I've written a few articles on disruption over at my brother's site www.ondisruption.com. While most people think about disruption only from a technical point of view, you can find disruption across many areas, whether it's the business model, development approach, distribution etc. I've also written a couple of pieces about how disruption can impact your career and what to do about it.
At any rate, here are the links:
The Free Software Foundation today announced the finalized version of the long awaited GPL3 open software license. This was pretty long in the making, more than 16 years since the prior release, but the process, led in large part by Eben Moglen, was deliberate with input from a broad range of users, vendors, developers and lawyers. Pretty much anyone who wanted to comment on the GPL was able to. MySQL participated in the process, both through David Axmark's early discussions and feedback as well as Kaj Arno's chairing of a subcommittee. I'm also glad that the FSF took the extra time to address issues (or some might call loopholes) that came up around patent licensing, such as is found in the controversial Novell / Microsoft agreement.
While I'm no expert on open source licensing, I do believe that the GPL (both GPL2 and the new GPL3) are the best licenses for open source developers and for building a business. MySQL adopted the GPL2 a number of years ago when it became the easiest way to get inclusion in Linux distros. It was just too much trouble to explain why our license was better when it was just different from what people were used to. So it helped accelerate our growth by using a more standard license. I also think the GPL's reciprocal nature is good; it helps expand the market for open source by providing a better business model. And I think that's one of the reasons the GPL is the most popular license. I view the GPL as embodying a "quid pro quo" philosophy; if you want to use MySQL under an open source license, your software should be similarly licensed. But if you don't want to use the GPL, then MySQL can provide a standard commercial license.
I understand why some folks prefer the more permissive BSD or Apache style license, since it's more liberal and therefore ensures the widest possible usage. But I think the downside of permissive licenses is that it does nothing to help ensure fair use of the software. So if you don't care who uses your software, how they use it, whether they build closed source products off your work, then a permissive license may be appropriate.
For now, MySQL is going to continue to use GPL2 (the "classic GPL", if you will) but we'll be looking at the GPL3 to see if it would be beneficial to us or our users going forward.
With some of the new provisions in GPL3, such as Apache compatibility, and better patent protection, I am sure many companies with one-off open source licenses, especially those that are not OSI-approved, are likely to take another look at the GPL. The GPL3 license is not as radical a change as many people expected from earlier drafts, but I think that's as it should be. Why mess with a good thing?
Congrats to Eben Moglen, rms, and all the contributors on the release of GPL3!
One of the challenges we sometimes have at MySQL is that our audience is very broad. We get hundreds of thousands of page views every day and the interests span a wide range. That's one of the reasons we created the Developer Zone http://www.dev.mysql.com so that it would be easy for developers to find downloads, documentation and technical articles. In effect, people who are alergic to buzzwords like ROI, TCO and CIO could bypass the home page and just stick to the technical content on the dev zone.
Earlier this week, we launched a PR campaign called the 12 Days of Scale Out on our web site in order to highlight some examples of customers who have built very large applications or web sites using MySQL, such as Booking.com, Alcatel, Wikipedia, Zimbra, etc. The content was targeted towards business readers, CIOs, and IT managers who might not be aware of where MySQL is being used, rather than for developers. And quite rightly some folks have pointed out that there's not much technical meat in these short write ups and offered some suggestions on how we can improve. It's always good to get feedback from our users, and we should have clarified who the content is for. Zak Greant also pointed out that we should consider having a separate area for non-developers. That's a good observation also. We recently launched (without much fanfare) a new section on the web site called the CIO Corner. It's still very early on and there are just a couple of items up there, but in the coming weeks and months, we'll try to add some more content for CIOs, while also continuing to have good technical articles on the developer zone. (In fact, I'm thrilled that Kaj Arno and the community team are going to focus on adding more articles and interviews to the dev zone.) I've also encouraged a few of our more technical bloggers to add some meat on the topic of scale-out; so hopefully you'll see more details behind the scale-out examples in the coming days.
Most importantly, we won't be watering down the technical content on the developer zone. I hope that we'll be able to add in-depth content both for developers and for IT managers.
Looks like one-time hot VOIP company Vonage has got its work cut out for it. While the company was once considered disruptive, now it's got one foot in the grave due to mismanagement, excessive spending and a potentially fatal patent run-in with Verizon. The company has been losing money steadily and it's stock (NYSE:VG) cratered some months back wiping out $2 billion in market cap. The stock is trading in the single digits, now well below it's IPO price of $17. In fact the market cap seems to be hovering just over cash-on-hand. Easy come easy go.
The company recently sacked the CEO and is now looking to work around the patent infringement issues. But the real issue may be seen in the dismal customer churn and the fact that Vonage as a business just wasn't disruptive enough; it wasn't really creating a new market and there was little unique about its offering.
SAP Chairman and co-founder Hasso Plattner has been out discussing how SAP is redefining itself and investing in building the next generation of Web 2.0 software for the Enterprise. SAP has been out doing a few acquisitions in recent months, presumably to accelerate the pace of change. While SAP has long been a quiet supporter of open source technology and investor in companies like MySQL and Zend,
Plattner is down right enthusiastic about opening up processes to have more community involvement and a more accessible hosted approach. Plattner cited Google and Salesforce.com as a good models of how to rapidly deliver high quality information to users. SAP is investing heavily in a new initiative known as A1S, which is a new online hosted offering based on a collaborative service-oriented architecture (SOA).
Thinking further about Microsoft's FUD campaign to threaten patent lawsuits against customers for using Linux, I was wondering if this isn't really a result of a bigger issue facing the company: Google Envy. As I mentioned previously, Microsoft is competing on several fronts. And while they hate like hell to give up market share to open source that would threaten their cash cow Windows or Office business, the bigger issue for the company is that their core businesses are being disrupted. And Microsoft is in last place when it comes to new online businesses like hosted applications, online search, email, blogging, videos, and music. (Ok, to be fair, Microsoft has come from behind in the past in other markets like gaming and accounting software.) As is the case in many mature markets, their core products have become bloated in recent years. There's a lot more excitement around Ubuntu and OS/X than there is about Vista. I've yet to meet anyone outside of Microsoft who is running Vista and recommends it.
Ballmer has become so obsessed with Google he called the company a "one hit wonder" at a presentation at Stanford. There is some truth to that since 99.999% of Google's business comes through their online advertising program. But it's a helluva hit, and that's the real issue for Microsoft. Despite all their MBAs and financial focus, Microsoft missed out big time on a disruption in the market. It's as if GM woke up one day and discovered that everyone outside of detroit wanted fuel-efficient Japanese cars. Ok, that happened too.
Instead of criticizing their rival, Ballmer would be better off taking aim internally and trying to fix the problem. Maybe that was the idea behind the possible acquisition of Yahoo. The resulting company ("Moohoo?") could have been a contender against Google. But as the analysis showed, why would Yahoo want to sell out to Microsoft? Other than cash, Microsoft doesn't bring much to the party. But it is a fairly well accepted way for an older company to deal with disruption.
But maybe last week's FUD against open source has a subtler target. It's well known that all of the leading web 2.0 companies are running open source software rather than Microsoft's closed source stack. Perhaps Microsoft's real intention was a veiled threat against Google and newer companies running the LAMP stack. That's conjecture, but consider that Microsoft is a company that doesn't mind playing hardball. Remember Microsoft's earlier disdain for the US government and it's anti-trust investigations? ("To heck with Janet Reno!") Not to mention the infamous video tape that Microsoft presented in court that later turned out to be a contrived fake. With those ideas as a backdrop, almost nothing is too weird to consider.
Microsoft upped the FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt) in the open source world with a carefully planned story given to Fortune magazine Monday in which their legal counsel revealed that Microsoft believes Linux and other open source software violate more than 200 of Microsoft's software patents.
As the article points out, the whole idea of software patents is a relative new one and there are likely thousands of bogus patents that will not stand up in court. In fact it's not that many years ago that the Bill Gates was talking about how software patents could be abused:
"If people had understood how patents would be granted when most of today's ideas were invented and had taken out patents, the industry would be at a complete standstill today ...
The solution is patenting as much as we can. A future startup with no patents of its own will be forced to pay whatever price the giants choose to impose. That price might be high. Established companies have an interest in excluding future competitors."
Bill Gates, 1991
(That's one of the reasons we fought software patents in Europe with the www.nosoftwarepatents.com initiative. But I digress...)
The latest story is running like wildfire through the blogosphere about how Microsoft is the new SCO, how there's no beef in their story, Microsoft's engaging in bully tactics, they should innovate not litigate etc. Many in the open source community are up in arms about it. But all of this misses the point. Microsoft doesn't care whether developers get irked by any of this. Instead their goal is to create a chilling effect on software buyers in government and industry who may think twice before using open source software in case Microsoft sues them. In that regard, any press is good press for Microsoft since it creates confusion which can cause delays in the evolution of the market. This is a classic response to disruption in the marketplace.
But if Microsoft is so confident of their patents, then they should put their money where their mouth is and put the patent infringements on the table for all to see. Put up or shut up, as Larry Augustin has stated. I doubt they will. Because if Microsoft actually provides any real evidence of infringement, then the open source community can remedy the situation or fight the patents. Microsoft is a paper tiger here. The irony is that another approach that could be taken is that customers could just decide they've had enough of Microsoft's bullying and start to leave Windows in droves. Certainly there's not much compelling in Vista the latest release and if Microsoft is going to sue people, maybe it's going to provide an opportunity for Ubuntu, Red Hat and others to make some hay.
Microsoft's in a tough position. They're fighting a battle on two fronts (open source software, and online offerings from Google and others) and struggling mightily to determine how they will be relevent for the next 25 years. The irony is that Microsoft is occasionally a good partner in open source. They've worked with JBoss, Zend, MySQL and others. And Windows is a pretty good platform for development.
But Microsoft is schizophrenic in this regard. Despite the great progress by folks like Bill Hilf, the reality is that Microsoft's senior management is on the attack against open-source. In that regard, it's attacking a tidal wave of progress in the industry. Microsoft may as well be tilting at windmills. Open source is taking hold and growing at an accelerated rate, partly because Microsoft has such an insular culture that they can't conceive of why anyone would want to run anything but Windows. The only question is whether Microsoft will be relevant in an open source world, the way IBM, Oracle, Sun and others are. Or will they continue to fight against the trend, much like they tried to maintain a closed approach in face of open Internet standards. (Remember Microsoft's "Blackbird" or "Hailstorm" projects? Me neither.) Maybe Microsoft is destined to be the next DEC, a great company that ultimately missed the boat on massive changes in the industry.
The whole thing reminds me of The Onion's classic story "Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes." Now apparently it's gone from satire to strategy.
"Think of this as a partnership," Gates said. "Like the ones and zeroes of the binary code itself, we must all work together to make the promise of the computer revolution a reality. As the world's richest, most powerful software company, Microsoft is number one. And you, the millions of consumers who use our products, are the zeroes."
Here's a thought, Microsoft should patent the Blue Screen of Death --that's a Microsoft innovation after all.
The OSBC Conference is coming up next week, May 22-23 in San Francisco. This is the absolute best business conference on open source, bar none. Matt Asay, built this conference up from nothing when the idea of open source and business was an oxymoron (like government efficiency or software quality). Matt is still the conference chair and also a top exec at Alfresco, the leading open source content management system.
Keynotes this year include Matthew Szulik from Red Hat (nice to see them participate at industry events, a rare phenomena in the past), Marc West from H&R Block, Eben Moglen on the GPL, Rob Curley from the Washington Post, Marten Mickos from MySQL among others. There are tracks for new products & services, legal issues and CIO issues. This is a great conference for managers, CIOs, execs, investors, lawyers or others trying to figure out why open source is growing so fast and how to leverage the changes taking place.
I've been to all of the OSBC conferences, and I'm sorry that I'll be travelling and will miss this one.
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Red Hat formally announced the Red Hat Exchange (RHX) at this week's Red Hat Summit in San Diego. This was a great conference for Linux sysadmins, developers and those who are using or contributing to open source development. It was also nice to see how well JBoss is doing at Red Hat. Although Marc Fleury left the company some time back, they've retained a huge strength in the JBoss development organization and customers are now getting the benefit of an integrated stack. There were a lot of folks rooting for a successful integration of JBoss into Red Hat and I think they've made it happen.
There were many technical sessions as well as keynotes highlighting several new initiatives, the most important of which I believe is RHX. While RHX is not a technical initiative per se, it does create a marketplace for other open source software that has met the "Red Hat seal of approval." At the March pre-announcement of RHX there were a half dozen or so companies involved and now there are a dozen including: Alfresco, Groundwork, JasperSoft, MySQL, OpenFire, Pentaho, SugarCRM, ZenOSS, Zimbra, Zmanda etc.
Red Hat is the #1 Linux platform and not surprisingly, it's the #1 platform for MySQL. We have a lot of joint customers, especially in Telecommunications, Government, web sites, and high-tech. RHX makes it much easier for existing Red Hat customers to expand their use of open source with "one stop shopping" for additional open source applications and infrastructure software. To me, RHX is a great next step for Red Hat to show that they aren't just the technical leader, they are the business leader when it comes to Linux and open source in general.
Matt Mattox, one of the brains behind RHX, in his keynote on Thursday had a great video where he used an analogy of a local farmer's market to show that RHX would include only mature, proven products, and not half-baked "projects." (I still need to find a link to that video.) While I don't care for Red Hat's stick figure animated videos, the video Matt showed was excellent and the audience really responded to it.
Some of the press at the conference asked why Red Hat didn't do RHX sooner, and while that's a legitimate question, I think the good news is that Red Hat stayed focused on their core business, and expanded carefully without impacting their execution. They got RHEL 5 to market, they've done a great job integrating JBoss, they acquired MetaMatrix, and now they've launched RHX. Maybe RHX could have happened sooner, but to their credit instead of rushing it to market, they took care of all the details to make sure everyone is treated fairly. Red Hat is truly "an honest broker" in the software industry.
MySQL is now looking for a CIO (Chief Information Officer). For the right guy or gal, this could be a dream job. The ideal candidate should have 15 years IT experience and a proven track record managing complex infrastructure and familiarity with Sarbanes-Oxley. Send info to jobs@mysql.com . More info to be posted shortly.
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