I have never believed that there were separate open source software (OSS) and non-OSS markets. But as good analyst and taxonomer of software markets, I was always happy to size one and forecast it for clients for a fee. As often as not, the client wanted the metric in order to claim to be the leader in some OSS submarket they perceived existed. The client was most often disappointed to find out IBM was the leader (if the software was infrastructure related) no matter what the OSS submarket, no matter how strained the taxonomy. For example, in the Linux operating software market in which Red Hat competes, IBM ships thousands of systems with Linux and reaps millions in service revenue, the same way Red Hat does. Ditto for the Apache web server built into WebSphere. And the Eclipse toolset. And so forth.

In addition, I also could never come up with a good non-negative descriptor for non-OSS. If the source code is not "open" in the 0-4/1-10 Free Software Foundation (FSF)/Open Source Initiative (OSI) senses of that word, what is it? Closed source? Proprietary? Captive (as in the opposite of “free”)? This is especially an issue when the OSS is bundled into the closed, proprietary, non-free product (see the IBM Apache/WebSphere example above).

Red Hat’s quarterly results for the period ending August 31, 2007 illustrate that the challenges of defining non-OSS and taxonomizing OSS markets are becoming moot. There are now numerical and market-dynamics proof points that there is no difference. Red Hat by its own description of itself is just another software supplier, like Google, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP. Red Hat’s apples-to-apples trailing-12-month software revenue growth rate will probably come in around 30% after we backcast for independent Metamatrix results in 2006. (Red Hat's Metamatrix-related revenue is closed-source, proprietary, captive, non-free revenue by the way.) Red Hat’s growth was lower/slower than Google’s, but twice the others’. There was nothing that shouts “Wow, this is really different.” Red Hat revenue grows (and will eventually deflate) the same way the overall software market does.

Red Hat admitted that JBoss revenue was not what they hoped. It was probably not even what they thought it was when they acquired it, by a factor of 2 (a little due diligence problem there?). But just like the other guys, they quoted an IDC statistic and said that was the market they were shooting for, the ones where the other guys already have 80% share. Red Hat management also explained its very real opportunities in the server virtualization and so-called desktop virtualization spaces. Add EMC to my list above and subtract Google and the competitive set and market dynamics are very similar, Nothing about the OSS development model makes them different.

In addition, Red Hat’s revenue is based mostly on replacing existing software, just like the rest of the market. The replacements Red Hat management spoke of were of UNIX, not Windows. So it’s new UNIX (Linux) for old UNIX (OSF/1 and AT&T/Sun), working just like the rest of the software market.

There is no OSS market and non-OSS software market; there is just the real software market.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I said in my posting yesterday that I didn't understand Red Hat's (and FSFE/Samba's) exuberance over the European Union (EU) Court of First Instance's ruling against Microsoft. The EU CFI press release specifically said the EU Competitive Commission did not intend to force Microsoft to open source its code in both the 0-4/1-10 Free Software Foundation (FSF)/Open Source Inititiave (OSI) senses of the term, open source software (OSS).

Today it looks like Red Hat at least has had second thoughts, based on this press release of a few hours ago:

RALEIGH, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Red Hat ....again congratulates the European Commission in yesterday's judgement from the Court of First Instance in the Microsoft matter. Access to interoperability information and the ability to provide alternative technologies are essential elements to restoring the competitive landscape of the information technology market. However, open source solutions, such as those delivered by Red Hat, are critical to this competition.

“Microsoft continues to deny open source providers access to and use of the interoperability information that now clearly must be provided. Red Hat strongly encourages the Commission to take the steps required to assure rapid implementation of a remedy that gives broad and equitable access to Microsoft interoperability information to all competitors, including open source providers. Red Hat firmly believes that competition, not questionable patent and trade secret claims, drives innovation and creates greater consumer value,” said Michael Cunningham, Executive Vice President and General Counsel at Red Hat.

With wording such as "… are essential elements to restoring the competitive landscape of the information technology market. However, open source solutions, such as those delivered by Red Hat, are critical to this competition," I think Red Hat is now agreeing with me despite yesterday's press release.

The initial Red Hat/FSFE exuberance is probably based on 2- or 3-year-old quotes by Neelie Kroes, now EU Competitive Commissioner but not involved in the 2004 rulings, in favor of OSS. She also said earlier this year basically that Microsoft's prices for its technology is too high and in fact the protocol code should be given away. But as Red Hat has slowly figured out, I think, that still doesn't make it open source.

Stay tuned. I am trying to understand these issues better technically and in terms of its underlying marketing research.
-- I have always felt the whole EU 2004 ruling was technically flawed because of the primitive 1980ish way in which it defined interoperability.
-- Its research premise is flawed because it defines a functionality-based market in usage terms, a methodological/taxonomical no-no (I was the co-author of the IDC Software Taxomony until this year).

I also didn't think any of this mattered because all the relevant technology parties (Novell, Sun, Microsoft, and so forth) had settled their differences by 2004. And the market taxonomy has changed dramatically with Software as a Service (SaaS), blades, Web 2.0 and a lot of other trends. I admit I am scrambling here.

I am also trying to cut through all the legal mumbo jumbo. I never thought that to do my job in technology research as well as to understand modern day sports in 2008, I should have gone to law school after passing the LSAT in 1968.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

IBM has resurrected the old Lotus brand Symphony to launch its Sun OpenOffice-based open source office suite. Although termed an office suite and hyping collaboration on its own web site, neither Symphony nor OpenOffice has an email component the way Microsoft Office comes with the Outlook email client or the way DEC All-in-One and Data General CEO and all the real original albeit proprietary office suites worked (which is why Ozzie wrote Lotus Notes, right?). It's an interesting choice of brandname since the original was chosen by John Dvorak in 2004 as one of the 10 "worst software disasters" in industry history. Symphony also includes some of same tools that are inside Lotus Notes 8, which can be used to extend a business process or to create dynamic composite applications. The product supports Microsoft and Adobe formats as well as the Sun OpenOffice format.

So unlike when IBM entered the open source software (OSS) application server market with its purchase of Gluecode in 2005, IBM is not competing with itself with this OSS move. You can use any email client and server and IBM hopes you will chose Lotus Notes and Domino. Of course, the documents will not appear in the email client in an integrated fashion the way Word is usually used as the text editor within Outlook. This appears to be an effort by IBM to bolster its OSS bona fides, particularly related to the Sun OpenOffice Open Document Format (ODF) format. In fact, you can now call it IBM/Sun Open Office because IBM (according to press reports) said that it will contribute 35 developers to the Sun OpenOffice project.

And this move by IBM illustrates how important applications are to the eventual success of OSS. Despite all the fits of pique in the OSS community over Linux vs. Windows, the thing that matters to real people is how they read their email, type their personal and business correspondence, pay their bills at home, plan their production lines at work, and so forth. Real people could care less if there is Linux in their Tivo or Symbian in their cell phone or Windows in the cash register at the corner convenience store.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Development | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A first-level European Union (EU) court today upheld the EU Competition Commission’s 2004 findings that said that Microsoft had to take steps to increase interoperability between its Windows-based client operating software and other providers’ server operating software (e.g., Sun’s Solaris before it was OpenSolaris, Novell’s directory services circa 2002).

There are other issues about worldwide marketplace dynamics and such in the court finding that will get a lot of coverage in the wider media. The now responsible EU Competitive Commissioner (not involved in 2004) says,

“This is an important precedent, not just for this particular product on this particular market.”

But there is a side issue that relates to open source software (OSS). I am not sure I am expressing the legalities correctly but I think of the OSS side issue this way:
-- The EU said in 2004 that Microsoft had to release information about its communications protocols and make them easy for others to work with
-- Microsoft felt it has always done that via TechEd and Windows Solutions Developer programs and the like (in fact that’s how Microsoft answered the original Sun 1998 complaint)
-- But reasonable people can disagree. Microsoft asked the EU how it could be more cooperative.
-- In 2005, after a year or more of studying the issue, the EU said the way for Microsoft to meet its demands was for Microsoft to release reams of related documentation
-- Microsoft in early 2006 said OK, we’ll even go a step further. We’ll license the protocol code for XYZ, just as IBM and others license their technologies, and as Microsoft does for other of its intellectual property (IP)
-- In 2007, the EU said no, the protocols have no market value so you, Microsoft, have to give them away for free (in the OSS sense of the word as well as in “at no cost”).
-- The EU had not apparently previously said that Microsoft even had to provide the code, just documentation

First, forget the unbelievable slow pace at which the EU works, which means both the technology and the market have moved on by the time the EU makes a decision. For a little historical context, remember this whole thing started in 1998 a few months after Google was founded. Most notably of course, the original complainants Novell and Sun have long ago settled with Microsoft and are already doing all the things with Microsoft that the EU said it would force Microsoft to do with competitors.

The real issue is that some number of developers have already determined that the protocols do have a market value (because they paid the XYZ to license them, which is the definition of a market). Should EU bureaucrats be able to decide what a person’s or company’s IP is worth?

Of course, the free software wing of the OSS movement thinks just that. The Free Software Foundation (FSF) filed as a friend of the EU Competition Commission (or whatever an amicus brief is called in the EU) and it thinks it got what it wanted out of the court’s ruling.

But the press release about the ruling (sorry the ruling is 250 pages long and I haven’t read it yet) specifically says:

“The Court notes that the Commission emphasised that Microsoft’s abusive refusal to supply concerned only the specifications of certain protocols and not the source code and that it was not its intention to order Microsoft to disclose its source code to its competitors.”

So based on the press release (something I always argue against doing, I know) the EU court ruling does not seem to agree with FSF and Red Hat, which released an “amicus press release” on the matter.

The relevant EU commissioner also said in a statement,

“In this case, the Court has confirmed that Microsoft has to make available indispensable interoperability information on reasonable and non-discriminatory terms to allow competitors to make workgroup server products that work properly and on an equal footing with Microsoft products.”

The commissioner apparently believes that “reasonable” equals “free.” I doubt if Microsoft will see it that way so I also doubt if this is over yet.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Listen to or download the 3:32 min. podcast below:

Download file

This podcast talks about Sun's business strategy relative to expanding its agreement with Microsoft. The PR came out on September 12 but the real motivation was explained by Sun on September 5... without even mentioning Microsoft. The OSS conspiracy buffs will have field day with this announcement. But it's just business.

These three-four minutes go into more detail.

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In partnering with Red Hat and Alfresco, and building large applications for Endeca and the Chicago Public Radio (not Schools, corrected 9/17), the open source software (OSS) services supplier Optaros has been in the news a lot recently. So I caught up with Marc Osofsky, Optaros’ VP of Marketing, to find out what the buzz is about.

Optaros was founded three years ago with the express intent of bringing OSS expertise to larger enterprises. Large enterprises have historically turned to a big-four-type consulting firm whenever they bring in a new technology. But the big four (or however many there are left these days) has been slow to pick up the OSS mantle the way they keyed on SAP in the early1990s and Siebel in the late 1990s. Despite the fact that large consulting firms work on a collaborative basis and had always been big contributors to groups such as IBM SHARE and Digital’s DECUS, they just didn’t get OSS in the beginning. Or they decided that people that wanted “free software” probably wouldn’t pay for services to implement it.

Optaros saw it differently. With guys who cut their consulting teeth at Cambridge Technology Partners, Viant and Scient, they saw an opening. Optaros’ specific mission statement is to
• Build next generation (i.e. Web 2.0) Internet solutions
• By assembling rather than developing
• Entirely from OSS
• With a design emphasis on the “user experience”

The Optaros news that most intrigued me was the updating and move online of its solutions catalog in July. The project is called the Enterprise Open Source (EOS) directory. In it Optaros analysts rate about 300 OSS communities based on client experience. A key criteria is whether the related OSS projects are enterprise ready and the directory includes case studies and other useful information that illustrate the increasing maturity of the OSS movement. One interesting aspect is that while Optaros puts the projects on the list, anyone—even Optaros competitors—can participate in the rating process. Others can also suggest new OSS projects to be added the list.

I asked Marc what Optaros thinks of open choice because a key part of the client decision process in choosing Optaros is choosing OSS first. His answer: Optaros will work with any new OSS project, not just those in its catalog. And it will work on projects that coexist with Microsoft; it is “not religious.”

Marc has a lot of good points about future trends in OSS, including an intersection with my key mantra, that OSS applications are the key to continued success for the movement. We will try to get him on a future podcast so you can hear him directly.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Since Microsoft proposed in August that the Open Source Initiative (OSI) approve a couple of its "shared-source" licenses as "official" open source software (OSS) licenses, the OSI's "license-discuss" mailbox has been overflowing every morning. The wave of emails has been helped along by the forum participants deciding to bring the Free Software Foundation (FSF) GNU General Public License Version 3 (GPL v3) into the mix, although the OSI has already basically approved GPL v3 when it was released in June (and formally approved it last week). Remember the FSF and OSI are the guys that argue over free vs. open all the time.

What is surprising is that at least one OSS luminary that contributes to the license discussion is now saying "enough is enough."

Chris di Bona, OSS evangelist at Google, got the ball rolling a few weeks ago by suggesting the decision to OK the licenses should be based on more than just literal interpretations of the OSI's rules. In other words, it was OK to "vote against" Microsoft's request simply if you were a Microbasher. Groklaw piled on, arguing an interpretation of OSI rules that it was literally OK to discriminate against Microsoft by OSI rules.

That opened the floodgates, pro and con and in all directions. The discussion diverged into
-- the possibility of having two types of licenses (literally OK and ideologically OK)
-- the need to drop an old license if a new similar one was too much like the old one (making one discussion thread a choice between MS-PL and one of the Berkeley licenses)
-- a series of comparisons of Microsoft's request with licenses that do not even exist
And as I said above, the group even waded into the already decided GPL v3 process uninvited.

Now, Brian Behlendorf of Apache Web Server fame has suggested that the group rein it in. But his solution is to stop discussing legal issues on the license discussion forum (and to take the discussion to another forum). That would be pretty un-OSS of them. An underlying theme is that the wide-ranging discussion and options under consideration will make the OSI irrelevant.

Despite conspiracy theorists' likely analysis, I do not believe that is or was Microsoft's intent. Microsoft even had a lawyer monitoring and responding during part of the debate but Microsoft seemed to back away from participation in all the offshoots of their original request. The facilitator of the license-discuss forum said in early September in a periodic summary that he issues that he did not believe the Microsoft license approval discussion was over.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Somehow I suspect the open source software (OSS) community will not buy into a product beauty contest anyway but publishers can't help themselves. Sorry, boss!!

Product beauty contests are “round-up stories” or special reports in trade publications and related web sites that attempt to pick the best “foobar of the century” or the leaders in some such categories. InfoWorld is reporting on such a beauty contest this morning called the Best of Open Source Software (BOSSIE) awards, starring Miss OSS Applications, Miss OSS Networks, Miss OSS Platforms and Middleware, Miss OSS Security, and Miss OSS Storage. In each category, there were sashes for different types of each “Miss.” For example, Sugar wore the sash for CRM and OpenBravo for ERP. That was our friend Dave Rosenberg over at Mulesource in the two-piece (suit) in the ESB category.

It’s all in good fun and makes for good after-work discussions. As in, “Is Peckham better than Pele? Woods than Nicklaus? France than Germany?” But my concern is that this one will get the OSS community looking inward when looking at the broader market where users look is more important. Users compare JBoss with WebSphere AS as well as with WebSphere AS Community Edition and at Sugar vs. salesforce.com as well as with SplendidCRM. I am not sure that these best-of-the-year awards are that influential in user decision making in any manner but if I was marketing an OSS foobar, I want to make sure it is on the same page with IBM, Oracle’s and SAP equivalent product, not just on the same page with another OSS community effort.

And apparently there was supposed to be a Miss OSS Enterprise Monitoring and Miss OSS Programming Language as well. But for some reason they are only covered in “Related Articles” (or not at all) depending on which InfoWorld page you click on. Our friends from Zenoss and Hyperic as well as Groundwork and Qluster look like they were in the running before falling off the runway completely. Their category didn’t seem to even get a sash to cover their whatever, based on looking quickly at the accompanying slides shows.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Attention all open source software (OSS) business intelligence software organizations:

I am doing the next in a series of open-source-software (OSS)-related Research Reports for ebizQ. This one will focus on OSS business intelligence (BI) software and services, including software as a service (SaaS) offerings. The ebizQ article on OSS BI is tentatively scheduled for release on ebizQ.net in early October.

If you would like to formally participate in my data collection, please download and return the 1-page survey form at this link to dennis@ebizq.net by Thursday September 20. Download file

Note that as the survey indicates, BI products qualify for the report if they use OSS even if they are not “sold” as OSS and no matter how they are monetized.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

I came across a blog post by Murat Aksu, VP of Marketing at Zenoss, recently entitled “Not your father’s Open Source Software.” It got me thinking that the open source software (OSS) market moves at lighting speed in the same way we all think that OSS development moves. From a user-expectation/market-dynamics point of view, what used to take years takes only months. So I gave Murat a call to learn more about his thoughts on the changes in the industry. He doesn't bring my grey hair/no hair to the subject but he has had an experience mix that lets him analyze the trends from multiple perspectives.

Murat is saying we are already into a second (or third) generation of OSS organization type and I think he is right. In the area of the market where Zenoss (pronounced Zen-os) competes, he compares his company and Hyperic—truly OSS systems management companies (VC backed in Hyperic’s case)—as part of a generation ahead of organizations such as Nagios, more of a pure systems management software community that simply points users to support options. An analogy more to the point for me, a midstack software guy, is the difference between Apache and JBoss (before it was acquired by Red Hat).

Murat joined Zenoss in April of this year from Mercury Interactive, which had been acquired by HP in November 2006. So he brings a sense of the difference between the closed source and open source business models as well. He finds two countervailing trends:

-- On one hand, he says, “most people who work in proprietary software companies in Silicon Valley either underestimate or simply don’t understand OSS.” Execs get it, he thinks but developers and middle managers don’t see OSS as a threat and are not even making an effort to learn about OSS.

-- On the other hand, he implies that the difference between OSS organizational generations described above is more meaningful than the difference between closed source and second-generation OSS companies. He does not think that Zenoss competes with Nagios but with BMC, CA, HP/Mercury and IBM. Like these big four systems management software suppliers, Zenoss has to supply a full suite of monitoring tools to compete.

That’s why OSS development has to move ahead at lightning speed. It’s not just for “two guys in Alabama working out of their garage” any more. “Good software ideas regardless of their licensing mechanism find users, supporters, customers and financiers” quickly.

Another key differentiator, which we discussed when we talked to the LoopFuse founders last month, is that Zenoss provides a complete suite of software and services to help users succeed in monitoring their entire IT infrastructure, not just their OSS infrastructure. Zenoss started with a Core offering that Enterprise Open Source Magazine readers this summer selected as the Best Linux Systems Management Tool, not just the best OSS Linux systems management tool.

Also this summer Zenoss added an Enterprise Edition that combines the Core edition with time-saving features, support services, best practices, and indemnification.

The Core edition is licensed under the GNU General Public License Version 2.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Business Issue | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

There’s a saying that goes something like “even if you like democracy and sausage, don’t watch either of them being made.” Anyone who is been following the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) process related to Microsoft’s Open Office XML (OOXML) won’t be surprised that that’s the saying that came to mind when I read this week’s press release from Microsoft saying the ISO imprimatur for OOXML is close.

Officially, this is about the ISO/IEC DIS 29500/Ecma 376 file formats ratification process. Unofficially everyone in the open source software (OSS) community sees it as another Microsoft attack on OSS. Others see it as IBM, Sun and others piling on Microsoft, with the OSS community simply pawns of the heavyweights.

With a great corporate ability to spin a negative into a positive, Microsoft said, “With at least 87 countries taking part in some way, the Open XML review represents an unprecedented level of participation in the standardization of a document format.” Of course, this participation level is a direct result of either Microsoft or the heavyweights behind OSS—or more than likely both camps—leaving no political stone or tactic unturned in generating participation and comments. In Sweden, Microsoft is alleged to have cooked the books by paying developer partners to join the national body and vote affirmatively. Here in Massachusetts, it looks like leading state employers Sun and IBM tried to stuff the ballot box the other way just as the two apparently had tried to fix a Massachusetts state government endorsement of OSS a few years ago, when IBM ran the process of developing state IT standards and Sun got to vote on accepting those standards. Microsoft was caught flat-footed by the way Massachusetts plays politics at the time. It looks now that Microsoft has learned its political lessons well on a worldwide basis.

According to Microsoft, “although no date has been formally set, the final tally is likely to take place in March 2008. ISO/IEC requires that at least 75 percent of all “yes” or “no” votes (qualified votes) and at least two-thirds of “P” members that vote “yes” or “no” support ratification” because OOXML is on what ISO calls a Fast Track process. “P” members come from 37 countries representing a joint committee of ISO and the International Electrotechnical Commission [IEC].

Just the fact that there are “P” members with one voting level and other members with what looks like a lesser level of say on the issue tells you all you need to know about the process. It makes the UN look functional.

The good news is that users historically don’t care about standards. The OSS community experienced this during the UNIX wars of the 1980s, and is seeing it again in the Free Software Foundation vs. Open Source Initiative debates over the words “free” vs. “open.” This file format exercise is simply a subplot to the main narrative. In the end users want to choose which file formats they’ll use based on business or personal needs just as they want to choose their software functionality irrespective of how it is developed, licensed or distributed.

Open choice is the only standard users care about.

Posted by dennisb in OSS Culture | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Listen to or download the 5:57 min. podcast below:

Download file

This podcast tells you how we have designed our coverage of open source software (OSS) here on ebizQ.net along with the philosophy behind that coverage. That is, we look at OSS as a culture, as a development model and as a business. They all interrelate and in fact they are what make the subject area so interesting.

These six minutes go into more detail.

Posted by dennisb in Podcast | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)