Open Source Blog

Archive for the ‘ZD Open Source’ Category

Yesterday’s piece on phony open source drew pretty good traffic for a holiday.

It also drew a thoughtful e-mail from Tim Yeaton, president of Black Duck Software. He interrupted his efforts to counter OpenLogic’s new open source scanner to say that open source is bound to be assimilated into the software mainstream.

(Tim is pictured here on casual Friday at the company’s blog, commenting on the Oracle-mySQL situation.)

Some assimilation is inevitable, he noted. After all, 1 in 200 of us are now related to Genghis Khan. It’s how DNA rolls. (This explains why those who dream of past lives don’t imagine themselves as medieval scullery maids.)

The key to understanding open source assimilation, and protecting yourself from it, he added, is to understand the difference between projects and products:

• open source “projects” are usually community-driven efforts made available under an open process and/or open source license. We track over 220,000 such projects licensed under 1800 different open source licenses in our Knowledgebase.
• open source “products” typically take some form of freely available open content: Linux packages, open source-licensed code, web or other content, etc. and make it useful in some way: via support, via packaging & refinement, etc.

In the process of making it useful, they are able to commercialize some aspect of it and generate a return to continue to invest (support contracts, commercial licenses for value-added components or capabilities, advertising, etc.).

So from our perspective, it’s not so much about pegging a certain percentage of code or content that allows a “product” to be considered open source, it’s more about if the product uses open source in a meaningful way to make it more useful to customers, and if the company building the product acts as a good citizen in open source (e.g., honoring the authors intentions, community process participation, contributions back, etc.).

There is a question of degree to be debated on these dimensions to be sure. In our work with customers actively utilizing open source in multi-source development (including ISVs and embedded solutions providers), we found that, on average, 22% of their code was open source.

Since these are pretty progressive companies when it comes to effective use of open source, it may be a useful threshold to consider when one thinks about what an open source “product” is.

Yeaton’s view is not unusual. The Great Recession has turned most open source executives into pragmatists. They want to balance the visibility of their code with their ability to retain customer cash flow.

Personally I find this to be a reversible trend. Good times can breed idealism, and profitable idealism in open source can become a selling point that pushes companies back toward principle in the name of profit.

But that’s just me. What say you?

Go to Source

The Boxee Box, which will make its unofficial debut at CES next year, represents two key trends for 2010:

1. Open source with a standard retail business model.
2. The unity of all media.

As our Rachel King observes in her headline, this is an alliance between an open source software company and a hardware outfit, D-Link. This is important, because D-Link knows the channel and Boxee can supply the sizzle.

D-Link notes that there are a host of business-related applications for the Boxee Box, including training and meetings. On its blog, Boxee notes the consumer applications of the device, free movies, TV, radio, fun.

Both these desires need to be addressed for the creators’ goals to be attained. This can be a mainstream business device — go down to Fry’s and stick this in the conference room. That demand can be important in order to ramp up production and hit the consumer segment, the mass market Boxee needs to meet its goals.

Business applications are especially important when you consider this box will hit the market in the second quarter. Small business demand can lead to the multi-million unit orders that bring this in from China at a consumer price point for placement under the Christmas tree.

The Boxee offer makes the software look a lot like other open source video players like Miro. Should the device be a success it’s easy to see D-Link competitors calling on these open source players, looking to adapt what they have into proprietary hardware.

Throughout the 2000s (how can you finish a decade without getting a clear name for it) we’ve seen TV and Internet media as two trains running on one line, separate but equal. They started to come together mid-decade, but then with the rise of HDTV they parted again.

Now, in time for the new decade, they’re coming together again. (Let’s get this straight. The new decade is the teens, not the 2010s. You 20th century people need to get over yourselves.)

The question shoppers will be asking when they go out next Christmas is, should they?

Go to Source

There is nothing the media likes more than a good fight. It lets them take sides. (Yes, that’s Brad Pitt in Fight Club again. You prefer a gossip mag photo of him and Angelina?)

In the case of Florian Mueller (he likes to be called Floyd) and Eben Moglen (he’s Professor Moglen to me) the fight club imagery is overdone.

This is not Mr. & Mrs. Woods. This is a public dispute about a public issue. But it’s not James Inhofe and Al Gore either. These guys are on the same side.

On 99 out of 100 issues, I’m certain, Floyd and Prof. Moglen are on the same side. They disagree on the Oracle purchase of mySQL and have been public about it.

• Floyd looks at Larry Ellison’s track record. If you were running Siebel Systems or Peoplesoft when Oracle bought them, you probably feel you paid for the merger. And Ellison’s barber. Even his sailboats. When customers are there to be squeezed, Ellison is not squeamish. Floyd fears Ellison bought mySQL to bury it.
• Prof. Moglen looks at contracts. He’s a law professor. His statement, issued through the Software Freedom Law Center (an unlikely Ellison ally) suggests we have faith in the GPLv2. Ellison can’t squeeze mySQL customers the way he could PeopleSoft’s. They can walk. They control their own code. So what’s the big deal?

The big deal is what happens to the code without a deep pockets sponsor. Under Sun mySQL was champagne wishes and caviar dreams. Monty Widenius is more a beer-and-a-bump. And you’re paying.

I still believe that all mySQL stakeholders, like Amazon, can get together into a foundation to support the code in fine style, based on the large number of companies, large and small, that depend on it. I have suggested Ellison set up such a foundation, but if he won’t someone else can.

Trouble is, Monty is trying, and making little progress. Big money and small change don’t hang in the same circles. To be effective, Floyd needs something done in an air conditioned ballroom high in the sky, with comfy high-backed chairs and bottled water in front of each place.

Both sides here have a point. Prof. Moglen is right in the law, and right in theory, but I think Floyd tells some truth about the practice of business in the age of Oracle.

You can take whichever side you choose. Just remember that at the end of this, and it will end, we need to shake hands and get on with it.

This is a primary battle, not a general election. It needs to strengthen the movement, not just deliver divorce, division, or snark.

Go to Source

One of the most common criticisms of open source a few years ago was that it was just an excuse to dump failed projects for a fast tax write-off, the way you’d take old clothes and toys to Goodwill.

Sometimes this was even true. Open source was often the last quiet act of desperation before a corporate ship sank. But not always.

Which is it this time?

Submitted for your approval. PalmOS, reportedly an also-ran in a smart phone race Apple has won. And word that AdMob has launched an open source software development kid (SDK) for the PalmOS.

Can an ad-supported Palm business model be far behind?

Probably not. AdMob is doing Palm third, having already launched its mobile phone ad network on the Apple and Android platforms.

But consider how cheap smartphone parts are getting. A touchscreen, a case, a couple of chips, some software, and you’re done. Now consider the huge market of older phones out there, the giveaway kit carriers would love to replace with higher-use (higher ARPU) 3G ware.

True, this is a business model from the Seinfeld days, from when the Web was new and you could give away anything subsidizing it through ads. (We lose money on every sale but make it up on volume.) But there should be enough money in 3G ads to subsidize both the equipment and some of the service costs.

You won’t see Apple or even Google sullying their hands with such a crazy idea, but someone who is fading fast might see it as a lifeline. And God knows Michael Richards (who played Kramer on Seinfeld) could use a comeback vehicle.

Anyone for a Kramerica cell phone powered by Palm?

Go to Source

What do the last three Presidents of the United States have in common with Google?

Deranged critics.

Whatever you think of Bill Clinton, George W. Bush or Barack Obama, most admit some of their critics have been, well, a bit strident. A little out there.

It hasn’t helped. The stridency played into the hands of all three men, who used it to whip up their own supporters. See, the supporters would say, our critics are deranged, so we can’t be that bad.

It’s almost as if there is a law in politics that we raise people up, then knock them down, maybe raise them up to knock them down.

The same may also be true in the computing business. In the 1980s IBM was seen as the face of implacable evil. It was replaced in the 1990s by Microsoft. Now it’s Google.

What I want to know is, where is the evidence? Where is the evidence that Google is evil, or has done evil? I try to read all the critics and mostly what I see are intimations of what they might do.

• They might use their digitizing of books to control the book market.
• They might use their collection of personal data against you.
• They might tie their Android phones and Chromium PCs to Google services and lock others out.
• They might create a search monopoly.
• They might kill the newspaper business.
• They might take over the DNS market, and while they would be better than competitors it’s still evil.

As I have noted many times this year, Google has a big cost advantage in providing Internet services of all kinds, so as demand rises for any service it gains. But I have yet to hear anyone offer a coherent argument as to why that is a bad thing.

Someone is always going to have a cost advantage. That advantage should inspire others to compete. That’s what makes capitalism great. Think of it as evolution in action.

It’s true that with great power comes great responsibility. We are right to be suspicious. But you don’t call in the cops before there is some evidence of a crime, until power has been abused. IBM’s problems in this regard date to the 1950s. Microsoft has still not overcome its reputation from the Netscape days even though people disagree on whether the smoke meant fire.

The great thing about Google’s unofficial mantra, “don’t be evil,” is that it’s a warning. It is designed to keep Google clean in the face of great scrutiny.

Yet many, many people — here and elsewhere — insist that the biggest contributor to, and user of, open source software is evil, or has evil up its sleeve, evil intents, or evil ambitions.

Where is the evidence? What evil has Google actually done? Not threatened to do, not implied through otherwise-legitimate actions. What harm has it caused?

In terms of our Presidents or our past computing masters of the universe, critics have had answers at the tip of their tongues.

What has Google done to deserve its evil reputation? Or is it all sour grapes?

Go to Source

Social networking is the latest iteration of open source content, a business that has been around since the Web was spun.

Remember Geocities? Back in the 1990s Geocities, and companies like it, were the center of the open source content space. Geocities was just a place for your stuff. But it was stuff-oriented, its tools were primitive.

Blogger and the community systems that followed it — Drupal, WordPress, Typepad, etc. — were the second generation. Here the focus was on you, rather than your stuff. The software was easier to use. It was instant publishing. It retains its niche in media and the enterprise space.

MySpace pioneered the third generation of social networking, the niche Facebook now dominates, and it’s interesting to recall why it failed.

I think it was all a question of control. The day Fox bought MySpace, and Rupert Murdoch started talking about taking over the Internet, the game was up. Because on a social network you’re the game. The network is the hall, but you’re the game. When the landlord starts talking about locking the doors you leave.

Now that Facebook has figured this out, the question becomes what is the next growth driver. Is it an open API? Or is it, as Twitter alleges, simplicity and ease of use.

Our Matt Asay likes Facebook more than he likes Twitter. I go the other way probably because, at heart, I’m more of a Blogger guy. Facebook is an updated, dumbed-down version of the blog, Twitter a dumbed-down version of the RSS feed.

I don’t tweet about going to the bathroom or playing with my cat. I tweet my tweets after I finish writing, tell them why they should read it, and check out what my colleagues have been up to.

What matters to me in a social network is getting the most publicity from the shortest commitment of time. Social networking is advertising for yourself. It’s about seeking, and finding, your personal market, no matter how large or small that may be.

It’s also about maintaining control of that market, and that process. It’s what makes social networking and open source similar. It’s about taking control of the process from the vendor and avoiding anything that smells like lock-in.

But if the history of the last decade teaches us anything, it’s that we’re not likely to stop at Version 3.0 in this phenomenon. There is a Next Big Thing out there, and another one after that, and yet another after that.

There is still time for you to find it.

Go to Source

Critics are always claiming open source lacks a business model.

(Let’s Make a Deal is back on TV, on CBS, starring Wayne Brady as Monty Hall. Cross-promotion is a great old business model, don’t you think?)

In fact it’s proprietary software that is lacking in imagination.  They have only one business model:

1. EULA Ware — Give me money. Now go away. It doesn’t work? Go away. You want your money back? Read your EULA, and go away. You want to see the software? Go away.

This has the virtue of simplicity. People pay and you really aren’t required to give them anything. But it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. Don’t know what that is? You must work for a proprietary software company. (Go away.)

Telling people to pay you and go away worked for an amazingly long time. It sounds like it shouldn’t. It sounds a bit like theft. But software is a miracle, and for decades EULA Ware was the only model there was.

Open source companies, on the other hand, they have to use their imagination. They can’t feed people EULA Ware, so they must make money in other ways:

1. Support Ware — Pay us money and we’ll support the software. We’ll answer your questions. Or we’ll try to. Over the phone, on the Web, whatever. Pay us enough and we’ll come over. Red Hat likes this business model.
2. Product Ware – The software is free, you just buy the box it runs in. Android phones use this. So do some network routers. It’s number two, but with a bullet.
3. Cloud Ware — Our software is in the clouds now. Pay us for what it does. The money goes into the cloud. Later it will rain on us. SugarCRM likes this business model.
4. Project Ware — Need something done? We’ll do it with open source. Pay us for our work, and pay us for the project. IBM makes a ton on this business model.
5. SaaS Ware — Our software is SaaSy. You can rent it, by the hour, by the month, by the user. This is wildly popular. Zoho uses it. So do many other companies.
6. Ad Ware — This is a free version of SaaS Ware. You don’t pay anything, the advertiser pays instead. Heard of The Google? This is their primary business model. ZDNet also uses this business model.
7. Sugar Daddy Ware — Our software has a sugar daddy. Firefox has Google. Eclipse has IBM. Open Office has Sun, or it did. So just use the stuff. Daddy will provide. We believe in daddy.
8. Foundation Ware — Our software has a foundation. It has lots of sugar daddies. Want to be one? Linux runs this way. So does Apache. Not to mention Wikipedia.
9. Beg Ware — Please give us money. We know you don’t have to. But give us money anyway. Lots of little projects use this business model. Or pretend to.
10. Tchotchke Ware — Wanna buy a t-shirt? How about a bumper sticker? A pen?
11. Let’s Make a Deal Ware — The programmers who wrote the software support it out of their own pockets until they can figure out something. WordPress started this way. So did Drupal. Go by Sourceforge and you’ll find tons of folks still using this business model.

The great thing about open source is you don’t have to use just one business model. You can mix-and-match as you see fit. You can change. You can go to a more profitable model and buy a suit, or fork the code and go down the stack.

Or maybe you don’t see your business model here. Maybe you have one of your own. Care to tell us about it in the talkbacks? Whisper it in our ear. It will just be between us.

This is what freedom is about. It’s about having choices. You don’t have to go to Sand Hill Road to get into the software business. If they tell you to go away, go open source and in time maybe they’ll call you.

Then you can tell them to go away.

Go to Source

Whenever we have a talkback thread about open source business models, someone is bound to pipe up with the charge that open source developers are not making money, or not making enough money.

(Raheel’s blog has a collection of funny programmer t-shirts. This one is available at Zazzle.com for just $21.45. Makes a great stocking stuffer.)

I have been around software developers for over 35 years. I’m married to one. Happily. And one thing I can say for certain is that, while they all like to eat, most don’t measure their self-worth strictly on the bottom line.

What most care about, once body, soul and family are taken care of, is that they work on interesting projects, that they see the what they do released, that their working conditions be adequate, and their co-workers tolerable. The best measure tolerability in part on how well those co-workers code.

Most don’t care for ties, or the trappings of great wealth and power. They prefer beer to single-malt scotch, and a quiet hike or cozy book to the party scene.

Their values are half-way between those of engineers and artists. There is art (at least craft) in code, and good programmers can identify others’ handiwork readily. There is pride in a job well done. Most of the guys can change their own oil, and the gals are unfussy, down to Earth, team-oriented.

This is in contrast to the CEOs, or the marketing types, or the bureaucrats, all of whom are necessary in any organization. If anyone in an open source organization is underpaid, it’s these people. Folks like Matt Asay, who might be getting stock options out the wazoo in a biotech start-up.

Now, are there enough jobs in open source for all the great coders who want to work in it? I don’t know, but most of the great open source coders I know have jobs.

Certainly, when you’re unemployed — and a lot of us are these days — you want to find a reason. Open source makes a good scapegoat. The industry is a shell compared to what it was in software’s glory days.

But what’s most missing from that shell is stuff good developers don’t care much about. Hype and ballyhoo, fortunes and the strategies of the great, break room talk of stock options and what the market is doing.

So it seems to me. How does it seem to you? Are you an unemployed developer living in your parents’ basement? Will you code for food, but you’re unable to pick up work because there’s no money in open source?

Or is that just a cliche?

Go to Source

One of the least remarked-upon scams of the last decade has been the rise of what I call racket ware.

As in protection racket.

Expert users don’t seem bothered by this. Expert users can avoid the racket. They fix their own registries and change their own oil. To the extent they have contempt for the user on the street, I say they’re in on the racket.

We all know how it works. Windows slows down for no reason. You go online to check it out. You’re told, “try this free, it will fix you up right” and you download it. You load it. It runs, and then it says “you have hundreds of problems here that must be fixed right now. But it’s going to cost you.”

Nice bits you got there. Shame if something happened to them.

The user then faces a choice. Buy the software — buy it now — or lose control of their machine to malware.

Wash, rinse, repeat.

There’s always a new kind of scam coming along. There’s always something that the products you own don’t pick up, but this new piece of junk will. Or will claim to.

Malware locks into Windows like barnacles on a ship. If you’ve ever watched Windows load you know why. It’s messy. There are a ton of .dll files and hot key entries where malware can hide.

I’m not just talking here about viruses. I’m also talking about ad-ware and the messes legitimate programs make in registries and on hard drives, all the software dust bunnies Windows lets developers toss into systems.

The developers of Chrome OS talk a good game about fixing this. Our own Ryan Naraine at Zero Day has been on this like white on rice. Too lazy to read? Watch the video.

Google’s work will be conducted against a solid wall of skepticism. Bruce Schneier has already condemned it, calling it 2+2=3 impossible. Others, more cynical, insist this is all just a plot to impose Google adlware on us.

Maybe. But starting with a clean sheet of paper, and limiting access to the operating system, is not where Windows started. Windows started with the idea of enabling, not preventing. And Google starts with a Linux kernel — all the Linux geeks here love to talk about how secure that is.

So we’ll see. And I’ll have my fingers crossed.

Go to Source

Computing’s greatest accomplishment of this decade will likely go unremarked in the popular press.

I call it the “death of the black box EULA.” (Picture from the blog Fortunes Pawn Luncheonette, December 2007.)

Free software wounded it in the early 1990s. The Internet stabbed it again. But it was open source, in this decade, that struck the fatal blow.

Users under 25 may be unaware of what I am talking about. Let me explain how the scam worked.

1. I have this black box. It does tricks. I sell you the tricks it does with fancy TV ads or in glossy magazine spreads. You want my black box. You want it bad.
2. I will let you use a copy of the black box, but I will not sell it to you. I will take your money but you are not buying anything.
3. All this is covered by an End User License Agreement (EULA), written in a form of elvish. You signed it when you ripped open the black box.
4. The EULA states that the box may not work. The EULA states the box may do nothing. Regardless, I keep your money.
5. The EULA says you can’t look in the black box and try to fix it. You can’t even see what’s inside. You might steal it. Maybe I will talk to you on the phone about it from India.
6. Here is another black box. It fixes the first one, makes it better. It’s more stable. You need an upgrade, maybe a new computer, but you really, really want this black box. Seen the ad?
7. Wash, rinse, repeat.

The black box EULA is descended from licenses IBM wrote in the 1950s, when computers filled great rooms and the value of calculating, say, the pay-outs for a horse race were worth a fortune.

Software was unstable then, even more so than now, and without the EULA companies like IBM might have been sued out of business by angry customers. The computer revolution may never have happened without the black box EULA.

Companies like Microsoft brought the black box EULA into the 1990s intact. Even though PCs were very reliable, even though software storage had become stable, and even though the creation of software was no longer a black art, the black box EULA remained.

The black box EULA made Bill Gates a billionaire 50 times over. It made many other people wealthy too, rich beyond their wildest schemes.

But the black box EULA was always hopelessly one-sided. It was unfair to customers. And lawyers could provide no help — they had written the black box EULA and were sworn to uphold it.

So folks like Richard Stallman struck a blow against wealth and said software should be free. Not only free but visible so you could see it, smell it, kiss it, touch it. Fix it, improve it. And they wrote their own license, which they dubbed copyleft.

The war against the black box EULA was on.

The free software folks won applause, but the people who needed complex black boxes were skeptical. They knew you couldn’t just give stuff away, that software writers need to eat, too. Even if Linus Torvalds was happy with hamburger while the customers ate steak, a way was needed to get him a hamburger. And a beer.

This is what I have now spent a half-decade covering. Open source is a transformation enabled by the Internet, born of righteous indignation, and driven home by hard-headed businessmen and women on both sides of major transactions.

So now you have an alternative to the black box. The makers of black boxes know they can’t hold customers to their EULAs forever. They have to compete with free. The eye of Gates has fallen. The age of men has begun.

The black box is now encased in plastic and steel. You can return an iPhone to the store. The EULAs are still there, and they retain their legal weight, but they no longer control the market.

It’s a good time, at the end of the first decade of the 21st century, to look back from these heights and see what has been accomplished.

The black box EULA no longer has the power to cloud mens’ minds. It is dead as a controlling force in the software world. You can open the box, see what’s inside. You are free to tinker with it, to freely connect with it, and you no longer think of it as a black box that holds all light, but as a physical product, with a warranty.

There are obligations on both sides. It’s a fairer and more just software world. It’s worth celebrating this Thanksgiving.

Happy Turkey Day.

Go to Source