Roberto Galoppini's
Commercial Open Source Software

Is the sun dawning into a new day of brotherhood, as Roberto thinks? Should we think that this time it is different, that no harsh words were spoken? That critics are wrong to suspect that something is brewing? I believe that the initiatives described by Roberto are just a new front of an ongoing market (and mindshare) battle, that Microsoft is playing to guarantee its position in the IT landscape of the future.

A Mad World, My Masters by Matt West

If there is one thing that should be visible to every analyst in the IT market, is that monopolies does not disappear in the night. As I already wrote in the past, the fact that every year is believed to be the “linux year” remains wishful thinking; and I still believe that even with the many new low-cost devices designed to run linux, the linux desktop market share in my simulations does not exceed 5% for the end of 2009 (of course, I hope to be wrong, and that in a bold sweep some new company is capable of selling 20M pcs in one year). On the other hand, open source is clearly capable of entering in both new markets or to be the underlying basis for more traditional products, like Apple OSX or the iPhone. I believe that the new activities from Microsoft are the first mature attacks against the OSS ecosystem, designed to de-emphasize both the ethical aspects behind OSS and the differences in licensing that provide the real differentiators from the technical point of view.

Let me share with you some initial musings:
Microsoft is a development tool company, and primarily sells to other developers. This may sound strange- after all, Microsoft sells operating systems and office suites that are not developer oriented. The reality is that Microsoft has created mostly platforms for other to build upon, and by providing nice and centrally-managed software libraries for every conceivable task it simplified the work for those building on Windows, Office, SQLserver and now SharePoint (among many other things). This simplification allowed ISVs to write software that run conceivably well, on a large number of machines, without having to juggle with updates from many different vendors of a separate DB, a separate web server, a separate presentation layer and so on. I believe that it is this ease of integration of components (because they were mostly from a single vendor, with rather similar and laissez-faire licensing conditions) and the fact that most of spending could be reused for different applications by buying licenses centrally from Microsoft once, and reusing them for additional value. In fact, I suspect that part of the lackluster performance of Vista was probably caused by the fact that, similarly to Windows ME, Vista had very little of value to offer to developers when confronted with the additional hardware requirements and the additional licensing cost.

For Microsoft (and its partners) everything is a PC. Remember when Microsoft designed its first game console? It was a PC, with just some changes in the bios and startup circuitry. Media centers? PCs. Servers? PCs. Mobile devices? PCs with a small screen, and a small “start” menu. The only “outsider” is the Zune, that is clearly designed as a clone of a product designed by others, and that as such is somehow neglected even by Microsoft itself.

And now, what happened? Many different things. First of all, the web (and virtualization) finally managed to deliver on the promises made years ago; even with some immaturities, a modern web engine can deliver end-user applications with security, speed and central management that provides significant cost reductions and much less hassles for both users and administrations. This combination allows for near-unlimited scaling (horizontally and vertically) and when used with open source software require no licensing steps that may increase the time to market, that is fast becoming the deciding element for IT deployments. Call it Prism, Air, Silverlight, JavaFX, there are enough choices that by leveraging existing and new platforms can give to software vendors new choices. And now there are enough options for developers to be free from the Microsoft endless supply of libraries, and they can now search for their own liking.

On the other hand, low-cost devices, handheld systems designed for the web and embedded systems on one side, and very large scale systems are so different from a PC that trying to shoehorn a PC model there simply fails, and in this way Microsoft has left opened several breaches that were ineffectively guarded (like stopping a flood with barbed wire). Now, mobile internet devices like the iPhone/iPod touch, nokia’s own N770/N800/N810 tablet (and the other WebKit-based N-series phones) and the up-and-coming intel MID are all examples of a new kind of platform that Microsoft is not prepared to fight for.

So, after trying to ignore OSS, badmouth it, or scaring companies into cross-platforms agreements, now Microsoft is taking a more mature approach, that uses its innate developer-oriented strength to swoon developers to develop and deploy on Windows and with windows-oriented tools, by dangling in front of software vendors the promise of a much larger market and the support of an extraordinary marketing force. By doing this, of course, it creates an incentive to leverage Microsoft technologies whenever possible, to “adapt” licenses (avoiding copyleft-based ones, that prevent deep linking with proprietary software) and thus facilitating a progressive embrace into additional Microsoft (or partner) technologies that can be centrally controlled. I suspect that there will also be a licensing change in future version of Enterprise/Grid versions of Windows, to counteract the economic and licensing advantage of OSS-based virtualization; this may however be difficult to manage well, as it may significantly lower extractable prices for large-scale installations. Pushing effort to reengineer their software offering in a modular way may help the company to move into smaller scale computing, as well as large scale system, and at the same time maintain the comfortable development and deployment environment that has made Microsoft such a large scale success.

What will happen? If Microsoft is consistent in its “good spirit”, they may be able to reduce significantly the platform threat and create strong bonds with at least half of the commercial OSS vendors within 2010. On the other hand, this can increase the penetration and perception of OSS in general, and if a suitable service provider appears on the market it can capitalize on that “visibility asset” and weaken Microsoft position from the inside.

If Microsoft (and at this point I mainly think about Steve “chairs” Ballmer) shows its “bad face” it may polarize the market further, creating a cadre of “white knights” that show no compromise and gain visibility and interest from the part of the OSS community that believe in ethical and openness values, thus reducing the value of accepting the Microsoft compromise.

If there is a message received in visiting CeBIT, is the fact that open source is everywhere and nowhere. Everywhere because inside most products on show it can be seen an underlying OSS component (be it linux, asterisk, Eclipse…) and nowhere because this was written nowhere (with some notable exceptions). The fact that a product has inside some open source parts is so common that nowadays is not differentiating anymore; and this brings the second thing that I observed: the Linux part of CeBIT was sad and gave little value to the companies (and OSS communities) exposing there. For example, the OpenBravo stand was nice and filled with knowledgeable people, but would probably gained much more attention in the ERP pavillion; the same applies to Zimbra and the other (few) companies that were using the “free software” card ahead of that of what their product was for.
I believe that this self-segregation is counterproductive, as the main objective of a company looking for a solution to an IT problem is (not surprisingly) to find a solution, and then later prioritizing requirements and features (including ethical and economic ones) to decide if the adoption process can continue. In fact, I had the opportunity to see two companies presenting more or less the same service (based on OSS), one in the IT infrastructure pavilion and one in the Linux stand, and the difference in terms of people stopping by was quite noticeable, with the Linux one getting 2/3 times less people than the other. It may make sense to have a separate “community” part of CeBIT for those project that still have no significant commercial backings, or that prefer to show themselves in a “pure” way (in this sense, I appreciated the enthusiasm of the people at KDE, Scribus, Gnome, and Amarok), but not for companies: OSS is a differentiator in the long term, but cannot be the only thing you promote at your stand.

Today Richard Stallman was giving the last in the series of his three public lectures in Moscow. It was about Free Software and Copyright.

I had a small conversation with him before the talk and asked him why he hadn’t come to Russia since his last visit in 1991. The answer was simple: he didn’t get any invitation. This can be a hint for the people in the countries where Richard has not been yet — if you organize the visit properly and send Richard an invitation, chances are very high that he will come.

Invitation by sarahkim

He liked today’s Russia more than the one he had seen 15 years ago. Even though his time was very limited, it was sufficient to find out that Russian food (including pancakes and solyanka soup) is good and that people are now paying more interest to Free Software than before.

Richard has a theory for that. In his view, the post-communist countries get warmer to Free Software as they move away from the ideology where freedom is restricted. The younger of us, whose personalities were mostly formed after 1991, are more receptive to the idea of contributing to the benefit of the public. Therefore there are more Free Software users and developers among us than could have been among our parents. There is a similar situation in China.

Richard may be right. We were poorly globalized back in the early 1990’s, and that hindered our acceptance of Free Software (along with thousands of other good and bad things that globalization brings with it). To some extent it may remain a problem even now as we often prefer to do things on our own rather than ask for help, which might be readily provided upon request.

It is not strictly about communism. It is about the science of living in a larger world.

Technorati Tags: free software, communism, moscow, RichardStallman

Microsoft announced a new interoperability approach, opening up previously secret specifications and protocols to open source developers (and heroes), providing a covenant not to sue them for development or non-commercial distribution of implementations of these protocols.

Am I a visionary? by osse

The Open Source Interoperability Initiative is just started, and the EU seems skeptical on Microsoft sharing plans, as is Red Hat, while Groaklaw recaps us on Microsoft’s promises. ArsTechnica reports that the EU investigation seems to have played a role, stating that Microsoft may not be up for yet another fight with regulators.

Besides the ballot resolution meeting, I doubt Microsoft is changing everything so that it can stay the same. Beyond any possible speculation of the real meaning of the non-commercial covenant, Microsoft today is probably giving up with its vertically integrated corporation approach.

The Microsoft’s de-verticalization has begun, Microsoft opening its interfaces and APIs will allow applications to be hooked more easily its products. This is a huge change, and it will affect the IT market at large. Before exploiting it further, and how and if it will impact on the open source market, a little background.

One of the most promising value of open source software is that its licensing enables coopetition. The neologism refers to a market situation in which two or more organizations compete and cooperate simultaneously. The non-rivalrous nature of software distributed under an OSI compliant license is the basis on which cooperation among open source firms can take place.

The Observatory of European SMEs, given the importance of High-tech SMEs in Europe , analyzed success factors and among them the role of networks:

Studies dealing with barriers to networking and co-operation in the area of high-tech SMEs identify a number of
reasons hampering the formation of networks among these enterprises. Many of these factors are the same as for SMEs in general, e.g. different objectives and expectations among partners and differences in enterprise culture. Also, the lack (or the importance respectively) of a ‘co-ordinator’, e.g. a larger leading firm or an agency, is relevant for the networking among high-tech SMEs, too. [..] small and large high-tech enterprises seem to have different motives to engage in networking: for high-tech SMEs the main motivator is to achieve (quick) access to markets and credibility. Hence, networking is seen to be a ‘necessity’ for high-tech SMEs. In contrast, for large high-tech firms the reasons to engage in networks include primarily access to competitive R&D and technology. [..] These fundamentally different approaches imply that smaller firms are rather oriented towards short term and concrete results. SMEs want projects to have a quick path to market and achieve returns as quickly as possible. However, networking often requires a lot of time-consuming communication and efforts before actual results are achieved and benefits are not visible immediately. But SMEs have difficulties in allowing time and delays for different processes and exchange of information. A further consequence is that SMEs prefer to form one to one collaborations rather than collaborations between groups of enterprises.

Open source consortia and other “loosely coupled” organizations among open source firms could definitely play an important role to foster communities, but as a matter of fact they suffer from above mentioned limitations.

Despite the recent rise of interest toward coopetitive alliances, effective coopetition doesn’t occur too often. Strategic-business literature lack of descriptions explaining how organizations should manage a coopetitive relationship, and how they in practice manage to compete and cooperate with other organizations.

How co-operation and competition could possibly merge together to form a strategic interdependence among firms, eventually giving rise to a coopetitive system of value creation?

ZEA Partners experience shows the importance of the creation of an intermediate organization, providing rules and regulations, aiming to secure the long term survival of the association. ZEA Partners is on duty to resolve conflicts, and considering that fields of expertise are not complementary, one of the most important reason to become a ZEA partner is definitely to get a more formal status. Organizations within ZEA Partners are willing to cooperate on activities that are far away from applications that could generate an income:

It is knowledge that is not close to an application, and that means that it is knowledge that can easily be shared.

Therefore OS firms sharing the same knowledge can easier co-operate through customer distance (i.e. the closer to the customer, the more competition). The rules and regulations that an intermediate organization could issue don’t include licensing to manage the coopetitive relationship.

But the concept of competition might include relationships with suppliers and customers, rather than restrict coopetition only to relationships among cooperating firms that compete in the same market and want to reach the same customers.

Customers asking for not differentiating IT solutions or not competing (e.g. public administrations), could take advantage of the possibility to share with suppliers assets like source code and also blueprints to implement such technologies. Allowing them to reuse by other customers might turn to be a viable strategy to obtain enhancements and discounts.

Suppliers on the other hand can take advantage of customers’ ability to set user requirements and through blueprints can turn their customers in testimonials, reporting about such best practices.

Now, how does the Open Source at Microsoft fit into the picture?

Microsoft recently launched another initiative, the NXT partner program geared towards Open Source ISVs. The program is aimed at providing open source ISV with information to make it easier to develop and sell open source software on Windows. Microsoft NXT partner provides ISV with a range of services, ranging from marketing support to technical advice, including also business model definition and channel delivery plans.

All in all the Microsoft NXT partner program, the Open Source Interoperability Initiative and the just started Forge New Powers to me seems to be part of a general strategy. As a matter of fact there is a lot of free and open source software deployed on Windows, and Microsoft is refocusing on fostering value creation also partnering with open source firms.

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft will eventually give rise to a coopetitive system of value creation in the next future, helping IT firms to exploit the role of networks, as none else could possibly will to do.

Am I a visionary?

Technorati Tags: open source microsoft, microsoft, open source interoperability, NXT, open source hero, Forge New Powers, commercial open source, open business

Italian Minister answers questions posed in our open letter (Italian) - Now that we managed to get an answer to our letter it is great time to pose more questions..

Myself interviewed by Marco Rossi (ADIT Innovation Network Association) (Italian) - Sequential innovation, coopetition and an analysis of the Italian IT market (Italian)

It is widely known that despite many significant advantages, “explicit” use of OSS is still not as widespread. One of the many approaches designed to help in overcoming the adoption gap is the creation of “OSS competence centers”, that provide support and knowledge to facilitate open source software adoption.

Creating a competence center may take years, especially when it is necessary to create everything from scratch. But as I wrote in a recent presentation, it may be more efficient to “piggy-back” on top of existing IT incubators or IT districts, leverage what has already been produced in other projects and especially offer mediation as a service, because it is clear from the many surveys that companies need significant hand-holding when performing the first open source migrations. We will test this approach (after several trials) at the FutureMatch event colocated within CeBIT,

OCR is one of the few markets that are not fully internationalized yet. An OCR that can decently process Cyrillic texts for now can only come from Russia. And there are no more than two at the moment: ABBYY FineReader and Cognitive Cuneiform.

Both trace their origins to the late Soviet-era government research projects that were commercialized in the nineties. However, Cuneiform started to lose its position in the consumer market by the end of the decade, then the application saw very little progress since 2000, and now it is generally unknown among end-users. Cognitive, who has by now shifted to systems integration market, has finally decided to open up Cuneiform, make it available as freeware immediately on a dedicated website and publish under an open source license in March, 2008.

What makes it interesting is that Cuneiform will be the second OCR system to be published as Open Source after years of development inactivity along with Tessaract published by HP in 2005. Thus, the market of Open Source OCR will quite unexpectedly become competitive.

The most probable idea behind the decisions of both Cognitive and HP is to put to work the unemployed resources so that they start producing at least minimal benefit. It looks like a simple ‘let’s see’ action, and no clear business model seems to be lying behind it.

But with the recent increase of interest of the Russian authorities in Free Software usage at middle schools, the demand for the liberated Cuneiform could become considerable. However, until the government’s plan to shift all schools to Free Software by 2009 is fulfilled at least partially, it is very difficult to say what this state-supported middle-school FOSS market will look like and what its rules will be. But if it comes to reality, Cognitive has all chances to be a player there by simply having used the available resources in a smart way at the right moment.

Technorati Tags: oss, ocr, Cognitive, ABBYY, Tessaract, Cuneiform, Russia, schools

Few days ago I reported that funds allocated by the Italian budget law to foster innovation by Italian local public administrations through open source software are vanished.

A couple of day later my blog peer and friend Stefano Maffulli launched a campaign (see the logo below), asking other bloggers to join us. Up to now Debianizzati, Geekplace, PlanetGnome Italia, Stefano Canepa, Dario and OS Revolution.

What about the 10 millions euro? by Stefano Maffulli

I invite Italian bloggers - and among them Antonella Beccaria, Paolo Didone, Nicola Mattina, Dario Salvelli, Luca Sartoni and Italo Vignoli - to join the campaign and ask Italian politicians to tell us all the (open source) truth!

I really wish you all a great year!

Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, oss, Public Administrations, SMEs, Italy, Italian politicians, Stefano Mafulli

Many were surprised by the extraordinary sales of the eeepc, and Asus plans to have 3.8 millions sold next year. One single product seems to be capable of substantially rise the number of linux users worldwide in a single year. How is it possible? Can we do even better?

At the end of each year since 2000 we are bombarded with opposing views about the next coming of linux on desktops, or the growth or decline of open source software on servers, whether Apache is growing or IIS is regaining share. It reminds me so much about heated debates about football, or politics, or many other clearly undecidable questions; the debate has an entertaining value in itself, so despite the lack of any practical value it remains a common sport. As I would never leave such an entertaining opportunity unfulfilled, I will try to present a few opinions on my own.

Blue Ocean 1024 by Aube Insanite’

First of all, I strongly believe that the overall idea of a “tipping point” that happens in the short term (0-2 years) that shows a sudden switch from Windows users to Linux on the desktop has no factual basis. All the research on ICT and innovation diffusion shows that when the incumbent enjoys strong network effects (like Microsoft with the combination of economic incentives to its channel and latency of user base) and is willing to adapt its pricing strategy to counter external threats, it can significantly delay the adoption process of even technically perfect alternatives. This, combined with the fact that at the moment the channel for linux desktops does not exist (apart from some internal successes like IBM, or some external sales by Novell) means that my models predict a less than 5% adoption within 2 years for enterprise desktops if everything stays the same.

And what can change? The first important idea is that there are two ways of doing business, the “red ocean” (fighting for the same market and undercutting competition) and the “blue ocean” (searching for new markets and ideas). My belief is that abrupt changes are much more difficult in red ocean environments, as everyone tries to outsmart the others, and those that are capable of surviving for longer (for example, because they have more cash) are increasingly favorite by this competitive model. But “order of magnitude” changes are possible in the blue ocean strategy, because the space for exploring new things is much larger. Andy Grove of Intel once mentioned that:

in how some element of one’s business is conducted becomes an order of magnitude larger than what that business is accustomed to, then all bets are off. There’s wind and then there’s a typhoon, there are waves and then there’s a tsunami.

Can we find examples of this “order of magnitude” change? Some examples are the Amazon EC2 (cost of one hour of managed and scalable CPU one order of magnitude lower than alternatives), the Asus eeepc (nearly one order of magnitude lower cost compared to other ultraportables), the XO notebook (one order of magnitude reduction in costs, one order of magnitude or more in planned audience); all were surprisingly successful (even the XO, well before shipping, forced companies like Intel, AMD, Microsoft to react and compromise in order to be able to participate in the same market).

Still with me? The missing piece is the fact that we should strive to facilitate the choice of open source at the change points; for example, it is easier to suggest an alternative when the current situation is undergoing change (like suggesting a migration to linux when people has to change its PCs). We should make sure that we propose something that has one order of magnitude less costs than alternatives, that can provide sustainable business models, and that satisfies the needs of users. We have to create a software/hardware/services assembly (as the XO was created from scratch) to replace and enhance what desktop PCs are doing now. Technically speaking, we have to create a hardware assembly that costs one order of magnitude less, software that costs one order of magnitude less to maintain, and services that cost one order of magnitude less to maintain.

How we can do it? The hardware part is easy: design for the purpose. Take the lead from what XO has done, and create a similar platform for the desktop. Flash disk is still too costly, so design a single platter disk, with controller and metal case soldered on the motherboard; think about different chip designs (maybe leveraging Niagara T2) by reducing the number of cores and adding on-chip graphics and memory architectures (when source code is available, more sophisticated manual prefetching architectures are possible). Software needs are in a sense easier: we still need to facilitate management (Sun’s APOC or Gonicus’ GOSa are good examples) and integrate in the system an easy way for receiving external help. Think out of the box: maybe LLVM may be a better compiler for some aspects of the machine than GCC? (think about what Apple has done with it) Leverage external network services (like the WalMart’s gPC and gOS). This means create external backups and storage for moving users; allow for “cloning” of one PCs to another when a replacement is needed, easily synchronize files and data with external services using tools like Conduit. Allow for third parties to target this as a platform, like Google is doing with Android; partner with local companies, to create a channel that will sell services on top of it. As the cost of materials goes down of roughly 10% for every order of magnitude in produced parts, an ambitious company can create a 99$ PC, with reasonable capabilities, packaged by local companies for local needs; the potential market can be estimated at 25% of the actual installed PC base (both new users and users adopting it as second platform or replacement platform), or roughly 200 million PCs.

The assumption that everything is going to be as today is just our inability to plan for a different future.

Technorati Tags: Open Source Innovation, oss, open business, open source strategy, eeepc, ec2, niagara, XO

While at the Future of Mobile, the event organised by Carsonified Systems last week in London, I enjoyed very much Tony Fish’s key-note speech.

I asked Tony to pass me over his presentation in order to write an article for an Italian magazine, and here I am reporting just some of his notes regarding Digital Footprint.

Enjoy also his full presentation.

Footprints: Like Neil Armstrong we all leave footprints. 2.0 has a fascination with this data, in web 2.0 language ‘the next intel inside.’ I don’t associate footprints with identity. Footprints are about where we have been, for low long, how often and the inter-relationships.

Therefore Digital Footprint is not identity, your passport, bank account or social security number. Digital Footprints come from mobile, web and TV – the digital data and metadata of who we are, the true value and why the ownership of this data is the battle ground to be won and lost, the reason why Eric Schmidt the CEO of Google wakes up thinking mobile before he looks at his email or worries about the value of double click or improving a search algorithm.

However this footprint and its digital data I contend is mine. Google gets your hands off it, but who will I trust with my digital footprint if I don’t want Google to have it. I need a trusted, open digital footprint store. Collecting, collating and serving my footprints, through an open application protocol interface across all platforms. I want to share my footprint, as this will lead to service companies improving my experience as it will become personalized. But who should I trust and what should I trust them for. To understand this we need a small diversion to chat about advertising, as this is a model to justify your views and assertions.

Advertising started with the age of assertion, “washing powder washes whiter than white”. It moved to the second phase of engagement, comparison and involvement – “look what your neighbour uses.” The current phase is about attitude – “Dirt is Good”, but advertising in what-ever shape or form requires channels and feedback, something it lacked until recently. Advertising is currently used to justify every business model, with the associated convergence or bundling issue of everything else is free. A symbiotic parasite. But the advertising to give you something for free requires an understanding of your personal data, based on your digital footprint. Therefore if I control your digital footprint, I control the advertising revenues. But as Google only controls the web footprint, control of the mobile is critical, especially when you consider Mobile adds whole new classes of unique data – location and attention.

But there is a school of thought that says if I own my digital footprint data, I could sell this to advertisers directly, but this poses the difficult question of who would store it, how it is collected, shared and protected, great topics but not for now.

I want you to consider line of sight advertising for a moment. Consider the following model. Suppose that a bill board, or a scene that it within your line of sight could be controlled by you mobile device. Advertising now becomes specific to the person looking? But how would it cope with the crowd. Would the utopia vision focus on those who are strong and marginalize the weak. The social gap becomes formed not by the technology but by those who don’t have the same opinion. We only get to listen to the voice we want – this is how you train a terrorist. As a design consideration – how about taking away the screen and then consider the uniqueness.

Indeed, where is there value, is there more value in knowing what I am doing or who I do it with. The TV can provide some data, the web probably more, but the mobile would be unique.

Therefore as you consider mobile and bring your experience - think about the context and where value is created, not why your doing it, but how others can and will extract value from it.

Technorati Tags:   TonyFish, Future of Mobile, digital identity,