Facebook Counters Google's OpenSocial With fbOpen

A week ago the rumors heated up that Facebook would open source its platform.

And today Facebook made good on the rumor by launching the Facebook Open Platform (fbOpen). On the Facebook Open Source Projects, they list fbOpen and the other open source projects (Thrift, MemcacheD, ...) they are involved in.

What is fbOpen? According to the website it is:
"a snapshot of the infrastructure that runs Facebook Platform. It includes the API infrastructure, the FBML parser, the FQL parser, and FBJS, as well as implementations of many common methods and tags."

Or put more simply:
fbOpen is an open source reference implementation of the Facebook platform.

This is a similar statement to:
Apache Shindig is an open source reference implementation of the OpenSocial specification.

In my "Social Networking Big Dog: Facebook or Google?" post, I draw a comparison of Google and its OpenSocial Foundation to Sun and its Java Community Process.

I'll extend that comparison further by equating fbOpen and Apache Shindig to be logical equivalents to the J2EE Reference Implementation. The primary difference between these two efforts, of course, is that OpenSocial provides a specification for the Apache Shindig reference implementation, while fbOpen is simply a snapshot of code from the already implemented, deployed, robust, and successful Facebook Platform.

So this news begs a couple of questions:

• Does it matter that fbOpen is not based on a specification but is simply "a snapshot of infrastructure"?
• Does it matter that implementations like Apache Shindig have a common specification (OpenSocial) to base their efforts on?

Before answering the questions, you should consider the success of open source projects like Hibernate and the Spring Framework, both of which did NOT implement the predefined J2EE specifications. Instead, they both defined new and better ways of doing things. Good technology trumped agreed-upon specification.

One final note. I expect that all or parts of these reference implementations will be leveraged by a wide range of people and companies interested in extending them to suit their specific market/product needs. Similar to how companies like BEA, IBM, Sun, Oracle, and JBoss all created their own J2EE application servers that implemented the specs as well as included piece parts of the reference implementation.

This matches what Ringside Networks has been doing by integrating and extending Shindig in order to provide a production-ready implementation of OpenSocial. Moreover, since our open source social application server already provides extensive Facebook platform compatibility, we'll look at fbOpen to see how we can leverage it so we can spend less time implementing Facebook compatibility and more time on our unique value add.

I'll elaborate much more on the Ringside Networks product strategy in upcoming posts.

Bottom-line:

• Only time will tell if Facebook launched fbOpen in time to slow or stall the momentum of Google's OpenSocial Foundation.
• Open code is better than closed code; but open does not necessarily translate into vibrant community.
• Only time will tell if Facebook's community will be open and vibrant enough to generate significant momentum (and code) of its own.

Getting Back In The Ring

Well, it's been three months since I left Red Hat to take a little time off before finding my next challenge. It hasn't really been "time off" per se, since I've been real busy hosting an exchange student from Switzerland, visiting nine colleges with my 16 year old daughter Liza, enjoying time with my wife Irene and 13 year old son Billy, completely redoing the landscaping around my house, reestablishing old friendships, working out regularly (down 15 pounds), and working with a few open source companies in an advisory capacity on the side.

But, as I stated in my "Purposeful Risk-Taking" post, I wasn't planning on taking too much time off since I wanted to reinvest my experience in another open source endeavor.

So Monday May 19th will mark my first official day at Ringside Networks where I'll be handling Product Management and Marketing; operating at the intersection of our technology, the market, and our customers.

As I've said many times in the past, I look for jobs that enable me to love what I do and who I do it with.

As far as loving what I do, Ringside Networks is focused on the business of the social web and bringing the power of social applications directly to corporate websites and business applications. This is a fast-moving market area and an exciting opportunity. My "Focus on Meaningful Website Traffic" post is just the first of many blogs to come about this emerging market. So, I've clearly got "love what I do" covered.

How about "who I do it with"? Well, I feel privileged to be joining a team of folks that I've worked with in the past at Bluestone/HP and JBoss/Red Hat. While each of us will have our own areas of responsibility, we know what it takes to work as a team and move forward together as a company. We all firmly believe that teamwork, execution, and respect for employees, customers, partners, and community is the way to win in the market.

So, I'm getting back in the ring with Ringside Networks!

If you'd like to have a Ringside seat, I suggest you become a Friend of Ringside and sign up for the Ringside Networks newsletter so we can keep you abreast of all the action as this really cool market area heats up.

XAware Gets Your Data Working Harder Than You

I had the opportunity to meet with the folks from XAware a while ago and came away very intrigued by their technology, value proposition, and momentum.

For those not familiar with XAware, they are an open source company focused on simplifying the complexities of data integration. According to their website, “XAware’s mission is to be the world’s most popular way of integrating data and applications.”

Basically, XAware provides technology that executes distributed queries across multiple datasources so the integrated views, formatted as XML, can be more easily consumed and manipulated by Web 2.0 dashboards. applications, other integration infrastructure components such as ESBs, or XML query and reporting tools.

What I like about the technology is that it leaves the application data in place, in contrast to tools for extraction, transformation and loading, which perform "data movement" to create a new copy of data. People don't need more copies of data, they need to access their existing data more easily...and that is XAware's focus.

How many of you have heard something like the following request? We need a new Web 2.0 dashboard component that "just" grabs our existing call center data and displays it by region.

For developers, the word "just" can be a four letter word...especially if the data for the above request is spread out across multiple databases, systems, applications, etc. XAware does a great job simplifying the problem and enabling developers to focus on creating applications rather than dealing with data access and integration complexities.

So, the technology and value proposition sound good...but how are they doing from an awareness/momentum standpoint? Well Bill Miller, XAware Executive Chairman and CTO, had an interesting blog a few weeks ago: ">1,000 XAware Downloads per Day"

So, let's add a little more context to this impressive statistic. XAware announced last November that they would flip their technology from closed source to open source, and they announced the general availability of XAware 5 on March 11, 2008. Below is a chart of their monthly download pace over that timeperiod:


So, they have averaged over 15,000 downloads per month since their GA release, and at 13 days into May they are already over 10,000 downloads. Putting this into perspective, successful open source middleware projects like Spring Framework and Hibernate had paces of 10 - 15,000 downloads per month in their earlier years, so XAware's pace is impressive and worth keeping an eye on.

Bottom-line: The technology, value proposition, and momentum all look positive, so stop working so hard for your data and give XAware a try!

Open Source Big Dog: Red Hat or Sun?

So my question is simple: Who is the open source big dog?

The answer to the question as stated is likely IBM.
You're welcome Savio. :-) IBM, of course, benefits nicely from its investments in Apache and Eclipse and has done a lot to make Linux what it is today. But IBM is not betting the farm on open source, so let me tweak my question to be:

Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?

The answer really boils down to Red Hat vs. Sun.

Red Hat is the incumbent big dog, of course. They have a nice portfolio of Linux and JBoss Middleware offerings. And Red Hat's financial performance last fiscal year was quite impressive.

Red Hat however continues to suffer from [re]breathing its own air. "Red Hat Announces Improvements in Organizational Alignment to Focus on Top Priorities" just underscores Red Hat's "business as usual" approach.

The above "news" simply talks about how folks like Cormier and Pinchev (long-time executive team members) will "Assume Responsibilities to Enable and Accelerate Growth". Snore. I'd like to think that that's been their focus for the past few years.

They've clearly done a great job convincing Jim Whitehurst (new CEO last January) that there's no need to add fresh talent to the team. Hey Jim, you already have the A-Team, so there's no reason to change things. Just look at last year's financial performance after all.

Call me naive, but while Red Hat's financial performance has been quite good, the measure of "big dog" status needs to go beyond that. Red Hat can continue to grow nicely off of its Linux and JBoss Middleware businesses, but "big dogs" need to aggressively lead the charge into new areas. Which requires fresh blood with fresh ideas, in my opinion. Asking people who are good at executing on "business as usual" to aggressively expand into new areas does not work.

Meanwhile....Sun is busy marking its own territory in its quest to be the big dog.

Jonathan Schwartz's recent statements make Sun's strategy pretty clear:
"Everything Sun delivers will be freely available, via a free and open license (either GPL, LGPL or Mozilla/CDDL), to the community. Everything. No exception."

Sun sponsors a portfolio of open source technologies arguably wider than Red Hat's portfolio...from OpenOffice to Java to NetBeans to Glassfish to OpenSolaris to...

The acquisition of MySQL.

Sun not only added a database to their footprint, they added a great team (Marten Mickos, Zack Urlocker, etc.) with a strong open source pedigree. If Jonathan Schwartz manages the acquisition and integration properly, he will listen to and value the input from the MySQL team. MySQL's success and market momentum has been impressive and Sun finally seems to have a better appreciation of the importance of momentum and what it means to lead the market.

Matt Asay's article entitled "Ubuntu + Sun = Very good idea" expands further:
"But Sun does recognize the importance of momentum for it right now, and it wants the favor of open-source developers pulling its way. With MySQL and Ubuntu in its court, it's hard to see how it could possibly be less sexy in the market."

While Sun is making great strides, I need to see more from them before I entirely buy into their ability to execute. Sun's open source portfolio doesn't have enough #1's in it to overtake the current top dog. Moreover, Sun has historically stumbled and fumbled in executing on its software strategy. The transition from McNealy to Schwartz, who has been leading Sun into new areas, came just in time. But I still need to see more. While Sun gets "community"...they don't have a strong history of success in the software business. And their commitment to open source almost came too late.

So for now, my answer to the question "Who is the open source [as a business] big dog?" is:

Red Hat

But Red Hat needs to realize that past success does not guarantee future dominance. Red Hat needs to improve its ability to grow into new areas. It needs to make its ability to expand its footprint a strategic weapon.

Focusing purely on business as usual may yield some solid results over the coming year, but will ultimately result in decreased momentum...

...and the crowning of a new open source big dog.


UPDATE ON MAY 1:
I got some private emails about this post. I believe Matt Asay hit the nail on the head in his "Former JBoss executive to Red Hat: Don't rest on your laurels".

This post is purely based on my desire to see Red Hat step up and lead. And I mean lead beyond Linux. To Matt's point...a response of "we already are" just proves they are missing the point entirely.

Frankly, IBM, HP, Oracle and others set the table for the Linux market (years ago, they all poured a ton of marketing $$'s and other resources into putting the "Enterprise" in Linux). Yes, Red Hat did a lot too, but they benefited greatly from the sugar daddy investments in the Linux market.

Red Hat's move into middleware (i.e. beyond Linux) illustrates the fact that those same sugar daddies are likely NOT interested in helping Red Hat market themselves beyond Linux. It is up to Red Hat to prove it can do that themselves. And they need to prove that they can do it beyond middleware as well.

So, yes, execution is very important, but maintaining and increasing momentum is critical! Otherwise your competitor with the mojo will be more than happy to be the big dog. In this industry, it’s not an either or. If you want to stay on top, you need momentum and you need to execute.

And as Matt stated: "this isn't intended to be a rant against Red Hat." As the big dog, I simply expect a great deal from them....as should others.

Who Invented Open Source?

I stumbled across this Federal Computer Week article - "Sun founder extols open source for government" - and wondered if it was an April Fools joke. The quote that caught my eye was: "We invented open source," McNealy declared in a tone that dared anyone to challenge the claim, and he listed its advantages."

Wow...McNealy invented open source...that was news to me. I thought folks like Stallman, Perens, Raymond, and Augustin played an important part in the early "open source" days...but McNealy? Hmmm....let's see if Wikipedia's definition of Open Source can clarify.

Just as I thought...no McNealy mentioned there. As a matter of fact, I always thought McNealy struggled with understanding the benefits of open source. For example, let's look at "Sun’s McNealy: Java won’t be open source", Government Computer News, March 24, 2004. McNealy stated that “We’re trying to understand what problem does it solve that is not already solved”. I must say that a lot has changed since McNealy's departure from Sun.

Anyhow, enough about McNealy...when we all know that the real story is How Microsoft invented open source. Back in November 2001, Bill Gates was quoted as saying: "The reason that you see open source there at all is because we came in and said there should be a platform that's identical with millions and millions of machines, and the BIOS of that should be open to everybody to use, and all the extensibility should be there."

This article explains a lot actually, and I'd argue that the core of Bill Gates quote still sums up Microsoft's open source strategy: Microsoft feels their pervasive platform enabled the rise and success of open source. Moreover, Matt Asay recently wrote a good article summarizing Microsoft's continued dilemma with open source.

So, in closing, I think it's safe to say that neither McNealy nor Gates invented open source...because it was actually....me....yeah...it was me! I invented open source....way back when I was married to.....uhhh....Morgan Fairchild....yeah....that's the ticket!

Business of Open Source

I read Cal Evans' blog entitled "Thoughts on Open Source, Running a Company, and OSBC"; in it he chronicles his thoughts from OSBC last week. Since I'm a JBoss guy, what initially caught my eye was the fact that he mentioned JBoss, and ex-JBossians, a couple of times in his rant.

I want to state first that I agree with MANY of the points Cal makes; I'll get to those after I touch on the points I had issues with.

I'll start off with his biggest rant that businesses were bastardizing (my word, not his) the intent of "open source" by trying to monetize the projects. My initial reaction is "what do you expect to hear at the Open Source BUSINESS Conference".
:-)

Also, he seemed to imply that ex-JBossians have sold out: "Developers seem to be willing to sell out for bucks these days." To quote Marc Fleury...great code just doesn't fall from the sky. Nobody should have to apologize for paying great developers to do what they love to do full time.

I'm not sure which ex-JBossians Cal was referring to, but I know, for example, that the Ringside Networks guys created and launched a new project and company at OSBC. All of the code is out in the open and that team is actively recruiting folks to participate in their project. I actually think it's healthy for people from JBoss, Red Hat, and other open source companies to branch out and start new projects/companies. It helps ensure that open source continues to expand its reach and useful footprint.

The business of open source can be done the right way...and it can be done the wrong way...which leads to some of Cal's other points:

• "Free Download!=Open Source": I WHOLEHEARTEDLY agree. 'nuf said.
• "Business people who work with open source consider it a business model": Open source is not a business model...it IMPACTS the business model. With easy and free access to the source code and binary distributions, open source takes an adoption-led approach to the market. It enables users to decide if the technology is worth using and if the project is worth interacting with. This results in a different approach to sales and marketing. Some things need to be done differently...otherwise you risk disaster for the business AND project. Do NOT confuse having a business associated with an open source project as selling out, being less transparent, etc. At JBoss, we worked hard at making sure we kept a balance between JBoss the company and JBoss the projects.
• "Hire from your community": Relates to the business point above. Business and community CAN coexist. Professional Open Source leverages the $$'s generated by the business to further grow the community of interest, ensure future vibrancy of the projects, add new projects/technologies, etc.
• "Transparency is the new black": Agree. This is actually what makes open source powerful! You can't afford to be half-pregnant here.
• "Outsource everything that is not a core competency": Don't get me started on this topic! :-) I agree with your point 1000%; this is the basic core vs. context argument. If you try to outsource what makes you different...then what do you really have.
• "If you take yourself too seriously, no one else will take you seriously at all": I also have issues with people who take themselves too seriously. Anybody worth their salt wants to be the best at what they do, so drive and passion do not necessarily equal "too serious". I find the most down to earth people are those that love what they do and who they do it with.

Good thoughts Cal...thanks for sharing.

Next-Gen Project Management?

After my last blog on Projity's OpenProj and Project-ON-Demand, I surfed around for recent articles covering the latest in Project Management software.

There was eWeek's "Next-Gen Project Management" which covered offerings from LiquidPlanner and Lunarr. I read this article a couple of times in order to figure out what exactly makes these two particular offerings "Next-Gen". To be honest, I was completely underwhelmed.

Project Management software has been around for a while...so when I see an article touting "Next-Gen", I want to see something that offers more than subsets of the standard "table stakes". I want to see something designed to change the game!

This is why I wrote about Projity. They appear to have all of the important "table stakes" project management features, and they have mixed in both open source and SaaS as game changers. This is a great start, but in an industry that has arguably rehashed a lot of the same-old, same-old stuff for the past 20 years....I'd like to see Projity kick it up a notch further.

What do I consider "Next-Gen" project management? An open source offering, available in standalone or SaaS models, that kicks it up a notch with social features that really add value and help projects come in on time, under budget, and with the minimal resources required.

So, that means, I'd like to see Projity leverage its strong open source and SaaS foundation and mix in social networking features that enable people to capture their thoughts, comments, ratings, pictures, videos, whatever for a given task (or set of tasks)...and gain leverage from the power of social interactions and socially-generated information.

Providing an easy way for people involved in the project to discuss and annotate the tasks with timely, context-appropriate information (text, audio/visual, etc.) that can help the collective group make better decisions...well that's valuable....and that would truly start moving the project management market to the "Next-Gen".

Projity: Open Source Project Management that is SaaS-y!

I spent 12 years (1988 - 2000) creating Project Management software at Primavera Systems , and since I'm an open source guy, I always figured it was a matter of time before an open source alternative emerged that was good enough to disrupt Microsoft Project.

Well, that time has come. I recently downloaded Projity's OpenProj, and for those who still think that "open source" means less feature/function....well think again.

OpenProj offers all of the typical project management bells and whistles found in products like Microsoft Project...only in a more approachable, open source offering. After installing OpenProj, I started off by opening some of my old Microsoft project files and poof...they opened up right away and looked great.

I still need to play with it more deeply, but the product feels nicely polished. This, of course, made me curious as to who is behind the company. A look at the management team yields expertise from Scitor (which always boasted nice graphics) and WebProject (one of the early hosted, web-based solutions).

I have not yet tried out Projity's Project-ON-Demand, which is their hosted SaaS (software-as-a-service) offering, but at first blush, it appears to offer much of the feature richness of OpenProj directly in the browser.

So for those who don't want to install software, you can use Project-ON-Demand. For those who prefer a desktop app, OpenProj is a great choice.

IBM's Interest in EnterpriseDB

Like a few others, I found IBM's choice to make an investment in EnterpriseDB kinda interesting. Matthew Aslett (the 451 group) got the following quote from IBM in explanation:
"IBM has become a minority shareholder of EnterpriseDB. This affords us an opportunity to continue to participate in, and gain further insight into, the open source community. This complements other experiences such as with the Linux, Apache and Eclipse communities and previous investments we’ve made in Red Hat and Novell. IBM has been a long-time supporter of Open Source communities, and we continue to see interest among our clients for Linux and other Open Sources solutions. This investment supports our overall strategy to support Open Source solutions in the marketplace to further enable our customers to implement business-critical solutions"

If I'm in EnterpriseDB's shoes, I'm digging this quote since being thought of in the same breath as Linux, Apache, and Eclipse sounds like strategic company to me. After all, in my opinion, a large part of Red Hat's success can be attributed to the early investments and marketing done by IBM (as well as HP, Oracle,and others) on its behalf.

The quote above also tries to minimize the importance, of course, but why would IBM invest if it just wanted an arm's length relationship?

To me, this move is a typical IBM long-term strategy play. They are always looking 5-10 years down the road (which equates to 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years). And while EnterpriseDB is not going to immediately displace Oracle for the high-end database needs, they still have an interesting market opportunity.

Savio Rodrigues (IBM WebSphere dude) posted on this topic and asked the question:
"What do you think, does EnterpriseDB have a brighter future by targeting Oracle users that want "Oracle like features for MySQL prices" or by targeting MySQL users who have "hit the wall"?"

Since EnterpriseDB is built on Postgres (which has been around a long time and is quite stable) and since they provide an Oracle compatibility layer, my answer would be "Yes" and "Yes". I think they compete for general database business with both Oracle and MySQL.

Bottom-line: This investment by IBM gives them a potential future play that neither their DB2 nor their Cloudscape/Apache Derby investments address directly. Now we just need to wait 1-2 Big Blue Dog Years to see how it all plays out.

UPDATED: The EnterpriseDB One-Two Punch
Savio replied to my blog with "I agree in principal that EnterpriseDB will continue to go after Oracle & MySQL. But in practice, they need to pick one segment to be their primary focus, or else they risk less than optimal results in both."

While I agree with Savio that focus is usually a good thing, my experience at JBoss, for example, also taught me that sometimes you've gotta lead with a one-two punch. At JBoss, we had momentum from new application development projects AND momentum from BEA migrations. Both were valid and lucrative focus areas. We actually had solid WebSphere migration business too, but we treated those more opportunistically than strategically since battling IBM is always more complex.

Anyhow...my point is that if EnterpriseDB's Oracle compatibility is any good, then over the longer-term, they can drive solid business. Ex. think through the Oracle upgrade cycle (when faced with moving from an older version to a newer version....should I consider EnterpriseDB??). The combat with MySQL clearly will heat up over time...but I still think they need to milk the Oracle opportunity.

I'm just a Philly guy who loves a nice one-two punch. :-)

ROBLOX Redux

In my Future of Open Source blog, I posed the question: "Are online destinations like ROBLOX grooming the next generation of open source developers?".

What leads me to ask this question is how platforms like ROBLOX are encouraging our next-generation of developers to interact with its cloud-based platform and create and extend virtual worlds using collaborative approaches that are arguably at the heart of professional open source development.

John Shedletsky (aka Telamon), a ROBLOX developer, picked up on my post and wrote a great article drawing the corallary between the ROBLOX model and the open source model.

1. He begins by illustrating the fact that there are Multiple Levels of Engagement (Basic User, Intermediate User, Advanced User, and Power User); his simple pyramid diagram is quite effective
   
2. He describes the power of Massive Peer to Peer Collaboration
3. He discusses how ROBLOX uses Economic Incentives to encourage production of high-quality content.
4. He closes with how an Exposure to Engineering at an early age influences the future
   

So, I'd like to thank John for his post. I could not have described things better. I do believe that sites like ROBLOX are absolutely shaping our next-generation of developers. And since it promotes what is arguably an open source collaborative methodology, I maintain my assertion that they are shaping our next-generation of professional open source developers.

The Future of Open Source

Matt Asay ponders "what happens to the open-source development community if the world moves to cloud-based computing?".

His blog provides an interesting angle on a discussion I had over the weekend with my 12 year old son.

My son is hooked on the ROBLOX Virtual Playworld, which is a free online Multiplayer game where you play in user-created worlds with blocks. When I asked my son what he likes about Roblox, he said: "Roblox combines Legos and scripting...two of my favorite things!". My reaction was "Scripting? Show me what you mean.".

So he proceeded to show me Roblox Studio, a development environment where you can create your own customized "Place" and publish it to the Roblox servers. It's actually a pretty cool development environment. Roblox enables you to customize the behavior of elements in your virtual world via the open source Lua scripting language.

For example, you can add special "admin" doors to buildings that only let in people with the right permissions. Actually, my son likes setting up the door so all people without the necessary permissions explode upon contact with the door. Typical 12 year old. :-)

Anyhow, there's extensive online help, a community forum, a developer's blog, and the ability to freely share Places, Objects, and Scripts.

It is cool to watch my son develop his online world; he scours through the shared online scripts, grabs a script that sort of does what he wants, modifies it to suit his needs, tests and perfects it, then uploads it to the server. He laughs out loud when one of his friends explodes upon contact with his new "admin" door.

So I will ask a question in response to Matt's original question:
Is Roblox, and other online destinations like it, grooming the next generation of open source developers?

UPDATE ON FEBRUARY 6, 2008:
I wrote "ROBLOX Redux" in response to a followon blog written by one of the ROBLOX developers that details the corallary between the ROBLOX model and the open source model.

Golden: Commercial Open Source - Can It Scale?

Bernard Golden of Open Source Maturity Model (OSMM) fame had a similar reaction as I did to the blog by Savio Rodrigues that asserts OSS business models don't scale.

I countered Savio's assertion with "Scaling a Software Business (open source or otherwise)".

Bernard Golden countered Savio's assertion with "Commercial Open Source - Can It Scale?" where he makes a range of worthwhile points:

"What this strikes me as is a failure to really come to terms with what open source means to IT, and, by extension, the software industry. It is judging open source by the standards of proprietary software business models and finding it lacking, instead of thinking through what business opportunities are made possible by the new mode of software distribution."

"His argument fails to fully comprehend the power of price elasticity, richly explored by Clayton Christensen; simply put, reduced prices don't mean less money is spent on a given item; reduced prices increase the customer base by more than enough to increase total market spend."

"What is important to recognize about all of these open source businesses is that they follow a publishing model and sell subscriptions. And, like all subscription-based businesses, they scale slowly, but are, nevertheless, able to grow to very large scale and can be phenomenally profitable... By contrast, licensed software companies can grow much faster, but tend to have problems later on when it becomes difficult to find new customers to fork over large upfront signing fees."

"The key to successfully scaling a software business (and this is true for both open source and proprietary software businesses) is to generate sufficient leads and to efficiently manage them well enough to create a viable business, defined as sufficiently profitable on a sufficient revenue base. An efficient sales process, applied to the very large lead base made possible by price elasticity, can certainly achieve success on even a 3% close rate."

"We haven't even begun to see the potential for commercial open source (or for that matter, community open source). It will so transform the IT landscape that, in the not-too-distant future, we'll look back on the bit-coercive proprietary software world and marvel that it existed at all - and that it was so small."

Mr. Golden states much more elegantly what many of us OSS vendors have been saying for a while now. And as he points out, the landscape is still changing...which should make the next few years a lot of fun.

Scaling a Software Business (open source or otherwise)

OK, I've grabbed the bait Savio Rodrigues (of Big Blue fame) has cast for me. Savio's a good guy and we've traded opinions in the past, so here we go again.

Savio asserts "The OSS business model is great to grow from $0-$50M, but very difficult if you're trying to get to $100M.".

In my inimitable Philly style, my response is: Dude, that same statement can be made of most software companies, open source or not.

Let me use Princeton Softech (non open source) as an example. I was there before JBoss, and my focus was to help them grow to $50M and beyond. So I helped build and launch their database archiving solutions for Oracle E-Business, PeopleSoft, Siebel, and JD Edwards. In order to scale the business, we expanded our footprint beyond the generic archiving solution, to application-specific solutions. This scaled the business and increased valuation enough to entice your Big Blue to buy them recently...so be sure to treat my friends well! ;-)

So let me now use JBoss and Red Hat as examples.

To establish and build the business, you've got to start with great technology and A players. You then need to focus your business model on selling the right stuff. In the case of JBoss, we sold 75% subscriptions, 15% training, 10% consulting. Why? Because subscriptions have higher margins than training and consulting.

Once you've got momentum going on one product, you scale the business by:

• Expanding your footprint (new products, product lines, solutions, etc.)


• Expanding your reach (channel business, partners, geographies, etc.)

The focus when I joined JBoss in 2004 was to grow the footprint beyond the application server into a full middleware suite of products (Hibernate, JBoss jBPM, JBoss Rules, JBoss Portal, etc.). Add in our upcoming SOA Platform (based on JBoss ESB), and the fact we added MetaMatrix earlier this year, and you've got a nice footprint.

On top of that, Red Hat has a pretty cool strategy for the RHEL business, has a solid Channel focus that includes JBoss, and offers a global reach.

All of that adds up to a multi-product line company with decent reach. You take that into customer conversations and you're able to drive strategic decisions rather than single product discussions.

[Added on Dec 1]
To those who think “The support-only OSS business model does not scale.”. Uhhh…I disagree. It may take a while to build up a base, but once you do and you can keep renewals at a good level, it’s a very scalable model. It's actually quite similar to the maintence revenues traditional software companies treasure. The subscription model is the gift that gives day in/day out.

IBM is famous for its 10 year strategies, so I encourage you to visualize this over the long term and let me know if you're still having problems seeing the model scale.

Legitimate Open Source Strategy or All Wet?

Call me old fashioned, but I like reading the hardcopy version of the SD Times...and over the weekend, I caught up on some of the back issues.

One of the articles I read was Curl Opens RIA Tools to Community. I definitely scratched my head for a few minutes after reading it. Not to pick on Curl (since I don't really know them or their products all that well), but I cringe when I see statements like:

• "We want to remove the concern that Curl is a proprietary platform," said Richard Treadway, vice president of product strategy at Curl. "We are releasing things above the platform that are fairly mature."
• Curl will not release its runtime to the community, Treadway noted, because it's important that the runtime exist only in one version that is solid and can run anywhere.

Believe me, I realize that open sourcing previously proprietary software is a complex process, but it feels to me like Curl's strategy is to leave one foot on the [proprietary] dock and one foot on the [open source] boat...and firmly commit to neither.

My experience tells me that in situations like this...you get all wet!

I racked my brain for an example of a company that voiced a similar strategy and avoided getting wet.

Sun made similar statements. Their initial open source strategy excluded Java Standard Edition because they feared doing so would open the doors for competitors to fork Java.

I actually think Sun got a bit damp before they corrected their strategy by rolling out OpenJDK which put them firmly on the [open source] boat.

Bottom-line: Sun's a big company and can afford to get a little wet...but smaller companies that face credible open source alternatives need to get it right the first time.

Microsoft's Open Source Strategy

Microsoft's Bill Hilf Reveals Its Open Source Strategy caught my attention, as well as July's Microsoft's Open-Source Strategy Coming Into Focus.

I found Dana Blankenhorn's response interesting, and I have to agree with many of his points.

Microsoft's stance on open source is pretty clear to me:

• Microsoft has no plans on flipping any of its flagship products to open source. Period. The effort vs. reward equation just does not make sense since it would be a HUGE effort to make the code consumable by a community.
• Microsoft sees some value in understanding open source; hence its investments in Port25 and CodePlex.
• Microsoft sees some value in open source technologies that run on or interoperate with its platforms and products.
• Microsoft sees some value in enabling people to see (but not touch) parts of their code; as evidenced by them Releasing the Source Code for the .NET Framework Libraries. This is not open source, but it does yield some benefit to developers targeting the .NET platform.
• Microsoft will aggressively fight/compete with products (open source or closed source) that pose a threat to its core products. Hence, Bill's points re: Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Now, while I do work at Red Hat, I should also disclose that I know and respect Bill Hilf. We started working together a few years ago on the JBoss / Microsoft alliance. At that time, we agreed to set aside the Java vs. .Nyet (sorry Bill) debate and focus on better serving our developer and production users that target Windows. Among other things, we focused on interoperability (Web Services, etc.) and have participated in various plug-fest workshops over the years.

So, I have to admit that I'm disappointed to see Bill Hilf dance around the questions and hide behind such FUD as proprietary software "guarantees".

As much as I hate to say it, Microsoft could learn something from IBM's strategy. They make no bones about it: they work in the open source on piece-part components that they Bluewash into their closed-source products. While it's not a pure open source business model...it's clearly an open source strategy.

C'mon Bill, drop the FUD (that's Ballmer's shtick, not yours) and just say it as plainly as I have above.

Who's the BOSS? JBoss Seam and JBoss Rules, of course

InfoWorld recently awarded the Best Open Source Software for the Enterprise (aka the 2007 InfoWorld Bossies).

Gavin King and the JBoss Seam community were given top honors as the Best Web App Server Framework in the Platforms and Middleware category:
"Seam is a Java EE-based framework that helpfully combines Enterprise Java Beans (EJB) 3.0 and Java Server Faces (JSF), and delivers important new benefits that include handling the thorny problem of stateful page flows, simple construction of CRUD applications, AJAX and Web 2.0 interfaces on server-based applications, reporting enhancements, and an extensive business-rules capability."

And speaking of business-rules capability, Mark Proctor and the Drools/JBoss Rules community were given top honors as the Best Business Rule Management System in the Software Development category:
"Measured by enterprise-grade features including sophisticated tools for developers, graphical interfaces for business analysts, and fast runtime performance, JBoss Drools lags only Fair Isaac's Blaze Advisor and ILOG's JRules. At the current pace of development it will not lag them for long."

Both of these communities have been quickly building out innovative features designed to simplify application development. When used together and along with JBoss jBPM for Business Process and Workflow, the speed with which a robust, AJAX-enabled, business process and rules-driven application with full CRUD capabilities can be created is mind-numbingly impressive.

Anyhow, kudos to the Seam and Drools communities for showing who's the BOSS...the Best Open Source Software.

What's in a Subscription?

So, it's been a busy couple of months of business travel. With lots more to come in September and October.

My travel has mostly focused on meeting with customers and partners to understand their needs, share our strategy, and discuss ways we might be able to help them.

In these discussions, I typically cover our strategic roadmap and development model for the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform and other JBoss Enterprise Middleware products.

Since the Red Hat / JBoss business model is built on selling subscriptions, the discussion leads to the definition of a Subscription.

Put simply, a Subscription is comprised of:

1. Software bits
2. Patches and updates to the bits
3. Support in the use of the bits
4. Legal assurance

While there's much more to say about each bullet point, that's basically the definition in a nutshell.

Since our products are open source, some people associate subscriptions with just support. In my Open Source Business Models: Definition of Support posting, I make the case that our customers need more than just support...which is why we are in the business of selling Subscriptions.

Open Source Business Models: Definition of "Support"

Interesting thread on InfoQ regarding open source business models:
http://www.infoq.com/news/2007/06/open-source-models

Rod Johnson and Stormy Peters are engaging in the debate of which model is better: "Create & Support" vs. "Pure Support". This topic has gone round and round in the past, and I think the heart of the debate lies in the definition of "Support".

The "Pure Support" model should actually be called "Technical Assistance" since it focuses on helping people get over technical issues, find workarounds, etc.

Technical assistance is important, but what happens when the issue requires a bug fix...or a refactoring of some of the code? Then what?

The code can be changed...but who manages that change? And if that code is part of a complicated stack of open source technologies...who is managing all the patches and branches of all those changes?

Also...who ensures that change is committed upstream so that future releases of the technology benefit from the change? If the changes are not committed upstream...then who will maintain that fork for the X-years lifecycle that enterprise customers demand?

Let's be real. While enterprise customers need technical assistance, they also need patches and updates to the versions of the software they have deployed today...and they want the peace of mind that comes with knowing that their fix today will still be there in future versions if/when they upgrade.

So, this explains why we at JBoss hire the key technical leaders from the projects that comprise our middleware portfolio. THIS is Professional Open Source.

Professional Open Source is not just Technical Assistance.

So, How's Life After Marc Fleury?

I was at the Red Hat Summit in San Diego last week and we had a capacity crowd of attendees, with lots of press and analysts attending the event as well. There was a lot of interest in our Open Source Architecture and our Developer strategy.

A variety of people also asked the question: "So, how's life after Marc Fleury?"

My thoughts on Marc's departure remain unchanged from my JBoss Reloaded blog in March. "Marc was never shy to speak his mind, and that fact helped keep JBoss in the news as much as our great technology did. Marc's persona fueled love/hate feelings forever preserved on the Internet; if you Google "Marc Fleury", you will get hundreds of thousands of hits. Love him or hate him, you have to give Marc props for taking a huge risk in 1999 and creating a software business that was valued at $350M in June 2006."

The recent article by Tom Sanders accurately quotes me in some aspects but sums things up in a misleading way. I do not think that "Marc Fleury's oversised ego stood in the way of partnerships, according to JBoss vice president - product management. ". And I do not credit our continued growth to Marc's departure.

I believe my thoughts above are clearly stated in my JBoss Reloaded blog. Marc Fleury absolutely has a lightning rod personality, and that fact helped make JBoss the success it is today. As part of Red Hat, however, JBoss Reloaded is less about one person. Things are different because folks like Sacha Labourey and Bob McWhirter have their own way of doing things. The new look at JBoss.org is just one example.

While I am quite happy with the success JBoss is having as part of Red Hat, I do not credit that success to one person joining...or one person leaving. We've got a great team of folks focused on the success of JBoss.

So, how's life after Marc? Fast-paced, exciting, and in the eye of the open source storm. While some things have changed...other things remain the same.

Open Source Strategy: Freeing Great Technology

At Red Hat, we are 100% focused on an open source business model and what we call the democratization of technology. Let me elaborate on what this means and how it fuels our strategy.

Having been with JBoss since 2004, our approach to expanding our base of open source technologies and accelerating innovation has been accomplished using one of the following approaches:

1. Work within existing open source communities. Our work on a wide variety of Apache projects and Eclipse projects are examples here.
2. Create and staff new JBoss projects. JBoss Seam, JBoss Portal, JBoss Messaging, JBoss Web Services, and JBoss ESB are examples of projects that fit this category.
3. Identify complementary open source projects and recruit them to join our community. Hibernate, JBoss jBPM, and JBoss Rules are examples here.
4. Free great proprietary/closed source technology. Let me use three examples to illustrate this further.

JBoss Transactions is an example of great technology that was previously proprietary. We worked with HP and Arjuna on freeing that technology so we could enhance our middleware technologies and open up technology to the benefit of the larger community.

Our partnership with Exadel is actually a blend of two approaches. We've added their open source technologies to our community as JBoss Ajax4jsf and JBoss RichFaces. And we are working with them on freeing their great Exadel Studio Pro technology at JBoss.org. Those who want to consume the individual Eclipse plug-ins will have that ability. Those interested in getting all of the Exadel, JBoss, and Red Hat Eclipse tools in an integrated and tested offering will be interested in the Red Hat Developer Studio.

Finally, our new Hibernate Shards project was developed by Software Engineers at Google who created some really cool technology built on Hibernate and then decided to free that great technology for the benefit of the broader community. Max Ross at Google describes the process in his Ode to Hibernate blog. Thanks Max, Tomislav, and Maulik and welcome to the community!

As I mentioned in my blog on Open Source Community, while I consider the open source projects and people who work directly on those projects as the core neighborhood within the "community", I do think the definition of community is broader and includes neighborhoods that extend beyond the core neighborhood.

I love working at a company whose core strategy is focused on constantly extending our community so we can free more and more great technology. It is much more difficult for proprietary closed-source sofware companies to follow suit since they are continually lured by the siren’s song of license sales and using “open source” as a marketing tick rather than as their raison d'etre.