I just returned from Germany where I spoke on The Open Source Census at the Open Source Meets Business conference.  At the same conference, HP announced the FOSSBazaar initiative, which OpenLogic is sponsoring along with Olliance Group, Novell, Google, Coverity, DLA Piper, SourceForge and The Linux Foundation.  The press release and presentation on FOSSBazaar has generated a lot of confusion.  In his blog, Dana Blankenhorn states

“The press releases for Fossology and Fossbazaar seem aimed mainly at branding these initiatives as HP’s when in fact they’re nothing of the kind.  A who’s who is backing them, including the Linux Foundation, Google, Novell, Olliance Group, OpenLogic, SourceForge, DLA Piper and Coverity.”

I’ve already received several calls and emails wondering whether HP is now competing with OpenLogic.  So I thought I’d share my views on the FOSSBazaar initiative as well as the announcement.  Although this initiative was started and led by HP, it is designed to be backed and supported by many in the open source ecosystem.  The FOSSBazaar website describes it this way:

“…an open source community web site of technology and industry leaders who have come together to accelerate adoption of free and open source software in the enterprise.”

That description is why we signed on to sponsor FOSSBazaar.  In Dana Blankenhorn’s blog, he seems to see the announcement on open source governance as planting fear.  The enterprises we encounter, though, are eager for information and help on how to better use and manage open source in their organizations.  FOSSBazaar will provide that information, expertise and advice in a free and open forum.  Ideally, FOSSBazaar will bring the best aspects of open source communities to bear on that topic. 

Just as no single member of a large open source community would claim responsibility for all the results, FOSSBazaar will need to follow these same open source community norms.  In HP’s desire to talk about their leadership on FOSSBazaar, they may have lost sight of the open and community aspects.  HP’s press release included a list of services they want to sell around open source governance, which seemed to blur the line between the free offerings of FOSSBazaar and HP’s for-pay offerings.  Those details of HP’s open source services may have been better left for a different forum or separate press release.   

One of the biggest points of confusion among people I’ve talked to is over what FOSSology does and how that compares to OSS Discovery, an open source tool OpenLogic released in December.  The short answer is that they are complementary.  OSS Discovery can be used to discover which open source packages are installed on your machines (providing package names and versions), regardless of license.  FOSSology can be used to search for open source licenses in a set of source or binary code.  We think enterprises will use these tools together – to identify open source packages and then identify the licenses.  Whichever tool enterprises need, they are both open source and freely available.

Bottom line, we think that FOSSBazaar can be a valuable resource for enterprises, despite some confusion around the announcement.   Our intention is to work with all of the participants in FOSSBazaar to ensure that it is a valuable resource helping enterprises to become more knowledgeable about open source governance issues and therefore more comfortable in using open source software.

Lots of big news in the open source world.  (No worries - not another acquisition!)

FOSSBazaar launched today - with OpenLogic as one of its founding partners.  Last week HP also announced that they released FOSSology as open source.  This is on the heels of OpenLogic's announcement of the Open Source Census and the open sourcing of our tool OSSDiscovery.  This is all really cool because together these make a great tool box.  We've been getting a lot of questions about whether FOSSology does the same thing as Discovery (short answer is no) and how FOSSBazaar fits with Open Source Census.  Here's what they do:

• OSS Discovery - scans any number of machines and generates a list of all of the installed open source software and version numbers, regardless of license.  OpenLogic released OSS Discovery as open source last month.  We’re looking for people that want to expand the fingerprint library, so go to ossdiscovery.org to learn more.   
• FOSSology - scans source code and generates a list of all the copyrights and licenses it finds.  It doesn't identify what open source packages are installed - it finds licenses.  HP released it as open source last week.  FOSSology and OSS Discovery are complementary, and will often be used together — OSS Discovery to inventory open source software across a number of machines, and FOSSology to identify the licenses.
• FOSSBazaar - a website where you can find open source governance resources (including links to tools like OSS Discovery and FOSSology), and share best practices.  It was launched by a group of companies, led by HP, but it's a working group of the Linux Foundation and has nine partners sharing resources: Linux Foundation, HP, OpenLogic, Olliance Group, Novell, SourceForge, DLA Piper, Google and Coverity.
• Open Source Census - a global, collaborative project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software in the enterprise.  It collects and consolidates the data found by OSS Discovery.   Results will be shared publicly to encourage the use of open source software! It's an initiative started by OpenLogic and we will soon announce partners - we have over half a dozen signed up.

OpenLogic is excited to be a member of FOSSBazaar, and to share and talk about open source governance best practices, and we are glad that enterprises will now have access to tools like OSS Discovery and FOSSology.  We believe they will use OSS Discovery to inventory their systems and then they'll use FOSSology to get a picture of what copyrights and licenses they are dealing with.  We currently use both tools at OpenLogic today.

I'm packing my bag for Australia.  I thought I'd let you all know where I'm at, so if you are also there, we can get together.

Over the next two weeks, I'll be giving the following talks:

• LinuxChix – January 28^th, Melbourne, Australia
  “What does a community manager do?”
  http://conf.au.linuxchix.org/schedule/communitymanager-stormypeters/

• LinuxConf Australia – January 30^th, Melbourne, Australia
  Keynote: “Would you do it again for free?”
  http://linux.conf.au/programme/keynotes

• Women in Open Source – February 8^th, Los Angeles, CA
  “What does a community manager do?”
  http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale6x/conference-info/women-in-open-source/

• SCALE – February 10^th, Los Angeles, CA
  Keynote: “Would you do it again for free?”
  http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale6x/conference-info/speakers/Stormy-Peters/
  

 I'm trying a whole new slide style, so I'm looking forward to my presentations.  But I'm most looking forward to seeing everyone - that's my favorite thing about conferences.  Getting together with people I know and meeting new people.

A while back we added governance capabilities to OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX.)   This is really cool because it means that not only can you get your open source software through OLEX but you can set your policies and run your approval process through OLEX. 

So a company can sign up for OLEX:

• set some policies (say LGPL products are ok, GPL licensed products are ok for teams using it internally but external teams need approval),
• give their employees access to OLEX (so they can look through our library of 350+ supported open source software for software that's useful to them),
• track downloads and installs within their company,
• generate reports for management and legal on who is using what, and
• allow people to ask for approval to use products right in the tool and get approval through the tool.  

So everything is tracked in OLEX.  No more spreadsheets, no more folders of random emails to compile.

Febuary 12th we are having a webinar where we'll explain why governance is important, how to do it and we'll demo our online governance tools.  Here are the details:

Tuesday, February 12
2:00 p.m. EDT / 12:00 p.m. MDT /
11:00 a.m. PDT / 7:00 p.m. GMT
Register Now

In 2007 the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filed four lawsuits on behalf of the creators of BusyBox open source software alleging violations of the GNU General Public License (GPL). Although enterprises need to be aware of open source legal issues, an effective open source governance program can help mitigate risks while enabling enterprises to maximize the benefits of open source software.

If your organization uses open source software in development or production environments, attend this webinar to learn how OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX) Enterprise Edition helps enterprises find, download, use, manage, and support open source software while protecting against potential risks.

Webinar attendees will learn how OLEX Enterprise Edition can help enterprises implement the five steps to open source governance:

• Inventory open source usage
• Implement an open source policy
• Manage approval of open source
• Ensure compliance with open source licenses
• Track and audit open source usage

Join Senior Vice President of Marketing Kim Weins and Product Manager Nathan Bobbin for an in-depth discussion of open source governance and OLEX Enterprise Edition.

Dawn Foster recently started a series of podcasts all around community management.  If you don't already subscribe to her blogs and podcasts, you should check it out.  You can listen to the latest one with me!  (I think it turned out pretty good but to be honest I always have a really hard time listening to myself.) 

Continuing my study of whether or not external rewards kill intrinsic motivations, I read a paper Norms, Rewards and Their effect on the Motivation of Open Source Software Developers that Luis pointed me at and Matt Asay blogged about.  (For the record, the paper is as long as its title implies it might be.)  The authors of the paper were also interested in whether or not paying open source developers would demotivate them.  They did a survey with college kids that concluded that paying open source software developers doesn't demotivate them.  However, I think and they agreed, that the research has yet to be done on a real open source software project.  They did point out three really interesting facts.

1. Self-reported interest (intrinsic motivations) increase with payment if payment is a "normal" part of the process.  So since software developers are often paid to write software, paying developers to work on open source software is not likely to be demotivating.  (Note that if the external reward is not part of the norm, it actually ends up being demotivating!)
2. External rewards tied to completing a task or tied to performance are most demotivating.  That would imply that bounties (for adding a feature or fixing a bug) are more demotivating than collecting a paycheck to work on a project.
3. Informational rewards are more motivating (or less demotivating) than control rewards.  So receiving a good performance review (informational reward) is more motivating than being paid to add a feature you think doesn't fit.  This goes with #2.  Performance goals and task completion goals are seen as more controlling and less informational.

If, like me, you've wondered why with all our email and conference calls, we spend so much time on airplanes, then you should read How Email Brings You Closer to the Guy in the Next Cubicle from Wired.  I don't think he completely answered it but he makes two good points:

1.  Technology enables us to meet up with people we are interested in meeting, whether for business or pleasure. 

It follows that matchmaking is most effective in densely populated areas, where there are plenty of fish but an awfully big sea. If you live in Los Angeles, online dating is the killer app. If you live in a small town, you've likely already met all your potential mates at church or a bar.

2.  Technology enables us to communicate more effectively with our networks, but doesn't replace facetime. It just enhances the inbetween facetime communications.

The most productive workers have the densest intracompany email web.

This shouldn't surprise us. Email makes it quicker and easier to reach your colleagues — you don't have to interrupt them, and messages are easy to process. But email doesn't stop you from wanting facetime, too. Just the opposite: By enabling us to maintain productive business relationships with more people, it encourages more face-to-face contact. Have you noticed business travel dying out? Neither have I. Air travel is at record highs.

On a different note, I'm glad to see that all those hundreds of inter-HP emails I sent were good for my productivity!  I have to admit that sometimes I wondered!

As many of you know, I'm really interested in the question of "Would you do it again for free?"  If you take developers that are working on open source software for free and you pay them, if you stop paying them, will they still work on open source software?  This was the topic of my keynote at GUADEC and will be the topic of my keynotes at LinuxConf Australia and SCALE - the story continues to evolve as I learn more.  One of the things I started with was a search to see if there was any relevant data out there.  I found the following five studies that explore how external rewards affect internal or intrinsic rewards:

1. NYC "pay for grades."  New York City is offering financial incentives to students to encourage them to do well in school.  Kids are being offered up to $500 a year to take the standardized tests, get good grades and attend school regularly.  Barry Schwartz, author of The Paradox of Choice is very critical of the plan.   He says that by paying them we may actually make them less likely to want to go to school (unless they are paid.)  Instead he says we need to figure out why kids don't want to do well in school.  We need to work at making them internally motivated to do well in school. 
2. Kids & Crayons.  In the same New York Times editorial, Barry Schwartz pointed to another study that shows how external rewards can kill intrinsic motivations.  This study was done with preschool kids - they were given some special markers.  Some of the kids were given awards for playing with the markers and some were not.  Those that got rewards were less likely to play with the markers again and less likely to draw pictures.  They associated drawing pictures with earning rewards not with having fun and so were less likely to draw pictures just for fun! 
3. Swiss nuclear waste.  In a slightly different twist, a study was done to see if external rewards were more or less motivating than internal rewards from the onset.  (Actually, I don't think that's what they were studying but that's the question they ended up answering.)  A few years ago Switzerland was trying to figure out where to put its nuclear waste - no town wanted it.  Researchers went door to door and asked people if they would take the waste in their town.  When they were reminded that it was their duty as a Swiss citizen, 50% of them said ok.  When they were told they'd be paid a substantial sum (about six weeks pay every year,) only 25% of them said ok!  It wasn't worth the money.
4. Israeli Daycare.  An Israeli daycare also conducted an unintended study on motivations.  They were tired of parents arriving late to pick up their kids, so instead of giving the parents a hard time and explaining that their workers wanted to go home on time they decided to start fining parents.  Parents saw the fine as sanctioned baby sitting and started showing up late even more often.  They no longer had to feel bad about showing up late because they were paying for the service!  The scary thing (for the daycare) was that when they removed the fines (because parents were showing up even later,) parents didn't go back to their original behavior!  (I think the daycare must not have charged enough.  My daycare charges a $1/minute and I have to say that's motivating!  Although I am more motivated by the embarrassment of being the last parent and of making my kid feel bad.) [Dave Neary pointed me to Luis Villa's post on this one.]
5. Household chores.  Motivation crowding theory cites a study that found that kids that were paid to mow the lawn would only mow the lawn if they were paid to mow it.

So the question is, can those studies be applied to open source software?  I think so, although we'll need to look at the intrinsic motivations driving developers and the external rewards they get.  I'll be sharing more of my research in future blog posts.

I've been thinking about Data is a commodity:

Data isn't the valuable.

In fact, data's a commodity. We're drowning in data.

Think about it this way: the lower the cost of interaction, by definition, the more abundant data is - because every interaction creates reams of data. More data is created tomorrow than was created yesterday. And so on.

He claims the value is in the data creation:

What is valuable are the things that create data: markets, networks, and communities.

I disagree.  The data is valuable and the data creators are valuable, but they are also commodities.  (Just because air is a commodity doesn't make it any less valuable.)  However, if you are talking about where you can make money with data, I believe it's not in creating or selling the data but in helping people do useful things with the data.  The Value of Things You Don't Own touches on it when the author alludes that you create conversations and groups of friends around shared data.  However, the point they should have made is that there is tons and tons of data out there, data that is very useful to you and me, and helping people find and manage data is very much the business of the future.  Data is being created by the bucket load - "very interaction creates reams of data."   How do I find what I'm looking for?  How do I even know there's something interesting to look for?

We see this with open source software.  There are hundreds of thousands of open source software projects.  Sometimes companies are looking for a specific type of project (like a database) and sometimes they need something that they don't even know exists (like instant messaging a few years ago.)  At OpenLogic, we've made our knowledge base, our open source data, free to everyone through OpenLogic Exchange.  The data was out there for anyone to find hidden on many different websites and bundled in tar files.  What customers needed was a way to parse it, read it, verify it, find it, … we organize the data and make it easy for them to find what they are looking for.  Then if they want to "manage their data" and track open source software in their enterprise … that's where the value-add comes in.  It's not the data.  It's helping people use the data efficiently.

When you look at the acquisition of MySQL by Sun, many pundits and  bloggers point to the acquisition as a way for Sun to fill the database slot in their offering. (PaulaRooney at ZDNet, Forbes)   But I think that leaves out a couple of key underlying market drivers — consolidation and competition — that may help to explain Sun’s acquisition, and to understand potential future implications for the industry as whole.

 Enterprise usage model drives need for consolidated open source support 

Enterprises use lots of different open source components – our internal research shows over 90 different components on average.  They typically combine many open source components into a single application, along with custom and proprietary software.  When these applications go into production and it’s time to get support, enterprises want to ensure they have support for all of the open source components in that application. 

Enterprises have two options for commercial support of open source software – getting individual support contracts on each component from different vendors or getting support on many or all of the software components from a single vendor.  Given all else being equal (quality, price), most enterprises would prefer the latter — a single vendor across many components.

Competition in open source support drives costs lower 

However, before we start to believe that this looks a lot like the proprietary world, we need to look at the second market driver — support for open source software is a competitive marketplace.  Unlike most proprietary software, open source creates the possibility of competition among vendors for support contracts.  We have seen this in the Linux market and at OpenLogic we offer support of over 350 open source components, often competing with other vendors.

Enterprises have realized that this is a competitive market and increasingly we find they are shopping for the best combination of support quality and price by getting competitive bids.  Price is a critical factor that enterprises consider.  In the past year, we have seen a growing number of enterprises dropping or foregoing support contracts from leading open source vendors such as JBoss and MySQL in order to find lower priced, consolidated support that will better meet their needs.  The winners in the open source market will be vendors that adapt to this model by creating business models, pricing and cost structures that adapt to this commoditization.

What it means for Sun and MySQL 

For Sun, the acquisition of MySQL is a starting point for addressing this need for consolidation of open source support.  However, it is not a sufficient ending point.  Enterprises will need support for more than the handful of open source components that Sun provides to-date.  In his blog, Jonathon Schwartz seems to acknowledge that — intimating in his blog that there is more open source in Sun's future.

What is less clear is how Sun will adapt to this change in the competitive environment.  In his blog, Jonathan Schwartz states that Sun is ready for the competitive environment that open source presents. 

The good news is Sun is already committed to the business model at the heart of MySQL's success - first investing to grow communities of users and developers, and only then creating commercial services that attract (rather than lock in) paying customers. 

However, competing with alternative products is very different from competing for support on the same product.  Success in open source will require that Sun can do both.