Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

Xwiki, a French company aimed to bring open source wiki to the enterprise, recently won the i-Expo Prize for Economic Intelligence at the i-Expo 2007 show in Paris for XWiki Watch.

Ludovic Dubost by rsepulveda

I happened to know about Xwiki few moths ago reading that at ENST were having two internship proposals to work on XWiki, later I got in touch with Luis Arias and since then we occasionally exchange opinions and ideas about Open Source business models.
Yesterday I had a conversation with Ludovic Dubost, Xwiki CEO, and we start speaking about how Wikis in general are getting more an more interest and attention, despite Knowledge Management and Collaboration tools are not on the food chain.

Then I asked Ludovic about XWiki Watch.

XWiki Watch concerns an activity which is well defined in the enterprise. monitoring what competitors do, how your company is perceived, how much press is received.. The concept is not new, it’s just Internet opened new opportunities.
I mean, the Wiki is already perceived as a way to record knowledge about the competition, but only manually before XWiki Watch.

Why should I use Xwiki Watch?

With XWiki Watch you can mix retrieving info from the Internet, flag it, comment it but also write your own info, create wiki pages about the subjects you are watching and you can construct a knowledge base (wiki style) which will the connected to the internet info

We are also planning to have delivery as a web site or in a blog, in addition to the delivery as mail, pdf, and RSS feed.

The big differentiator versus RSS aggregators is the delivery tools, while the big differentiator versus existing Competitive intelligence tools is the collaborative aspects (flags/comments) and the Wiki integration.

In XWiki Watch once the different users select the best news and comment them, and tags them, once you have done this you can construct a filter and ask for a specific delivery. So the filter could specify that you want only the flagged articles and specifying that you want them by email, or PDF, or on a web page, or a news RSS feed.

Actually XWiki Watch doesn’t collect news from source that are not RSS enables, as tools like MySyndicaat (actually not Open Source but a great tool to do newsmastering), but they eventually could do some custom coding. After all their business model is a mix of Products specialists and Split OSS/commercial Product. FLOSSMETRICS taxonomy describes Product specialists companies that created (or maintains) a software project, and use a pure FLOSS license to distribute it, and the main revenues come from services like training and consulting. But XWiki it is also adopting the Split OSS/Commercial product business model, selling XWiki Enterprise edition, and I guess they will soon expand their offer in this respect.

Can you tell me why Xwiki Watch won the prize?

We were in a conference about Competitive Intelligence, and XWiki Watch won the innovation prize. The main reason for the prize was because of the ability for XWiki Watch to “democratize” Competitive intelligence. As a matter of most organization tend hire a person to do that and deliver info to the management or to the company, with XWiki Watch you can decide to organize things differently, like everybody in the company becomes a Watcher and everybody gets the most interesting info delivered. While actually if you look at it precisely you’ll see that everybody is doing watching on his space, it’s just not shared.

While firms like Wikispaces are mainly working with on-line collaboration and open source industries, XWiki apparently is differentiating its offer going further than the wiki, targeting collaborative tools, project management and collaborative watching. In order to do that they are through partnerships with other players, like Nearbee, CHRONOPOLYS.

Thank you Ludovic, and happy hacking!

About XWiki.
XWiki is an open source Wiki, and it is also an Enterprise wiki which allows the creation of applications within the Wiki interface. The languages that can be used are Velocity and Groovy, it is written in Java and it uses database like MySql or HSQLDB.

Technorati Tags: XWiki, Xwiki Watch, LudovicDubost, Business models

Where’s the grassroots marketing for Linux? - Alex says that the biggest barrier to Open Source adoption is (poor) marketing, and I share his vision. But appropriating returns from the commons is not trivial, and Open Source firms are not willing to invest huge amount of money to publicize public goods. In my opinion we need to implement unconventional marketing campaigns, spending little money and possibly through a collective action. Consortia and similar organizations could play their role in this respect.

Open Source at Microsoft - Bill Hilf announced a new web “property” (fix the FAQ page) that outlines Microsoft’s position on OSS, while Port 25 will still be the source for technical issues. Microsoft is getting closer to OSS (SpikeSource certifies OSS on Windows), but I really doubt they are going to buy Red Hat. While I believe that Savio’s analysis is lucid and intriguing, I am afraid that Microsoft’s investors are too IP-addicted, and the 235 patents story tells a lot about how important is to keep them calm. The “cultural” issue is an issue, if we talk about investors, IMHO.

California city connects with open-source networking - Now it is clear why Cisco is trying to prevent Open Source networking to be successful.

WHurley spins BMC into open source - Dana mentions Whurley’s experience at BMC, apparently another known hacker is leading the Open Source strategy of a (previously) not OS firm. Just as Bob Bray is doing at Autodesk. Again, when talking about hybrid production model (firm+community) people matter.

Advertising the open-source way with Openads - Matt met Scott Switzer, Openads’ founder and CTO, to learn more about Openads business model.

OSCON: Open Source Awards 2007 - David Recordon won the Open Source Awards 2007 as Best Strategist because he has turned OpenID into a viable alternative to non-open identity systems.

SourceForge Community Choice Award winners are…. - Matt commenting SourceForge community-driven awards process says that participants had a tenuous grip on what “enterprise” means, may be he is right, and not just green of envy because Alfresco didn’t win!

OSI Approves New Open-Source License - Ross Mayfield, CEO and co-founder of Socialtext tells eWeek the whole story of the CPAL long approval process.
The Bug in OSI Approved Licenses - I don’t see any “bug”, besides the partially missing transparency, and VCs’ attitude to invest in OS firms is definitely not an OSI’s issue.

Intervista a Bruce Perens (Italian) - When Bruce Perens met the blogosphere here in Italy, I happened to interview him, and Nicola Mattina managed to get it published on Nova 24 (Il Sole24 ore).

[cisco, OSI, Perens, NicolaMattina, BobBray, Whurley, BMC, DavidRecordon, OSCON, commercial open source, open source strategy, Microsoft, SavioRodrigues, SugarCRM]

Michael Tiemann, President of the Open Source Initiative, recently talking about SugarCRM, SplendidCRM and Centric licenses said clearly that are abusing of the term Open Source:

THESE LICENSES ARE NOT OPEN SOURCE LICENSES.

Always in control by Taomeister

Today he personally published the Common Public Attribution License: OSI eventually approved badgeware licensing as OSI compliant. Congrats to Bruce and OSI to close this old debate, well done!

Nowadays one of the open issues has been solved, but the democratic approval process still needs some tuning, since apparently OSI made some last minute changes to the CPAL license.

Never mind, I agree with Bruce saying that OSI’s approval was a success, but it was slow, and worse he happened to stand up against them just before approving their licenses, something that I can hardly define as opportune. Even if it likely brought SugarCRM to take the decision to adopt the GPLv3, though.

I am a fan of Open Source Initiative, four years ago I asked my editor to create a logo for my rubric representing also the Open Source mark, but I really wish them being transparent and to react on time.

Open Source now is ready for prime time, and we need OSI taking is role really seriously, and I suggest them also to consider changing the home page, reporting:

Open source is a development method for software that harnesses the power of distributed peer review and transparency of process. The promise of open source is better quality, higher reliability, more flexibility, lower cost, and an end to predatory vendor lock-in.

The Open Source Initiative (OSI) to me is about maintaining the Open Source Definition, it is a very important task, and it needs to be carried on time and with the highest transparency.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Definition, tiemann, GPLv3, badgeware, sugarCRM, socialtext

Trieste, 17th of July 2007 - The Association PLIO has deeply analyzed the Microsoft Office Open XML standard, and reading the over 6000 pages PLIO’s experts believe that the format should be substantially revised before being approved as standard.PLIO Association really appreciates the effort and the commitment of Microsoft, in relation to the declared availability to create a task force for the development of a reference implementation for OOXML. Anyway, this implicitly admits that the reference implementation is missing, and this creates a problem for any OOXML would-be implementor other than Microsoft itself.

If the proposed OOXML file format will follow the ISO standard track in order to address problems which are still open, the PLIO Association is interested in becoming a member of the OOOXML reference implementation task force.

(Read on …)

I am extremely happy to announce the start of a new joint research activity between the FLOSSMETRICS project and Roberto Galoppini, one of the most important European researchers working on FLOSS-based business models. The joint research work will be carried with Carlo Daffara and will be centered on business models taxonomies, and how the participant actors (like the FOSS communities, commercial companies, individual developers) and the licensing choices interact in a commercial exploitation context. The research will leverage the tools and research work carried in the European project for analyzing OSS project participation and contributions, and as for all of FLOSSMETRICS will be publicly avaliable.

Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Open Source Strategies, FLOSSMETRICS, robertogaloppini, carlodaffara, taxonomies

Channel ecosystems and the way vendors and Commercial Open Source vendors treat them were recently commented by Vinnie Mirchandani, Dana Blankenhotrn and eventually Alex Fletcher. I wish to add some considerations, bringing also Open Source Franchising in the picture.

Let’s start talking about VARs’ importance, I agree with Dana reporting:

Whether the SugarCRM license conforms to the OSI standard is not important, Whitehead said. Affordability is all. License gotchas don’t matter as much as the small business’ relationship with their reseller. 

Whitehead concludes that to succeed in the mass business market, open source companies need to keep Value Added Resellers (VARs) happy. Make a long reach toward VARs and your project can crack this market.

As results also from the interview to Juergen Geck, firms like Open-Xchange are addressing market needs with two different solutions: a customizable platform for who needs integration through VARs, and a turn key solution to sell through Resellers and Distribution channels.

Alex Fletcher talking about Open Source Firms added:

Operating a successful commercial open source software operation requires maintaining the delicate balance between enabling the free user and flat out making money.[..]
The point being, traditional forms of partner engagement tend to not scale well with the current realities of open source software.

As I already have observed I see space for growing in computer services franchise arena, but before talking about that, I think it is important to stress once more that there are just two ways to make money from OSS: “best code here” and “best knowledge here”, tertium non datur. Vendors willing to empower their channel need to think about it, and arrange training programs and marketing plans able to massively deliver fixed-time, fixed-price and standard quality through their partners.

Open Source Franchising strengths, in terms of vendors’, customers’ and partners’ goals and perspectives, are worth to be analyzed and might be applied to other vendors besides Sun.
If you didn’t like the barber’s shop analogy, have a look at this enlightening post talking about Packaged (Productized) Services in a Hospital by Michael Krigsman, and wonder:

In reassessing how they perform bypass surgery, Geisinger doctors identified 40 essential steps. Then they devised procedures to ensure the steps would always be followed, regardless of which surgeon or which one of its three hospitals was involved.

Next time a services vendor says your project is too complex to define a fixed price, ask whether it’s more complex than heart bypass surgery. If packaged services can successfully be applied to surgery, they can be applied to enterprise software implementations.

I totally agree with Michael, it can be done, it must be done.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Franchising, Open Source Strategies, AlexFletcher, DanaBlankenhorn, MichaelKrigsman, ecosystems

IEEE group changes voting rules - Bob Sutor mentioned IEEE changing rules to prevent steamrolling, I am afraid is a very hot topic, whatever are your guts about the File Format War, the OOXML and the ISO/IEC JTC1 Fast Track process is a sad story..

Alfresco: Competing in the Enterprise - John Powell, Alfresco’s CTO, said that he would guess that about 10 percent of Alfresco’s code was contributed by other people. Is that for real?

Free Software acquisition by governments - Stefano Maffulli is looking forward to see Pietro Folena’s laptop equipped with Free Software, while I am waiting to interview him about the lower chamber of the Parliament moving to Linux. Is that for real?

Patents don’t pay - I am glad too to be based in Europe where software patents are not allowed, so far.

Our commitment to open broadband platforms - Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt wrote a letter to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, saying that, should the FCC adopting openness principles for the benefit of consumers, Google intends to commit at least $4.6 billion to bidding for spectrum in the upcoming 700 Mhz auction.

Poor Man’s BI: Getting Started with Open Source Tools for Analytic Intelligence - The “poor man’s BI” with a combination of Python, PostgreSQL, OpenOffice.org and R can deliver value along significant points of the BI lifecycle, said Steve Miller.

The CIO Conundrum - CIOs of a large company see decreasing by about 4% their budget, says Anthony Gold, and Open Source can greatly help in his opinion. I would like to see his presentation.

Thoughts on Software Advisory Boards - James McGovern on Advisory Boards, I totally agree, and I am eager to participate to my first meeting.

My UbuntuLive Talk - Stephen O’Grady slides on Ubuntu, have a look.

Open Standards Rise in Japan - Jeff Kaplan reported that last week, the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry issued its official Interoperability Framework. At the moment Japan’s new Interoperability Framework recognizes only one acceptable document format, namely the OpenDocument Format. The File Format War goes on…

Why rPath? - Billy Marshall this time talks about his rPath, I would like to see others commenting his post.

Syndicating your feelings - at We Feel Fine are running an interesting experiment, I am wondering how it could possibly turn into a corporate blogging metric, eventually.

Snort, GPL, open source, Cobia and copyright - Alan Shimey “explains” Cobia’s licensing choices through StillSecure’s ones. In his opinion GPL is not good for commercial use, as far as I understand.. weird, isn’t it?

Autodesk’s first year as a member of the open source community has been a successful one, as far as Kevin Flanders, Peoplegis President, reported.

About three months ago MapGuide, a web-based platform aimed at deploying web mapping applications and geospatial web services, became a fully endorsed project within the Open Source Geospatial Foundation. Originally developed by Autodesk, MapGuide besides being considered a leading project within the GIS arena - see “The State of the Open Source GIS” (PDF) - now has some interesting facts that is worth to mention, among them the number of downloads: 30.000 in the first year.

Bob Bray Autodesk Platform Software Development Manager and Architect, talking to Kevin said:

the open source development community has become a true development partner for Autodesk, generating tremendous enhancements and upgrades to the code base in significantly less time than it would have taken Autodesk to do it alone.

Also Daniel Morrissette, now mapgears President, was very impressed with Autodesk move.

He feels that Bray and his colleagues have converted their minds to working “open” instead of their old way. [..] To Morrisette, Autodesk is not just “acting the part,” it really believes in this new process.

I totally agree with Kevin saying, that Autodesk got its goal for faster code development realized, and this is likely due both to the feedbacks by users and to the way Bray got into Open Source.

People matters a lot, when it comes to the hybrid production model.

Read the full article.

Technorati Tags: Open Source GIS, BobBray, Autodesk, MapGuide

Disappointed: Nick Gall of Gartner - James McGovern wonders why at Gartner don’t spend time answering his questions. My guess is that they are not (yet) deeply into the ‘blog thing’, because if they had a look at their popularity James’s blog pops up as one of the most authoritative pointing to them.

Office 2.0 Conference Website Now Live - The upcoming Office 2.0 Conference is now live, attendee registration are open by now.
blogging is dead, long live communicating - Luis Villa says that most discussions about blogging would be much better off if we analyzed ‘communication that is public, searchable and persistent’ instead of ‘blogging’. I totally agree.

We need an Open Service Definition - People at GNOME (Havoc Pennington’s blog) is thinking to to protect our private data, , but the same definition could reward also services which use and promote open knowledge. Interesting issue.

Will Oracle Buy Red Hat or BEA? - Savio plays Nostradamus and predicts that Oracle will not buy Red Hat. Oracle may buy BEA. Read his post to know why.

Managing backup of MySQL via iPhone - Whether it makes sense or not, Zamanda presented to a couple of their customers a solution to manage MySQL backups via iPhone, read the use case.

Can’t buy me (OOXML) love in Italy - Bob Sutor enjoyed Carlo Piana’s post “OOXML does not buy its way in Italy“, and he posed also a question: is whether a large company with a lot of money and business partners will essentially be able to stack committees so that they are out of balance and therefore buy an ISO standard? I am afraid that the whole ISO standardization process lost some sense, the ultimate result of the File Format War might be just invalidate the process owner itself..

Talend raises $3.5m in Series B funding round - Raven Zachary tells us about the Talend 2nd round.

Funambol is a 2007 AO 100 Top Company - Fabrizio got listed in the AO 100 Top Companies, congratulations!

Gartner, Open Source, and Microsoft - Seth keeps posting on the subject, he simply can’t resist!