Highlights of OSBC 2009 - Day 1

Yesterday I attended the first day of the 2009 Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. This is the premiere event for anyone interested in open source and has separate tracks specifically appealing to Executives and Managers, Developers, Venture Capitalists, and Attorneys. This is a great place to not only see and hear all the "rock stars" of the open source industry, but you can even meet and talk to them in person ... it's like having a backstage pass, but without the groupies.

I attended several interesting sessions on the first day and some of the key points that stood out to me are below. I also participated in a session on managing open source within an organization with an excellent panel: Virginia Tsai Badenhope from Smithline Jha law firm, Joyce Chow from Apple, Angela Ziegenhorn from Symantec, and Duane Valz from Yahoo! I'll have a separate post on that in the next couple of days.

-New Meaning of "risk" in open source. In the past, open source discussions focused (often unnecessarily) on risk, specifically referring to the perceived risk with the quality of the software. Now, however, the stronger view is that NOT using open source software is risky... risky in the sense that IT managers might lose their jobs if they don't cut costs. (Matt Asay noted this in his keynote opening remarks.) The survey data presented by Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture Partners backed this up with unfamiliarity with open source ranking much higher as a barrier to adoption than legal concerns.

-Don't lose focus on innovation and quality. A good deal of discussion occurred around whether the current economic difficulties benefit open source. The majority view is that yes, indeed, those in need of software solutions are more likely to look to open source as a free or low cost alternative to proprietary software.

However, several presenters also pointed out that open source has always stood for more than cost savings and the open source community has worked hard to demonstrate the pace of innovation and quality of open source software. Marten Mickos, SVP of the Databased Group at Sun (at least for a little longer) made this point very well in the panel discussion portion of the keynote. During the Marketing in Open Source presentation moderated by Sun's Zack Urlocker, Greg Armanini from Zimbra (Yahoo!) emphasized this point saying that we don't want to lose the check on the innovation checkbox in procurements. It would be a shame to lose that message in the marketing push around low cost solutions. John Roberts, CEO of SugarCRM also said that the ability of customers to maintain control over the software and avoid lockin is critical.

-Issues of open source "purity" are not longer important. Creating a business with open source software is well accepted and must not be seen as a contradiction to open source values. This evident in the mainstreaming of open source in the software industry, the breadth and quality of open source solutions, and the fact that litigation of open source issues is becoming more common.

-The next frontier for open source is enterprise IT. This is where the big money is for the open source industry, and it is evidence of the legitimacy and broad acceptance of open source by even the most conservative customers. (Note - Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems (Disclosure: I work for Sun), said Sun's data shows that ALL of the Fortune 500 companies use open source.)

-Disruption is great for business, but don't disrupt adoption. Marten Mickos and other panelists had commented that a good business strategy is to target any industry that has not yet been disrupted by open source. Michael Skok of North Bridge Venture Partners further clarified this notion by emphasizing that adoption by users must still be easy. In other words, do not disrupt the ability of end users to obtain and use the product.

I found all of these points useful in further clarifying how best to implement open source as a business strategy and I hope you do too.