The open source pundits are out in full force trying to anticipate what Oracle's acquisition of Sun means for MySQL. It's a fun exercise to try to predict the future — which may be why there’s no consensus. Here are some of the quotes that we found interesting.

• Larry Dignan, ZDNET: "Oracle gets to kill MySQL. There’s no way Ellison will let that open source database mess with the margins of his database. MySQL at best will wither from neglect. In any case, MySQL is MyToast."
• Larry Augustin, long time open source investor and entrepreneur, suggested on his Twitter feed "Oracle probably keeps some of the storage software assets while selling the hardware parts to EMC, Hitachi or HP. Win-win."
• Marten Mikos, former MySQL chief told Forbes: "Larry Ellison is smart. MySQL was getting around 70,000 downloads a day when I left. It's an amazing grip on young developers. Having MySQL makes business sense for Oracle."

We agree with Larry and Marten – we don't think the MySQL community would let MySQL die even if Oracle wanted to kill it. Open source communities are resilient and have the ability to be self-repairing. There are plenty of people in the developer and user community who want the MySQL technology to continue to grow and evolve. If Oracle either neglected MySQL or actively tried to kill it, the community could and likely would fork the project and continue on. So, we don't think MySQL will die.

But we also think there is a valid concern that Oracle will raise the support costs of MySQL. There are a couple of reasons we think this is likely:

1. History
After Red Hat acquired JBoss, we started to get JBoss customers coming to us when their RedHat/JBoss subscriptions came up for renewal. They were reporting increases in subscription prices from RedHat/JBoss — by as much as 400%. We expect that trend to continue with Oracle's acquisition of Sun.

2. Business Models
Oracle has a typical high-cost enterprise software business model. They spend a lot of money to acquire and retain customers. And they expect and get high margins for their maintenance business. Successful open source companies need to learn how to operate with much lower expenses — in order to provide subscriptions and support to customers at much lower costs. As MySQL begins to be offered through the Oracle sales force and channels, Oracle's enterprise sales model will impact costs of selling MySQL and will likely result in higher prices for MySQL support from Oracle.

In addition, there will be pressure to avoid cannibalization of revenue on the Oracle database, which will drive Oracle to reduce the price differential between Oracle DB and MySQL.

The promise of open source companies lies in their ability to offer significantly lower cost support and solutions to customers. To deliver on this promise, a different mentality is required.

First, open source companies must foster open communities. To gain the cost savings and quality benefits that come with open source, you need communities that extend beyond the walls of one company. Only then can you break free of the high development costs that come with traditional proprietary software.

Second, open source companies must foster low cost sales models. Typical software sales approaches are simply too expensive when you are trying to deliver software at a fraction of the cost.

It's highly doubtful that Oracle will be able to change their mentality and their approach — so the result will unfortunately be higher pricing from Oracle on MySQL support and subscriptions.

Luckily, one of the other benefits of open source is that customers have choice. They are not locked-in to one vendor for support.

As InfoWorld's Savio Rodrigues reported in February, one of the leading reasons that almost 100 medium-sized and Fortune 500 companies come to OpenLogic is for our low-cost MySQL, JBoss, and Tomcat support.

For cost-effective consolidated support providers such as OpenLogic, we expect this acquisition to drive more customers to compare prices on open source support and bump our sales, just as the RedHat/JBoss acquisition did a few years ago.

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.

High Mobley nicely outlined the business case for open source last week, and not surprisingly his words generated some pretty heated comments.  The open source vs. proprietary issue always brings out passionate debate on both sides.

I think the business cases Mobley covered are valid, but as some of the comments suggested there’s more to technology decisions than the fees associated with a particular software license.  Technology investments always come with issues like training, ongoing maintenance, interoperability, and ease of configuration and integration.  These decisions aren’t made in a vacuum where the up-front licensing costs are the only factors considered.

Sometimes open source software isn’t the best solution for a particular problem, business environment, or the personnel involved.  But when open source offers the best solution for a problem—and enterprises are increasingly choosing open source over commercial software—the key is to go with a commercial open source vendor that can fill in the gaps around the issues mentioned above.  Harper Mann perfectly summed up the situation in a separate blog:

…the solution is not to avoid open source, but rather to engage commercial open source. That is, work with companies that can connect and enhance what open source tools can do. Companies that serve as immediate liaisons for both the open source community and the business community. Ultimately, companies that can provide what end users need.

In short, that’s what we do here at OpenLogic.  We offer the services that enterprises want (certification, support, training, updates, indemnification, and management tools) for hundreds of the most popular open source packages.  This puts open source on a level playing field with proprietary software and allows companies to choose the best business solution for each situation.

Red Hat announced its Red Hat Exchange program last week.  (Coincidentally, the abbreviation for the program—RHX—reminds me of the OXC abbreviation used for our OpenLogic Expert Community program.)   They've already signed up a number of open source vendors and are offering those vendors’ open source applications as part of the Red Hat Network.  By consolidating sourcing and support for the Linux operating system and a number of applications on top of it, Red Hat is hoping to make it that much easier for Global 2000 companies to use open source software in a production environment.

While this looks like a step in the right direction, my concern is that the Red Hat Network doesn't go far enough in providing the breadth and choice that customers want.

As we work with Global 2000 companies, we find that they are using a broad range of open source packages.  On the average, companies that we talk to report using 75 different open source packages.  (In fact, this number probably underestimates actual usage, since many companies do not have an easy way to inventory open source.) 

First, when large enterprises look for support for open source, they typically want coverage for the whole breadth of open source products they use.  This includes products like Spring, Struts, Eclipse, JSF, Ant, Maven, CVS and Subversion, which go beyond the open source applications that have been announced as part of RHX.

Second, companies look for choice within any product category.  They want support for open source products like Tomcat and Geronimo that might compete with Red Hat’s products.

Lastly, customers are deploying open source across multiple platforms — including RHEL, SUSE, Solaris and even Windows.  They want open source support that covers all of the platforms they deploy on.  Whether RHX will ever support multiple platforms remains a question.

As Dave Rosenberg commented on Matt Asay’s blog about RHX, “The thing I don’t love about rhx is that it’s not an open market.”  With Red Hat controlling vendor participation in RHX, competition and choice—at least for some types of applications—will be limited.

At OpenLogic, we have chosen to offer support for hundreds of open source packages that give customers options across a variety of product categories and a variety of platforms.  We believe that this provides the breadth AND choice that companies want.

Red Hat will undoubtedly continue to fill out their offering, and perhaps someday it may be considered a one-stop-shop for open source.  But it’s my belief that customers have needs that go beyond what Red Hat is willing to offer.  At the end of the day enterprises will pick the solutions best meet their needs, whether or not those solutions all come from RHX. 

Lately I’ve been thinking about how the open source values of choice and flexibility might be affected by enterprise uptake of open source and the evolution of open source business models.  As we talk to enterprises we find that more and more of them are following the advice of industry analysts who recommend evaluating open source on an equal footing with commercial software.  This often means that organizations are looking for the same types of services for open source that they are used to getting from commercial vendors.  They want a trusted supplier, technical support agreements with specific service levels, product updates, and indemnification, to name a few. 

As a result, commercial open source companies, including OpenLogic, are looking to provide all of these commercial-grade services that enterprises want.  There’s nothing wrong with that—that’s just the market at work to meet a need.  But not surprisingly, along the way the commercial open source vendors start to look a lot like commercial vendors.  In terms of the set of commercial-grade services you can access, getting the Red Hat Application Stack from RedHat doesn’t look much different than getting a stack of components from Microsoft.  (Note that I’m not trying comment on the relative quality or functionality of these options—I’ll leave that argument to others).  Sure, you can look at the source code with the open source solution, but the reality is that most enterprises prefer not to change the source code.

So if the commercial-grade wrapper starts to look the same, how do some of the open source benefits like choice and flexibility provide additional value to customers?  The reality is that if a particular product category has only one commercial open source option with the wrapper of commercial-grade services, then the benefit of choice and flexibility for enterprises is lost.  If you look at today’s commercial open source alternatives, there are clearly a few categories—Linux distributions, databases, CRM systems—that do provide choice among commercial-grade open source alternatives.  In other categories, the open source choices can get pretty thin.   

Maintaining choice in open source is important for several reasons:

• Different options allow enterprises to meet different business and technical needs, which can vary a great deal from company to company.
• Choice leads to competition that drives innovation in open source projects.
• Vendor lock-in, whether by traditional commercial software vendors or commercial open source companies, increases costs for enterprises.  Choice eliminates lock-in and drives down costs for the enterprise. 

At OpenLogic, we’ve adopted the mantra of choice and flexibility, and that mantra impacts the decisions we make.  For example, our library of hundreds of certified open source packages offers a wide range of choices in each product category.  Whether the need is an application framework, development tools, application servers or testing tools, the enterprise has more than one choice.  And all of those choices are wrapped with the commercial-grade services—certification, support, indemnification and maintenance—that enterprises want.  This ensures that enterprises don’t need to choose between commercial-grade and non-commercial grade open source.  Instead, the choice is between multiple commercial-grade open source options.

We hope that as open source evolves, so too will the business models continue to evolve so that open source solutions continue to offer companies the benefits of choice and flexibility.

It’s been a rough winter so far here in Colorado.  Denver and the surrounding areas along the Front Range usually experience only occasional snowstorms and cold spells separated by mild temperatures and sunny days.  Not this year.  We’ve had record amounts of snow and days upon days of single-digit temperatures.  It was during the worst of this weather that we had to finalize all 2006 business. 

Like many of today’s businesses we’re fortunate to have laptops, VPN connections, and all the other trappings necessary for employees to work from a “virtual office” when the roads aren’t passable.  We’re also lucky to have dedicated employees who don’t neglect deadlines, drop support issues, or otherwise miss a beat when working from home.  Thanks to technology and fantastic people, we were able to successfully close out 2006 despite the fact that our office was closed for three of the final ten business days of the year!

While everyone at OpenLogic did a great job during those hectic wintry days, one person deserves special recognition. Rod Cope, our CTO and founder, was scheduled to fly to San Francisco on December 21—the very day that the first major storm of the year was moving in.  Rod miraculously made it to the airport, caught one of the last flights to leave town, arrived at his meetings on time, and then found himself stranded 1,200 miles from home just days before Christmas.  With all return flights cancelled, Rod managed to find a rental car and make it home in time to open his stocking.  

In recognition of Rod’s special efforts during those hectic days, I presented the following “Ode to Rod” during our recent 2007 kick-off meetings.  I hope you’ll enjoy….

T’ was the day of the storm and all around the town

 no one was moving he saw with a frown!

He dashed to the airport, seeking the sound

of a flight to the bay, where partners are found!

He taxied and turned to the gates all around

this one will get me the heck out of town!

He spoke and he demo’d and sold with a clatter –

we can deliver, resources don’t matter!

He turned to the prospect and smiled as he said

I’m off to the mountains before the flights are all dead!

At the airport he arrived and met the remark

flights to Denver …. a shot in the dark!

He thought and he wondered, what will I now do

oh Hertz #1 Gold, how I need you!

He grabbed a one-way and exclaimed as he drove out of sight

Denver by Christmas, to heck with the flights!

We recently announced indemnification coverage for intellectual property infringement on each of the more than 160 open source products included in the OpenLogic Certified Library.  While most media coverage of our announcement has been overwhelmingly positive, a few have questioned the relevance of indemnification. What these individuals don’t understand is that enterprises specifically ask us for indemnification coverage.  In fact, eight out of every ten sales opportunities in which we’re involved require indemnification at some level to move ahead.

As more and more Global 2000 companies turn to open source as a viable alternative to all kinds of commercial software products, they examine open source products using a familiar set of ground rules like price, support and indemnification.  The fact of the matter is that Global 2000 enterprises are expected—by shareholders as well as executive management—to exercise a reasonable standard of care when it comes to the software tools they acquire, whether open or closed source.  Failure to do so can have serious repercussions down the road. 

It’s one thing to have a couple of open source products brought into the enterprise by a developer.  It’s another thing altogether when an enterprise forms a clear strategy based on the significant cost savings and productivity increases that can be achieved by proactively moving to more open source.  And more open source is a good thing as long as the products are right for the job and the benefits outweigh the risks. 

When this happens, large enterprises look for the same assurances they’re used to getting from commercial vendors: they want SLA support agreements, confidence that the software will work they way it’s intended to, and indemnification against potential IP risks.  This is where OpenLogic bridges the gap.  We provide the products and services enterprises expect from commercial vendors, including a library of over 160 certified open source products.

OpenLogic provides a “security blanket” for open source so that enterprises can either adopt open source with confidence or step on the gas with a more aggressive strategy.  Dana Blankenhorn raises some interesting questions about indemnification coverage, but our experience with the Global 2000 tells us that it’s in integral part of our solution.

Open source businesses are different than traditional software companies in many ways, but how much do the differences matter from a management perspective?

Matt Asay argues that it's unwise for open source businesses to hire management with no open source experience.  And if you must hire management without this experience, he says, make them “slog like privates for 6-12 months” to get the experience they need to be successful in the unique open source world.

Asay's “trenches first, then you can lead” belief certainly rings true, but is hands-on experience really more important in open source management roles than in management at traditional software companies?  Domain knowledge is important in open source, but is that so different from other technology businesses?

I've gotten advice about recruiting leaders from many people over the years, and one axiom still stands out in my mind: find the best talent possible.  Jim Collins reinforced this notion when he said that the first thing you need to do is get the right people on the bus.  

In my experience, this approach has been proven time and time again.  Truly talented people will learn the open source world, with or without six months of slogging in the trenches. 

Companies—open source or not—need to create a culture that passes on what is known and learned about the markets in which they participate.  Otherwise, they perish.  Our market just happens to be pretty unique and pretty new, so we don’t have the luxury of attracting a high percentage of talent that’s already breathing the open source air and drinking the open source water. 

However, that doesn't mean they will fail.  Rather, it means that we need to do a good job of recruiting talented individuals that are pre-wired to learn quickly and enthusiastically, as those traits are reflected in the actual open source community and will be part of the key to long term success.  

We need to be willing to recruit based on talent when direct experience isn't readily available.  Otherwise, how will we ever grow the number of leaders that the ever-increasing open source market demands?

To quote the famous philosophers, The Talking Heads, “same as it ever was….”

Matt Asay’s blog always gets me thinking.  One comment I really love comes from this entry: “Open source is a better model for customers. Period.”

The open source model is the key to success in today’s marketplace.  But it’s not just about the software, which the open source model does a great job of creating; it’s about solving problems for real people and making their daily lives just a bit easier and more productive.  Extend that to people in a business setting and you get real business value.

That’s where support comes in.  After all, isn’t support the key element of a great customer experience?  I echo Matt’s comments on support 171 times.  Why 171?  Because that’s the number of open source products that OpenLogic and our Expert Community members currently support (and that number is growing every month). 

If the JBoss example illustrates a way to help a financial services company get real use and return on investment from their software, let’s extend that model to other open source products.  After all, lots of open source products have great communities of people who contribute to the code but lack an enterprise-friendly way to tap into them.

Take a software example and think of what Salesforce did to Siebel—they provided “good enough” capabilities at an order of magnitude lower price.  Isn’t that what SugarCRM is now trying to do to Salesforce?  

The support market isn’t really any different.  Like water, it will find the path of least resistance and best value.  OpenLogic might be to JBoss what JBoss is to those other dreaded commercial products. 

I agree with Matt—it’s all about support, not software.  The disruption that we’ve seen occur in software will also come into play for support.

The big guys are increasingly getting into the open source game with preconfigured stacks and supporting services. Unisys, which recently threw its hat into the ring, is a perfect example. Matt Asay blogged about this and echoed the case made by Forrester that these fixed stacks are a good way to give their enterprise customers the stability and safety they want, even if the price of those benefits is reduced choice and flexibility.

At OpenLogic we don't think it is an "either/or"? option. We think enterprises require both. On one hand the production data center needs fixed stacks that work and don't need a lot of tinkering and updating. (In fact, change at any level is resisted here as it can bring down production servers.) On the other hand, development teams need rapid access to many sets of components, integrated in ways that cannot be imagined or pre-built by anyone other than the team members themselves.

Even the most basic OS/database/app server combos can vary widely. Since no one is going all open source all of the time, the reality is that everyone has a mixed environment. These normally include commercial products from vendors like Oracle, IBM and BEA, mixed right into the sauce with JBoss, Geronimo and PHP.

When you combine the production data center, the wide array of development teams, the large number of open source products, and the installed base of commercial and proprietary software, the reality is that fixed stacks do not work in the enterprise. They may have been a good starting point, but are not a viable end point.

That’s why OpenLogic focuses on building a technology platform that gives enterprises the flexibility to create their own open source stacks with an easy to use interface. OpenLogic Enterprise leverages a built-in knowledgebase that has the "smarts"? to automate the technical configuration, integration, and testing to ensure that all components–open source, commercial, and proprietary–work together. This approach, along with commercial-grade maintenance and support, gives enterprises the stability they want and need in their open source infrastructure.