Obligatory End of Year Post - 2009

Yes, I know it's already 2010, but this post is still my official "end of 2009" post. I've included some highlights from the posts on this blog along with my choice of top 5 open source stories and themes of the year. Please add your comments on what you think are the top stories for 2009.

Reflections on This Blog

The readership of this blog grew substantial in 2009 and I am very thankful for that. Visitors from 30 states, 29 countries and 6 continents came to this blog with the top 3 countries being the United States, Brazil and the United Kingdom. I have to admit, the prominence of Brazil surprised me. Visitors seemed to be attracted to a wide variety of subjects, but management of open source within a company and GPL enforcement seemed to be the favorites. Here are top 5 most visited posts of the year, beginning with the most popular:

1. In-House Counsel - Managing Open Source
2. FSF Motives in the Cisco Case
3. Obligatory End of Year Blog Post (2008) (emphasis on the FSF-Cisco case)
4. Highlights of the Open Source Business Conference - Day 1
5. Show Me the Money at OSCON - Venture Capital and Open Source

Top 5 Open Source Stories

Shifting to the industry as a whole, the top stories of 2009 also illustrated the importance of in-house open source management and GPL enforcement among many other themes. Below, I have provided my list of the top 5 stories and themes of the year:

1. Oracle Acquisition of Sun Microsystems - As a Sun employee, I have a deep personal interest in this deal, but it is also a significant event for the business of open source (not to mention the software and hardware business too), particularly the EU's competition investigation of the MySQL business. The deal could be characterized as a definitive affirmation of the importance of open source in that even companies whose success is perceived to rely on the traditional proprietary software model (such as Oracle), see open source as an important strategic element. Questions on the MySQL aspect of the deal even prompted industry heavyweights like Eben Moglen, founding Director of the Software Freedom Law Center, to explore the impact of the GPL.

2. GPL Enforcement Actions - The relative popularity of my blog posts on the Cisco-Free Software Foundation litigation (which has since settled) is one indication that GPL enforcement is a hot topic. This trend gained momentum throughout 2009 and will likely continue to do so in 2010. Examples include the Software Freedom Law Center's December announcement of litigation against Best Buy, Samsung, Westinghouse and 11 other entities on behalf of the owners of BusyBox, and a French court case in which users of GPL software got a ruling affirming their right to receive the source code to that software and modifications.

3. Microsoft Release of GPL Code - Few companies raise the ire of the open source community more than Microsoft. That's why open source proponents were pleased, and surprised, to see hear Microsoft announce that it would contribute driver code to the Linux kernel. It is not clear whether Microsoft's decision was based on necessity in the face of a potential GPL violation, or a strategic move to enhance compatibility with Linux. Regardless of the motive, Microsoft's actions indicate that even the most sophisticated of companies must pay close attention to their use of open source and honor the provisions of open source licenses. This is especially true in light of the recent enforcement activities discussed in the previous paragraph.

4. US Government Commitment to Open Source - The principles of technology neutrality have long been recognized in the European Union to the benefit of open source software usage by European governments. The United States federal government has not been as accommodating of open source, but at least two events in 2009 indicate a possible change in US attitudes. The US Department of Defense revised its guidelines on use of open source software in October to essentially give it a procurement preference over proprietary software when all else is equal. In addition, it appears that the Obama Administration is actively looking for ways to bring the benefits of open source to government operations.

5. Red Hat's 10 Year IPO Anniversary - Red Hat is commonly viewed as the most successful pure open source company with its status as a Fortune 500 company with a market cap of almost $6 billion and generating over $700 million in revenue in 2009. As such, it's longevity and success are significant barometers on the health of the open source business as a whole. With a lingering cloud over the economy, and the relatively slow growth trajectory of most open source companies, it seem unlikely that we will see any open source IPOs in 2010.

Please post your thoughts on the most important open source events of 2009. I wish the best of success to all of us in this corner of the world we call "open source."

[Note: The "Top 5" portion of this post was updated after the original post to make non-substantive changes for purposes of clarification and adding more reference links.]

April Roundup

A number of news items grabbed my attention this month ... for instance, I vaguely recall a story about one big tech company buying another, but the names escape me. In any case, a number of interesting open source blog postings appeared in April. Here is a sampling of posts falling in two basic categories:

Open Source as a Hobby and Business

• Connecting Hobby and Business in Open Source - How are some businesses able to harness the passion of developers for their open source hobby to create open source success? Dana Blankenhorn illustrates that it takes more than good software and a good business model to create a successful open source business.
  

• Open Source Business Strategy: About the Open Source Whole Product Concept - Roberto Galoppini explores the idea that successful commercialization of open source requires delivering a fully realized product. In my opinion, productization is the critical element differentiating an interesting project that is viewed as a fun toy from an enterprise class tool that customers are willing to pay for.

Open Source in Government

• Five Ideas to Get FOSS Into Governments - Sun's open source officer, Simon Phipps [Disclosure: I work for Sun], offer six (in spite of the blog title's reference to five) concrete ideas to speed government adoption and use of open source. Because of their size and influence (both as exemplary users of open source, and through their ability to impose procurement and usage rules), governments are important players in the open source movement. Broader government adoption of open source would be a great benefit to the industry as a whole.
  

• Participatory Legislation: the Italian Democratic Party Launches a Wiki - This blog post describes two cases of governments taking first steps towards applying open source principle to the legislative process. Specifically, the post mentions efforts in New Zealand and Italy to allow the public more direct input into writing laws. These small steps mark what I believe will result in a more participatory governing process that will ultimately lead to more accountable government.
  

• Election Industry Trade Group Issues Report Examining Open Source Voting - The Election Technology Council, a trade group US voting system vendors, recently published a report concluding that open source and proprietary software products must be treated differently for purposes of governments making decisions about voting technology citing complexity in management and lack of accountability in traditional open source projects among other things. My view is that the Election Technology Council is perpetuating the type of fear, uncertainty and doubt we typically see in industries not prepared for competition from open source vendors. While it is true that the integrity of the voting system requires certain minimum standards including security assurances, open source software can surely satisfy those needs.

Other hot topics included the importance of channel sales in growing the scope of the open source industry, and deeper discussion of the status of the emerging cloud industry , and what type of open source license is appropriate for cloud technology.

Speak to the Government in Language it Understands

Last week Matt Asay explored the downside of governments legislating open source use, and the theme was extended by Dana Blankenhorn who pointed out that the migration to open source must be evolutionary rather than something stipulated to occur at a point in time. Matt went further this week by highlighting the EU's recent message to its member countries urging them to use more open source, with the very astute observation that the tactics of advocacy and persuasion are likely to be more effective than legislation. The time is right to explore strategies for accelerated government adoption of open source.

In essence, the debate on how best to accelerate government adoption of open source has boiled down to whether to dictate use through legislation, or persuade governments through the same grass roots persuasion used for years by the open source community. In my opinion, we should not discount the value of the right kind of legislation, which can accentuate the positive aspects of the types of community persuasion that have been so effective. An ideal approach would be to create legislation that encourages the government to make procurement decisions based on criteria indicative of high-quality open source products and projects.

To explain what I mean, think of Section 508. Section 508 is a US federal law requiring government agencies to consider accessibility factors when purchasing IT products. Federal procurement rules implementing the law provide more details on the specific types of factors to be considered. In short, the government is not permitted to purchase software or hardware that does not meet its minimum accessibility standards (such as for use by blind or motion impaired workers or members of the public who access government information) unless choosing a fully accessible product over a less accessible product would create an undue burden.

Applying this idea to open source, we should start by identifying the procurement criteria that are the most advantageous to open source products and projects. Lower cost is clearly a primary factor for enterprises in determining when to convert from proprietary to open source. After a recent tour of several Fortune 100 comanies, Zack Urlocker of Sun/MySQL noted that the current weakness in the economy appears to be enhancing the effectiveness of the "cost savings" sales pitch.

While the same economic benefits will be attractive to governments, the unique nature of government services means that other factors will be at least as important if not moreso. Fortunately, the conventional wisdom is that the open source development model, as compared to the standard proprietary model, results in quicker development times, higher-quality features, features more relevant to end users, better scalability, more customizable products and more secure products (which is particularly important to agencies like the US Department of Defense). This is something that open source companies already do in their data sheets, white papers and savings calculators to convince commercial customers that purchasing open source is a good idea.

In order to make this kind of legislation happen, the open source community would have to muster its resources and undertake a significant lobbying effort. Even if it's not successful in creating new procurement rules or legislation, this type of unified effort would possibly be the best marketing campaign in the history of open source. In any case, an emphasis on the right kind of legislation could accelerate the typical grass roots marketing efforts and sales pitches.

Governments Dive Into Open Source: How Deep is the Pool?

Over the last few years we have seen a steady wave of news stories, blog postings and seminars have been telling us that the government is making a big splash by making open source IT solutions a priority. No doubt the rising tide of open open source will reach government just as it is reaching the rest of the software industry ... as Mark Radcliffe put it, open source is the Borg and resistance is futile! Even so, constituents have felt few drops from the splash that open source software has made, particularly here in Silicon Valley where it might be expected to be more prevalent. Consider this:

• Municipal/City Government - I live in San Jose, California, a city that proclaims itself the “Capital of Silicon Valley”, is home to some of the world’s largest technology companies, and host to an innovative festival combining technology and the arts. These high-tech credentials have not translated into adoption open source. In fact, the city rejected a 2008 proposal to ease budget pressures through the adopting lower cost open source software on the grounds that it would have limited impact and was inconsistent with other strategies.

• County Government - As far as I can tell, Santa Clara County, which includes the City of San Jose, has not adopted or even significantly considered the adoption of open source software on any meaningful scale.

• State Government - California, to its credit, is one of several states that seems to have made the adoption of open source a priority. Not only did the State formally authorize a search for open source replacements to proprietary software but, as Matt Asay has highlighted, the CIO for the California Air Resources Board has encouraged his staff to use open source software in any way possible. Other states have even gone so far as to propose legislation requiring the consideration of open source alternatives in any IT procurement.

• Federal/National Government - The US Federal Government has seen a steady increase the use of open source over the last several years, and this has been a regular topic of discussion by open source commentators such as open source commentators. The Department of Defense in particular has invested a great amount of resources into open source and has made significant efforts to reach out to the open source community.

• Regional/Continental Government - The open source movement has touched even higher levels of government. As the most prominent example, the European Union is probably the single biggest adopter of open source, with a pipeline of open source priorities that will likely keep the EU ahead of the curve for years to come.

These anecdotes are just a sampling of the type of news constantly swirling about government adoption of open source. While open source almost certainly is being utilized in critical government infrastructure and other ways that are not readily discernable to people other than IT administrators, all levels of government can do more to grab the wave of unique value that open source software provides and apply it in ways that better serve its constituents. Some governmental bodies, such as the EU and its member states, seem to have jumped into the deep end of the pool. (Matthew Aslett at the 451 Group recently embarked on an open source tour of Europe that has resulting in intriguing insights on the status of open source in Europe as a whole as well as specific countries including Austria, Switzerland, Romania and Russia.) In the meantime, governmental entities here in Silicon Valley continue to splash in the kiddie pool, or choose not to get wet at all. With some prominent exceptions of specific agencies that are clearly in the "deep end", the federal government and various states are wading in deeper pool waters, but no further than their feet can touch.

In my next post, I'll discuss some thoughts on a framework for government open source adoption that avoids the pitfalls of mandating it through legislation.