that the best way to monetize open-source software is with the careful inclusion of proprietary software. I told The New York Times' Ashlee Vance that Mark Shuttleworth would eventually have to grapple with this same strategy, basing it on my own conversations with Shuttleworth about how to effectively monetize Ubuntu.

That strategy increasingly points to tethering an open server (and desktop) with closed cloud services. That's not a critique. It's a fact.

Unfortunately, it's also a fact that once Ubuntu hands off its customers to a closed cloud, it depends on that cloud vendor to offer open data policies. The delivery of such policies is out of its hands. It won't have much say in the matter.

It's ironic, in many ways, that the key to Canonical monetizing Ubuntu will be proprietary software. There's a very good reason that Canonical isn't leading with a link into open-source software like Eucalyptus: just as Red Hat depended on proprietary Oracle to drive its early business, Canonical's best chance of driving open-source revenue from Ubuntu is likely to be closed-source Amazon.

Amazon's service is popular. It's also proprietary. Depending on an open but weak cloud service would be futile; building bridges to proprietary Amazon will likely not.

Canonical, just as Google has done in search, is helping its users build habits. I am sure that there will be positive financial remuneration to Canonical, the more that Ubuntu users indulge their Amazon EC2 habit--a habit that Canonical therefore will have an interest in feeding.

Is this bad? No, it's business. Even Canonical needs to make money, and it's really, really hard to make a lot of money by giving everything away.

Some things need to be closed. In this case, it's the cloud that Ubuntu will feed.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

While most of the activities on Facebook count as spam or worse ("super poke," anyone?), it's likely that such friending and poking was intended to be private. Recently, however, Facebook changed its terms of service to ensure it has perpetual rights on personal content, including content deleted by its users, as The Consumerist reports:

You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense) to (a) use, copy, publish, stream, store, retain, publicly perform or display, transmit, scan, reformat, modify, edit, frame, translate, excerpt, adapt, create derivative works and distribute (through multiple tiers), any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service or the promotion thereof subject only to your privacy settings....

You may remove your User Content from the Site at any time. If you choose to remove your User Content, the license granted above will automatically expire, however you acknowledge that the Company may retain archived copies of your User Content.

Facebook has always retained the rights to profit from its users' content, but now it retains the right to use old content that its users may have deleted.

Google has had its own problems with user privacy, but this Facebook move calls into question the wisdom of clouds or, rather, storing one's data in others' Web services like Facebook. We need to come up with new licenses or new mandates for open data in the cloud. Facebook shouldn't own our data.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

Open source is particularly well-suited to create cloud-computing systems, but such open-source ingredients won't necessarily result in open clouds. Indeed, cloud computing has the potential to lock users in as much as or more than desktop computing.

In a bitter irony, then, the more the cloud releases us from the crowded confines of our desktops, the more we risk allowing it to fetter our freedom, as Greg Papadopoulos, CTO and EVP of research and development at Sun Microsystems, suggested in a recent email exchange with me:

Greg Papadopoulos

(Credit: Sun Microsystems)

The growth of cloud computing threatens to have the unintended consequence of being a giant step backward for software freedom.

Because it's easy to use and architecturally progressive, we could find ourselves in a position where we're all using cloud services. But while there are open source technologies at its base, there are forces conspiring to make it proprietary. Companies building cloud services have spent millions, if not billions, to scale their grids, and ultimately they will have to prioritize either recouping that capital expense for their shareholders, or offering developers truly open access to infrastructure.

But it's not really the hardware or software at issue here. It's the data. Free software doesnt necessarily translate into free data, which is arguably the technology industry's next big battleground. "Data is the new Intel-inside," proclaims Tim O'Reilly, the source of lock-in and hence profit for technology companies like Google, Yahoo, Digg, and more.

So what are we to do? Cloud computing has too much momentum at this stage to take a Luddite's view and try to take a hammer to the data centers. The trick, suggests Papadopoulos, is to enter cloud offerings with eyes and options wide open:

The antidote is simple: demand open services. If you can't move your data to another service, easily and cost effectively, don't put it in. Take an activist position. Encourage your cloud operators to use open source software, with no gratuitous incompatibilities. Ask them to pledge their standards and intellectual property to OASIS or other open standards group.

Ultimately, if you demand open services, it will force cloud operators to compete on the basis of bringing innovation to market, rather than competing by lock-in. And with a free and open market ensured, the wave of creativity and innovation we saw unlocked during the open source era will repeat itself in the network.

It's a good point, but again, I don't think "encouraging...cloud operators to use open source software" does much to prevent lock-in, unless they actually make that software transparent and usable to end-users. Regardless, most, if not all of them, already use open source in abundance due to the quality of open-source components like MySQL.

No, the real emphasis must be on open data. Perhaps we need to invent open-data licenses, similar to open-source licenses. Perhaps the Open Source Initiative should get involved.

For me, guaranteeing open data is the most critical component of ensuring that cloud computing doesn't replace our desktop chains with cloud chains.

Follow me on Twitter at mjasay.

The Open Knowledge Foundation blog provides some excellent reasons to take open-source licenses seriously, especially for data on the Web, but these struck me hardest:

Together, a definition of openness, plus a set of conformant licenses, deliver clarity and simplicity. Not only is interoperability ensured, but people can know at a glance, and without having to go through a whole lot of legalese, what they are free to do...Thus, licensing and definitions are important, even though they are only a small part of the overall picture.

If we get them wrong, they will keep on getting in the way of everything else. If we get them right, we can stop worrying about them and focus our full energies on other things.

Efficiency can be reached through consistency and transparency. This is why licenses like the General Public License and Apache/Berkeley Software Distribution work in open source: everyone knows what they mean or, at least, what everyone else thinks they mean.

They're not perfect licenses, but they're understandable, and the Open Source Initiative has proved invaluable in ensuring the ongoing integrity of what "open source" means.

As the debate shifts from software to the data enabled and constrained by software, it will be critical that open data licenses emerge. Just as open source and open protocols paved the way for the modern Internet, so, too, will open data ensure the freedom of the next-generation Internet.

Open-source licensing is fundamentally about efficiency, not law. It's about understanding and keeping everyone on the same page so that the more important work can move forward. Licensing matters.

The more Google grows, the more it becomes a cause for concern for many people--and not simply its competitors. But should it?

On the one hand, Google has become a privacy bogeyman, dropping off the list of the top 20 companies trusted with customer privacy. Ironically, this has come at the same time that Google has upped its commitment to open data policies, which enable users to control their own data privacy policies. Are users suggesting that they can't trust themselves?

This abandonment of trust in Google also comes in the face of an ever-growing commitment within Google to open source. Google now hosts more than 200 open-source projects, ranging from the more obscure (Protocol Buffers) to the well-known (Chrome browser, Web Toolkit).

Perhaps the drop in trust derives from Google's refusal to stay in its search sandbox, expanding its reach well beyond the search engine to mobile, for example, with a range of new features planned for the Android mobile open-source platform.

But why the lack of trust? The more Google has expanded its appetite for influence and dominance of the Web, it has has circumscribed its ability to control through open data, open source, and open APIs. As Google hasn't always had a policy of openness, I'm increasingly impressed by the search giant's widening commitment to it, even as it has the potential to seriously close off the Web to competitors' and, ultimately, customers' detriment.

Is Google perfect? No. But it is also not a 1990s Microsoft-style monopoly. Many of us begrudged Microsoft its dominance because it has been protected through things such as proprietary file formats and (past) illegal tying arrangements. Google does not compete this way. It competes in the open.

Have we lost trust in Google simply because it is winning, and we innately suspect the worst of a company at its scale?

Despite occasional criticism that Google doesn't commensurately contribute back to open-source software, hordes user data, and otherwise exercises too much control over the Web, it is also a refreshingly open company. Google has long declared the virtues of open data, open source, and open standards.

Writing in the International Herald Tribune, Google's Nelson Mattos, vice president of engineering for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, reiterates this message with an impassioned plea for open technology:

Open innovation is better than closed. Open technology - open in the sense that the technology or knowledge is available to the general public for use - encourages new ideas, competition, efficiency, and innovation.

It can be messy, but its inclusiveness means that the barriers of entry are low, cost savings occur across the board, and the best ideas and practices will rise to the top, allowing companies to grow, become profitable, and benefit society as a whole....At Google we believe in openness because it's at the heart of the Web's success.

Microsoft won by tightly bundling its products - legally and, at times, illegally - and closing out competitors through proprietary file formats and closed APIs. Google, on the other hand, is winning through a directly opposite strategy. The former strategy worked well on the desktop; the latter strategy seems well-tuned for the Web.

Could it be that the only effective way to compete on the Web is through openness? If so, will Microsoft be able to adapt to this new reality or will it simply stick to its old script, monetizing the world inside the firewall but becoming increasingly irrelevant outside the firewall on the Web?

Only Microsoft can say, but it's fast approaching a decision that will challenge the foundations of how it has competed for decades. The cynic in me believes that old dogs don't learn new tricks. The optimist? That anyone, any company, can change, provided that it can find the will to do so.

Recent decisions around open source suggest that Microsoft may have a growing will to change. Time will tell if the old guard kills change in the womb.

InternetNews.com's Andy Patrizio pens an excellent analysis of why EMC, the storage giant, just might gobble up Sun, the former Unix king. While there are potential conflicts to such a match, the synergies might well outweigh them.

Patrizio walks through a range of benefits EMC could derive from Sun's hardware prowess (tape storage to complement EMC's expertise in NAS and SAN, enhanced server throughput performance. ZFS, etc.), as well as its software line-up (Java, RSA security, database replication, etc.). The list is long and the potential benefits would be huge.

But it's actually in the very thing that Patrizio describes as a potential deal-killer - open source - that EMC could derive the biggest benefit. Patrizio warns:

There is one big snag to this EMC/Sun theory. EMC has displayed no interest in the open source movement, while Sun has embraced it in a big way. This could prove a no-win situation if EMC picks up Sun and open source advocates demand that it open source other products -- especially if GPL-licensed (define) products start mixing with EMC software. If EMC balks, it could wreck the goodwill Sun has built over the last few years. Then again, goodwill doesn't pay the bills.

True enough, but Sun's struggles derive from fighting open source (e.g., Linux kicking Unix out of data centers), not its embrace of open source. In areas like its Open Storage strategy, Sun has been doing very well.

What does EMC need that every vendor on the planet needs? Customers. But customers in the current environment and, indeed, well before it, are exceedingly expensive to acquire. A friend at Oracle tells me that his company routinely spends $1 million to win a $1 million license deal in order to capture the ongoing maintenance revenue stream.

One of the primary benefits of open source, contrarily, is that it drops the cost of customer acquisition to nearly $0.00. Sun's explicit strategy with open source is to use high-volume downloads of Java, MySQL, and other open-source projects to drive sales of its hardware and services. Sun's software, in other words, does the heavy lifting of lead acquisition while its hardware and solutions businesses do the heavy lifting on lead conversion.

Wouldn't EMC need the same thing? And, arguably, EMC would be in a better position to convert open-source leads into paid customers because it has more closed complements to sell to such leads.

Open source, in other words, may be one of the primary reasons for EMC to acquire Sun, not avoid it.