Scott McMullan: ehick

OpenXource Helps Open up Closed Source Software

I had the pleasure of coffee Bob McWhirter (blog) yesterday.  Bob is the guy behind codehause.org, home to open source projects such as Groovy, Jaxen, and ActiveMQ among many others.  Bob recently founded OpenXource, a consulting and product company focused on helping companies move closed source software to open source. 

Helping with the strategy and execution of moving closed source to open source is an undeserved market according to Bob, and I agree with him.  Folks like Sourcelabs and Spikesource are going the other direction, helping companies bring open source in.  I don't know of anyone else specializing in the other way around. 

And while perhaps a smaller market, it's a much harder problem IMHO.  I had a taste of this helping Orbeon transition their presentation server product to open source, and of course their biz model too.  Oh yeah, that thing.  They've since joined ObjectWeb and their community and biz is on the rise, but going it alone, without the benefit of experience, is difficult.

Behind raw adoption numbers, the next most important metric of an open source project's success is the size and health of its dev community.  OpenXource is addressing this with a hosted community service called Xircles.  Its Open source community in a box, leveraging the insights gained starting, growing, and managing codehaus.org.  They've got to differentiate from the Collabnet's, sourceforge's, and GForge of the world, but there seems to be room to innovate there for sure.  This is a needed service, and I wish Bob and OpenXource success!

CivicSpace Rocks

Last week I had the pleasure of meeting Zack Rosen, founder and director of CivicSpace Labs.  CivicSpace is a Drupal-based platform that is being billed as a, "grassroots organizing platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters."  Translated that means open source collaboration software to help people connect so they cann campaign and press for change.  "The" public sector platform.  Or if that's not clear, I guess knowing it's the 2nd generation of software written originally for the Howard Dean for President campaign, and you get the vibe.

This is one of the coolest projects I've ever run across!  Collaboration software for all the people trying to change the world for the better.  Of course "the better" depends on your notion of what needs fixing, and over coffee we also discussed people on "the other side" (my words) using CivicSpace to do fun stuff like organize to squash women's rights or keep "those people" from threatening our communities with "their lifestyles." etc.  But that's fine too -- let the best organized pushing the soundest principles win!  Enough of that -- not my typical blogging topic...

People are using this stuff too.  Currently the live sites page lists 147 sites.  The model is to create the software as open source, and then sign up ISPs and consultants to host at costs low enough for cash-strapped grassroots orgs to afford. Zack's recent CivicSpace as a Platform post discusses some of the issues they face going after such a broad customer base, but I agree that this is doable because there are many passionate and capable people to tap.  It helps at this stage to have funding, which they do (some foundations and a Bay Area VC), and conviction, which I can say that Zack has in spades.

CivicSpace is looking to grow the community so if you need this service or want to get involved, check it out.

So is this OpenEvents?

Greetings from sunny San Diego.  Morning after posting Google/Internet Archive, Meet Mr. Event we threw the kids in the WRX and headed south for some R&R with friends and family.  So now that I've snuck into the local wifi cafe I'm very gratified to discover more people, projects, and conversations about this events vision.   For sake of clarity, from now on I think I'll start using Marc Canter's OpenEvents moniker -- seems like the same/right philosophy, and appears to still be a green-field project.

Here are just a few additional links I've found related to OpenEvents vision, although I haven't had time to fully dig through all this yet:

• EventsML, an IPTC effort for an XML vocab standard for, "event publishing, event planning, and event coverage."
• ESS  the "Event Share Specification" for, "assisting in the publishing and distribution of event (e.g. meetings, conferences, holidays) information."
• WhizSpark's broader thoughts on social networking and events
• CivicSpace are some veterans of the Dean campaign building a, "...platform that empowers collective action inside communities and cohesively connects remote groups of supporters."
• Who What When Where XML is headed up by Hanan Cohen, who believes, "people should be able to publish where and when they will be, and others should be able do discover those facts and arrange to meet them."

Among many others!  I haven't yet digested the comments/trackbacks/new info, but clearly people are looking and addressing events from many different angles and biz models. And it's all "just software," so it's doable.  Hard part is herding cats, aligning interests so collaboration, real work, and follow-through happen.

Still getting my mind around all this, but I'm looking forward to continuing to connect with interested and engaged parties.  But my main event right now is quality time with family until the new year, so I think I'll idle my mind and keyboard until '05.  Have a great holiday if you're still reading this!

Google/Internet Archive, Meet Mr. Event

In the spirit of "tags are the new black," here's a vision for how event and calendar management should be handled by 2006:  Wouldn't it be grand if all events in the world, from a garage sale in Lexington to a tech conference in SF, could be automatically discovered (Google), stored in one central, public domain, web services accessible database (Internet Archive), where the events could then be categorized (Topix), community rated and recommended (Amazon/Netflix/Last.FM), personally tagged (Flickr/del.icio.us), and ultimately custom-fed (PubSub) directly to your calendar device of choice (Calconnect)?

Cool, where do I sign up? I Could have used this to promote our now defunct SF Web Services SIG, which was done "by hand," one site/email list at a time.  Not to mention the relative difficulty when you go searching for a good event in your area...(not to knock workit.com or craigslist.org -- thanks guys!)  But I want this uber event service now!

So past and current pains combined with threads followed, dots connected, and small wheels turned since last week's Berkeley Calendar Project post create this mashup event service vision.  Actually, people are talking about this vision in so many words.  Dr. Bob Glushko and Allison Bloodworth et al are leading part of the effort by trying to bring sanity and sharing to the 80+ event calendars of UC Berkeley.  Tantek Çelik and other folks working on hCalendar talk about using your web site as your API,

"...bloggers can discuss events in their blog(s) in such a way that spiders and other aggregators can retrieve such events, automatically convert them to iCalendar, and use them in any iCalendar application or service.",

Kevin Hughs at zLab writes,

"The potential for applications that make use of networked, time-driven information is huge. Today's portals have no concept of event personalization or collaboration. Today's applications have only the most basic concept of integrating with or subscribing to time-driven data. And there are no providers of horizontal event-based services. ... Software and the Internet has freed online music from its proprietary data and application jails, why not do the same with events? The traditional calendar interface deserves a overhaul.",

Marc Canter chimes in,

"I wonder if they wanna help put up shared XML servers of Events - scraped from throughout the web?",

the Calconnect.org folks proclaim,

"Our members’ intent is to enable calendaring and scheduling tools and applications to enter the mainstream of computing," said Dave Thewlis. "After email, the World Wide Web, and instant messaging, calendaring and scheduling capabilities are what business people and consumers will really care about.",

and many many others I have yet to discover [add more in comments].  Yes, A few people are already doing similar stuff, like upcoming.org, rsscalendar.com, openeventscom, whizspark.com, evdb.com(?), and most likely Google Labs (?) [any more?].  But for starters, from what I can glean these efforts rely on people coming and manually submitting events, rather than auto-discovery and aggregation via spidering --> problem of db critical mass.

So let's make one!  Let's combine something practical and "standards-based" (ie., iCalendar/XHTML) like hCalendar, but extend it with the rich UBL-inspired semantics of a Berkeley Event Model.  Now that everyone agrees, let's move one.  We need open source tools so event producers (even for my yard sale) can list their events on their blogs/web sites, like they already do, but also be sure to use valid markup.  (Note: people are motiviated to promote their events -- no prodding necessary)  Then we need an open source spider, a bunch of disks and some linux boxes, a REST API, open source recommendation and reputation/rating/tagging engines (eg., tweaked openscrobbler + ??/??/??), and some pub-sub and feed generators.  And to top it off, let's make the database and service usable by all (eg., some kind of creative commons), so we can unleash the creativity of the world to build custom interfaces via our web services API.  Easy stuff in these days of inspiration from  Amazon/Google/PayPal/eBay/SForce, open source, wikis, bugzilla, and PayPal donate buttons.  Right?

The law of ideas says that at least 6 (or is it 8?) people are either building or have already built this exact event service -- and I haven't found it yet.  Any pointers?  If not, anyone want to build this monster?

BzzAgent and Word of Mouth Marketing: Ripe for Open Source?

Fascinating recent NY Times article "The Hidden (In Plain Sight) Persuaders". Read this one with awe and a hint of unplaced fear.  BzzAgent and a few other firms "hire" small armies of every day folks to stealthily promote products to their friends in casual conversation. Fascinating because while these people are hired (or more correctly "admitted") to become BzzAgents, they don't do it for $$. Instead the program taps in to people's inner needs to "belong to something bigger," be the "first kid on the block to know about XYZ," and maybe even as a form of therapy:

"In essence, they told Balter that there was nothing wrong with the rewards; it was just that the rewards weren't really the point. Even now, only about a quarter of the agents collect rewards, and hardly any take all they have earned." and,

"What, I asked her, if not the potential to get some free prizes for effort, made her bother to volunteer with BzzAgent? First, she told me, she gets the chance to sample new products shortly before they hit the stores, so she gets to feel a bit like an insider. Second, she has always liked to give people her opinion about what she's reading or what products she's using, and BzzAgent gives her more to talk about. Third, if she does like something, then telling other people is helpful to them. So participating is both a chance to weigh in and be heard, and also something close to an act of altruism."

and a woman speaking about her husband's involvement as a BzzAgent,

"She said she thought it had made him more open to other people. He used to be the kind of guy who just hated to call a mechanic about a noise the car was making; he would wait until the car actually broke down and he had no choice but to bother someone about it. He was in a shell. But that has changed..."

Nothing wrong with those motivations. Sounds like much of what drives open source software. And apparently the program works like gangbusters for BzzAgent's clients. But for how long?  It's probably just another immunity people will erect to deal with marketing overload (see also Marqui's use of paid bloggers), but this one could prove a hard strain to resist.  Lots of good discussion and commentary going on at Hugh Macleod's post around these issues.

So what's the problem, other than worrying about being duped by a BzzAgent, and adjusting to yet another marketing channel?  From the same post, Hugh offers one opinion,

"Jack, I'm not dissing BzzAgents because I think it's "wrong" or "immoral". If people want to squander their social capital on pimping supermarket-level products, fine. It's their life. I think BzzAgents is a "crap" idea simply because it doesn't solve the client's fundamental problem i.e. nobody sincerely wants to talk about their product."

But it apparently does solve this fundamental problem of kick starting chatter for BzzAgent clients, even if we're uncomfortable with it. So until we're immune or 60 Minutes outs the program, after which BzzAgents run the risk of becoming social pariah's when discovered, it will continue to be a viable sink for marketing dollars.

But there is a kernel of a wholesome, everyone-can-get-behind idea here. An "Open Source BzzAgent" approach comes to mind, where people honestly excited about products can get hooked up with other such folks for laughs and rewards (eg., I'd sign up to somehow formalize or benefit from my tireless Flickr invitation habit). This would have to be very grass roots and bottom up/decentralized, but sounds doable with enough free time and experimentation. This idea and/or project has to be out there already -- I'll hunt around and report back.

Build vs. use Open Source? Koders.com can Help.

Google for open source projects has appeared: Koders.com.  Looks like they scoure open source repositories and let you search for code by keyword, language, or license. 

But even more interesting is their "Build vs. Integrate Open Source" tool, which allows you to ballpark the cost to develop a given component yourself using some of your own cost metrics.  For example, here's their assessment of the cost to duplicate the popular Hibernate project's functionality. Good stuff.

Open Source Inside?

I had the pleasure of meeting Palamida founder Ray Waldin recently. Palamida is addressing a growing problem for ISV's: "what sort of open source might we be using, and are we adhering to the licenses?"

With a smorgasbord of ready-to-integrate code and a the proliferation of licensing terms, it's getting harder to ensure a complex, long-lived software product doesn't mistakenly run afoul of any licenses. Both Palamida and their competitor Black Duck Software are bringing a welcome service to market -- best of luck Ray!

The Dells of Open Source, Part 2

A little over a week ago I blogged SourceLabs, a newly minted Open Source aggregator aiming to sell support and services around productized open source components that have affinity. I expected to see a flood of these (it's a good idea after all), and last week we were indeed treated to another: SpikeSource. Turns out Kim Polese is CEO and the company was incubated and funded Ray Lane and Kleiner Perkins. Nice start!

Digging deeper, an interview with founder Murugan Pal (former Asera CTO) at TheServerSide quotes him as saying,

Almost all the other companies in this space talk about the same thing--but
what are the objectives metrics that they are measuring? Is it integration? Standards compliance? Regression? Negative tests, boundary tests. How can you integrate these tests in multiple dimension? How about IP rights classification? Security threat assessment?

But thinking about this for a few seconds longer, I see some cracks in this foundation. For starters protecting the investment Murugan mentions above. Once SpikeSource's LAMPJ stack becomes known as versions a, b, c, ... j of open source components 1, 2, 3, ... 10, and this info is widely disseminated, why pay the subscription? Certainly some will, but how many, and how much can you charge? And then there's the low or no cost competitors, who "knock off" your package with their own free distribution the day after each new release. I can picture tiny me-too companies shadowing SpikeSource's "products" and getting a free ride off their rigorous processes.

I'm obviously glossing over a whole host other value-add they have in mind. However in general, the basic value proposition of selling access and support to a, "vetted and test set of open source software as a product" seems better suited to software higher either higher up the stack, like Gluecode's portal server, or to a "sell the services" model, like JBoss or Orbeon.

The Dells of Open Source

One common way to innovate is to combine two or more different things and create something new that is more than a sum of parts. This happens in music all the time. Musicians take what they like -- their influences -- and combine them in their own way. Sometimes you get literal combinations that create little genres like "trip-hop," "ambient dub," our "sadcore," but most often you just get bands that,
"sound like a faster mix of band X and band Y."

Sooo... what do you get when you combine Dell and Open Source? As covered by CNET in Industry veterans bet on open-source model, you get a startup called SourceLabs. SourceLabs looks to make money by efficiently sourcing, pre-integrating, and selling solutions made from low-cost ($0) open source software packages. I like the analogy, and certainly being the "Dell" of anything has a nice ring to it.

Now this is nothing that Redhat and others haven't done for the likes of Linux and other now established open source products. So in a way, it's just more of the same good stuff -- giving corporate adopters of open source "one throat to choke." But still, I like thinking about this in terms of Dell, rather than just purely in terms of selling support and peace of mind. Dell makes money combining commodity hardware and offering computing solutions, Redhat does the same for operating system, and SourceLabs will pre-integrate and sell open source "stacks." No word yet on which or how many stacks. My big question is how does this scale? Can SourceLabs, or someone like them, go big and become the Amazon of open source? Or just focus on a core set of applications, like Linux (or Dell)? I expect to see many more companies like this in the near future.

Open Source and the Transistor Radio?

I recently listened to Clayton Christensen's presentation from the 2004 Open Source Business Conference called "Capturing the upside." (Actually I streamed it from Doug Kaye's wonderful IT Conversations site).

Clayton compared the adoption and success of open source to Sony and their first transistor radios and the first Japanese autos exported to the US. Basically the early transistor radios were feature-wise pitiful when compared to the existing products on the market. However, they succeeded because they addressed a new market: young people who would put up with the static and poor reception because they could actually afford them, combined with the fact that they relished the ability to listen privately to there rock music, away from parental earshot. Existing radios, while high-quality, were big and expensive, and thus out of reach of most teenagers. So while the existing market supposedly clamored for ever-more features, the "good enough" transistor product proved that features and functionality had gotten ahead themselves, and the new "poor quality" upstart came in to open a open a new market. And then of course the transistor radio slowly improved, and the rest is history...

Clayton points out that open source is doing the same thing today. Beyond the now established open source infrastructure standouts like Linux, MySQL, Apache, etc., there's a newer crop of applications like SugarCRM, Gluecode, and Firefox that have also started out humbly as "good enough." Many people just aren't served by feature-saturated, high-priced commercial offerings. Instead they're finding relatively immature open source alternatives to be good enough, and also lower TCO or be more customizable or... I'm now looking at innovation and market evolution with respect to open source with a new twist -- thanks Clayton!