One of the issues that has arisen from the ongoing debate about the open core licensing strategy is the continuing confusion about open core compared to the use of open source components in a larger proprietary product – such as IBM’s use of Apache within WebSphere.

To some people there is no difference between the two (since they both result in products that make use of open source but are not open source), however it is clear to me that while the end result might be the same these are very different strategies that involve different approaches to engaging with open source communities/projects.

While open core has a clear definition there is no agreed term or definition for the latter category.

Over the years we have used a variety of terms to describe it, including “open and closed”, “embedded open source”, “open inside” and “open complement”, while Jack Repenning has referred to it as “open infrastructure”.

Our next categorization of open source-related business strategies is still a work in progress but the current thinking is as follows:

• There are a variety of complementary strategies employed by vendors to generate revenue from open source software indirectly.

• The simplest of these is open complement which is selling other products and services that are related to but separate from, and not reliant upon, the open source project.

• Then there is encouraging open source development on top of proprietary products to retain develop interest in that product. This is known as open edge.

• Then there is using open source software to create a platform for the provision of SaaS or cloud or social networking services (for example), which I am referring to as open platform.

• Then there is using open source components as building blocks for a larger proprietary software product, which I am calling an open foundation licensing strategy.

(This categorization is a work in progress, we welcome and encourage any feedback)

Open core and open foundation have different evolutionary lineages: open core is a variation on dual licensing as practiced by the likes of MySQL and Sleepycat that also borrows heavily on the value-added subscription model as practiced by Red Hat and JBoss. Meanwhile open foundation has its roots in the commercialization of BSD, which pre-dates the concepts of open source and free software, as well as Apache.

From a practical perspective, the easiest way to think of the distinction between open core and open foundation is via an example:

PostgreSQL is an independent, community-developed open source project. EnterpriseDB offers extensions to the PostgreSQL core, such as Oracle-compatibility, in the form of Postgres Plus Advanced Server.

PostgreSQL has also been used by many other vendors to create commercial products. For example Greenplum used PostgreSQL as the foundation of its Greenplum Database (for other examples see this post). This allowed the company to build on proven database technology and avoid reinventing the wheel, but it also involved the creation of an entirely new product, rather than extensions to an open source project (the company initially actually started a new project, Bizgres, and created extensions to that but Bizgres was last seen in August 2008).

So while open core involves offering proprietary extensions targeted at a segment of the open source project user base, open foundation involves using open source software to create entirely new products, targeted at a different user base.

The example used above highlights three important points to consider when comparing open core and open foundation strategies:

1/ While open core is most readily associated with vendor-controlled projects it can also be used as a strategy to monetize community-controlled projects.

2/ Open core strategies can be used in conjunction with complementary strategies. In the Greenplum example the company’s relationship with Bizgres was open core, while the relationship with PostgreSQL was open foundation. Similarly there is an open core relationship between Actuate’s BIRT products and the Eclipse BIRT project, and an open complement relationship between Actuate 10 and the Eclipse BIRT project. Meanwhile there is an open core relationship between Day Software’s CRX content repository and the Apache Jackrabbit and Sling projects, and a open foundation relationship between CQ5 and Jackrabbit, Felix and Sling – as well as the numerous other Apache projects that Day contributes to.

3/ Open core and open foundation are licensing strategies used as part of a larger business strategy for engaging with and commercializing open source software, which highlights the futility in trying to pigeon-hole companies as “open core vendors” or “open source vendors”.

Finally it is worth thinking about the different tensions that the open core and open foundation strategies create with their respective communities.

As Jorg Janke notes, “looking for an income stream as an open source vendor always results in some sort of conflict with the community. So, you have to pick the community you want to ‘offend’.”

With a vendor-controlled open core strategy the community is a user community, and as we have previously discussed the conflict is in deciding what features belong in the core and what features don’t.

With an open foundation strategy the community is the open source project developer community, and the conflict lies in deciding what features and resources to contribute to that project.

A community-controlled open core strategy arguable results in conflict with both the user and developer communities, although since the vendor does not own or control the project the relationship is much more comparable to the open foundation strategy.

We will be writing more about other strategies for generating revenue from open source software, in a follow-up to our Open Source is Not a Business Model report, which is due to be published latter this year. It will provide more context for the economic motivators and issues involved in the various models, as well as updated research on which vendors are following which strategies, and why, as well as a survey to uncover what software users make of it all. The report will be freely available to CAOS subscribers. For more details of the CAOS research practice, and to apply for trial access, click here.

New projects. Old arguments. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

New projects
# Gemini Mobile Technologies released Hibari, a new open source non-relational database for big data.

# Lockheed Martin launched the Eureka Streams open source project for enterprise social networking.

# Sony Pictures Imageworks expanded its open source initiative with the release of OpenColorIO.

Old arguments
# Kirk Wylie discussed the importance of natural split in open core , OpenGamma’s approach.

# Alan Shimel offered 10 commandments for open core. Mostly sensible, #6 will ruffle some feathers though.

# Simon Phipps maintained that open source does not need “monetising”.

# Carlo Daffara discussed property and efficiency as the basis of OSS business models.

# Jorg Janke continued his discussion of various open source business strategies in relation to Compiere.

# Henrik Ingo explained what you can do to help get rid of open core if you are so inclined.

# dotCMS went open core with the release of version 1.9.

# IBM faces EU antitrust investigation linked to TurboHercules complaint.

# The FT reported that IBM is blaming Microsoft for the EU investigation into its mainframe business practices.

# TechDirt explained how WordPress and Thesis have settled their differences over themes and the GPL.

The best of the rest
# Novell introduced SUSE Gallery for publishing and sharing Linux-based appliances.

# VoltDB released version 1.1 of its open source database.

# EnterpriseDB released Postgres Plus Advanced Server 8.4 and added Rob Bearden to its board.

# SAP has adopted Black Duck’s Suite to manage the use of open source software in its software development process.

# Oracle provided details of the MySQL Sunday event at Oracle Open World.

# SearchEnterpriseLinux reported that Ubuntu is gaining ground as a data center OS at the expense of SUSE Linux.

# Physorg.com explained how Georgia Institute of Technology researchers are helping the US military benefit from OSS.

# GENIVI Allianced has reportedly opted for MeeGo for its in-vehicle infotainment platform.

Topics for this podcast:

*OSCON conference highlights and impressions
*Rackspace and NASA open source more of cloud computing
*Open core debate du jour
*Open source motors Rhomobile’s multi-smartphone development software

iTunes or direct download (27:39, 7.6MB)

The post-OSCON lull. In alphabetical order.

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# Canonical launched a virtual appliance of IBM’s DB2 Express-C software running on the Ubuntu cloud platform.

# Carlo Daffara discussed the relationship between open core, dual licensing and contributions.

# ForgeRock released OpenAM 9.5, the first community-sourced release of the OpenAM access management software.

# Ignacio M. Llorente provided an overview of the OpenNebula project, in the context of OpenStack.

# Kaltura launched version 2.0 of Its on-prem Community Edition open source video platform.

# Nuxeo announced Nuxeo Correspondence Management, a new application built with Nuxeo Case Management Framework.

# Open Source for America has grown its membership from 70 to 1,700 in its first year.

# Outerthought released a proof of concept for Lily, a content repository that combines Apache Hbase and Solr.

# Sauce Labs announced Sauce OnDemand, enabling cross-browser testing of Adobe Flex and Flash in the cloud.

# Savio Rodrigues explained why OpenStack will not kill open core.

# SugarCRM announced it will release open source functional and performance testing tools for web-enabled apps.

# Terracotta announced Ehcache 2.2, offering over a terabyte of data in a single cache.

# The Apache Software Foundation announced Apache FOP Version 1.0.

# The open core issue (part two) How the open core strategy works, and how it doesn’t.

In the first part of this post I discussed the underlying division that drives the debate about open core, and the futility of arguing about what constitutes an “open source company” without any relevant definition.

Since then Monty Widenius has proposed a definition that would exclude any company that does not produce open source software (including open source support providers) and any company that does not provide access to 100% of its code (which would often exclude Red Hat as it moves to open source acquired code).

In the meantime others have declared that there is no such thing as an open source company and decided instead to discourage use of the term altogether. This is the logical conclusion of the argument that Open Source is Not a Business Model, and while this seems like a nuclear option, it does at least mean that we can hopefully avoid repeated arguments about whether company X is an open source company or not.

Since we seem to be able to move on from the theoretical argument about whether vendors with open core strategies are open source or not, it is an opportune moment to turn the debate towards a more practical assessment of the open core strategy and its strengths and weaknesses.

This second blog post turns attention to the open core strategy itself and examines some of the common criticisms. Some of them are valid, some exaggerated, and some are misunderstandings. If the debate is to progress it is important to stop fixating on issues that fit in the latter two categories and focus on those that fit in the first.

There are plenty of criticisms to choose from, and this is a complicated subject, so this is a long post. I have tried to cover all the major issues in one go in order to give a thorough representation of my views on the subject.

For an overview of the open core model itself and how it compares to other strategies for generating revenue see this post. With that in mind (deep breath) here goes:

Crippleware
Since open core relies on generating revenue from proprietary extensions to an open source core it is often asserted that the open source core will be crippled in some way to ensure that users opt for the proprietary version.

That is like claiming that open source support providers deliberately make open source projects difficult to work with in order to sell more support contracts.

Any strategy that worked like that would be flawed. That is why the open core strategy does not work that way.

Like the open source support strategy, open core relies on having a ubiquitous, fully functional, open source project.

Instead of selling support, vendors with open core strategies sell value-added features that are designed to be of value to paying customers. Of course the strategy relies on segmenting the audience for the product and delivering features that would be appropriate to each.

As Simon Phipps wrote:

“The community edition is used by a group of people who have the time and skills to deploy by themselves and who have no need of the many differences of the commercial versions. The commercial versions are feature-rich and effectively lock their users into a traditional commercial ISV relationship with the vendor.”

I’m sure vendors with open core strategies would dispute the reference to lock-in, but Simon’s comment makes it clear that there are two audiences for two separate products.

This distinction is important in understanding how Likewise Software can claim that customers drive open core: “The added functionality in Enterprise benefits a very specific segment of our community, and we work closely with our enterprise customers to ensure we provide value here.”

The point is that paying customers, as opposed to open source users, see value in the proprietary features and are prepared to buy the product. The strategy will fail if open source users also see value in those features but are denied them, or are forced to pay to adopt them.

The phrase “bait and switch” is often used to criticize the open core approach (indeed the term open core was promoted specifically to provide an alternative vocabulary to bait and switch) and suggests that users are either tricked or forced into taking the proprietary features. Clearly any strategy that relies on misleading potential customers is going to be short-lived.

It is true that some vendors are not great at communicating the differences between the open source core and the proprietary version in the past, but our previous transparency test indicated that they have got a lot better in that regard.

To some extent this is as a result of pressure from open source advocates. More than that though, I believe, it is the result of vendors realizing that a successfully executed open core strategy relies on transparency and in not attempting to sell anything to community users (and vastly improving the quality of their marketing communication).

While vendors with open core strategies have in the past been guilty of treating the community a sales pipeline, we have observed that the next generation of start-ups has learned that the best way to encourage a frictionless relationship between a vendor and its community is not to attempt to “convert” users at all.

It goes without saying that forcing users to use the proprietary extensions is going to be flawed – the open core strategy depends on keeping both users and paying customers happy, independently.

Managing that is not easy, as our research has confirmed. As previously noted, our CAOS report into how open source changes approaches to sales and marketing included a few choice quotes from vendors with open core strategies on its challenge:

“Number one [challenge] is differentiation between core and commercial.”

Clearly, the difficulty with open core is in deciding what features to put in which version, and what proportion of a company’s engineering effort should be focused on the open source project.

“We can compete with ourselves; i.e., our commercial product may not be purchased because our open source/core product contains sufficient functionality to solve customer problems.”

It is a significant challenge and some vendors have been better at it than others but it does not follow that because this challenge exists then the core must be crippleware. Indeed the success of the strategy depends on it not being crippleware.

“Continuing to maintain the right balance of functionality between the freely downloadable open core and the commercial extensions is both art and science. It’s critical to get that right so the model continues to grow and advance.”

Are there some open core open source projects that are lacking in quality? Of course, but that doesn’t mean that all open core open source projects are crippleware. There are some pretty crappy “fully functional” community-developed open source projects – that does not mean the community development model is flawed.

Half a product
In response to Larry Augustin’s statement that “Well over half of our engineering effort produces code that is released under an OSI approved license”, Tarus Balog commented:

“Well over half? Well, that’s pretty good, but is open source code something that can be divided? Can I say “here is the product, but you only get to use half of it under an open source license”. Who decides which half? If I look at it in binary, do I just get to use the ones or just the zeroes?”

I am assuming Tarus is deliberately misunderstanding Larry’s statement in order to be facetious/mischievous (the last line certainly suggests so) but the statement highlights another misconception of the open core strategy – that the vendor starts with a fully-featured product and then divides it into the basic core (open source) functionality and the value-added (proprietary) extensions.

As we have already stated, however, in order for the strategy to work the core project must be widely adopted. For that to happen it needs to be a complete project. As Jack Repenning notes:

“if the open parts accomplish their goal fully and well… then the open-source product deserves to be assessed on its own terms. If there are also commercially licensed, or even proprietary/closed things associated with it that together accomplish some larger goal, that’s a different product, not a betrayal of the open one.”

The biggest issue that open core has, in my opinion, is that it attempts to bypass Clayton Christensen’s law of Conservation of Attractive Profits, which states that “When attractive profits disappear at one stage in the value chain because a product becomes modular and commoditized, the opportunity to earn attractive profits with proprietary products will usually emerge at an adjacent stage.”

It is this law that explains why it is difficult for open source support vendors to generate significant profits (since they have commoditized their own stage of the value chain). The same is true ofvendors with open core strategies, except that that are attempting to commoditize only a portion of their value chain – the core functionality offered by the open source version, while betting that their value added extensions are sufficiently differentiated to retain the ability to generate profits.

Christensen’s law dictates that it will always be easier to generate profit at an adjacent stage. Or, as Matt Asay explains in the context of the OpenStacks project: “The reason OpenStack may be a big winner is that Rackspace doesn’t need OpenStack to make money. At least, not directly.”

Community matters
Cloudera recently told The 451 Group that 50% of its engineering effort is focused on open source projects (specifically Hadoop and its related projects) with the other half focused on the proprietary capabilities that are delivered in Cloudera Enterprise.

No one would suggest that Apache Hadoop is a limited or crippled project, simply because Cloudera (and IBM, Karmasphere and others) are offering closed-source complementary products.

Of course the difference between Hadoop and SugarCRM community (or many other open source core projects) is that Hadoop is a community-developed project, while in vendor-led open core projects are dominated by a single vendor.

This enables accusations of lock-in and a lack of community contributions to the development process. I’ll address the first issue shortly, but with reference to community development it is undoubtedly true that the majority of vendor-led open core projects do not enjoy the benefits of a collaborative development process.

Carlo Daffara explains how the strategy is a tradeoff between monetization and contributions, noting that “it is simply not possible to get something like Linux or Apache with open core”.

That is true, but then that is also not the aim of open core. Vendor-led open source projects are invariably more focused on creating ubiquitous platform and lowering barriers to adoption than they are on creating ubiquitous platforms for collaborative development.

Not all open source software projects are collaboratively developed. Whether this is a concern is very much a matter of personal opinion – is it enough that software is under and open source license, or does it also have to be developed collaboratively?

It is a problem, of course, if a company actively avoids contributions from elsewhere on the grounds that that doing so would impact their proprietary extensions. Simon Phipps notes that one of the reasons NASA involved itself in the OpenStacks cloud projects was due to frustration with Eucalyptus Systems’ reluctance to accept contributions that competed with its closed extensions.

(UPDATE – Our understanding is that the dispute was not actually about a reluctance to accept the code but a disagreement over the contributor agreement, which is another related problem that I haven’t addressed in the post – UPDATE)

Clearly this highlights a potential problem for vendors with open core strategies, but it is one that actually contradicts the accusation that open core users have no choice but to accept the proprietary extensions. While there is lock-in associated with any software choice, one of the weaknesses of the open core approach is users could decide to fork and/or develop open source versions of the proprietary features.

Similarly, Dana Blankenhorn reports that SplendidCRM has already replicated the user interface delivered in SugarCRM’s paid-for versions and made it available in its own community edition.

It is important to note, however, that while issues related to the community contributions are a symptom of the open core licensing strategy, they are by no means exclusive to open core.

The recent debate about open core was kicked off my this post by former Compiere CEO Jorg Janke about the apparent failure of Compiere’s strategy in putting too much emphasis on the closed extensions (as well as mistakes related to the partnership model).

In a follow-up post Jorg turned his attention to the project’s lack of external contribution. While it is clear that this was an issue that was exacerbated by the open core strategy it is important to note that the development model was dictated by a decision that was taken prior to the open core strategy being adopted.

Similarly the vast majority of the developers of the MySQL database have always been employees of its owner (first MySQL, then Sun and now Oracle). The shift towards open core (and it hasn’t got there yet) came much later than the decisions that prompted the development model.

Development costs
One area in which the lack of community does matter, of course, is in the R&D costs of vendors with open core strategies. The greater a proportion of employees that you have focused on development (of open source or proprietary code) the greater your development costs are going to be. This is undoubtedly a valid criticism of the open core model as the company is failing to benefit from R&D cost savings in terms of both the open source core and closed source extensions.

Arguably, the company is also impacted by higher development and testing costs since the closed source extensions do not benefit from exposure to the open source user community. How significant this additional cost might be depends on the significance of the extensions and the relative size of the community (since the vendor will still go through the traditional alpha/beta testing with its paying customers).

Another cost, arguably, is the loss of quality in the proprietary extensions resulting from the smaller testing group and the lack of open source code review. Again this is a valid criticism, but it is one that belongs in a much larger debate about the relative benefits of open source and proprietary development strategies.

Venture-capitalist tool
Jorg’s initial post also discussed how VC investors had pushed Compiere towards the open core approach, and another criticism is that it is the chosen OSS-related business strategy of VCs. Again this is a valid argument. There is no doubt that VCs are attracted to the open core strategy and have encouraged its wider adoption.

However, it is also worth noting that there are exceptions to the rule. OpenLogic is a VC-backed company that has been vocally critical of open core, while xTuple is a self-funded vendors with an open core strategy (there are other examples).

I would also point out that VCs are also fully aware that for the strategy to be successful it depends on a ubiquitous, full-functional open source core, and that attempts at crippleware will fail.

Lock-in and other problems
Perhaps the most obvious criticism of open core, from an open source perspective, is that it perpetuates the use of proprietary software. Again this is valid, and I have previously covered why I think vendors with open core strategies are limiting their opportunities by focusing on product-led strategies and leaving themselves open to accusations of lock-in.

Again these are really issues for a larger debate about the relative merits of proprietary and open source licensing.

Finally (one hopes) the other major criticism of vendors with open core strategies is that they are misusing the term open source to describe themselves (or as Henrik Ingo put it “So if I don’t call myself ‘open source vendor’, then everything is fine? (yes)”

Assuming the decision to avoid using terms like “open source company” are maintained, this becomes less of an issue, but it is worth noting that the attempts at policing the term have been counter-productive.

The point is this: if you want vendors with open core strategies to refer to themselves as “open core companies” rather than “open source companies” then demonizing the open core strategy is not the way to go about it. Is it any wonder that Larry Augustin does not want SugarCRM to be seen as open core when accusations of crippleware are being thrown around?

Previously, Redmonk’s Stephen O’Grady noted that there is the potential for serious collateral damage in the way the debate about open core licensing is progressing.

Henrik Ingo notes that companies like CollabNet (which is not open core) is “concerned about the negative image now attached to open core and worried that his company would then be suffering from the negative image too.“

There are many ways in which an open core strategy could fail, but that does not mean that all open core strategies will fail. Open core is just the strategy -how you execute that strategy determines whether you succeed or fail.

I agree with CollabNet’s Jack Repenning that the conversation needs to move “a bit towards how to do it right, and away from confrontation”.

That was my aim with these two posts. I am sure there are plenty of people who will disagree with plenty of the things that have been written above. My intention is not to be confrontational but to take a balanced view of the potential problems related to the open core strategy.

We will be writing more about other strategies for generating revenue from open source software, in a follow-up to our Open Source is Not a Business Model report, which is due to be published latter this year. It will provide more context for the economic motivators and issues involved in the various models, as well as updated research on which vendors are following which strategies, and why, as well as a survey to uncover what software users make of it all. The report will be freely available to CAOS subscribers. For more details of the CAOS research practice, and to apply for trial access, click here.

The creation and implications of Openstack. Yet more core. And more.

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OpenStack
# Rackspace announced that it is open sourcing its cloud platform and collaborating with NASA and others on OpenStack.

# Cloudera’s Ed Albanese explained the importance of OpenStack in the relationship between OSS and cloud.

# Matt Asay explained why Rackspace’s open cloud just might work.

Yet more core
# Simon Phipps explored whether OpenStack is, in part, a response to Eucalyptus’s open core approach.

# Simon Phipps on “open source business”.

# Monty Widenius attempted to define “open source company”

# Andrew Oliver offered “a simple declaration about open core”.

# Dave Neary weighed in on the open core debate.

# More on open core from Tarus Balog and Russ Nelson.

# Dana Blankenhorn asked who should pay with open core and examined the paid-free boundary.

Best of the rest
# Puppet Labs raised $5m series B from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

# The European Commission committed 3.3m euro to continue its open source and reusable data projects.

# Kirk Wylie explained why OpenGamma hasn’t released its open source software yet.

# The Open Information Security Foundation announced Suricata 1.0, an open source engine for intrusion detection.

# Zenoss released Zenoss Core 3.

# Likewise Software claimed a record first half.

# Protecode launched version 4 of its code scanning software and open source license management system.

# Heroku is now supporting CouchDB, MongoDB, Membase/Memcached and Redis via the Heroku Add-on System.

# The H reported that individual Symbian devs have formed a cooperative to ensure they are part of the Symbian Foundation.

# The VAR Guy reported that Canonical is lloking for 10 new hosting partners.

# Pentaho estimated that customers have accrued $2bn cumulative savings on license and maintenance costs.

# Nexenta Systems claimed a 351% revenue increase in the first half of 2010.

# MariaDB’s storage engine is now known as Aria.

# Microsoft’s IronPython, IronRuby and Dynamic Language Runtime are now under the Apache 2.0 license.

The open source and cloud computing worlds were simultaneously abuzz with today’s announcement of OpenStack, a new open source cloud computing project that represents roughly two-thirds of Rackspace’s own cloud computing infrastructure, which is now licensed under the Apache License 2.0, with some NASA Nebula, also open source under the Apache 2.0, added in. We believe OpenStack is significant in that it highlights the importance of open source software in cloud computing. We’re currently working on a report with our CloudScape practice that explores how critical open source software is to a majority of cloud computing technology and service providers, including Rackspace.

OpenStack consists of two projects: OpenStack Storage is open source Rackspace Cloud Files, while OpenStack Compute is the open source Rackspace Cloud Servers plus NASA’s Nebula code. Rackspace’s Cloud Sites PaaS service is not being open sourced and is not included in OpenStack. Still, the new open source projecet from Rackspace and NASA, which we cover in a new report (subscribers and trialists), also represents a more pronounced use of and move toward open source software for cloud computing, one that we anticipated and something we expect will continue to involve more vendors and more software.

In talking to both Rackspace and NASA backers of OpenStack, it also becomes apparent that there is significant energy and enthusiasm behind the project, and this highlights another important aspect of open source software and open source in the clouds: the champions. Once again, we see that the people behind the technology are critical, and Rackspace — impressed with NASA’s Nebula and the code — was wise to partner with NASA while the U.S. space agency also gains a proof point for its own open source efforts, which have come a long way in the last five years.

Rackspace is among a number of vendors that report many customers want an open source alternative to proprietary virtualization and cloud computing approaches, but we, along with others, do wonder how many alternatives might be too many? Still, any true open source projects and communities intended to open up cloud computing are good for open source, the industry in general and customers. We see OpenStack as a real and meaningful open source move by Rackspace, which, along with partner NASA, stands to benefit from community and ecosystem growth around their technologies.

Apple has finally responded to the issues with the antenna of its latest iPhone 4, but I can’t help but wonder whether this all could have been prevented if Apple the company and iPhone the product were nearly as open as much of the open source software that runs the popular device?

We often have to state that open source is no silver bullet, panacea or other positive cliche in IT. It takes hard work, investment, support, luck and timing to work, but for all of its challenges, one of open source software’s most significant and overlooked advantages is the typically immediate and exponential enlargement of development and testing.

Successful open source software communities are made up of developers, yes, but increasingly we are seeing the value of users and customers, whether it is code contributions, cash or simply enlarging and enhancing the ecosystem around the software.

An open source software community can also serve as sales funnel — alerting and informing vendors to preferred methods of consumption and direction for the software. Still, we’ve discussed the difficulty of selling to or focusing sales and marketing too narrowly on that same community.

Bottom line and back to Apple — open source software development and open source software itself serve as catalysts for not only open, collaborative and transparent development with more eyes on the code, but also for broader use of the product, so that those most excited about the latest version can give it a spin and report back any bugs they encounter, easily and early.

It does appear the iPhone4 may have gone out the door too fast and without the usual carrier testing, and this may be evidence of the pressures Apple is feeling regarding speed of development given Android’s traction in applications and market share.

This is additionally a case where Google’s beta strategy and the multi-hardware approach of Android make a lot of sense, but I believe this is also an example of how Android and a more open alternative again display advantages.

SugarCRM. Funding for EnterpriseDB and Morphlabs. Even more core. And more

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Bittersweet
# OStatic asked whether SugarCRM has violated open source principles.

# Larry Augustin clarified SugarCRM’s approach to open source and openness.

# Savio Rodrigues advised anyone considering SugarCRM not to get hung-up on source code availability.

Funding round
# EnterpriseDB has reportedly raised $7.5m of a planned $12m round of funding.

# Morphlabs raised $5.5m series B financing from Frontera Group, CSK Venture Capital and AO Capital Partners.

Even more core
# Jack Repenning called for an exploration of the delicate line between “crippleware” and “added value.”

# Likewise Software argued that customers drive open core.

# Stephen Walli explained how the success or failure of an open core model depends on execution.

Best of the rest
# Simon Phipps explained what led the OpenSolaris Governing Board to issue its ultimatum to Oracle.

# A Jaspersoft survey suggested Oracle’s acquisition of Sun may spark resurgence of Java and faster growth of MySQL.

# The Apache Software Foundation announced its new board members.

# Talend grew its customer base by 50% to over 1,500 customers in the first half of 2010, with 450,000 open source users.

# Part two of TEC’s interview with Consona’s CEO about its acquisition of Compiere.

# Are WordPress themes required to use the GPL? Tris Hussey provided an into to the ongoing debate.

# Joyent acquired software virtual server management tools provider Layerboom Systems.

# Opsview released version 3.8 of Opsview Enterprise, claiming data collection performance improvements over Nagios.

# Linux Journal reported that Mandriva’s press release raises more questions than answers.

# Cloudera is building a connector between Netezza’s TwinFin appliance and Cloudera’s Distribution for Hadoop.

# The end of Micosoft’s agreement with the UK NHS provides an opportunity for open source.

# Vodafone Group announced that it will make its location based services software open source.

# SourceForge launched its new forge development platform. Adobe is the first user.

# Glyn Moody published a Q&A with Richard Stallman on .NET, Mono and DotGNU.

# Couchio announced the release of CouchDB 1.0, the Apache NoSQL document database.

# MindTouchlaunched MindTouch 2010, including curation analytics for content and documentation.

# nPulse Technologies delivered its Dragonfly family of open source-based high-speed network sensors.

# A man walks in to a bar… Yves de Montcheuil is in search of a suitable analogy for open source and the cloud.

The debate about the open core licensing strategy continued last week while I was enjoying a week off.

However, like Carlo Daffara, I was unable to keep my mind completely off the topic and as I dug the allotment one afternoon I found myself pondering why it is that the topic continues to be such a controversial issue.

On the face of it the answer is obvious – open core involves the mixing of open source and proprietary licensing strategies as vendors offer an open source core, as well as a closed version with additional extensions, and opponents are concerned that the “open source brand” is tarnished by companies like SugarCRM claiming to be “an open source company”.

I believe the answer is deeper than that, however. The open core strategy highlights many of the major issues that divide attitudes when it comes to software licensing and development. Alongside “open vs closed” it also triggers discussions around “control vs community”, “customers vs users”, “pragmatism vs idealism”, “freedom vs lock-in”, “venture capital vs self-funding” and “product vs service”, among other things.

I intend to address many of those issues in the second part of this post, and the issue of “open source companies” below, but first I wanted to turn attention to what, for me, is the underlying division highlighted by open core: whether free and open source software (and its associated software freedoms) is considered a means to an end, or an end in itself.

During the ongoing debate before my week off Henrik Ingo stated “open core goes against the values of the open source community”.

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. Or, to put it another way: I think it is undoubtedly true if you consider FOSS to be an end in itself but not if you consider FOSS to be a means to an end – for example, if you are establishing or maintaining a VC-backed/public software company, in which case the end is likely to be maximizing profit through lowering software development costs in the case of an open complement strategy (see Motorola, below) or barriers to adoption, in the case of the open core strategy.

Neither position is truly representative of the values of the open source community. But the difference between the two is at the heart of the debate about open core and, more broadly, the use of open source software in the creation of closed products.

A great example of this tension was provided by Bradley M Kuhn this morning as he criticised Motorola’s “opposition to software freedom” based on its decision not to deliver unlocked Android phones for system development and re-flashing, a decision that it is perfectly entitled to take while remaining in compliance with the relevant licenses.

The difference between Motorola and many vendors with open core strategies, of course, is that Motorola doesn’t claim to be an “open source company”, which brings us back to the issue of the “open source brand”.

If you believe open source to be an end in itself then that open source brand is something to be protected, whereas if you believe open source is a means to an end then there is no open source brand to protect – just a description of a set of licenses that meet certain conditions.

That description, the Open Source Definition, is the closest thing we have to an articulation of the values of the open source community but – as I have previously noted – it is a functional document that is concerned only with licenses, not the business strategies associated with how they are used. It is certainly not a definition of an open source company.

As a result people on both sides are able to apply their own values to their interpretation of the OSD in the context of open source-related business strategies. Henrik Ingo is therefore justified when he writes “open core does not qualify as open source, as per the definition. It is closed source. It is the opposite of open source” as is Mark Radcliffe when he writes “the open core model does not violate the Open Source Definition, either literally or in spirit.”

It could be argued that Mark’s opinion carries a little more weight than others when it comes to the Open Source Definition, although it should be noted that he was providing his own personal opinion, rather than that of the General Counsel of the Open Source Initiative.

This is why I described the debate around open core as tedious and futile, because unless personal interpretation is removed from the equation there is no hope of resolution. (Incidentally, anyone who thinks there is an agreed definition of “open source” should probably avoid the comments on this Slashdot post discussing SugarCRM). In short, if you want to police the term “open source company” then you have to have a definition for it first.

An “open source company definition” was adopted by the OSI as a standard definition for an open source company In August 2009, although the definition itself has never been published, while in October last year Simon Phipps proposed building a Scorecard for Open Source that wold also have taken the conversation forward, but nothing much has been heard of that since.

That is why I welcomed Henrik Ingo’s list of the business practices he believes are unacceptable, because it at least it attempts to progress the conversation. At this stage, of course, Henrik’s list is still Henrik’s list, and a matter of personal opinion. The hard part will be reaching some sort of consensus on acceptability. Then there is the matter of how it could be enforced, and by whom.

There are signals of continued problems and dysfunction — namely lack of support, organization and communication — in the OpenSolaris community. This follows on a deterioration of the OS leadership and support since Oracle bought Sun Microsystems, including the elimination of OpenSolaris CDs, one of the things that made the open source version of Solaris more like Linux.

We had speculated on the fate of Sun open source software under Oracle and while we acknowledged Oracle’s participation in, contribution and commitment to and opportunity from open source software, we questioned its appreciation of open source software communities beyond code and customers. It appears the OpenSolaris community and thus the OS itself, which we believe is key to advancing development of the more popular, proprietary cousin Solaris — are not a priority for Oracle.

The same cannot be said for all open source from Sun, and there’s a lot of it, now at Oracle. Amid the struggles of the OpenSolaris community, one of the other open source keystones from Sun, MySQL, seems to be doing well, despite persisting claims Oracle purchased Sun and MySQL simply to keep it from competing with Oracle database products. According to a Jaspersoft survey of customers/developers, there is a lack of awareness or concern of Oracle’s involvement in MySQL (59 percent were not aware Oracle reorganized and established a separate MySQL business unit apart from Oracle’s traditional RDBMS business …). Another 43% of Jaspersoft’s respondents said MySQL development and innovation would improve under Oracle.

The Jaspersoft survey found even more love for Java under Oracle, with 80 percent of respondents indicating they believe the Java process will improve or stay the same under Oracle. The related GlassFish application server also appears to be healthy with both community and commercial versions recently released.

The OpenOffice community appears also to be continuing forward supported and unfettered by Oracle (perhaps because it was typically fettered by Sun?), but it may also me failing to fully seize the opportunity.

It has also been interesting to see how Sun’s cloud computing technology has helped give Oracle new love for the term and the market.

There are a number of key open source projects and pieces from Sun, those listed above as well as many others, that may be on the line right now (or may have already been branded ’stay’ or ’stop’). We will be watching to see how Sun’s open source continues to shine or to set at Oracle.

More core. Open source mapping. Sugar 6. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

More core: the open core debate continues (chronologically)
# Groklaw: Open Core and the OSI
# Giuseppe Maxia: Open to the core – The pragmatic freedom
# Henrik Ingo: If you’re selling to your community… you’ve got it backwards.
# Mark Radcliffe: Open Core Debate: Avoiding the Law of Unintended Consequences
# Savio Rodriques: Afraid of open core lock-in? Should you be?
# Carlo Dafarra: An on-vacation post on Open core
# Henrik Ingo: So if I don’t call myself ‘open source vendor’, then everything is fine? (yes)
# Jay Lyman: Do customers want open core?
# Miriam Tuerk: Open Core is Critical to the Future Success of Open Source
# Stephen Walli: Software Freedom, Open Source Software, and Jane Jacobs.

Open source mapping
# MapQuest announced plans to embrace open-source mapping.

# ESRI released an open source add-on for ArcGIS 10 allowing users to contribute data to OpenStreetMap.

# ESRI is also launching Linux-based ArcGIS Server 10 systems via a partnership with Cutting Edge Networked Storage.

The best of the rest
# SugarCRM announced the launch of Sugar 6, with a focus on ease of use, flexibility and openness.

# Monty Widenius is appealing against the EC’s decision to clear Oracle’s acquisition of Sun.

# The SCO Group appealed. Again.

# An interview with Consona’s CEO about Compiere.

# Jorg Janke discussed how Compiere’s approach to development and licensing impacted its community contributions.

# IBM and the EU partnered on open source projects designed to make government run more smoothly.

# OpenGamma emerged from stealth mode.

# The H reported that the OpenSolaris governing board is threatening dissolution.

# Alfresco Enterprise Edition 3.3 is now certified on Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Server Edition.

# Widespread adoption of open source and expanding M&A activity continued to drive growth for Black Duck.

# Calpont updated its InfiniDB Enterprise Edition analytic database to version 1.5.

# An interview with the CIO of the National Institute of Food and Agriculture on attitudes to and adoption of OSS.

# MuleSoft announced the availability of Tcat Server 6 R3, based on Apache Tomcat.

# Cycle Computing’s CycleCloud now supports access to Amazon EC2’s Cluster Compute Instances.

# Alfresco launched the Alfresco Community Committer Program.

# Todd Lipcon discussed Cloudera’s support for HBase.

# A comparison of Apache Cassandra and Apache HBase database projects.

# Nagios Enterprises launched Nagios XI.

# nSyte Software launched nQuire, a SaaS tool for auditing for inadvertent use of open source software.

# Cloud Linux announced SecureLVE, an extension of its Lightweight Virtual Environment for shared hosting servers.

# Worth a read in a “man bites dog” type way: Why Open Source Stalls Innovation and Patents Advance It

Venture capital funding for open source software-related vendors increased 11.5% in the second quarter, the third consecutive quarter of positive growth following a 6% rise in 4Q09 and a 38% increase in 1Q10.

According to our preliminary figures, OSS-related vendors raise $141.7m in Q2, compared to $127.1m a year ago. There were 21 deals in the quarter and 20 with a disclosed deal size, the same as 2Q09, resulting in an average deal size of $7.1m in 2Q10, compared with $6.4m in 2Q09.

Early stage deals announced in the quarter included $5m for Karmasphere and $2.5m for Datameer, both building businesses around Hadoop, as well as $7.15m for Moodlerooms, $14m for Sencha, $4m for AlienVault and an additional $3.3m for Nuxeo.

Later stage deals included $11m each for Cloud.com and Opscode, $10m each for Heroku, DeviceVM and Northscale, $9m for Zend, and $8m for Talend.

The biggest round announced in the quarter was Eucalyptus’s $20m series B round, which was reported just hours before the end of the quarter, tipping the total into positive growth.

Total funding for the first half of the year stands at $231.2, up from $191.7m in the first half of 2009. While it seems likely that we could see an overall improvement for the full year compared to 2010 we are sticking to our prediction of flat growth for the full year.

There is renewed and meaningful discussion going about open core with several good insights and arguments: Simon Phipps, Mark Radcliffe, Stephen O’Grady and our own Matt Aslett to name a few.

Still, when we consider the various people and sides arguing for and against pure open source, open core or something in between, I wonder if there is one key group being left out of all this discussion going on amongst vendors, open source companies, open core companies, open source projects, open source developers, open source investors, open source analysts and others: customers.

It’s been my experience that customers typically want the features and insurance (SLAs, indemnity, certification) of open core, provided it remains flexible and the code and option to self-support always exist with a usable, updated, free, open source community version. As we saw when we surveyed open source users and customers, while cost continues to be a big driver, flexibility is among the most cited reasons for and advantages from open source software. While ‘flexibility’ can be admittedly nebulous, what we hear from customers is that they want the freedom and free availability of open source software, but they also want and need the option of paid, commercial support, features and functionality.

Whether a vendor is pure open source or mostly proprietary open core, the advantages of open source software — reduced vendor lock-in, future-proofing and the freedom to continue working with the code, to work with other community members on the code and its direction, the option of self-supporting or otherwise continuing with the code, but not the vendor — all of these things come only with truly open source software and open source communities. I believe the community around the software and its well-being is the true differentiator when it comes to success with commercial open source, whether pure open source or proprietary-heavy open core. If the free, community version is truly crippleware or even if it is not updated and vibrant, then the vendor is less likely to reap or offer those advantages of open source. If the community version is comparable except for higher-level features, functionality and scale, and if that community is supported by the vendor and the community version is updated in parallel with the paid versions (which we typically see in successful open core models), then the vendor is more likely to reap and offer those advantages. The bottom line: flexibility and freedom for the user/customer are not tied to the vendor’s license or business model, be it pure open source, open core or other, but instead are connected to the state and health of the open source software community that is the basis for that vendor’s offering.

I’ve heard similar arguments and demands for flexibility — the option for free community versions that provide decent functionality and features along with the option for more advanced features and subscriptions in paid versions — from vendors that partner with open source software-based companies. Often, there is a reticence and inability, sometimes by policy or procedural rules, to effectively work with an open source software project or community, but once a vendor that supports that software and community commercially emerges, the opportunities for partnership become much more practical and doable. That does not mean the commercial backer has to take an open core route, but I believe the demand for things typically associated with traditional, proprietary software, such as SLAs, indemnity and certifications, are part of what drives demand for open core among open source customers.

This further reinforces the idea that the market and the customers will determine the success or failure of an open source-centered or focused vendor, regardless of how pure open source or proprietary open core they are. Whichever side or wherever in the arguments you find yourself, I believe we should consider IT end users and customers more in this discussion, since they’re always right, right?

Funding for Eucalytus and Moodlerooms. SkySQL offers support for MySQL. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Eucalyptus Systems raised $20m in a second round of funding led by New Enterprise Associates.

# Moodlerooms reportedly raised $7.15m in equity funding.

# SkySQL announced its intention to provide support & services for the MySQL ecosystem.

# StatusNet launched the open source StatusNet Desktop Client.

# Rhomobile released Rhodes 2.0 under the MIT License.

# The H reported that Oracle has joined the SQLite Consortium.

# Icinga marked its first year as an open source monitoring project.

# Rivet Logic announced a partnership with Lucid Imagination on open source content and search technologies.

# Jedox increased its licence turnover by over 100% in the first half of 2010 and signed 50 new customers.

# Axial Exchange partnered with MuleSoft to release a new open source healthcare interoperability platform.

# IBM is moving to Firefox as its

# The VAR Guy examined the rumour that VMware has bid to acquire Novell.

# Zenoss released Zenoss Enterprise 3.0.

# Sones released its first open source version of GraphDB, a NoSQL graph database.

# Likewise released version 6.0 of its Likewise Open authentication software.

# A Q&A with Oracle chief corporate architect Edward Screven on the importance of open source and open standards.

# Ulteo released version 2.5 of its open source virtual desktop software.

# Marten Mickos responded to Simon Phipps’ criticism of the open core model.

# Stephen O’Grady explained why open core is the new dual licensing.

# xTuple updated its open source business management software and expanded its xTuple Cloud Service.

One of the reasons I described the current debate about open core as futile is that there seems to be no hope of it ever reaching conclusion. This is partly because, as Stephen O’Grady notes, the anti-open core brigade have not put forward any potential remedies. Stephen argues that this is because there are no potential remedies. I would go further in arguing that there is, in fact, nothing to remedy.

The vendor controlled open core model sees a vendor offering an open source core project a license approved by the Open Source Initiative, as well as using dual licensing to offer a proprietary version, which also has additional features and functionality, that is not open source.

Simon Phipps has articulated why this strategy does not meet the approval of software freedom advocates, but in doing so, in my opinion, mischaracterises the relationship between vendors with open core strategies and open source.

The description of open core as exploiting loopholes in the system suggests that vendors with open core strategies are deliberately bending the Open Source Definition. However, as we have noted before, the OSD applies only to the license of the underlying code, and does nothing to prevent dual licensing or proprietary extensions.

Simon Phipps has claimed that the “OSI can and will challenge use of “open source” in relation to closed strategies” but so far has offered no response to the obvious question that is prompted by this statement.

Simon also argues that vendors with open core strategies “wrap themselves in the open source flag”. The accusation is that by referring to themselves as “open source vendors” they are misleading world-be users. This is a potentially fair criticism, but it is one that in my experience most vendors with open core strategies have rectified.

As we found with last year’s open core transparency test, most vendors have improved their communication in order to avoid confusion (which is in their own best interests).

Additionally, the core software is open source, and available under an OSI-approved license, and the users retain all the freedoms that are associated with that.

While I fully appreciate why software freedom advocates are uncomfortable with vendors that offer any proprietary software referring themselves as “open source vendors”, I do not believe that there is anything they can do about it for the same reasons noted above. This is why this debate continues ad nauseum. The fact that open core opponents seem strangely unwilling to name and shame the vendors they see as gaming the system doesn’t help matters.

Another of the misconceptions about open core is that something – be it code or freedom – is being taken away from users. It is this assumption that led Henrik Ingo to compare it to theft.

“We don’t approve of stealing, and there are several measures against stealing, in particular laws and criminal punishments. Yet, from this it doesn’t follow that stealing is only a crime if you get caught! So if you put closed source modules into your open source product, and nobody notices, then you’re still not open source.”

UPDATE – As can be seen in the comments below Henrik denies that he was comparing open core to theft, noting that he was “using theft and society’s punishment against it as an analogue, to criticise Mårten’s use of “self adjusting system” as a blanket permission to do anything he wants. But nowhere did I explicitly or implicitly say that open core is comparable to stealing.” He later added, however, that “theft goes against the values of our society, whereas open core goes against the values of the open source community” – UPDATE

This comparison is incorrect on the one hand because open core does not involve putting closed source modules into open source, and on the other because adding closed source extensions to the core does not take anything away from the open source user.

They still have the core. They are still free to run the core, to modify it, to distribute it, and to extend it. They are still free, in fact, to fork it and to replicate the vendor’s closed source extensions. They still have all their software freedoms.

It is true to say, however, that certain features are being witheld from them. The fear is that open core prompts the vendor to produce a deliberately crippled core in order to drive users to its proprietary version, but that would be completely self-defeating.

As we previously noted, “There is no point trying to compel community users to become customers by providing them with substandard software and waving an enterprise version at them. It won’t build a community, and it won’t build brand. That is neither the best, nor the right way to generate revenue from open source.” Some vendors have tried that approach. They didn’t last long.

That all being said, I appreciate why advocates of software freedom are wary of open core. It does perpetuate proprietary software licensing, and it does so via open source. But that does not make it a crime. And a considerable amount of code has been contributed to the commons by vendors with open core strategies. Meanwhile even those that would wish to do something to remedy the situation are without the means to do so. Hence the endless and futile debate.

So what is to be done? I find it somewhat ironic that while some software freedom advocates are demonising open core they are also promoting David Wiley’s excellent recent post calling for more tolerance of others.

With that in mind, I will leave the last word on this matter to David:

“If someone has gone out of their way to waive some of the rights guaranteed them under the law so that they can share their creative works – even if that action is to apply a relatively restrictive CC BY-NC-ND to their content – why aren’t we praising that? Why aren’t we encouraging and cultivating and nurturing that? Why are we instead decreeing from a pretended throne on high, “Your licensing decision has been weighed in the balance, and has been found wanting. You are not deemed worthy.” Why the condescension? Why the closed-mindedness? Why the race to create machinery like definitions that give us the self-assumed authority to tell someone their sharing isn’t good enough? Why isn’t the open crowd more open-minded?”

I’ve written before about all the things that go into a trend we and others are describing as ‘DevOps.’ The subject of a coming 451 Group report, DevOps at its heart represents the intersection and integration of enterprise software development and enterprise software deployment, a.k.a. IT operations. To more closely examine the topic and gather other perspectives on devops, I attended DevOps Days in Mountain View, Calif. last week. Here’s some of what I encountered:

Culture of DevOps

One of most frequent words, discussions and topics was ‘culture,’ which similar to devops itself consists of many layers, including corporate culture, developer culture, admin and operations culture, management culture and open source culture. One individual cultural difference mentioned centered on how operations pros tend to be specialists in storage, network, Web operations, etc., while developers tend to be more generalized in their tasks and expertise. This was only one perspective, but I think it is one that is fairly common and true. Another cultural point was that sysadmins can be good developers, but aren’t always aware or don’t always know of the best tools and practices, which are more natural for a software developer. A related point was that this devops is good stuff that good sysadmins have been doing for years. It is true that as we describe and discuss devops, many organizations are recognizing that they are already doing it and already capable of it. Some of the other discussion on culture centered on changing from the bottom-up, which is where we see parallels between devops and open source, or from the top-down, where effective leaders such as those at the conference could steer an organization in the right direction.

The event also provided an opportunity to learn about additional resources, and several acknowledgements were made to Visible Ops, a handbook on improving IT operations written by Tripwire’s Gene Kim, who was in attendance. There was also reference to Leading Geeks by Paul Glen.

On the panel I was on, ‘Making the Business Case,’ I made a point that devops seems to be creeping and seeping into enterprise organizations similar to the way open source did — through the developers and ops people in the trenches, without cost or procurement or policy or awareness from the executives. However, I was reminded from a devop in the audience of the importance of maintaining respect for all of the different stakeholders in devops, which I’ll discuss in a bit. Bottom line, there needs to be trust and respect for devops and opsdev to work, understanding that each role and step in the hopefully improving process is important.

Aside from being a major focus of the conference, culture (and proof you were truly in a big room filled with devs and ops geeks) was also readily apparent with Ignite sessions including a Chief Eff You Officer and a job offer: ‘If you like to write code and hate all crap you have to deal with …’

Stakeholders of DevOps

It doesn’t take long when discussing devops to realize that it involves a lot more than people from dev and people from ops. While these folks, and many in attendance, report bouncing between development and operations, transitioning from one to the other or betting hired as an actual devop, there are a number of other people that come into play. Topping the list are the business requirements people who are increasingly shaping the application itself and when/where/how it is deployed. Those keeping track of company, product, team or division success, productivity, responsiveness and improvement are also involved in devops, and tracking and proving efficiency and performance are critically important. Of course, at some point, the leaders and executives of a company need to be involved, but it also goes the other way to users, who may be the first judges of devops as they give code and processes their first real-life tests. There are yet more stakeholders in devops, including security pros, which leads to another class of devops: secops.

Of course, like open source, devops probably wouldn’t amount to much if it didn’t have some champions, and one individual who seemd not only ready, but excited to carry the torch is Dan Nemec, who provides some of his thoughts on devops at Geeks Gone Mad. Canonical’s Clint Byrum also told a common story of working both sides – dev and ops – to understand the challenges and rewards of both groups and how they might both be better off in it together.

Another stakeholder that I hear about in devops is the single CIO, VP of Products or VP of Product Quality or other title who is in charge of an enterprise application from development to deployment, or as heard at the conference, ‘from code to cash.’ The many stakeholders that can have a hand in devops also highlights the need for a proper handoff, whether code and communication are going from dev to op, op to dev or back again.

Lastly on stakeholders, VMWare’s Javier Soltero, formerly CEO of Hyperic before it was acquired by SpringSource before it was acquired by VMware, made the point that the different people of devops have different tools and responsibilities, and it often comes down to paying enough money for the best people and keeping them.

Technology of DevOps

While much of the discussion was about culture and people, this is still the software and IT industry, and there was no shortage of discussion regarding technology. Attendees seemed to agree that technology and tools are perhaps most effective at changing culture and improving both software development and deployment.

Hitting on a common theme of the need for predictability, OmniTI Founder and CEO Theo Schlossnagle stressed that a devop, or anyone for that matter, should never wonder what’s wrong with an application, but rather that the application should tell you what’s wrong. Automation also figured in frequently to the discussion and serves as a critical underpinning for devops, at least successful devops. Along with automation is its elder cousin, agile, which also brings web application development and lightweight application development, leading some to wonder whether devOps is actually WebOps? What really got a reaction was when late in the day, someone on the panel talked about giving sysadmins root access to the code, to which one enthused devop, or op-dev, or some guy replied: ‘Yeah!’

The bottom line for the technology of devops is that it must win both sides time while removing the hoops through which they must jump. Devops do need to be able to tackle issues and do the work of devops, but they must also be able to prove their improvement and justify it, thus emphasizing the need for monitoring and tracking, which has long been an integral part of devops.

Throughout the presentations, there were references to devops communities and tools groups, including devops-toolchain.

Future of DevOps

As we continue to prepare our report on the topic, we have little doubt about the current and coming impact of devops. There will be more sharing of culture, code and practices. Open source software is one thing both devs and ops seem to already have in common, and we’ll also be watching that part of the story. In addition to sharing open source software tools for development and operations, these groups are also sharing open source practices such as collaboration, transparency and speed, all of which can contribute to successful devops.

We also expect trends such as virtualization and cloud computing to both encourage devops by facilitating more communication, co-management and mutual consideration and to also force devops by putting time, quality, uptime and other pressures on both devs and ops.

It’s here and it’s spreading. Have you thought about devops?

The current debate about the open core licensing strategy is as tedious as it is predictable. As soon as Jorg Janke published his excellent post on the lessons learned from the “failure” of Compiere’s open source strategy it was inevitable that someone would argue that the reason behind the company’s failure was the open core strategy itself.

Simon Phipps rose to the challenge, in doing so also countering some recent statements in favor of the open core approach from Marten Mickos. While Simon makes some very valid points, and Compiere’s strategy was undeniably open core, it does not necessarily follow that all open core strategies are doomed to fail (as Jorg himself stated “execution is everything”).

Besides the debate about open core, as Stephen O’Grady rightly points out, is futile. We have been over the debates about freedom many times before but ultimately, as I recently discussed, it will be market forces that decide whether open core remains a winning strategy in the long-term.

However, the whole debate on open core is trapped in an assumption that proprietary products or support/subscription services are the only ways to generate revenue from open source software. I am much more interested in emerging business strategies that offer alternatives to traditional product-led revenue generation and explore the potential of new software usage models.

An example is the strategy being followed at Appcelerator. The company is best known for its Titanium open source application development platform for creating mobile, tablet and desktop applications.

Titanium is freely available under the Apache 2 license, but the company also offers two paid subscription editions, Professional and Enterprise. Rather than adding proprietary features, Professional and Enterprise add early access to new features, premium support and training (and in the latter case critical issue resolution).

They also provide access to more data from Appcelerator’s Titanium Analytics – an analytics platform that provides application developers with data to track and measure adoption, as well as session data.

As well as developing Titanium, Appcelerator has invested in creating its own analytics engine that is capable of delivering the sort of session and usage data you expect from Web applications on mobile, tablet and desktop applications.

Users of the free Community Edition get one week of data free, while Professional Edition users get six months’ of data as part of their subscription. Enterprise Edition users get 36 months’ of data.

What is most attractive about this strategy is that it manages to provide additional value to paying subscribers without actually witholding any of the features or functionality of the core product from the community edition users.

It is also evident that the concept could be applied in other areas – while Titanium Analytics has been developed specifically to deliver user and session data based on applications developed by the user, there would appear to be similar opportunities for open source software providers to deliver users with analytics data related to software performance, usage and other key metrics.

Open source software monitoring and management services delivered as part of a subscription package are not uncommon. Could it be that the key to differentiation in the long-term is not products or services, but data? That’s one possibility. What are the others?

Elephants on parade: Hadoop goes mainstream. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

Elephants on parade
# Cloudera launched v3 of its Distribution for Hadoop and released v1 of Cloudera Enterprise.

# Karmasphere released new Professional and Analyst Editions of its Hadoop development and deployment studio.

# Talend announced that its Integration Suite now offers native support for Hadoop.

# Yahoo announced the beta release of Hadoop with Security and Oozie, Yahoo’s workflow engine for Hadoop.

# Datameer announced a strategic partnership with Zementis for predictive analytics on Hadoop.

# The Register reported that Twitter is set to open source its MySQL-to-Hadoop tool.

# MicroStrategy announced support for Apache Hadoop as a data source for MicroStrategy 9.

# Appistry announced Hadoop-based strategic alliances Concurrent, Datameer and Kitenga.

# GOTO Metrics released Data Analytics Platform, a Hadoop-based business intelligence platform.

Best of the rest
# The Software Freedom Law Center responded to the Supreme Court’s decision on Bilski v. Kappos, while Mark Radcliffe provided his thoughts.

# David Wiley discussed openness, radicalism, and tolerance (and the lack of it).

# Jorg Janke discussed how Compiere overstepped the balance between proprietary and open product components.

# Simon Phipps argued that open core is bad for software freedom.

# Nick Halsey joined SugarCRM as chief marketing officer.

# DotNetNuke more than doubled its subscription customers in 1H10 to nearly 800, expects 400% FY revenue growth.

# Nuxeo announced its new Nuxeo Case Management Framework.

# Mike Masnick discussed why the lack of billion dollar pure play open source software companies is a good thing.

# The Apache Software Foundation announced Apache Tomcat Version 7.0.

# Glyn Moody asked whether Oracle has been a disaster for Sun’s open source.

# Infoworld discussed eight business strategies for profiting from open source software.

# Computerworld reported that Red Hat CEO sees VMware as biggest competitor.

# IBM published an essay on the role Linux plays in its smarter planet initiative.

# Groklaw asked, What did Microsoft know about SCO’s plan to attack Linux, and when did it know it?

# Mozilla won the American Business Award for the most innovative company of the year.

Red Hat lays the Foundations for cloud. Funding for Sencha and Nuxeo. And more.

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“Tracking the open source news wires, so you don’t have to.”

# Red Hat took a solution-led approach to the cloud with Red Hat Cloud Foundations, and launched Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization 2.2 with both server and desktop virtualization. Meanwhile Red Hat and Cisco announced the integration of Cisco VN-Link with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization. Red Hat also released JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform 5.0, while eXo introduced eXo Add-on Modules for JBoss Enterprise Portal Platform Site Publisher. Matt Asay examined where Red Hat is growing.

# Sencha, which was recently formed via the merger of Ext JS, jQTouch and Raphaël, raised $14m from Sequoia Capital and Radar Partners.

# Nuxeo added $3.3m to its series A funding round.

# Oracle returned Sun to profitability. (PDF)

# GroundWork Open Source announced GroundWork Monitor Cloud Connector for Eucalyptus, and claimed to have doubled its customer-base since January 2010 and quadrupled it in the last eight months.

# NorthScale released Membase Server, a persistent NoSQL database based on memcached, and formed the Membase.org open source project with Membase Server users Zynga and NHN.

# The Eclipse Helios release is now available for download.

# Adobe agreed to publish its Puppet modules for managing Hadoop in the Puppet Forge.

# Zend Technologies announced the general availability of Zend Server Cluster Manager.

# Nokia will use Linux MeeGo software in its N-series phones.

# eXo Platform released eXo Collaboration 2.0 and eXo Knowledge 2.0.

# ActiveState added support for financial and scientific computing Python packages.

# OKI released the source code to SFF, a SIP application development framework for Mobicents.

# Google released the Android 2.2 “Froyo” source code, as the H reports.

# Matt Asay assessed the potential value of Novell.

# Glyn Moody asked Can the CodePlex Foundation Free itself from Microsoft?

# AlienVault released version 2.3 of its AlienVault Professional SIEM.

# Tasktop Technologies announced Tasktop Pro 1.7, which builds on the release of Mylyn 3.4.

# Zmanda released Zmanda Cloud Backup 3.0.

# WANdisco released WANdisco certified Subversion binaries for Windows.

# The Inquirer reported that Mandriva has been saved from being acquired.

# Ars Technica reported that openSUSE developers are seeking greater autonomy from Novell.

# Marten Mickos defended the open core licensing strategy, while Henrik Ingo argued that open core is not open source.