“Open Core is the New Dual Licensing Model” is the last of a chain of interesting posts against or in favor of open core, coming from different realm of experience: the analyst guy Stephen O’Grady, the free software evangelist Simon Phipps, the hacker Brian Aker and last but not least the entrepreneur MÃ¥rten Mickos.
Let’s dig now deeper into what is open core to business, and why it is not a business model. (More …)
Packt – the UK publishing company specialized in books on software running yearly the open source CMS award – published “Funambol Mobile Open Source“, the first ever book on Funambol server.
Stefano Fornari, CTO and co-founder of Funambol, wrote a book explaining step-by-step how to install and get started with Funambol (have a look at the Funambol mail sample chapter to get an idea). Either if you are a geek or simply interested in mobile technology, this book provides you with all necessary information about Funambol architecture, how to provide push e-mail and synchronization services or even how to develop extensions on your own.
Despite both the author and the reviewer, Alberto Falossi, are Italians, the book is written in English.
Funambol just announced the availability of Funambol v8, a redesigned AJAX version of the MyFUNAMBOL web portal, a proprietary product tailored for carriers based on their open source piece of software.
The differences between Funambol community and carriers’ editions is key to understand Funambol business model. Knowing the importance of external contributions I asked Stefano Maffulli, Funambol Community Manager, to tell me about how  he passed the message to the Funambol community.
Open innovation is taking over in many areas, and open source plays an important role especially in software sequential innovation, where each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors. Foremost, for the most of us before anything else software (open source included) is a tool towards a goal.
Hi Roberto,
I think your comment about “standing on the shoulder of giants” is a really good one. A lot of people just think that an open source solution is a cheaper alternative. In fact, though, the greatest value of open source is the accumulated knowledge from all the users and developers on how software SHOULD be built (and also SHOULD NOT 🙂 ). This becomes a very valuable template for companies who want to build and extend a product/service based on open source software.
Hi Si,
good to hear back from you. I think the experience you gained with Opentaps in this respect might be enlightening for others. Let me know if you are open to tell your story, I’d be glad to write about it.
Is there a blueprint/roadmap for newbies to follow?
Funambol and JAJAH, the global IP communications company, today announced the world premiere of the new Go JAJAH service, to be launched exclusively in Italy.
The new service automatically updates a mobile phone address book, creating a local number for each international number, allowing callers to make international calls at local rates.
On my way back from the Open Source Think Tank I met my friend Fabrizio Capobianco at his office in Reedwood city, and he took the chance to show me his new MobileWe portal, the Funambol’s version of Apple’s MobileMe.
Funambol business model has always intrigued me, and I asked Fabrizio more about how Funambol manages the difference between the community edition and the carrier edition.
Thank you for your Tweet, Roberto. Just read this blog a moment ago and at first tried to respond by Twitter, then considered email, but then realized might as well respond here.
Wonderful post, Roberto. Yes, I believe Fabrizio Capobianco is the farthest along of anyone I am aware of in the dynamics of commercial open source. Fabrizio is clearly a pioneer of the Open Core Licensing business model as I articulated in August 2008 on my blog. Perhaps he invented it? (I simply coined the term and articulated a basic definition.) I am admittedly fuzzy on the history of some business models and vendors in 2000-2005. At the time of my first open core blog, I did not include AGPL in hopes of being more inclusive, but I added it in my second blog on the topic as I realized the point it addresses is unavoidable. Fabrizio had already been a long proponent of AGPL.
And Funambol’s example brings a good reason as to why copyright ownership is important in Open-Core: Funambol was able to create a unique license to accomodate his correct concerns around GPL v2 (not sure if Funambol used GPL v2 at one time? Anyway, he created the Honest Public License to include a sort of Affero clause) and then switch to AGPL when it came out – license switching is not something you can do without copyright ownerships or some sort of major control. I plan a blog to expand upon the further benefits of copyright ownership.
I believe Fabrizio’s segmentation of features by user type is one great way – and works beautifully in Funambol’s space, but I am not sure it as clear for every other segment as it is for Funambol’s division of community/enterprise and mobile carriers. Consider CRM, RDBMS, ETL, EAI, BI, etc. I would love your and Fabrizio’s thoughts on that – what do you see as the “separate kinds of users” in the corporate world? Seems fuzzy to me. Although it is true, to paraphrase Marten Mickos’ characterization, that some users will always have more time than money (“community) and others will have more money than time (“enterprise”), especially now during this poor economy I think there are more enterprises with limited budgets that would use community editions “for now” and then upgrade later to commercial versions with more features.
I am also curious of your and Fabrizio’s thoughts on the use of visible code in the commercial/carrier license? Is it done? beneficial? Not a requirement?
Ultimately, I agree with a key point of your post:
“Open source core is not bad or good per se, as far as the name confusion is resolved in favor of customers. ”
Yes, the key to any successful model is delivering value to users (both in open source and commercial editions.)
Re: open core business models. I don’t think that’s anything new, we were proposing those kinds of models to client in 2003. And I don’t think we were the first.
What is becoming clear is that most open source-based companies will have revenue from a variety of sources, each one of which will have it’s own business model. And the mix of revenue streams will be different for each company and it will change over time. Adaptability is the key thing, really.
Chris.
Hi Andrew, ciao Chris.
I like the issues you’re raising Andrew, especially about segmentation.
Talking about OpenOffice.org, just to make an example, I see a (potential) clear distinction between consumers and enterprises.
While individuals basically need a free (as in beer) office suite, medium-to-large enterprises have different needs, included support for packaged-services to migrate macros, etc. Often isn’t just matter of time, at least if you have to manage risks (and in similar migrations you have to, indeed!).
So said, I agree that every situation (package, and the product around it) is different, and how wisely says Chris you need to be flexible, time matters!
One of the key things that most OSS people don’t realize is that no middle manager in a large organization will risk his job on a piece of open source. Yes, community support may be good, but you still need resources capable of tapping into that. Often, it’s just easier to pay OpenLogic or someone else for that support.
I think this may change in the future as we see more open source being created and supported by end-user companies. It really hasn’t happened yet, at least not at the enterprise level, but I’ve heard rumors.
Chris
I think that Carol Izzo explained it clearly at the think tank CIO panel: mitigating risks is definitely a major issue, no doubt. While in US people might ask Open Logic, here in Europe the one-stop shop is the system integrator, as also Larry made it clear.
So said, while medium-to-large companies are already starting to enjoy open source self-sufficiency, I can hardly see smaller ones going that way.
As usual, customers are always willing to pay for value, but vendors need to deeply understand their core value propositions.
Hi Andrew,
thanks for asking my opinion about how can the Funambol model be made general. I actually have a presentation at OSBC about it next week (10:30 am on the 25th), which is going to be very similar to the keynote I gave at the World Computer Congress (linked here: http://www.slideshare.net/fabricapo/world-computer-congress-keynote-presentation).
The gist is: open source for deployment, commercial for hosted. Matches with Marten comment about people that have more time than money (they download and deploy in house), and those that have more money than time (they buy the hosted version). And it fits with the SaaS shift, plus totally solves the separation of communities: they self-select themselves, which is the best because you do not have to do it. No tension. No tight-rope walking.
Happy to discuss it live at OSBC.
Cheers,
fabrizio
Hello Roberto,
your article is very positive at the high level, but my personal experience maintaining a Funambol server (free version) is rather rough.
This especially because I have serious difficulties accessing the community handling the “free” version, http://www.forge.funambol.org. I would be interested to understand how Funambol fans out expenses and QoS among the various layers of its products, including which part remains to handle the “free” users.
Cheers, xavier
Hi Xavier,
what kind of problems do you have in accessing the free open source version? I believe the code is now hosted at SourceForge, not sure this is your actual problem, though.
Volantis Systems few days ago announced the availability of Volantis Mobility Server Community Edition version 5.1. The new release aims at bringing the power of Web 2.0 to the mobile world, including optimizations for the iPhone.
Volantis Mobility Server was released under the GPLv3 almost one year ago, so I asked Mark Watson, Volantis Systems CEO, about how things are going, and how going open source helped.
Hi Roberto Galoppini,
I would like to know the requirement for Volantis Mobility Server for creating Desktop Applications….
I would be happy if you could help me out with this situation!!!!!!!!
Apparently now Volantis Mobility Server is called AMP Web Server, check it out at Antenna website.
Ya I checked that site,there is no link for downloading AMP web server….can you send me the link for download..
Check again, it is on that page (you need to register, though).
thanks!!!!!!!!!
but I am facing problem in the third step, i.e
“3.2. Put ‘build’ script on your PATH environment variable”
I am unable to do this step..please help me out..
Did you go through the documentation? In case of problems send them feedback.
Funambol – the Mobile Open Source company – few months ago started looking for a community manager, as I learned from Fabrizio Capobianco while he was in Rome to join the VentureCamp.
A couple of days later I got a phone call from my friend and fellow blogger Stefano Maffulli, asking me for Fabrizio’s email. Below the full story.
Roberto’s blog has been a kind of a Monster: a good daily read but also a way to extend the reach of a social network. When I pitched my CV to Fabrizio (Funambol’s CEO) I learned that the selection process had been going on for a while already and other candidates were being evaluated. Nonetheless I was invited to speak with Hal Steger, Funambol’s VP Marketing: I liked his attitude and he liked my multidisciplinary background (architecture, technology and the upcoming MBA). Funambol has a balanced mix of the good hacker’s culture I love and the necessary strength on financial and marketing management, something that I want to learn (and have been missing in my past work experiences).
It wasn’t a long shot after all. It will be fun to work with Funambol’s growing community and the company.
Architect Stefano Maffulli at work by Stefano Maffulli
I am glad that the time I spent sometimes collecting open positions within open source firms and jobs was of some help. Few months ago I also started to display a widget on each job posted by considerati, that I happened to get in touch with via openbusiness, but unfortunately such distributed job site had a limited success.
Stefano, are you already thinking of how to get off the best from programs like Code Sniper and Phone Sniper?
We have some ideas on what has to be improved to help Funambol’s community but we are also open to suggestions. For example, our software is in many places and it’s not easy for newcomers to find what they are looking for. I’m interested in hearing experiences of Funambol’s users with the software, the mailing lists, the repository and the company: they can come to me and I’ll help if at all possible.
Funambol’s architecture of participation welcomes small contributions, allowing individuals to more easily participate, I am looking forward to ask Stefano how is he doing in six months from now.
For the time being I wish him and Funambol all the best!
Read Stefano Maffulli‘s full profile on Linkedin.
Roberto Galoppini, 
Xavier Giannakopoulos, 
Ali, and
Stefano Maffulli 10:28 pm on July 3, 2010 Permalink
Funambol is not Open Core as many people intend it. The whole open source package is feature complete and useful in enterprise as is, while only the portal (and some API that are used by it) of Funambol Carrier Edition is not open source. Funny enough, none of the customers have bought it either (see the list http://www.funambol.com/solutions/mobilesyncservices.php).