Commercial Open Source Software

The Italian Government in the framework of the Internet Governance Forum process, and in cooperation with the UN and the IGF Secretariat, Italy will organize a “Dialogue Forum on Internet Rights”, to be held in Rome on 27 September 2007.

The conference will be open to any interested stakeholder. Registration form as draft agenda are available on-line.

The organizers would like to encourage the submission of short written contributions that will then be summarized and introduced to the audience during the conference. Such contributions should focus on the two issues raised by the IGF Dynamic Coalition on the Internet Bill of Rights as working items for this year, and specifically:

• Which are the appropriate forms and instruments to implement and better define human rights and duties in the Internet environment?
• What areas and types of rights and duties, relevant to the Information Society, should be part of this work and of its results?

Contributions should be submitted by September 20 through the conference web site. The contributions, as well as the results of the conference, will also be used as preparatory material for the workshop that the Dynamic Coalition will hold at the second IGF in Rio de Janeiro.

Contacts.

The Government of Brazil will host in Rio de Janeiro on 12 - 15 November 2007 the second Internet Governance Forum meeting. The IGF website - run by the IGF Secretariat - supports the United Nations Secretary-General in carrying out the mandate from the World Summit on the Information Society with regard to convening a new forum for multi-stakeholder policy dialogue - namely the Internet Governance Forum.

Technorati Tags: Internet Governance Forum, Italy, Rome, Open Consultation

Despite many articles talk about Open Source business models, and some papers describe also possible taxonomies of open source business models, none of them is analyzing in depth all components which describe the business logic of a specific firm.

FLOSSMETRICS has assessed a list of 120 companies – resulting in the biggest empirical analysis of the business models adopted by OS firms done so far – while QualiPSo has analyzed 7 firms’ case studies. None of them has focused yet its attention on how pieces of the business fit together, eventually describing the company’s strategy, or how a specific firm differentiates itself and deals with the competition, either proprietary or FLOSS.

Not all lemons are created equal by Nan’s Pic’s

Adopting Alex Osterwalder’s definition of business model, I tried to process the information about the “Distributing copies of an OSS product for a fee” business model“, i.e. just selling free software copies, not bundling any services such as technical support, consulting, systems integration and so on.

The Value Proposition would be shrink-wrap open source products.

The Customer Segment would target business customers, likely SMEs and professionals, having low bandwidth (a missprint?) and poor knowledge of OS existence.

The Distribution Channel would definitely be a web site, too little margin for retail or worse to hire a sales team. In order to sell shrink-wrap OS products personalization it is a must, to exploit the long tail Community of Interest could play a great role.

Chesbrough and Rosenbloom suggest to consider “Position in value network” and “Competitive Strategy”, and as matter of fact the competitors are all forges and repositories, Linux Magazines and so on.

About the Competitive Strategy, Michael Porter identifies two types of advantages, the cost advantage and the differentiation advantage. Being difficult if not impossible to be cheaper than the competition, the only available option is serve customers’ idiosyncratic needs, I would say.

Once identified an appropriate Differentiation Strategy, big marketing investments are needed to reach customers who don’t know open source products. Consider that if the business would ever work, competitors could easily imitate you, without spending time and effort doing software selection.

At the end of the day, describing the business model and analyzing it helps to determine if it makes some sense, eventually ending to agree with Dana saying:

The attempts by some to shrink-wrap open source products and sell them at the cost of packaging have, on the whole, been failures.

Comparing business models could also be interesting. Reading “Do Some Business Models Perform better than Others? – A Study of the 1000 Largest US Firms” created a 16 different typologies of how firms differ in terms of two dimensions:

what a company does and how they make money from doing it.

It is worth to notice that some business models perform better than others, in particular selling the right to use assets is more profitable than selling ownership of assets.

I am looking forward to apply these considerations within the joint research I am conducting with the FLOSSMETRICS project, may be adding a dimension or two to the “main revenue generation” and “licensing model” already included in the actual taxonomy.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Strategies, business models, QualiPSo, FLOSSMETRICS

QualiPSo - the ever largest Open Source initiative funded by the European Commission - is making public its first results, and I just started to analyze them.

The goal of the project is “to define and implement technologies, procedures and policies to leverage the Open Source Software development current practices to sound and well recognised and established industrial operations”.

QualiPSo includes 7 research and development domains (QualiPSo Competence Centres, business models, next generation forge, trustworthy results and process, information management, interoperability, legal issues), articulated in 10 work areas.

Today I read the deliverable “State of the art concerning business models for systems comprising open source software“, apparently the most promising result within the “business models” research area.

Calypso Cabaret by Sackerman519

Looking at the document as a whole, basically it is an essay of pretty known and old articles, like the Seven open source business strategies for competitive advantage, by John Koenig, and the mentioned many times “Economics of Open Source” of my buddy Carlo Daffara, plus some minor citations. Not a single new business model, they just mentioned Open Source (?) Franchising, not exploiting it any further.

I must admit I learned about Sunil Joshi citations, but I honestly expected to find something more than things grasped around the net, sometimes even without double check. For example they happened to cite the Orixo consortium, so I guess they didn’t take a chance to talk with a representative, neither to read Gianugo advising on using consortia nor looking at the Orixo’s events section. On the contrary I didn’t read a mention of ZEA or Open Source Consortium, just to name two of them. I would warmly recommend them to add these, at least.

I found it auto-referential just as the already mentioned deliverable D2.1.2 , since chapter 3 “BIG INDUSTRY OSS BUSINESS MODELS CASE STUDIES” is only about 4 QualiPSo’s members.

Last but not least, chapter 4 “SME OSS BUSINESS MODELS CASE STUDIES” results to be a list of cases collected by the official sites of those firms, mostly cut&pasting public information available, not a deep research I would say.

QualipSO seems following a Ferengi’s rule: Sell the sizzle, not the steak, I hope they will come out with something interesting soon..

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, research, public funded, QualiPSo, IST

A recurring debate discussion among FLOSS-supporters and detractors is related to the estimation of the real number of active FLOSS projects. While it is easy to look at the main repository site (sourceforge.net) that boasts more than 100.000 projects, it is equally easy to look in more depth and realize that a significant number of those projects are really abandoned or have no significant development. How many active and stable projects are really out there?

Too many cereal choices by PartsNpieces

For the purpose of obtaining some unbiased estimates in the context of the FLOSSMETRICS project, we performed a first search among the main repository sites and FLOSS announce portals; we also set a strict activity requirement, stately an activity index from 80 to 100% and at least a file release in the last 6 months. Of the overall 155959 projects, only 10656 (6.8%) are “active” (with a somehow very restrictive definition; a more relaxed release period of 1 year shows an active percentage of 9.2% or 14455 projects).

However, while Sourceforge can rightly be considered the largest single repository, it is not the only potential source of projects; there are many other vertical repositories, among them BerliOS, Savannah, Gna! and many others, derived both from the original version of the Sourceforge code and many more based on a rewritten version called GForge. That gives a total of 23948 projects, to which (using a sampling of 100 projects from each) we have found a similar number of active projects (between 8% and 10%).

The next step is the estimation of how many projects of the overall FLOSS landscape are hosted on those sites, and for performing this estimate we took the entire FreshMeat announce database, as processed by the FLOSSmole project and found that the projects that have an homepage in one of the repository sites are 23% of the total. This count is however biased by the fact that the probability of a project to be announced on FreshMeat is not equal for all projects; that is, english-based and oriented towards a large audience have a much higer probability to be listed. To take this into account, we performed a search for non-english based forges, and for software that is oriented towards a very specific area, using data from past IST projects like Spirit and AMOS.

We have found that non-english projects are underrepresented in FreshMeat in a significant way, but as the overall “business-readiness” of those projects is unclear (as for example there may be no translations available, or be specific to a single country legal environment) we have ignored them. Vertical projects are also underrepresented, especially with regard to projects in scientific and technical areas, where the probability of being included is around 10 times lower compared to other kind of software. By using the results from Spirit, a sampling from project announcements in scientific mailing lists, and some repositories for the largest or more visible projects (like the CRAN archive, that hosts libraries and packages for the R language for statistics, that hosts 1195 projects) we have reached a lower bound estimate of around 12000 “vertical” and industry-specific projects. So, we have an overall lower bound estimate of around 195000 projects, of which we can estimate that 7% are active, leading to around 13000 active projects.

Of those, we can estimate (using data from Slashdot, FreshMeat and the largest Gforge sites) that 36% fall in the “stable” or “mature” stage, leading to a total of around 5000 projects that can be considered suitable for an SME, that is with an active community, stable and with recent releases. It should be considered that this number is a lower bound, obtained with slightly severe assumptions; just enlarging the file release period from 6 months to one year nearly doubles the number of suitable projects. Also, this estimate does not try to assess the number of projects not listed in the announcement sites (even vertical application portals); this is a deliberate action, as it would be difficult to estimate the reliability of such a measure, and because the “findability” of a project and its probability of having a sustained community participation are lower if it is difficult to find information on the project in the first place; this means that the probability of such “out of the bounds” projects would probably be not a good opportunity for SME adoption in any case. By using a slightly more relaxed definition of “stability”, with an activity rating between 60% and 100% and at least a release in the last year, we obtain around 18000 stable and mature project from which to choose- not a bad result, after all.

Technorati Tags: open source metrics, sourceforge, flossmetrics, flossmole

QualiPSo - the ever largest Open Source initiative funded by the European Commission - is making public its first results.

Waiting to eventually join the first QualiPSo conference, that will focus on the challenges that the Open Source model introduces while being integrated in industry strategies, I had a first look at deliverables within the “business models” research area, namely the deliverable State of the art concerning strategies for industry towards Open Source communities and vice versa (PDF).

The gesture of “me” by timtak

Too little is said about Open Source Consortium Model (paragraph 6.6), where across Europe there are quite a few indeed, and I am available to help QualiPSO researchers if they are willing to further investigate the matter.

Could you believe that the chapter ATTITUDES AND STRATEGIES OF INDUSTRY TOWARDS OPEN SOURCE COMMUNITIES describes only examples where a QualiPSO member is involved?

Apparently QualiPSo didn’t take yet into consideration my suggestion to make public their description of work as many others did already, stripping from only confidential information. This way everybody could find all possible details about the project, including the project management and exploitation/dissemination plan and the detailed Workplan. This way we might even get a rough idea of the cost of individual deliveries, while the average cost is already a known information, though.

I am still convinced that transparency pays..

Technorati Tags: commercial open source, research, public funded, QualiPSo, IST

The ClamAV project - the known open source anti-virus toolkit - last friday announced that all project’s Intellectual assets had been sold from the five key developers to Sourcefire, the firm maker of intrusion detection products based on Snort.

Sold! by Pommykiwi

Sourcefire, who recently launched its public offer, is likely to maintain ClamAV much in the same way as it has done with Snort. Martin Roesch, Sourcefire’s CTO, stated:

The success of the ClamAV project is a direct reflection of the talent and dedication of the founding team and the project community. Sourcefire will continue to invest in the ClamAV technology, much as we have with Snort and Snort.org.

As reported by Ohloh, over ClamAV history 13 contributors have submitted code, and only 6 have done it in the last year. As a matter of fact Sourcefire now is hiring the whole core group, and they are in the position to double-licensing it.

Differently from StillSecure, or worse Tenable Security, Sourcefire seems willing to balance open source and business through an hybrid production model, making money possibly with the Twin licensing business model.

I agree with the ClamAV team, saying that the acquisition by Sourcefire is a testament to the hard work of the entire ClamAV community, and I wonder: will they be able to retain external contributions (mainly virus signatures) from now on?

Dana asks if open source users, are going to get caught in the trips-and-dramas of corporate finance, just as if they were using proprietary software. While I know that it might be so, I think that there are chance that Sourcefire will balance its business interests with the community’s ones, eventually finding a way to keep ClamAV’s OEM’s interest in the project.

I disagree with Alan Shimel, who whishes that:

anytime a commercial entity makes a licensing move like this, other companies that are using that open source tool band together with others in the community and fork the project as is their right.

It is not efficient and likely not effective, above all unrealistic. On the contrary I would like to see other firms using ClamAV be part of the game. It is just up to Sourcefire find a way, if it makes some sense to them to work to build a ClamAV technological club.

Best wishes to all ClamAV guys, congratulations!

Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, Open Source Strategy, Sourcefire, ClamAV

The consortium is one of the oldest, and most practiced structures for coordinating resources of different companies towards a common goal, by creating a simple legal framework to coordinate and encourage a joint activity (for example promotion, development, management of rights). It is based on a simple concept: to be self-sustaining, a consortium must be capable of creating more than the simple sum of its parts.

What can be said of FLOSS-based consortia? The underlying “raw material”, usually, is based on open source projects that are available to all without limitations, and so they cannot be a discriminating factor, contrary to other development consortia like Avalanche. In fact, even joint development like the Common Customer View are not improved or hindered by the fact that the participating companies are all in a single consortium or not. It is not difficult to see that if such an approach looks technically interesting, other non-members would probably add a compatible offering to their own project; on the other hand, two companies in the same market would be hard pressed to participate in the same consortium, as Roberto correctly said, because there would be no economic incentive to be part of a non-differentiating common ground.

I suspect that development consortia can accept only a single company per vertical market, while representative consortia (that leverage a common effort to provide a simplified “certification mark”) can probably more effective in reducing the cost of promotion of FLOSS-based solutions. In this sense, I would suggest OSA to leverage more than simple interoperability, and try to promote a two-stage approach: an “inner circle” that provides the interoperability framework by leveraging paying customers, and a “subscriber circle” that leverages the shared resources (like IP clearing from Palamida, technical certification from SpikeSource, etc) to obtain a “seal of approval” that could be used as a marketing instrument.

After all, if we look at OSA, we can see two different kind of customers: the ones that are buying services and products from the members, and FLOSS companies that may be part of the consortium in the future; it is in my opinion sensible to try to address both.

Technorati Tags: open communities, OSA, open source consortia

An eye on the Open Solutions Alliance - Alex Fletcher sees a consistency in OSA’s stated approach, but as I wrote to Dominic Sartorio - OSA’s President - OS firms with “vertical” offering won’t apply if among OSA’s members someone else has already a similar offer. In my opinion OSA might better act on behalf of those companies delivering “horizontal” services - just like SpikeSource - much better than the “vertical” ones (those who take care of a product). The reason is that in horizontal services arena there is no “corporate player” yet, so OSA might well be the first mover.

OSI Submission Update - Bill Hilf submitted Microsoft’s licenses (MS-PL and MS-CL) just before going on vacation.

Building consumers products with open source - Ari Jaaksi tells Nokia’s approach to Open Source.

Actuate Harnesses Open Source to advance Leadership in BI -  Dilbert’s boss wants to use Open Source just for everything, may be also for Business Intelligence? Let’s see if Actuate will eventually turn BIRT in a successful business case.

China: Patent Moves Meets Standards Muscle - Jeff Kaplan reports that China is becoming a serious player in the IP world.

Firefox is a Public Asset - Mitchell Baker essay about the Mozilla’s business models.

The IT department of the Italian Parliament presented plans for the migration of all of its 200 servers and more than 3500 desktop PCs to GNU/Linux and Open Office. The switch will be carried out gradually, as reported by IDABC, it will start next September and it will take about two years.

After reading that the Italian parliament bets house on SuSE Linux I asked Pietro Folena to tell me more.

According to IDABC the IT department of the Italian Parliament presented a massive migration plan (200 servers, 3500 desktops) that will take about two years. Could you tell us more about it?

Pietro Folena, courtesy of Chamber of Deputies

Mr. Pietro Folena, Member of Italian Parliamente, proposed on July 2006, to adopt Free Software in the Parliament (low house) IT infrastructure and on desktop Pcs, both. The second proposal was to allow to MPs the choise between Windows and a Free Software Operative System, like GNU/Linux. This year the IT department of the House of Deputies (the low house of Italian Parliament presented a plan to migrate to Suse Linux Enterprise Edition the desktops of MPs, parlamentarian fractions, offices, but servers was migrated during 2005 and 2006.

In order to introduce politicians to Linux are you consider a sort of “One Laptop per Politician” initiative? If this is the case, how would you get them interested in learning a new paradigm?

No, It’s matter of freedom. We have Windows 2000 on our desktops. But this was an imposition that I didn’t accept. I’m a elected MP, so I want to decide if using Windows or a Free Software Operative System. I think that I’m more free using free software.
I hope that all MPs will chose GNU/Linux on desktops, to know this alternative to proprietary software. If MPs will know the Free Software filosophy I think that laws on software and culture will be better.

You said that “This migration will be a very important case study and will present us with best practices, relevant for all public offices.”, is the IT department wondering to write a blueprint (i.e a replicable and complete description of a set of tools and processes that satisfied a specific need)?

At this moment I know there isn’t a blueprint, because migration of desktops will start on september. But I think that it will write next year or after.

A political question, what do you think of the idea of “open-source politics”?

There are some interestin projects of this. I think that “open source politics” are necessary. Politicians and cityzen are too far. But I see some facts: European Parliament, in example, changed the IPRED 2 directive by Internet-people riot. In Italy we deleted a fee on cell phone by a petition signed on Internet. The Net is a chance of democracy and partecipation.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, Italian Parliament, PietroFolena, blueprints

In the context of the joint research work with Roberto, I would like to present a small update in the OpenTTT project. OpenTTT is a EU-funded project (SSA-030595 INN7) that aims at bridging the separate worlds of technology transfer and open source software (OSS), by introducing novel methodologies for helping companies in the take up of technology.

As part of the project, we are collecting examples of non-source code projects where collaboration or open licensing are critical, and prepared a listing of such activities. Such listing will be extended in the next weeks, also including previous work like the “Open Source Gift Guide” or a list of non software open source goods.

As already discussed a large portion of work in OSS projects goes into non-code aspects, and as such should be investigated probably with the same interest that OSS commands today.

Technorati Tags: openttt, EU projects