We have some upcoming webinars on open source governance.  There are three webinars in the series, but you can register for just the topics that interest you.  Here are the three topics:

May 20: How to Inventory your Use of Open Source Software. 

• We'll show how to use a free open source tool, OSS Discovery, to find and inventory the open source used in your company.

Jun 3: How to Implement an Open Source Policy and Approval Process 

• You'll learn how to roll out and enforcing your open source policy and approval process.

Jun 17: Understanding Open Source License Obligations

• You'll learn how to uncover and comply with open source license obligations.

We recently announced new capabilities added to OpenLogic Exchange (OLEX).  OLEX is a free portal where enterprise developers can research and download certified, enterprise-ready open source.   

OpenLogic's library of certified open source projects has now passed 400 open source projects.  Each project in the Certified Library, made available on OLEX at olex.openlogic.com, has passed a rigorous 42 point certification process to ensure it is appropriate for enterprise use.  The OpenLogic Library has doubled the number of projects over the last year.  We prioritize new projects to be added based on customer requests, so the library represents some of the most popular open source projects that are in use in enterprises. 

In addition to expanding the lbrary with new projects, we are continuing to add additional content and tools.  We often get questions from companies about what open source package they should be using.  To address this, we've created the Open Source Comparison Matrix.  The Comparison Matrix does not attempt to pick a "best" option within any given category, but rather provides information on what each project is "best for".  This will enables enterprise developers to easily select a set of projects to consider for a particular use.  Check out the Open Source Comparison Matrix for Application Servers.

Cool story:  I just got out of a meeting with a VC who is a potential investor in OpenLogic.  At one point during the meeting, he asked about adoption of open source application frameworks — specifically Struts and Spring.  I pulled up the web site for The Open Source Census, went to the All Packages by Name report and found out that Spring had been found on 8% of the machines scanned so far and Struts on 16%.  The VC's mouth dropped open.  He started staring at the screen and writing all sorts of numbers down in his notebook.

This is the promise of The Open Source Census.  I know we've got a ways to go to collect more data, but the data makes people salivate.  And it's only going to get better.  Now that is cool.

In a recent post on open source business models, Fabrizio Copabianco from Funambol states his belief that a business model based solely on support won't work.

I can't believe a pure model based on support is going to scale to the one billion dollars we always talk about. A pure support and services model works for a while, then customers get comfortable with what they have and pull the plug on it. Your best customers leave you because they are too satisfied… It is sad but inevitable. Maybe you can make it with an operating system, but if you move up the stack you are screwed…

I believe the issue with open source support models is because of the way they have worked up till now …which is often too much money for too little value.  In the end, companies are willing to pay if the cost is commensurate to the value they get and is better than alternative options (eg self support or community support).  Because open source support is often significantly cheaper than proprietary license plus maintenance costs, it may be easy at first to overlook the fact that we still need to ensure that the value customers get justifies the cost.

More than once at OpenLogic we have been called by companies who had already dropped support from a commercial open source vendor because they value/cost relationship was not there.  They later ran into support issues that they needed help with.  Inevitably, when we help solve those problems, they are happy to sign up for a support subscription.  The customer was always very willing to pay for support – just not the price that the vendor wanted to charge.

 As commercial open source vendors, we need to deliver value commensurate with our cost.  Sounds obvious, but I think it's been easy to skate by on the fact that open source is cheaper than proprietary software.  I don't think that will be the case for much longer.  As the economy tightens, as customers get more familiar with open source, as the competitive landscape emerges, successful open source support companies will be the ones that deliver a lot of value at a low cost.

The old adage, "you can't manage what you can't measure" applies to open source as well.  Bernard Golden recently posted on why it is important for CIOs to understand what open source software they are using in order to adequately address both the infrastructure needs and legal requirements of open source.  He looks at the challenges that this lack of awareness can present.

Think about the risk exposure this represents. Obviously, there are questions regarding whether the company is complying with the license obligations of the open source software, so the company's attorneys are likely to be concerned.

To my mind, though, legal risk is only a small part of the overall risk this CIO faces. The far larger risk is that there is no visibility into the makeup of a significant portion of the company's IT infrastructure. How can you confidently plan for SLA commitments when you're not sure of what software you're running, its maturity, supportability, and so on? Furthermore, as a CIO, you face the very real potential of being unable to adequately map out your workforce skills planning, since you are unaware of what development and operations commitments accompany these invisible software implementations. Finally, it's hard to attest to important regulatory requirements (if you're subject to regulations like recoverability and so on, as financial institutions are), when you don't know what will need to be recovered.

OpenLogic developed OSS Discovery — a free, open source tool that finds installed open source on your machines – to address just this problem.  IT organizations can download OSS Discovery and use it to scan a sampling of machines in their organization to find out what open source they are using.  OpenLogic also provides a free inventory analysis of the first 500 machines.  This inventory is the first step to open source governance.

Once you have the data about what open source you are using, you can:

• ensure compliance with open source licenses
• determine the type of support and SLAs required
• plan for skills needed in your organization
• ensure compliance with regulations and internal policies

You can also benchmark your open source usage against that of other similar companies by taking the results from OSS Discovery and anonymously submitting them to The Open Source Census.  By doing so, you will get access to benchmark reports that show opportunities for using more open source software.

I just read Matt Asay's blog post MySQL adoption: Deep and wide in which he refers to an anecdote on Jonathan Schwarz's blog about MySQL adoption in the enterprise.

In the anecdote, Jonathan meets with a CIO who claims that they don't run MySQL.  A Sun sales rep counters this claim with the tidbit that there had been 1300 downloads of MySQL from that company in the last year.

This is not uncommon — we frequently hear from CIOs who tell us they barely use any open source.  However when we use OSS Discovery to scan their machines, we find they are using a heck of a lot more open source than they realize.  This was the impetus for launching The Open Source Census yesterday.

So I decided to go check on the status of MySQL in The Open Source Census.  I found that of the 400+ machines scanned to date, about 37% had MySQL installed.

If this CIO participates in The Open Source Census, he will know how much open source and which open source packages are being used in the company.  And he will be able to compare his open source usage to that of similar companies.

Maybe Sun will pass it on.

http://blogs.sun.com/jonathan/entry/freedom_s_choice

As of today, The Open Source Census is now LIVE and accepting data!

The Open Source Census is a new project to collect and share quantitative data on the use of open source software in the enterprise. In short, that just means we want to count how many enterprise installations for each open source package. Our goal for The Open Source Census is to show how much open source is already being used by enterprises and encourage the use of more open source software. See the full press release on the launch of The Open Source Census.

The Open Source Census uses an open source tool, OSS Discovery, to scan a machine for open source and optionally contribute the results to The Open Source Census.  You can learn more about OSS Dsicovery at the OSS Discovery community hosted by Collabnet.

Along with OpenLogic, sponsors include IDC, Unisys, Collabnet, Holmes, Roberts & Owen, Navica, Olliance Group, Open Solutions Alliance, and the Open Source Business Foundation. Jim Jagielski of the Apache Software Foundation is acting as an advisor.

How to Participate

You can participate by:

• Visiting The Open Source Census website to learn more
• Scanning your machine and anonymously submitting the results to The Open Source Census
• Encouraging your company to participate in The Open Source Census
• Telling others about The Open Source Census
• Contributing fingerprints for your open source package so that it can be found by The Open Source Census

We look forward to sharing the results of The Open Source Census through the website and at upcoming conferences.

My new mantra is "Email is not work".  I just got back from OSBC 2008, and saw once again, how tied we all are to our electronic devices.  Now I like my BlackBerry as much as the next person, but I'm afraid that we may be so busy checking email that we are missing out on valuable opportunities to think and learn.  Matt Asay talks about this in his blog Back in the good old days when I had time to think. 

I only got my BlackBerry about 6 months ago.  My impetus for buying it was a bike trip to Italy last October, where I needed to have some ability to communicate with work.  I didn't want to be forced to spend time tracking down internet cafes when I would rather be on my bike or exploring a Tuscan hill town with my friends.  My fear in getting the BlackBerry was that I would become one of those "crackberry addicts".  As a recovering workaholic, I've (finally) learned to create some boundaries around my work.  It took a cancer diagnosis a couple years ago to make me realize that, as much as I love my work, spending all my time consumed by work was not the way I wanted to spend my life.  I also know that time I spend thinking is way more valuable to my company than time I spend checking email.  Hence my new mantra.

This has been my second year of attending the OSBC conference, and each year I've come back from the conference with new insights and "aha's".  I've been able to learn about how other companies have been successful and think about how OpenLogic needs to evolve as we grow our business.  I'm pretty positive those insights are way more important than an instant response to an email.  I will continue to use my BlackBerry to help me in my work, but I choose not to become addicted. 

 In his summary What I learned from OSBC 2008, Matt Asay commented on how we align open source business models with customer satisfaction (and willingness to pay".   According to Matt:

Enterprises love open source but the business models necessary to fuel both their happiness and that of the vendors still need a lot of work.

Jon Williams of Kaplan Test suggested in his keynote, as Dirk Hohndel captures, that the more happy he is with his commercial open-source software, the less likely he will be to pay for it. Why? Because his developers will acquire the expertise over time to support themselves and because the product will mature to the point that support will be less necessary.

The vendor can respond in two ways: Innovation and proprietization (made up word). By innovation, Jon suggested that continual development of the product keeps it buggy (my word, not his) and out in front of his developers, such that support remains relevant. Vendors can also offer services like the JBoss Operations Network that make maintenance of the software easier.

A combination of both is optimal, but Dirk is right that it's a bit depressing, this prospect of the customer leaving just when you've made them the happiest. 

 I've been thinking about this topic a lot, and especially how we can provide value around support. 

Like many people in the open source world, I spent many years working for proprietary enterprise software companies — mostly startups but also a few large companies like Hyperion and PeopleSoft.  During my time at the larger proprietary software companies, I saw how support teams were very eager to point fingers at other vendors and play the "blame game".  If they could feasibly point at the database or the operating system or the custom code written by the customer, they were very happy to declare it "not our problem".  Part of the reason for this approach was that the support teams didn't really have enough expertise in all of the components and infrastructure that worked around their own product and didn't want to spend the time and effort needed to troubleshoot a problem that could end up being in "someone else's code".

In the open source world, the support problem gets more challenging.  In the area where OpenLogic plays (above the operating system and below the business applications), companies are typically combining many open source packages, custom code and proprietary solutions to create their critical business applications.  Yet in these large companies, the expertise for each of these components is highly distributed.  There's an app server team, a database team, an infrastructure team, a network team (you get the picture) and often there's no one at the company that has the complete picture of how all of the components work together or, more importantly, why they are not working properly. 

At OpenLogic, We find that our engineers providing support need to have superior troubleshooting skills in order to follow the problems through the whole system to find the root cause.  That also means being willing and able to cross boundaries between products (even when they were not bundled by the vendor) to solve the customer problem - wherever it lies.  In fact, we rarely find that the problem is a bug in the open source package.  Most often we find that is some configuration or integration issue, or a problem with how all of the pieces interoperate.  When we solve these types of issues for customers, they are thrilled, ecstatic and grateful.  They are happy that someone is helping solve their business problem - regardless of its source. 

This wasn't something we fully appreciated two years ago when we first launched our support offering, but I think this lesson is an important one for all open source companies.  Just as open source has brought new, more transparent ways to engage with customers around product development, open source also brings new ways to engage with customers around support.  By breaking through narrow product silos, we can increase our value to customers and fuel customer happiness with open source companies and the services they provide.

Matt Asay recently wrote a post on What is Really Going on at JBoss?   In it he quotes Marc Fleury's comments that JBoss is doing well. 

I don't have any visibility on what overall JBoss numbers or uptake is looking like, but we have run across some interesting anecdotes from enterprise users of JBoss.  These are mostly customers that are unhappy with JBoss since the acquisition.  Common complaints are that RedHat is significantly raising prices (customers are getting renewals that are 3-4x last year's bill) and that the quality of support has gone down.  We mostly hear these stories as customers start shopping around for alternatives - either different open source software packages (a la GlassFish) or other JBoss support options.  Many of the ones we talk to have already cancelled their JBoss support contracts.

This may or may not be representative of overall JBoss business, but I think it does raise an interesting point.  Enterprises are shopping competitively for support on open source projects they use.  Many customers find us via the web and are actively soliciting bids from multiple vendors.

This is a little different twist than what we saw in the proprietary software world.  There, customers would shop around before selecting a product — evaluate Oracle vs SAP or Sun vs IBM.  However, once they made a selection, they were pretty much locked into that vendor for support and maintenance.  Switching costs were often very high.

In the open source world, customers can switch support vendors or switch products much more easily.  Customers see this as a huge beneft - they want to avoid vendor lock in.  Open source companies need to realize this and address it - not by trying to find ways to lock customers in (that's exactly what customers don't want), but by finding ways to deliver better quality support and service at a reasonable price. 

Vendor lock in is dead in the open source world.