Pros and Cons to Open Source Business Models

I just read this NY Times article on Open Source as a Model for Business is Elusive which claims that successful open source companies have more societal and strategic value than financial and cites the effect that MySql is having on the EU's evaluation of Oracle's acquisition of Sun as an example. They worry that if Oracle acquires Sun, then they will kill MySql which is a low cost alternative to Oracle's database product.

The article lists the usual suspects in their case both for and against open source; Red Hat, XenSource, and Mozilla being the three top reference models.

They also show how open source companies are supported by large technology vendors with deep pockets in order to wage proxy wars with their competitors. Google with Mozilla and IBM with Linux against Microsoft are two examples cited. This is actually Oracle's defense against the EU's concerns in that Oracle claims that they will continue to support MySql in order to eat into Microsoft's Sql Server market.

It seems that the exit strategy for open source companies these days is in acquisition over going public. Witness the recent purchase of SpringSource by VMware in order to gain more control up the API virtualization stack as the corporate world turns towards cloud computing. The acquisition of XenSource by Citrix is another example.

Giga OM countered to this article with an article of their own with the claim that Open Source Business Models Aren't Dead End Streets. They cite Android, Acquia, and Cloudera as example companies.

Implementing Virtual Worlds in Business

I occasionally cover stories on enterprise focused virtual worlds technology because I believe that it shows some promise and could, therefore, become a relevant trend. Last week, I attended an event in Second Life hosted by Nokia on this topic.

This event had a question oriented talk show format in which representatives from IBM, Linden Labs, Nokia, and Remedy Communications promoted their respective company's efforts in enterprise virtual worlds.



I hope that I don't have to explain who IBM and Nokia is and why they might be interested in enterprise virtual worlds. IBM hosted their own two day conference on the subject not too long ago. Their representative at this event was Zha Ewry who is a male using a female avatar in a professional role.

Linden Labs is the company behind Second Life. They host a public grid and sell the platform to companies who want a virtual world behind the firewall.

Remedy Communications is a marketing company who specializes in developing marketing collateral in virtual worlds. They have recently become a reseller for Rivers Run Red who competes with Linden Labs in what they brand as the immersive enterprise collaboration space. Their representative at this event had an avatar named Dusan.

Someone from Sun Microsystems was supposed to be here too but never showed up. Considering their recent change in leadership, I can only assume that there was a sudden and last minute change in plans.

One of the biggest things I learned at this event is that there are now several video sites devoted to enterprise virtual worlds. Metanomics takes on an education based approach to fostering corporate appreciation for virtual worlds. Treet.tv will be launching later this summer. They have both an entertainment and a business focus and are a spin off of SLCN. All of these Internet video broadcast sites feature shows exclusively filmed in Second Life.

One of the advantages to a virtual world event is the presence of a back channel in which the attendees can comment amongst themselves while the event is taking place. The presenters get to monitor the back channel in real time. I learned in the back channel about an European conference called MetaMeets about the present and future of virtual worlds (also called the 3D web).

I go into more details on the content of this talk in my blog at the Toolbox for IT Knowledge Sharing Community.

IBM Virtual Worlds Conference

I just got back from a two day conference that IBM hosted on Second Life called Beyond Blogging which is a conference billed as by IBMers primarily for IBMers but also open to the public. I believe that this conference was organized by IBM's Seeking Business Value from Investment in Virtual Worlds on the 3D Internet group.

The first day of the conference was more about how cool Second Life is for consumers. My own interests in Second Life are more towards how the enterprise can use virtual worlds as an affordable way to telepresence for remote teams to web seminar with a back channel, all in an easy to use HUD. That is why the second day of the conference held more interest to me. They billed this as "virtual worlds behind the firewall."

The first speaker of the second day was Neas Bade (Sean Daque) who is a developer for OpenSim which is a 3D Application Server that can be used to create a virtual world which can be accessed through a variety of clients and on multiple protocols.

He talked about the Open Source Metaverse where you can create your own simulator and connect it to a public grid for free. He talked about some EAI for OpenSim such as LDAP and web integration. When asked about integrating virtual worlds with cloud computing, he referred to a small group of analysts called RedMonk.

The second speaker for the second day was Rufus TT Horsefly (Neil Cats) who talked about how IBM asked Linden Labs to bring up an instance of Second Life within the IBM firewall on their blade center hardware (they had 250 users per session) in order to host their AOT Conference. Some of the lessons learned here was the importance of identity for attendees including the use of realistic avatars and the need for helpers and for training including help with installation of the HUD and with getting voice chat to work. He also talked about integration with their Domino product and an offering of theirs called Sametime 3D.

From this conference, I definitely get the sense that IBM is anticipating increasing corporate interest in virtual worlds as a way of mitigating travel expenses for remote teams to work together and as a way to reach out to customers in a way that is more affordable than the traditional conference model.

June Update: Now it's official. IBM's New Meeting Platform is Based on Open Sim.

IBM to Acquire Sun

Whoa! My world was rocked today when I picked up the NY Times and read about yet another decline in the stock market. Even more upsetting is that Sun Microsystems is in talks with IBM to be acquired.

This acquisition shouldn't really be all that upsetting. It does make perfect sense for IBM, which has always prided itself on its servers, to want to acquire the other technology company who also pride themselves on their servers. I'm sure that those two companies have competed head-to-head for years.

Sun is also the founding company of Java Technology which IBM is now heavily invested in. IBM has shown a lot of commitment to Open Source over the years with their development of a major OSS IDE called Eclipse and their endorsement of Novel's SUSE on the desktop and Red Hat for servers. So, when Sun Open Sourced Java, that most probably made Sun that much more of a desirable acquisition target to IBM.

The Sun blade servers have always been very respectable hardware from an engineering standpoint so I hope that IBM doesn't just retire the line to get it out of the way of their own similar offerings.

Maybe what is really the most upsetting part of this news for me is to have to see Scott McNealy down play his hot headed nature to be more compatible with IBM's more staid Sam Palmisano.

Or maybe it's the fact that the article clearly ties the reasoning behind this move to the faltering economy.

April Update: It looks like IBM has withdrawn its offer for now.

The Second (Life) Coming

Some recent announcements show movement on the part of Linden Labs to open up their protocols for Second Life such that others can host servers to participate in a federated, 3D version of the world wide web.

This is not Linden Labs first journey into open source when they released an open source version of their HUD. What's different this time is that they are taking steps toward releasing server code and protocols such that others can host virtual worlds on their networks which you could teleport to using the Second Life HUD. It still has a long way to go but it is a step in that direction.

Linden Labs isn't the only one using open source as a way to leverage themselves into a larger market where they have to share. This larger trend of moving from content provider to content platform provider means that Linden Labs has to give up a share of the revenue pie in order to be a founding participant in the vision of a World Wide Web where web pages are replaced with 3D virtual spaces and surfers who happen to be visiting that place at the same time get to text message each other.

Considering the impact of Web 2.0 and social networking on the web, I believe this to be a very natural and obvious evolution of the web. There are plenty of competitors who would love to beat Linden Labs to this punch so perhaps that is their "bottom line" motivation to move in this direction.

The Rise of Open Source Software

The Open Source Software movement has been gaining so much momentum within the Information Technology community recently that it is almost impossible to ignore. Technology players like IBM and Google have contributed to open source. Even Microsoft, whose CEO displays open hostility towards OSS, have contributed. Now media companies such as Yahoo and the New York Times have contributed to OSS.

CTOs and other key decision players in any company's IT department no longer consider OSS as an "if" but rather as a "when." It's not so much a decision as to whether or not to embrace OSS but rather to decide what their OSS strategy is and the timeline for executing on that strategy. It is also very likely that OSS is already being used within their organization.

Why is it that OSS is so compelling? It has a large community supporting it and the price/performance ratio can't be beat. I have blogged on this subject in more detail elsewhere.

A Very Foggy Vista

In a recent announcement, Dell has warned businesses against upgrading to the latest Operating System written by Microsoft. Called Vista, this O.S. has suffered years of delay and many cutbacks in promised features and functionality. Dell is recognizing and admitting that the Vista O.S. requires an amount of computer hardware resources that seem to be disproportionate to its abilities, especially when compared to previous MSFT O.S.

As a longtime participant in the world of software development, I have been around to see a lot of products come out of Redmond. This blog has my own reflections on what has recently come out of this software giant. I have no transparency nor intelligence into the internal workings of MSFT so these musings are simply based on observing and evaluating their output over a long period of time and not on any knowledge of their internal processes outside what they themselves have published.

Microsoft is, mostly, a software company. They produce products in many markets. I believe that, historically speaking, their strongest markets are O.S. and developer tools. From an end user perspective, Windows 3.1 and DOS was much superior when compared to the competition which was IBM's OS/2 and the X Windowing system of Unix. This was back in the 80s. In the 90s, Windows still led the pack with Windows 95 and NT. Even the early 2000s saw Microsoft still producing a great O.S. with Windows 2000, XP, and 2003.

With apologies to George Lucas, there has been a disturbance in the force recently. To put it bluntly, the latest MSFT O.S. is a step backwards. Gamers complain about Vista's sub-par 3D graphics performance. Security experts dismiss Vista's UAC approach. Although I don't use it on a daily basis, I have had occasion to work on a laptop where Vista came pre-installed. Although the hardware specifications of this laptop exceed MSFT's recommendations for running Vista, the performance is very lackluster. The latency is worse than another laptop, purchased four years ago, that runs Windows XP. How the GUI is organized is another complaint of mine. Everything has been refactored in a way that seems to me to be arbitrary. So, I'm having to learn a new organization of the computer's configuration without seeing any meaningful benefit from that new way. Another change that seems to be made simply for the sake of change is the move away from using menus which are now either cleverly disguised or completely removed. Why the GUI designers of Redmond have decided that menus are passé is completely beyond me.

And Microsoft's O.S. competition is catching up. I recently ran the live CD version of a recently very trendy distribution of Linux called Ubuntu. In my humble opinion, performance with Ubuntu was better than with Vista. This is especially disturbing since Ubuntu was running off of the DVD player and Vista was running off of the hard disk, which should have given MSFT an unfair advantage in performance. The Ubuntu GUI made more sense and was a lot more organized. Also, you get a lot more features with Ubuntu than with Vista since it comes pre-installed with an office productivity suite and a lot of other applications which Vista does not.

I have been working in the IT industry for more years than I care to reveal and I am very technical so I am not the target audience for this O.S. I would much prefer using Windows 2000 or 2003 than either XP or Vista, even as a workstation. The owner of this Vista laptop is a very representative member of the target audience who also prefers using XP to Vista.

Many industry pundits claim that it is the age of the network, and they are right. The days of the stand-alone computer are all but gone. However, everyone gets to a network through a computer and that computer, like every other computer, requires an O.S. in order to turn what would otherwise be a very expensive doorstop into a wonderful window on the world wide web. Perhaps MSFT has spent so much time sighting Google in their cross hairs, they have forgotten or gotten away from their core value proposition.