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  • Roberto Galoppini 12:33 pm on May 23, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Models: the Beekeeper model 

    James Dixon, Pentaho Chief Technology Officer, commenting a post introduced me to the “Beekeeper model“, a model used by open source firms writing the majority of the code.

    BeeKeeper Beekeepers (private) parking by Phil Downsing

    The Bee Keeper mode, which applies to companies like Pentaho, Alfresco or Zimbra, is about open source products where the original author, a company, is the main (if not the only) source code contributor (corporate production, in my words).

    Going through the whole document (PDF), I found interesting Dixon’s observations about the different kind of professional open source (commercial open source) firms looking at them by the relationship with the code:

    • Passive / Committers: Did not write much, if any, of code themselves. They provide services and support for third party open source software. They do not have their own community.
      .
    • Outers: Code started as proprietary software and has been released into open source by the creators.
      .
    • Founders: Originated project to be professional open source from the start. Often need seed capital to achieve this.
      .
    • Converters: Started project as open source project without intent to make money from it. Added ways to make income from it after it became successful. These are sometimes small businesses. Examples: JFreeChart.
      .
    • Baiters: Released an open source project as a method to attract consumers to a different, proprietary piece of software. Examples: Actuate BIRT.

    What is missing is a taxonomy describing how Professional Open Source firms cope with their communities, and how (and if) their business models are affected by the relationship.

    I suspect that Converters examining later which business model would be right for them have lesser choice, nevertheless they have a community and they can get advantage of it.

    About Outers, I believe that a taxonomy of the reasons to give away software would reveal something really interesting. The reason affects how and if the software will eventually be developed in cooperation with a community (hybrid production).
    Founders are also intriguing, whether they belong to the “third wave” (applications), or are exploring business models based on the absence of a corporate actor, why VCs are interested in investing in open source software firms would be important too. I guess that VCs play a very important role in the community start-up process.

    Technorati Tags: Beekeeper, business model, Commercial Open Source, Dixon, Pentaho

     
    • Debbie Moynihan 10:12 am on May 27, 2007 Permalink

      This is interesting. I hadn’t seen this list of business models before – thanks for sharing it. I attended OSBC this week where several different models were discussed. One thing that I find most interesting is how everyone seems to continuously evolve their business models over time as they figure out what works. I am hoping to get my notes from OSBC posted in the next 24 hours or so onto my blog.

      Deb

    • Roberto Galoppini 11:20 pm on May 28, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Debbie,

      unfortunately I couldn’t join OSBC this year, so I am eager to know more about it, please.

      About business models I believe that OS market is young enough to keep changing, because it is fundemental true that:

      In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few (Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi)

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:28 pm on May 20, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commercial Open Source is a Juggling act (part II) 

    Commercial Open Source has a lot in common with Juggling, and once you have broken the problem down into simpler steps, it is up to your discretion what to do next.

    Juggler Absentmindedly juggling by T Bell

    In juggling balance is an essential skill, but it doesn’t equal to stillness.

    The downside of balance is that you don’t want things to change. The moment you’ve achieved balance, you’d better be ready and willing to get rid of it. Because if you stay with what you think is perfect balance, you’ll be far from in control. Remember, there is no perfect balance; there’s only the approach to it.

    Open sourcing your software – throwing the balls – it is just the very first step, then you started playing you need to continuously refine your technique. Look at Funambol, now playing with two “balls” (community and carrier edition) instead of three: they are keeping moving and refining their business model. So does Alfresco, GPLing its software in order to give its new hybrid community a chance – and here I see a need for major adjustments, if they really want it to be a multiple vendors’ project.

    Juggling is also about being flexible to the unexpected:

    flexible to mistakes of any kind, like the wrong music coming up.When the unexpected flares up, you have to have a sense of humor — to know that your position has been compromised. It’s not the end of the world.

    May be at Novell they didn’t expect what’s going to happen because of the so-called nefarious deal, but it took ages for them to “catch” it, and the public get annoyed by not-so-humorous tricks. They were not proficient also in the “show-ending“, eventually.

    Open Source firms have to juggle different types of things, and the different characteristics of the objects affects your business game.

    Worse than dropping objects is letting them collide in the air and fall in random patterns. To prevent this, you need to create a separate flight path for each object. This comes from training and from knowing how objects move. A ring is a thin planar object that can slide through the air. A club creates a much bigger planar area as it revolves on its axis, and it takes up a lot more space. Then there’s the ball — the easy one that flits in and out of space. But the funny thing is that it’s usually the ball that screws everything up.

    Persons are like balls, if your business is based upon a community-based resource you really need to pay a lot of attention to retain them: a weak intellectual property asset need care.

    Customers are like clubs, the Internet it is just to small, and customers’ satisfaction gets more and more important when (and if) the exit cost is small. Despite the buzz can greatly help to get new users and eventually customers, but then you need to keep listening them.

    Partners are like rings, quite difficult to throw, but once in the air they are consistent with the original trajectory, unless you try to juggle them under wind conditions. Once you get partners, they tend to stay.

    And you better know that numbers jugglers do their best just with rings!

    Michael Moschen, one of greatest living jugglers, was interviewed by Anna Muoio, a Fast Company‘s journalist who wrote an inspirational article entitled “Life is a Juggling act“. I grabbed some idea from the original article – that I would recommend if interested in the subject – to talk about Commercial Open Source and Juggling.

    Technorati Tags: commercial open source, juggling, moschen

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 6:44 pm on May 19, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 19-05-2007 

    Business as Usual – Bill Hilf on Port25: It’s not us versus the free world.

    Three Minutes with Microsoft’s Open-Source Manager – Bill Hilf explains Microsoft strategy: to license and not litigate. Am I the only one thinking to the Cold war at this stage?

    235 more reasons to love open source – Fabrizio Capobianco designed a funny and provoking t-shirt, and I guess he is going to bring along an XXL one for Bill Hilf next Monday!

    Steve? Darl? All of the Above? – Billy Marshall asserts that Microsoft won’tl like the nature of the collateral damage caused by the 235 move.

    (added on the 20th) Microsoft’s Patent Impasse – A lucid commentary by Cote’, really enlightening.
    Organizing an Open Source Workshop!!! – A workshop entitled “Open Source, Open Ideas” will be held on Tuesday May 29th at the Politecnico di Bari campus sponsored jointly by Politecnico di Bari, OrgLab (University of Cassino), Syracuse University and IESEG School of Management.

    Dell announces the models for Ubuntu – Jeremy discloses Dell’s Ubuntu models.

    I’m Joining Adobe – Ryan Stewart joined Adobe as a Rich Internet Application Evangelist.

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 6:21 pm on May 17, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Italian Open Source Advocate: Carlo Piana 

    Carlo Piana is an Information Technology lawyer and a Free Software advocate, as Counsel to the Free Software Foundation Europe he advocates the adoption of free/open source software and interoperable systems by European Public Administrations.
    I asked Carlo, who I personally met about three years ago when we were both involved with the FSFE Italian chapter, to tell us more about his interest for free software and licensing issues.

    How did you get involved with Free Software?

    Well, that’s a long story. Here’s the short version. During late 90s I was using OS/2 as operating system of choice, but I did see no future for it, so I decided to switch to GNU/Linux as early as year 2000. It wasn’t easy, and some help was found in the local LUG. There I met Stefano Maffulli, Vice President of Free Software Foundation Europe.

    Then the Commission decided that Microsoft was abusing the market, and I was wondering whether the FSFE was somewhat involved. Stefano said something like:

    We are already an interested third party, now we need a lawyer with enough expertise to prepare our application with the Court. But time is really, really short.

    I thought it was just a couple of hours’ work, just to file the application, then I was supposed to hand over the matter to another lawyer, so I said:

    Well, I can help you with this initial step, then you will decide.

    It turned out to be slightly underestimated, as now we are turning the third year of litigation, and still do not see the end of the tunnel. So far I have invested thousands of hours in the case, and am still counting.

    In order to be effective in the case, I had to learn quick, and I became very interested also all aspects and implications of Free Software. I started helping people around with legal issues, and almost without realizing it, I was an active advocate. The media exposure of the Microsoft case was incredible, and perhaps this is the reason why people, including you, think I am important: because they know my name.

    Let’s talk about the Case now.

    Being involved in the Case somewhat changed my professional life, because I have never been in a litigation of that magnitude and importance. Even from a side seat, the pressure is enormous and ramifications are endless, the paperwork simply unmanageable. We now have gone through one interim case, and one merit case (we are awaiting the final decision), while one further appeal is on its way and we have applied also to that. The merit case was huge: thirteen judges, the hearing lasted five consecutive days, the “grand salle” was half packed just of lawyers and experts, the floor was barely enough for the two main parties, the rest was journalists, and it was not even enough. I said “side seat”, but don’t be mislead.

    Our role has been central in many occasions, thanks to the incredible work that those who back me have done. People of FSFE, but especially the members of the SambaTeam, have been incredible, these guys really rock! Jeremy Allison at the interim and Andrew Tridgell (Trdige) at the main case were outstanding and really, really credible, but also who worked behind the scene, like Volker Lendecke or another Italian, Simo Sorce, were incredibly helpful.

    But the case is way more than just that in court. The Commission is trying to firce Microsoft into compliance, after the first decision has not been suspended. But for the first time in history, there have been not just one, but two procedures for non compliance with the first decision: we are right now discussing the second one. The first ended by adding some hundred millions on the top of the at-the-time largest antitrust fine, somewhere short of half a million euro.

    Meanwhile, the Commission is cooking another case with a broader scope.
    While the first was on interoperability and lack of disclosure, as well as on the tying practice of bundling Windows Media Player with Windows XP, the second is about five different abuses in the server, client and application sector. In fact, interoperability is not just with network protocols, but also with the application layer protocols and formats.

    And the market has not been idle either: the ineffectiveness so far of the remedies has allowed the monopolist to double its share in the server operating system market, now well above 70%, the share in the client OS market has not lowered and many more fields have the windows logo on it.

    We are silently involved in that second investigation too. It not difficult to discover with whom because it is public on the Internet, but nobody still realized.

    What do you think is going to happen in the next future?

    The future is threefold. Free Software is gaining momentum by the day, over are the days when some people used to say that it was a toddler’s game. Most of the industry, from IBM to Google, from Sun to Oracle has various levels of engagement, and the mobile is the next frontier.

    Software as a service is probably the next step, which could shift the paradigm, but we are still far from maturity. In the middle lies the world of proprietary software and media companies, which will be eventually made irrelevant by the first two, but now they are fighting back with market power, DRM, software patents and the most dangerous weapon: people not realizing how much freedom they are losing any day.

    Antitrust is a good weapon to reestablish equanimity, but antitrust is also a political issue: just consider the number of monopolization cases in the USA in the last six years: 0. So we are at a turning point: public opinion must react now, and the first step is to convey more and more balanced information on these topic.

    Thank you Carlo, and please keep us updated!

    Technorati Tags: Free Software Foundation, Piana, Software Patent

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 11:33 pm on May 16, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Government: Italy launches its Forge 

    The Minister of Reform and Innovations in Public Administration, Luigi Nicolais, and the President of the Center for the application of Italian Ministry of Innovation and Technology Politics (CNIPA), Livio Zoffoli, today announced the latest initiative of the Italian Open Source Observatory.

    The Collaborative Development Environment (ASC, Ambiente di Sviluppo Cooperativo) offers Italian Public Administrations a medium to co-develop open source applications with other public administrations, market players and research institutes.

    Public Administrations need software aimed at addressing specific needs, and the collaboration platform has been designed to help them to involve partners in developing software public goods.

    Luigi Nicolais commented:

    Public Administrations will benefit of the advantages of open source software now, beyond software customizing they will learn how to share it easier, eventually opening a market for software services and reducing time-to-market and costs of acquisition.

    He also added that:

    Among e-Government’s strategic lines it is necessary to study and define a model to use open source software assuring economic sustainability, within a market where Public Administrations and software firms play their respective roles.

    About ASC

    ASC is a collaborative development environment based on GForge, to help public administrations to collaborate, using message forums , mailing lists and tools to create and control access to Source Code Management repositories.

    Related post:

    Italian Government: funds to sustain open source innovation

    Technorati Tags: Open Source Government, Italy, CNIPA

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 7:32 pm on May 16, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business models: to be or not to be community-driven 

    While Seth Grimes was in Rome we took a chance to have a nice chat talking of open source business models, and we happened to discuss about differences between proprietary and open source business models.

    How old is your community? by Insane Zamboni

    Characterizing Open as Altruistic and Closed as Profit-driven is, agreed, too black-and-white to explain the many businesses that seek to profit from open source. But on reflection, I like my table as-is. Open-source businesses are universally hybrids, whether they seek to profit from their altruism – those companies such as CentricCRM and Pentaho that sell support for software offerings that are completely free, open source – versus those such as SugarCRM and JasperSoft that are altruistic only to the point where they can attract paying customers for the closed parts of their software stacks. Open-source businesses span the table columns. Whether Open or Closed predominates in a given case depends on the particular business model.

    Reading Seth’s back thoughts on what characterizes open and closed business models, I got back to the idea that classifying Open Source production models is not a mere academic curiosity. On the contrary it makes a lot of sense, since it affects at large the software life-cycle.

    Corporate Open Source

    Hybrid Open Source

    Supplier

    An Open Source firm

    A multi-stakeholder entity

    Product development

    Driven by corporate economics

    Driven by product functionality

    Developers

    Limited numbers, all employed by the supplier, not reachable from outside the organization.

    Varies from a small to very large group of developers. Often permanently employed by the original author or other firms, volunteers or sponsored.

    Users

    Commonly not organised, every user maintains – if any – direct contact with the supplier independently from other users.

    Users participate in virtual communities and discuss among themselves and with the developers about the product, potentially influencing its development.

    The original version (edited) was extracted by the Open Source Maturity Model document

    While I can’t agree with Dion Almaer that if a company open sources its software it is a token gesture, I believe he raised some very important issues, describing what he meant for community driven open source – or hybrid production model, in my words.

    If you don’t have any committers from outside of your company. You probably aren’t community driven.

    If you didn’t spend time cleaning up documentation for the community when you opened it up. You probably aren’t community driven.

    If your users haven’t helped with the documentation if it is lacking. You probably aren’t community driven.

    If you do not have some kind of forums/lists where people help each other out. You probably aren’t community driven.

    If you aren’t willing to put in a lot of effort to build your community to get true benefits. You probably aren’t community driven.

    I don’t think an Open Source firm has to fulfill all of these requirements to proudly call itself community-driven, but if they can’t positively answer any of them I doubt they are taking part of a so-called community.

    I warmly suggested Carlo Daffara to take into consideration also this aspect when describing open source business models within FLOSSMETRICS.

    Is your Open Source Firm different?

    Technorati Tags: Commercial Open Source, community-driven, flossmetrics, grimes, almaer

     
    • Chris Marino 1:18 pm on May 17, 2007 Permalink

      Tony Wasserman at CMU West has done some research into this and has developed a framework for organizing the different methodologies.

    • Dominic Sartorio 2:16 am on May 18, 2007 Permalink

      Thanks for raising this excellent topic. At the OSA (Open Solutions Alliance), we have a diverse membership and are often asked what we consider to be “open” business models. So, we track this issue with great interest.

      Inevitably, discussion goes down the path of licensing, or how strong each member’s community it. What isn’t discussed enough, IMO, is what best meets customer needs. Ultimately that should determine which business models are best. Unfortunately, there’s no simple answer. Customer requirements can vary greatly, depending on industry, their IT best practices, the type of solution in question, and the skills and know-how required to implement it. Companies that serve different market segments must evolve their business models to best meet the requirements of that segment. Some may be more services-intensive, requiring frequent code customization for example, while others aren’t necessarily best served by purely OSD-compliant management and licensing of source code, but benefit from “open-ness” in other ways. Because open source, especially in the applications space, is still relatively new, we think there is much room for experimentation regarding what business models are best for the most customers. Consequently, we don’t limit our membership based on some preconceived notion of business models we think ought to be the best. Let customers decide that, not us.

      However, there is one notion that we don’t compromise. There’s a difference between “old guard” proprietary organizations and more open, collaborative organizations. The former hoard know-how, act unilaterally, and are always trying to “manage” how customers and partners perceive their products and solutions, as if yielding as little real information as possible is the key to business success. The latter instead share know-how, and act collaboratively with their customers and within their industry, and they compete based on their ability to make customers successful. We fundamentally believe that open and collaborative behavior is consistently superior to closed and unilateral behavior. This difference go beyond how the source code is managed, to how the company fundamentally operates; How it engages with its customers and partners, its corporate marketing, and even corporate culture and internal politics. A company’s DNA is either one or the other; these don’t mix.

      This is hard to quantify, but you know it when you see it when interacting with the management. There are some typical markers… GPL-licensing is a good sign. So is having public forums for customer feedback. (A closed company would never want the rest of the world to see an unfiltered view of what its customers think about its products.) But there are multiple ways a company can operate and still be “open”.

      Your thoughts are welcome. I’m not sure it’s possible to form a comprehensive taxonomy of open business models, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

    • Roberto Galoppini 8:53 pm on May 18, 2007 Permalink

      Chris,

      I have been a strong advocate for the Open Source Maturity Model, and I thought that the Business Readiness Rating could be considered its evolution.

      None of them became a standard yet, before them even the GRAM/GRAS list had not much success indeed.

      Apparently consultants did not succeed by these means in producing definitive answers on which open source software is best suited to cover a particular need. Why? Once again one size doesn’t fit all.

    • Roberto Galoppini 5:48 pm on May 20, 2007 Permalink

      Dominic,

      I appreciated very much that you came over to comment my post and I am glad you at the Open Solutions Alliance are taking seriously this issue.

      While how strong each member’s community is, it is partially due to members’ choices, licensing on the contrary is totally under their control.

      I wrote about “false positive” talking about OSA’s decision to accept members not using open source licenses.

      You are right saying that there is room for experimentation regarding what business models are best, but pretending to sell open source while selling proprietary software is misleading.

      If you don’t compromise (only) on the degree of openness

      We fundamentally believe that open and collaborative behavior is consistently superior to closed and unilateral behavior. This difference go beyond how the source code is managed, to how the company fundamentally operates; How it engages with its customers and partners, its corporate marketing, and even corporate culture and internal politics.

      you should be clear about it, and tell everyone OSA has decided not to talk about open source (while not it is even under the logo, reporting “open source at work”). Then you might consider to make some changes to your website, that says:

      From time to time, the OSA may use the term “open source solutions” or “open source based solutions.” We do not mean to confuse this with the OSI’s Open Source Definition, which includes requirements not included in our open solution definition.

      This way OSA is contributing to make open source definition uncertain, don’t you agree?

      Your opinion is always welcome.

    • Dominic Sartorio 11:24 pm on May 20, 2007 Permalink

      Hi Roberto, Thanks for your thoughtful reply. Yes, we had our own “false start” through sloppy use of the term “open source” when we originally launched last winter. Open Source (capital ‘O’, capital ‘S’) means something very specific, as defined by the OSI, and the OSA intends to cover broader ground, for the reasons I described in my previous post. Our collective experience has been that customer value can be achieved in a variety of ways, and some of them don’t always fit a strict definition.

      You found other parts of our website that we overlooked. Thanks for finding this, and we will fix this. We don’t intend to cause further ambiguity around what it means to be “open source”, but rather clarify an issue that we believe hasn’t received enough attention: focus on customer needs. In an effort to avoid confusion, we came up with our own term, “Open Solution Definition”.

      Rest assured that our continuing work on this issue will be done in fully open and collaborative ways. Just like open and collaborative development has led to great Open Source products, we believe that open collaboration by the vendor community on various business issues is the best way to achieve customer success.

      Many vendors are incapable of this behavior. Some grew during the pre-WWW time when business success depended on unilateral behavior and “knowledge hoarding” than the collaborative behaviors that modern technologies now enable. Take a look at a more recent blog re: the Microsoft patent issue as an example.

  • Roberto Galoppini 12:24 pm on May 14, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 14-05-2007 

    Microsoft takes on the Free World – Is Microsoft wondering to put it this way (patents’ infringements)? Microsoft mind your business: FON Abandons Microsoft, Adopts Ubuntu

    Ooh, ooh, the bogeyman is gonna getcha with his stupid patents. Or maybe not.

    Do Industry Analysts Matter? – It greatly depends on who they are!

    What about open source in the emerging world? – Alex Fletcher is amazed by the lack of demonstrated initiative at the macro-level by the typically western-based organizations, foundations and companies directly involved with open source software.

    The Top Ten Reasons To Work For MySQL -  Wondering to change your job? 29 open positions.

    ConfSL is overThe Italian conference on Free Software is over.

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 12:10 pm on May 13, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Commercial Open Source is a Juggling act 

    Juggling, or more technically speaking toss juggling, is about throw objects into the air and catch them: easy to say, difficult to do. Gravity is very selective, despite anyone can learn to juggle, few people take time to discover what it really involves.

    Michael Moschen, one of greatest living jugglers, was interviewed by Anna Muoio, a Fast Company‘s journalist who wrote an inspirational article entitled “Life is a Juggling act“. I grabbed some idea from the original article – that I would recommend if interested in the subject – to talk about Commercial Open Source and Juggling.

    Juggling is mostly about breaking down patterns into simpler tasks. There are only two ingredients, tosses and catches. Even the most complex pattern can be broken apart into simpler steps. Once learn how simple are the individual atomic actions, you can recombine them, and eventually show your latest trick.

    Juggler Life is a Juggling act by f.vp

    In juggling there are three basic steps:

    First, make a good throw. Are you rolling the ball off your fingers — as you should — or are you using your palm? Do you throw the ball so it always falls away from you — as it should — or does it fly over your shoulder because you don’t want to let go of it?

    Throw the ball, open source your software. Whether you do it smoothly or not, you have to manage the fear to loose your business opportunities, your brand, or both. Throwing is the very first step, and you need to mind it carefully.

    Second, trust your throw. Look straight forward. Don’t focus on the ball. Realize that once you let go, you have no more control.

    Once you let it go choose if you want to keep coding on your own or not, assess the level of “promiscuity” that you want with your partners, ranging from “totalizing” to none, or “ecosystemic“. Whatever you choose, remember others can take advantage of it, and you might hardly find a way to prevent it. Gravity always wins.

    Third, put your hands under the ball. Let the ball fall into them. If you reach up for it, you cut the amount of time you have to adjust to catching it.

    After a good throw aim for a good catch, if you opted for a medium-long term strategy just wait for the business to come to you, think about Mozilla. You do know if it was a good or a bad throw.

    Juggling is not about Magic: you get just what you do.

    Technorati Tags: commercial open source, juggling, moschen

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 12:09 pm on May 12, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Links: 12-05-2007 

    Alan Shimel Should Stop Talking About Snort’s Licensing – Thomas Ptacek and Alan Shimel keep discussing about GPL compliance.

    Open source is bad for vendors – Yet another Dana Blankenhorn suggestion.

    Unisys shows acceptance of open source in biz application – It is still the Open Source Economy, System Integrators!

    OpenOffice.org in Education: A Roundup – a roundup into a set of references that could easily and quickly be investigated, by Ross Brunson, Linux Solutions Specialist at Novell.

    The Japanese government looks to go open source – The Japanese government said it wants to decrease its reliance on Microsoft as a server operating system platform.

    FSF still working to achieve Apache license compatibility for GPL 3 – The Free Software Foundation is working hard to establish compatibility between GPLv3 and Apache License.

    Technorati Tags: Apache, Commercial Open Source, FSF, GPLv3, Japan, OpenOffice, Snort

     
  • Roberto Galoppini 9:44 am on May 11, 2007 Permalink | Reply  

    Open Source Business Intelligence: Seth Grimes 

    Seth Grimes, a consultant specialized in large-analytic computing system, who in 2003 was engaged by Pentaho for market-positioning, few days ago stepped by Rome to present a course, entitled Open Source for the Enterprise.

    Seth a couple of weeks in advance wrote me an email to get in touch, and last sunday we meet to talk about the open source market, business intelligence and related stuff, as follows.

    Seth, how do you spend your day?

    Like you and many others I know, I have a fork in several pies. I spend about 40% of my time doing hands-on work relating to management, analysis, and dissemination of government and marketing statistics. Another 40% of my time I spend on IT strategy consulting, focusing on business intelligence and text-analytics technologies. The remaining 20% of my work is writing, presenting, and teaching — same topics, a variety of audiences — my Rome class on Open Source for the Enterprise, the Amsterdam Text Analytics Summit the week before, and so on.

    Are you deeply into Open Source?

    I’m not an open source specialist. I work at the applications layer, and I’ve found over the years that open source is often the best option measured by a combination of capabilities, ease of introduction and use, and cost. I’ve been using Python since the mid-’90s and Linux, MySQL, PHP almost as long. Over the years, I have become a fan of Apache, Mozilla, OpenOffice, and a slew of other Web and end-users tools.

    I suppose that my predisposition to open-source was helped along by my use of the Internet. Nothing unique there: the Net in earlier days was about connecting and sharing, a natural for those who are community minded. I think I first used Network News (Usenet) and sent my first international e-mail over Bitnet in 1984, and starting in the late ’80s, I was an Internet (and then Web) evangelist at a series of organizations where I was employed. But I actually trace my involvement in OSS — in commercial OSS much earlier.

    I first learned to program in high school in the mid-’70s. We wrote Basic code that was interpreted, not compiled, so the source code was exposed. Time-sharing users had access to program libraries: utilities, applications, games, etc. I spent many hours playing a Star Trek inspired space wars game — this was dial-in on a 110 baud/10 CPS teletype with an acoustic-coupler modem — and I coded a slew of enhancements and improvements. The commercial part: my friend Mitch and I went to Star Trek conventions in New York in ’75 and ’76, and the second year there I brought listings of my modified code and even a couple of copies punched out on paper tape, and I sold a couple to one of the exhibitors there. I think I got $10 each.

    Tell us something about Pentaho, and Open Source BI.

    Given my BI interest, I first surveyed open-source options back in 2002. I got a chance to use some of the software for real work starting in late 2004. I was hired to introduce BI at a Washington DC membership association, which had very limited in-house IT skills because all their applications — management of membership, bookstore and software sales, meetings, knowledge communities, continuing education — was hosted. In keeping with their modus operandi, the organization budgeted lots of money for consulting and nothing for software. So I set them up with MySQL, Mondrian OLAP, and JPivot for JSP interfaces, and I did my data work with Python. In retrospect, we should have spent more effort building a BI culture, figuring out how to incorporate analytics in everyday operations. The system funtioned well enough technically; acceptance obstacles had nothing to do with open/closed source software origins.

    That said, it OSBI of the era — and I think this is still largely true — was technology for Java developers. It took a lot of work to craft end-user applications. I wrote about this situation just a few months ago.
    OSBI is evolving. There are suite alternatives from a variety of companies with similar capabilities and but a variety of sponsor business models. I’ll probably write about some of them — Pentaho, JasperSoft, SpagoBI, OpenI, Palo Server — soon.

    May be at Gartner are too busy playing the Magic Quadrant game to notice that things are changing?

    Thank you Seth, and please keep us updated!

    Technorati Tags: Business Intelligence, Commercial Open Source, Seth, Pentaho

     
    • Truster 9:54 am on September 9, 2008 Permalink

      Thanks for the post and the interesting interview you had with Seth. It might change the way I look at the Internet: I did not know it started up that early. And it reminded me the time when most people did not have access to the internet; my first browsing a few years ago.

      But the purpose of this comment is not to talk about myself but to ask a question about OSBI and certain programs I have to choose. As written in the post, I have looked at applications you write about and others. So far I am pretty fond of two programs: Talend and Pentaho.

      It is difficult to make a choice when it comes to the performance, the compatibility and the components of the software. But a difference can be made by comparing the GUI which might be more user-friendly with Talend Open Studio: I especially like the tmap component in Talend Open Studio, a really good way to get a graphical and functional view of integration processes. The tool also has a good debugging system and an active community able to help you. Have some of you tried it out?

    • Roberto Galoppini 5:44 pm on September 9, 2008 Permalink

      I have just asked Seth, but unfortunately he is not a Talend Open Studio user.
      Googling around there are few free resources available comparing the two applications, at the end of the day choosing the “right” application is time consuming (what I call “the cost of free”).

      Keep us updated if you want, and happy hacking!

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