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.

When Was Your Last Giant Leap?

A few years ago, I participated in a two day session with Bill Treasurer of Giant Leap Consulting. Bill's focus is on helping people and organizations be more courageous.

Founders of open source projects and companies exemplify what Bill would call "purposeful risk-taking". It takes courage to put your passion and work out there for all to see.

Two recent events reminded me of taking Giant Leaps:

1. My friend and prior coworker Ibrahim Abdelshafi is headed back to Egypt to be the CIO of one of their top financial services companies. Ibrahim has been at Primavera Systems for the past 15 years and has done a great job leading the development team there. He periodically considered a move back to Egypt to be closer to his family, but figured he'd seriously think of it in 3 or 5 years since he was really enjoying himself at Primavera. A conversation with an old friend from Egypt led him to more conversations....and bada bing....Ibrahim was faced with a Giant Leap decision. He leaves for Egypt on Tuesday.
2. My daughter Liza will turn 16 this July but will not be home for her sweet 16th birthday. She is currently participating in the Experiment in International Living and is in Europe for the entire month of July. I have tried to raise my kids to be open to life's opportunities, and I feel the EIL program will open her eyes to the much bigger world out there. This is definitely a Giant Leap for Liza who has never been away from home for an extended period of time...and frankly...a Giant Leap for me as her parent who still can't believe it's been 16 years since she was born.

As they say, the only constant in life is change. Many of us are spectators for these waves of change. In my opinion, the best changes, the sweetest changes, the most impactful changes are those where you make a conscious and informed decision to "go for it".

So, when was your last giant leap?

Whether it's in open source, business, or life, I'd love to hear your giant leap story.

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.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta is Available

On Tuesday, we announced our New Development, Distribution, and Support Model for JBoss. As followup to that announcement, we have released the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform 4.2 Beta. Congratulations to the development team and community for helping us pull this Beta together!

You can access the Beta download from the JBoss Enterprise Middleware Downloads page.

JBoss Enterprise Application Platform integrates the following open source JBoss technologies for building, deploying and hosting enterprise Java applications and services:

• JBoss Application Server 4.2
• Apache Tomcat 6
• JavaServer Faces 1.2
• JBoss Clustering, Cache and Messaging
• JBoss Transactions JTA
• Hibernate
• JBoss Seam

This Beta Release represents an opportunity to evaluate the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform before its widespread production release. It is intended as a technology preview in order to allow users to explore its capabilities and evaluate its suitability for their needs. Please deploy it in testing and evaluation environments only.

Your feedback on this technology preview is valuable to us, and is an integral part of making this the most stable Enterprise Application Platform possible. Please raise any concerns that you have or issues that you encounter by opening an issue in our JIRA Issue Tracking System at http://jira.jboss.com/jira/browse/JBPAPP. Please bear in mind that the JBoss Enterprise Application Platform Beta is a technology preview and will not have a support SLA until its final release.

Driving Developer Preference

JBoss' success has hinged on grassroots adoption by developers and users of our open source technologies. Thank you for your support over the years! With our relaunch of JBoss.org, we are hoping to fuel that innovative spirit further and keep our users informed and excited about our new technologies and directions.

There are many types of developers, of course. While many will download our open source components and tools and support themselves via our forums and wikis, many corporate developers just want a set of solid tools they can use and a well tested platform to develop and deploy on. While they may think innovation is cool...and will factor it into future applications...stability is what gets deployed today. They have a job to do and want vendors like Red Hat to make their lives simpler.

At Red Hat, we are focused on driving preference for our Open Source Architecture as early in the development lifecycle as possible. So, we are building on the grassroots relationship JBoss has with developers and consolidating our developer-related efforts into a single strategy across all of Red Hat.

Towards that end, we have launched the following new subscriptions:

• Red Hat Developer Professional is designed for corporate developers and individuals.

• Red Hat Developer Enterprise is designed for Independent Software Vendors, larger development organizations and mission critical development projects.

• Red Hat Developer Studio is an Eclipse-based development tools environment that integrates tools for Linux, Java, and Web 2.0 application development.

The first two offerings provide full access and developer support for ALL Red Hat certified products (Red Hat Enterprise Linux, JBoss Enterprise Middleware, etc.) under a single subscription. We want to make it as easy as possible for developers to get access to any/all of our certified bits and support them in the use of those bits as they're developing their applications.

The Red Hat Developer Studio subscription is due out in the summer timeframe and will integrate all of our Eclipse-based tools, including the Exadel Studio Pro and Ajax technologies, into a development environment that works well with and includes our certified platforms. So, developers will not only get the tools but also access to our certified JBoss and Red Hat Enterprise Linux platforms.

This is a first step, of course, and as always, if you have cool ideas for other things we should be doing to help developers, just let us know.

OFF TOPIC: Thank You Sir, May I Have Another

I had the pleasure of spring skiing with my family in Alta, Utah this past week. This was our first time skiing "for real"...meaning taking a lift that brings you up to 10,450 feet.

If you've never skied in April...do it! And if you are looking for a nice place to stay, check out Rustler Lodge in Alta, Utah.

Thank you Rustler...we look forward to our next trip to Alta.

Typical of any vacation, I returned to a ton of emails...but one email in particular caught my eye. The email was from Andy Oliver, longtime JBoss developer now doing his own thing at Buni.org.

Andy read the two blogs I posted on March 31 right before I headed out on vacation. Admittedly, those blogs could have used a bit more editing...but I had a plane to catch and slopes to conquer so I quickly wrote and posted them and put up my "On Vacation" sign.

Anyhow, Andy's email basically said: "Dude....write less!".

Good advice for bloggers in general...and I'd like to thank Andy for the Buni-slap...I really do appreciate the feedback.