A living diary gives Senokian Solutions, an open source consulting firm based in UK, a powerful and risky voice to let the IT decision makers know about how do they cope with migrations to Open Source.

Diary by Kathrin Jebsen-Marwedel

Mercian Labels, a UK security label printer, has told to have commenced its migration, supported by Senokian Solutions, because of reliability and upgrade cost concerns, and they are keeping a blog to tell us daily about their journey.

Mercian Labels has commenced its migration away from Microsoft to Open Source software because of reliability and upgrade cost concerns. Supported by Senokian Solutions, the company is blogging its experiences of moving a whole small business IT infrastructure to open source, offering a vital case study resource for SMEs considering a similar move.

Googling around I sorted out that Mercian Labels is not new to represent a case study, and considering that last time they managed the following results, I am looking forward to see what will happen now with this migration.

Results

Lead-time improved from 70% of orders being dispatched in 5 days to 80+% orders being dispatched in less than 3 days, with no extra staff or infrastructure. This also led to a 50% increase in goods delivered within target time.

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, migration, senokian solutions, mercian labels

SugarCRM has announced that over 233 applications, extensions and modules are currently available on SugarExchange, and more than 7,000 transactions have occurred since October 2006, when the software marketplace was launched.

Marketplace by Troy B Thompson

The SugarExchange products listed in the press release are almost all proprietary, with the exception of Insideview and Scalix. As a matter of fact many SugarExchange’s Providers are imitating SugarCRM’s approach, keeping proprietary their extensions and plug-in. It is worth to notice that Sugar Portal for Mambo and Asterisk VoiceRD Integration, just to name two of the most popular this week, are not following this path, being both released open source. Upselling from the open source version to a more feature-rich version might be not easy.

First movers can take advantage of positive externalities - SugarCRM Announces 1,000 Customers and 1,000,000 Open Source Downloads - but this is not an option for all.

Talking about participation John Roberts, SugarCRM CEO, said:

The strong provider participation rates on SugarExchange validate the appeal of SugarCRM to both commercial as well as open source developers. Independent Software Vendors can leverage SugarCRM’s strong customer growth rate and offer complete, integrated solutions to commercial and open source users of SugarCRM.

Considering how well is going SugarExhcange I believe that SourceForge Marketplace has very good chance. By the way SourceForge has recently announced that has embedded Krugle’s search engine, a code search engine for developers similar to the famous koder.

Technorati Tags: marketplace, commercial open source, sugarcrm, krugle, sourceforge, koder

With the new year Linden went (partially) Open Source releasing its Second Life client with a GPLv2 license with a FLOSS exception. In the meanwhile later was created the first “open source” Second Life server. Few days ago Peter Seebach wrote an insightful post on hacking Second Life client that I warmly recommend to anyone interested in the subject.

10, 9, .. ignition! by bryan campen

NASA within the CoLab initiative is taking second life seriously, with a classroom-course facilitated virtual build of the International Space Station in Second Life. The project is aimed at catalyzing the volunteer community, and teach them about the ISS, space sciences, and technical skills.

If you are interested just in knowing more about on line virtual worlds read this mini-guide.

Technorati Tags: virtual world, second life, open source, NASA, floss exception

At ENST, a French engineering school and research institute located in Paris, France, we currently have two internship proposals to work on XWiki, a Free Software wiki. European candidates may apply. Interns will receive 800€/month. Contact me if you need more information.

We also have fixed-term positions available (up to 18 months) on similar subjects (working on XWiki). Net income will be around 2000€/month. Do not hesitate to contact me if you are an European citizen and want to apply.

Read the full post.

The Debian Project yesterday announced the release of “etch”, the last version of Debian.
The press release reported that it took 21 months of development to create this release. Whether you consider contributing to Debian a work or a joy, it would be interesting to know how much would have cost to develop “etch” from scratch.

Roadmap by Pinocure

Being based exclusively on volunteer contributions, Debian can’t grant the availability of all packages included in the previous version, as results from “Evolution of Volunteer Participation in Libre Software Projects: Evidence from Debian“. Packages maintained by volunteers who left the project become unmaintained (”orphaned”) and the probability that an orphaned package gets adopted by other maintainers is not 1.

[..] maintainers who left Debian between July 1996 and December 2004 were responsible for 33.5% of the packages in 2.0, 67.5% of these packages can still be found in 3.0.

The Constitution itself can’t help much when a volunteer decide to exit and no one is willing to take care of his or her tasks. It is worth to notice that within an hybrid production model paid employees are often responsible for less attractive tasks, as results from “GNOME, a case of open source global software development“:

Paid employees are usually responsible for the following tasks: project de- sign and coordination, testing, documentation, and bug fix- ing. These tasks are usually less attractive to volunteers. By taking care of them, the paid employees make sure that the development of GNOME continues at a steady pace.

Corporate production has to be on Time on Budget. The firm solves the problem of finding the efficient management of human resources through time not allowing the free entry and exit, and delegating production control to a manager.

Community-based production on the contrary allows volunteers to enter and choose their tasks. Volunteers choosing what to do apply for tasks they like, and that they are likely to accomplish effectively. They can also freely exit from a project though, or not to end their tasks on time.

How open source firms will approach the hybrid production model? Whatever is your guess, read the following (old) excerpt from the Debian Weekly News - December 2nd, 2003:

Debian Roadmap? The project was asked if there was a roadmap for the Debian distribution, so that certification can be organised accordingly. Ben Collins pointed out that Debian hardly has release goals and Jonathan Dowland added that a smaller group of loose-knit volunteers has managed to agree on a roadmap.

Technorati Tags: Debian, Coordination costs, Hierarchy, hybrid production model

Reading Wayne Porter I happened to know about Open Source Cinema, likely not the very first push for Open Source Film, but for sure now on a stage level.

B-movie heroin by ale2000

As Porter suggests the question how makers make money is still open , since they are still searching for someone to fund their film. I googled around and I found another interesting post on viability, not a definitive answer though.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Cinema, Porter

Within the context of the FLOSSMETRICS project we are performing a study on the business models adopted by companies that are leveraging FLOSS source code, and how the model changes with respect of licenses and commercialization approaches.In this post I present a draft of the result of 80 FLOSS-based companies and business models, conducted using only publicly available data. Feedbacks and suggestions are welcome!

Practical taxonomy by ellen’s attic

Methodology

An initial list of 120 companies was prepared during the first two month of 2007 using some popular open source news websites as source like FreshMeat, Slashdot.org, OSNews, LinuxToday, NewsForge and some blog sites devoted to FLOSS business models like those of Matt Asay, Fabrizio Capobianco, Roberto Galoppini. Additional information was retrieved from Google searches. this list was further refined by eliminating companies that were not really adopting FLOSS, even using a very relaxed definition. In the specific, any company that allowed source code access only to non-commercial users, or that did not allowed for redistribution was dropped from the list; also, companies for which no information was available, or for which no clear product or service was identifiable was equally eliminated. One of the companies included (Sourceforge, from the OSTG group) is not open source in itself, but represents an example of an “ancillary” model, as the site itself hosts more than 100000 open source projects and provides supporting services like mailing lists, source code versioning systems and file distribution. Also, companies that have a significant OSS contribution, but for which FLOSS is not the core business model were not included (this for example includes IBM, HP and Sun; all of which are important FLOSS contributors, but for which open source software is just one of the overall revenue streams).

Results

The final result is summarized in a table (pdf), the 6 main clusters identified are:

Twin licensing: the same software code distributed under the GPL and a commercial license. This model is mainly used by producers of developer-oriented tools and software, and works thanks to the strong coupling clause of the GPL, that requires derivative works or software directly linked to be covered under the same license. Companies not willing to release their own software under the GPL can buy a commercial license that is in a sense an exception to the binding clause; by those that value the “free as in speech” idea of free/libre software this is seen as a good compromise between helping those that abide to the GPL and receive the software for free (and make their software available as FLOSS) and benefiting through the commercial license for those that want to maintain the code proprietary. The downside of twin licensing is that external contributors must accept the same licensing regime, and this has been shown to reduce the volume of external contributions (that becomes mainly limited to bug fixes and small additions).

Split OSS/commercial products: this model distinguish between a basic FLOSS software and a commercial version, based on the libre one but with the addition of proprietary plugins. Most companies adopt as license the Mozilla Public License, as it allows explicitly this form of intermixing, and allows for much greater participation from external contributions, as no acceptance of double licensing is required. The model has the intrinsic downside that the FLOSS product must be valuable to be attractive for the users, but must also be not complete enough to prevent competition with the commercial one. This balance is difficult to achieve and maintain over time; also, if the software is of large interest, developers may try to complete the missing functionality in a purely open source way, thus reducing the attractiveness of the commercial version.

Badgeware: a recent reinvention/extension of a previous license constraint, that is usually based on the Mozilla Public License with the addition of a “visibility constraint”, the non-removability of visible trademarks or elements from a user interface. This allows the company to leverage trademark protection, and allows the original developers to receive recognition even if the software is resold through independent resellers.

Product specialists: companies that created, or maintain a specific software project, and use a pure FLOSS license to distribute it. The main revenues are provided from services like training and consulting (the “ITSC” class) and follow the original “best code here” and “best knowledge here” of the original EUWG classification. It leverages the assumption, commonly held, that the most knowledgeable experts on a software are those that have developed it, and this way can provide services with a limited marketing effort, by leveraging the free redistribution of the code. The downside of the model is that there is a limited barrier of entry for potential competitors, as the only investment that is needed is in the acquisition of specific skills and expertise on the software itself.

Platform providers: companies that provide selection, support, integration and services on a set of projects, collectively forming a tested and verified platform. In this sense, even linux distributions were classified as platforms; the interesting observation is that those distributions are licensed for a significant part under pure FLOSS licenses to maximize external contributions, and leverage copyright protection to prevent outright copying but not “cloning” (the removal of copyrighted material like logos and trademark to create a new product). The main value proposition comes in the form of guaranteed quality, stability and reliability, and the certainty of support for business critical applications.

Selection/consulting companies: companies in this class are not strictly developers, but provide consulting and selection/evaluation services on a wide range of project, in a way that is close to the analyst role. These companies tend to have very limited impact on the FLOSS communities, as the evaluation results and the evaluation process are usually a proprietary asset.

The remaining companies are in too limited number to allow for any extrapolation, but do show that non-trivial business model may be found on ancillary markets. For example, the Mozilla foundation obtains a non trivial amount of money from a search engine partnership with Google (an estimated 72M$ in 2006), while SourceForge/OSTG receives the majority of revenues from ecommerce sales of the affiliate ThinkGeek site.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Business Models, FLOSSMetrics

Jeremy Irons, one of the lead developers of the Samba Team, wrote an article for ZDNet entitled “Working for the Man? Advice to a young programmer“. After his resignation from Novell he talks about the importance of the community.

The community is more important than your employer
Are corporations fundamentally amoral? If they can make more money by outsourcing your job to India or China, or recycling employees into fertilizer for the rose garden at corporate headquarters, will they do it? I once had to listen to several high-level executives (for a previous company that shall remain nameless) waiting for the private corporate jet complain how inefficient it was that the country was run by democratically elected politicians as “they just didn’t understand business.”

Corporations are great places to work when things are going well, and I enjoy the perks as well as the next employee, but I’m very careful even in my optimism to not make the mistake of thinking this is the way things will always stay. In the free software/open source community, the people you’re collaborating with and creating code with are the people you can really depend on. While you might not get on with all of them personally, they share your common goal of making sure that the code is the greatest, most beautiful work of art that all of you can create together. Smart corporations, at least the ones you’d want to work for, hire from that pool of people, and even though individual corporations may stumble and fall, if you’re part of our community you should be able to successfully manage your career between the occasional stormy periods of corporate upheaval.

Read the full article.

Technorati Tags: Jeremy Irons, Samba, hacker

Steven L. Grandchamp, OpenLogic’s CEO, has wrote an insightful article entitled “The Evolution of Open Source” (require membership), explaining that there are many sourcing and selection issues and how this market is evolving.

Support can be particularly vexing, with companies juggling support contracts with dozens of different commercial open source companies or trying to tackle problems internally without the proper expertise, either one a risky and time-consuming proposition.[..]

The open source service companies can assume many forms: One form is the stack supplier, and others include the support provider, systems integrator, consultant, software developer, and a combination of all of the above. Among the newcomers are Virtuas, BitRock, SpikeSource, and OpenLogic[ the author’s company], but the larger, traditional IT players are also beginning to take notice and build practices in this area.

Trends by farfalina

I would also add open source consulting firms like Navica and Optaros, just to name two of.

While the size and substance of the service companies differ, all share a common philosophy: each eschews the typical model for the commercialization of open source. Rather than latch onto one, particular open source product with a big installed base and monetize it with subscriptions, support contracts, and consulting, each company provides solutions that extend across many open source products. Each supplier traffics in expertise about how to use open source in concert with software downloaded, purchased, or developed internally.[..]

The real opportunity for growth is in demystifying the use of open source. Those third-party, open source firms that focus on helping enterprises develop policies, pick projects, and manage deployments are the ones most likely to succeed and excel.

I would rather say that “horizontal” business models are new - compared to the “old” vertical ones - not sure they are more likely to succeed, though.

Those firms are all taking advantage of the absence of a Corporate actor:

• Consulting, because (almost) no one is marketing OS products;
  .
• Selling quality assurance, because (almost) no one is tracking the production process;;
  .
• Building Stacks and Benchmarking, because (almost) no one develop partnership programs;
  .
• Mediation, because (most of) open source projects lack of commercial support;
  .
• Offering indemnification and IP coverage, etc.

OpenLogic is an open source consulting firm based in Colorado, has just added sixty new open source to its Certified Library, also releasing a new version of its Enterprise 4.4, with added also Open Source Governance functionalities designed to help enterprises.

Technorati Tags: OpenLogic, Commercial Open Source, Grandchamp, Open Source Service

I already mentioned StillSecure releasing Cobia, a security platform that they call “Open Source”, redefining the meaning as reported by the license FAQ:

Is Cobia open source?

The definition of “open source” is evolving as companies create new licenses or add “riders” to OSI licenses such as the GPL. Some believe that open source means it must be one of the OSI compliant licenses (GPL, Mozilla, Apache, etc.). We’ve found what is most important to a majority of open source software users is that open source software is free of charge and include easy access to source code. Cobia software meets these requirements through our community license structure.

Shift Freedom by aliceinreality

Being compliant with OSI or FSF definitions is mandatory if you want to call open source or free software your products, wehther or not you like OSI and FSF licenses’ approval processes.

Thomas Ptace at matasanochargen blog wrote a post entitled “Questions for StillSecure About Cobia” raising some issues about Cobia’s restrictions about redistribution and asking them to stop calling Cobia an open source product or fully complying with the OSI definition.

Reading the license I found things like this, not really open source style indeed:

2. GRANTS OF RIGHTS

(a)From original developer. Subject restrictions in Section 2 of this License, the Original Developer grants you a non-exclusive, worlwide, royalty-free license:[..]
(iii) to Distribute Unmodified Code, but only if:[..]

B. You do not embed, integrate, bundle or incorporate the Unmodified
Code with any other product or good (whether tangible or intangible)

Alan Shimel, Chief Strategy Officer of StillSecure, replied:

1. Is Cobia open source? The not so short answer Thomas, is that if you are a strict constructionist and believe all open source must have an OSI approved license, than I guess you can say it is not open source. Me personally, I don’t like strict constructionists in my Supreme Court judges and I don’t deem software open source or not by a strict construction of whether or not an OSI approved license is in place. Thomas, I don’t say this flippantly either. We thought long and hard about licensing and this issue around Cobia. Here is the story. We believe and our research proves it, most people consider software open source if the product is free to use and it includes the source code. I think only purists will get hung up about the OSI stuff.

I wouldn’t describe myself as a purist, but I as Thomace I firmly believe that outsiders need incentives, and such license can be an obstacle to firms’ participation.

Alan added also this:

Thomas, todays commercial open source business model isn’t the open source model you grew up with. I am glad you brought up both Snort and Nessus. Go ask Ron and Marty if they were starting today if they would do it under GPL from the beginning again. If they are being truthful, they would tell you no way. The idea we are trying to get across here is that if you are using Cobia for your own use in your network and not reselling it or packaging it for profit, it is free and open. If you are going to use it for profit, why should we not share in this? Someone has to pay the bills here.

Success story like Snort are a typical case of open source community-based product that turns in a proprietary product and I can’t believe they might get there without going that way. As a matter of fact, many open source firms are giving away software “for free” getting advantage of positive externalities and contributions.

StillSecure can choose its way, I can’t say anything about that, but they can’t pretend it to be the only way.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, StillSecure, Cobia