Stephen O’Grady discussed an interesting idea on his blog about how open source is like visual basic:

“They share an important, even crucial, attribute: the ability to dramatically expand the size of their potential audience and userbase. How they accomplish that end differs dramatically; in the case of VB, it was largely a focus on simplification, ease of use and an improved toolset, while open source has relied more on transparency, low (or no) cost, inherent distribution advantages and collaborative development. The net result, in either case, is a dramatically expanded potential audience.” (tecosystems / RedMonk)

At first glance, I did not agree with the open source is like VB concept; however, as I was writing my response, I noticed more and more similarities finally coming up with one primary theme. Open source and VB were able to expand their audience and user base only when they shifted the balance of power into the hands of the end user rather than keeping all of the power with the developer.

The beauty of VB was that it was so easy to use that anyone could program in it. From my experience, the people using VB did not typically come from a traditional programming background; they were ordinary users or new programmers who now had the ability to easily and quickly write programs. Previously, this could only be accomplished with years of education and programming experience. With VB, the power was now in the hands of the users and not the hard core programmers.

Open source, on the other hand, began with developers scratching an itch (as Eric Raymond would say), but open source programs were often difficult or impossible for an ordinary person to install and use. It was not until open source software began embracing the end user as a primary customer that they were able to expand quickly. Firefox is a perfect example; users can easily get Firefox, install it, and find extensions and themes that allow them to customize their environment. Firefox, like VB, puts the power into the hands of the users rather than keeping it in the hands of the developers.

In summary, with VB and open source, putting the power into the hands of the end users seems to have a dramatic impact on how quickly the audience expands.

Sure, the first time that I miss LinuxWorld since before 2001 and something catches on fire. Oh well, the fire was probably more interesting than the keynotes.

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Shortly after a plea for funding made by OpenBSD, Mozilla announced that they have donated $10K for OpenBSD, OpenSSH, and related development activities. Mozilla had several reasons for making this donation:

“In particular the Mozilla project uses SSH extensively for various purposes, including securing connections to the Mozilla CVS repository. The OpenBSD and OpenSSH projects have been experiencing some financial difficulties, and based on their importance to the Mozilla project and to the wider open source and free software world we felt that it was well worth showing our support for them.” (Mozilla Foundation)

Open BSD has consistently faced shortages of about $20K per year, which has been making it difficult to sustain development on the project. Hopefully, this funding will help OpenBSD at least in the short term.

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Richard Silkos of the New York Times and Tim O’Reilly have been discussing a newly coined term, “purpose-driven media” adapted from Rick Warren’s concept of “A Purpose-Driven Life”:

“These are new-media ventures that leave the competition scratching their heads because they don’t really aim to compete in the first place; their creators are merely taking advantage of the economics of the online medium to do something that they feel good about. They would certainly like to cover their costs and maybe make a buck or two, but really, they’re not in it for the money. By purely commercial measures, they are illogical.” (New York Times)

Craigslist is a great example of purpose-driven media. They are providing strong competition for newspaper classified ads; however, Craigslist’s goal was not to make large amounts of money. It was designed to be a community resource. The New York Times article and Tim’s blog both pointed to Firefox as another example of purpose-driven media.

I am not sure that open source software is really purpose-driven “media”, since media usually refers to newspapers, magazines, blogs and other sources focused on content. A more appropriate term might be “purpose-driven technology” referring more to the method of creation (open source software) rather than a media outlet.

Open source software fits well within the Christensen disruptive innovation model by approaching the market in a very different way to fill a niche need along the edge of the market, but then grows to displace the mainstream market. This idea ties into the purpose-driven technology concept for open source software especially well when you consider the origin of many open source software projects and how they began to fill their niche market. Linux started when Linus Torvalds wanted a Unix-like system that ran on less expensive hardware for his own use. Linus did not start this project to make money or disrupt an industry; however, the end result was purpose-driven technology that may have seemed like an illogical competitor for Microsoft and Unix operating systems from an economic perspective. Many other open source software products had similar beginnings and a similar purpose-driven technology as a result.

According to Net Applications, Firefox According to Net Applications, Firefox now has 10.05% of the browser market share for March 2006 behind Internet Explorer, which has 84.7%.

It is great to see how the scrappy underdog has grown to 10% market share through innovation and grassroots, word of mouth advertising.

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Is Marc Fleury of JBoss One of the Most Hated Men in Open Source?

The latest edition of BusinessWeek did a feature article on Marc Fleury of JBoss, which portrays him as one of the “bad boys” of open source software. The article includes the following gems:

“Brash, outspoken, and frequently insulting, Fleury has clawed his way to the top of the open-source pile over the past six years. Part of the dislike arises because he’s a threat.”

“Meanwhile, some open-source companies are put off by what they say is Fleury’s money-grubbing, controlling style. It’s out of keeping, they say, with the cooperative, do-it-for-the-greater-good ethos of the open-source movement.” (BusinessWeek)

Marc responded to the article on his blog:

“One of the advantages of achieving a little notoriety is that you get to spend time telling young journalists about what a ‘bad boy’ you are. The aftermath: you get to read the ensuing portrait of a money grubber who’s ‘clawed his way’ to the top of the open source pile (of what, kaka?) and who communicates via a ‘fervent, almost preachy and completely self-serving blog.’

“Don’t get me wrong I am actually EXTREMELY GRATEFUL for the article, Sarah, I mean it is not every day that ANYONE gets a full-featured article in BW. This is more publicity than I could ever hope for and I did get a chuckle out of reading it, so thanks.” (Enter the JBoss Matrix)

Another Open Source Win for Healthcare

Catholic Healthcare West, the largest non-profit healthcare provider in California, moves to open source as part of an initiative to consolidate systems and increase efficiency. The flexibility of open source software allows them to more effectively meet the restrictive regulatory requirements of this industry. Eric Leader, Chief Technical Architect for Catholic Healthcare West said, “In general, IT in the healthcare industry tends to lag. They are slow to adopt and risk-averse.” (Newsforge) I have previously discussed the risk-averse nature of the healthcare industry, which makes these examples of open source usage even more compelling than similar ones in industries with greater tolerance for risk.

Venezuela Promotes Open Source Software

Many governments promote open source software as a way to stimulate the local economy, reduce costs, and avoid supporting the large, multinational, American companies. Venezuela is the latest example with the Science and Technology Ministry recently holding an event to promote the use of Linux and other open source software in place of Microsoft solutions. The ministry said that this is part of a move toward “technological sovereignty, and taking advantage of knowledge for building national scientific independence.” (AP)

Former Sun Exec Asks Sun to Open Source Java

Peter Yared, former Chief Technologist at Sun and currently the CEO of ActiveGrid, posted an open letter to Jonathon Schwartz questioning Sun’s decision to open source Solaris and SPARC, but not the Java virtual machine. It has generated some press attention, but I have not seen a response from Sun yet. Sun has answered this question before, but typically in convoluted terms that do not really explain why open sourcing Java should be different from the other products that Sun has released into open source, so it will be interesting to see how Sun responds to this request.

An Update on the City of Tuttle, CentOS, Jerry Taylor Saga

I blogged about the City of Tuttle story earlier this week, so please read this post first if you are not familiar with the background. This week the local paper, The Tuttle Times, reported on the event that captured attention from around the world. In the article, Jerry Taylor was quoted as saying:

“’This is just a bunch of freaks out there that don’t have anything better to do,’ he said. ‘When I came in to work Monday morning, I had about 500 e-mails, plus anonymous phone calls from all the geeks out there. [CentOS is] a free operating system that this guy gives away, which tells you how much time he’s got on his hands.'”

“Taylor said that the mistake could have happened to anyone, and he stands by what he did.”

Despite all that has happened,

“Mayor Paxton said that the city manager knows a lot more about computers than he does, and he trusts Taylor.” (The Tuttle Times)

Interesting choice.

City of Redmond, WA Goes Open Source

In an unprecedented move, the city of Redmond, Washington has announced a plan to migrate all local government offices and public schools to Linux running OpenOffice.org. The city is also creating a program that will provide other incentives (tax advantages, discount plans, etc.) to local businesses that chose to follow the city’s lead in adopting Linux and other open source software. This will be one of the largest migrations to Linux on the desktop.

This move has ruffled a few feathers at Microsoft’s corporate headquarters in Redmond. One senior executive made the following statement, “I can’t believe that this happened in our own backyard! F***ing jerks. We are now evaluating a relocation of our corporate headquarters to Fargo, ND where we can finally get some respect.” A Fargo, ND government official who asked me not to use his name had only this to say, “we don’t want them!”

Happy April Fools Day!

I want to remind people to look carefully at the source of your information in order to determine credibility. A recent IDC study, sponsored by Microsoft, found that when most organizations migrate from Unix, they migrate to Windows, not Linux. I have been involved in enough market research to know that the questions asked can have a large impact on the results of any study. Maybe this study is accurate, but I would tend not to rely on it to support any arguments the same way that I would not rely on a report sponsored by a Linux vendor to answer the same research question. The best data comes from un-sponsored research conducted by an independent, neutral third party. Many organizations have a vested interest in open source (positive and negative), and many studies are sponsored by organizations on both sides of the open source vs. proprietary software debate. As a result, it is especially important to evaluate the credibility of our sources.

I am reminded of the famous saying, “lies, damned lies, and statistics”, which has been attributed to various people including Mark Twain and Benjamin Disraeli.

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Blake Ross wrote an interesting blog entry yesterday about Internet Explorer and Firefox that highlights the chasm between developers and users of software. Many of us think nothing of using the command prompt, FTP, and other utilities that are second nature to us, while some users have never installed a piece software and do not even know what a browser is. They use one and know that they access the Internet; however, some confuse it with a search engine, and others do not realize that it is an independent application separate from the operating system.

One of the challenges of the SpreadFirefox campaign has been in educating these users. “So you can imagine convincing someone to download an ‘alternative’ to a product he didn’t know he used, in a genre of software he never knew existed,” (Blake Ross). Developers and other techies frequently make the argument about technical superiority (it is better, so people will use it). “These kinds of arguments ignore an entire spectrum of barriers facing ‘regular people’ that we developers never contend with, and I think our industry would do well to empathize with them,” (Blake Ross).

If we want average users to adopt open source technologies, we need to remove our techie hats for a bit to help them understand ‘why’ they should use it while talking in a language that appeals to them.

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According to Peter Quinn, the former Massachusetts CIO advocate of the OpenDocument Format (ODF),

“Open source has an unprofessional appearance, and the community needs to be more business-savvy in order to start to make inroads in areas traditionally dominated by commercial software vendors. (Having) a face on a project or agenda makes it attractive for politicians (to consider open source).” (CNET)

He went on to suggest that while the open-source community was slowly beginning to come to terms with the need to dress for success, doing so is a “huge education process.” (CNET)

Yikes. I would like to think that we live in an age where people can evaluate a technology based on its merits and not based on the clothes that someone wears.

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