open source

It's Pronounced "Duffle Tee See See"

Posted on by tarus

I want to point out a post Alex Finger (OGP) wrote over the weekend.

It has been said that you can divide open source people up into three groups: Those who write open source code, those who pay for open source code and “free riders”. I think that is total crap, and Alex is one of the reasons why.

Alex doesn’t write much code, yet he has been a great contributor to OpenNMS over the years. His career is in IT management (as in managing people and solutions), and he’ll soon take a new position as a CIO. What he brings to the table is a view on open source from upper management.

It is no secret that OpenNMS is usually introduced into an organization from the bottom up (usually, but not always). We don’t have any full time sales people and most of our leads come from people who have already downloaded and installed the software. I don’t see anything wrong with that, but sometimes it is nice to be able to talk to the top people in charge, especially when you want a check written. In order to be successful when talking with those at the top of a management structure, it helps to understand them, as they process information much differently than the technical people I’m used to.

To me an open source community is a lot more than just who writes code. Everyone who uses the software can contribute. But until this weekend I did not have a good model for understanding the process of how one becomes a member of that community.

Alex has come up with something he is calling “the DUFLTCC Cycle”. It’s an acronym that stands for Download, Use, Fail, Learn, Teach, Change, Commit.

Check out his post for the full details. I especially like the “Fail” step. A lot of open source software requires a steeper learning curve than commercial off the shelf products, and usually everyone gets stuck at some point. It’s those that use those failures as a learning experience that, should they overcome them, tend to become some of the more vociferous proponents of the project.

I often paraphrase The Matrix when discussing my open source experience in that it is one thing to know the path and another thing to walk the path. Once you walk the path the use of open source seems to be a no-brainer. But how do you get that across to people who have never even seen the path in the first place? It’s ideas like Alex’s that help, and work like this is as important as any code in a community like ours.

Netcool? Hyperic IT is Not Cool

Posted on by tarus

I’m certain that the title of this post will raise some eyebrows, and not just for the bad pun. I’m not talking about the Hyperic we all know and love. As much as I disagree with open core software’s business strategy of using the term “open source” that doesn’t mean I don’t like the people involved, and the Hyperic crew are pretty nice folks.

No, the Hyperic I am talking about is a company calling itself Hyperic IT.

I was working in Milan today when I entered some search terms into Google. Google uses your source IP address to direct you to the site most customized for your location, so while I am in Italy http://www.google.com takes me to http://www.google.it.

One of the terms I searched on was “opennms” and I noticed that Hyperic had bought an adword link. I clicked on it and was taken to http://www.hyperic.it. There I saw the expected orange and blue, and since the site was in Italian I just figured they had opened an Italian office like with our http://www.opennms.it.

I dropped Javier a note to ask him about this and he replied that he had no idea that site existed. On further examination it appears that a company called netEdge Srl is taking the open source part of Hyperic, forking it, and selling it as Hyperic IT.

Look, I personally think taking the open source part of an open core project and forking it is fantastic. But open source code does not mean you can steal someone’s brand. That is most uncool.

For a company like The OpenNMS Group, the OpenNMS brand represents most of our value. What more do people want – we give away all of the source code under a free license – at least let us build our identity and reputation around the trademark. Yet some people don’t understand this and think they can take that, too.

By calling the product Hyperic IT, using the same color scheme and even the Hyperic HQ logo in their screenshots, this company is obviously trying to rip off the real Hyperic. If their product was any good they could have renamed it something else, easily removed all of the trademarked logos (a la CentOS) and worked to build their own business instead of trying to steal someone else’s.

If they are willing to so blatantly steal from others, would you really want work with them?

From what I can understand from my friend Antonio, this company is an Srl or Società a responsabilità limitata, similar to our LLC (I could be wrong since my Italian is weak). If this is the case, since Hyperic is trademarked in the EU, the people at netEdge may not have the protections of a corporation and could be held personally liable for their actions. Not too smart.

I’m hoping this blight is soon removed from the Internet.

Monty Widenius Leaves Sun

Posted on by tarus

I read on Matt Asay’s blog that Monty Widenius has left Sun. As usual, I disagreed with his interpretation of that information, but I found it ironic that it happened while I was in Milan as a guest of Sun Italia.

I see Sun as a company that is trying hard to understand open source. They have made some impressive moves in the area, from OpenSolaris and OpenJDK to the acquisition of MySQL. But while eager to change they are also, like many of us, trying to figure out how to support open source while staying in business.

Matt explains Monty’s departure as

Widenius’ ideals don’t translate well to a big software business

I see it as just the opposite. Open source spells the end of big software, if big software is defined as companies that make billions of dollars from selling software licenses. True open source projects exist outside of any one company or any one person. They have a life of their own and they continue to grow or they die. Those that grow tend to grow in directions that are the most useful, since the energy powering that growth are people with immediate problems to solve.

As such they will continue to put pressure on commercial software by providing, for free, the features that are most needed by the most people.

I was asked during our seminar today how we maintain the quality of OpenNMS code. I talked about test driven development and pair programming, along with our annual Dev-Jam where the key people in the community gather to learn, regroup and focus. This allows us to insure that each release of OpenNMS is better than the last.

Matt states one reason that Widenius left was “that the MySQL 5.1 release wasn’t ready for public consumption”. On thinking about this I decided I needed to add one more reason to use open source to my growing list. Open source does not have any artificial deadlines for releasing code. While we have a schedule and a roadmap for OpenNMS, we’ll release the next version only when it is ready.

In my mind Monty is a role model and I wish him all the best.

Let the Sun Shine In

Posted on by tarus

It’s been cold and snowy for most of my stay in Milan, but today the temperatures warmed and the sun came out.

We held a seminar on OpenNMS and open source for over 20 of Italy’s best and brightest IT decision makers and professionals (I know this because they were interested in OpenNMS, so it goes to reason that they were intelligent, amazingly witty and very attractive to the opposite sex).

I was limited to a 20 minute presentation and 10 minutes of questions which is extremely hard for me to do (since the guys in the office say it takes me more than 20 minutes to introduce myself) but I think it went well.

I started off with a discussion of software business models, and then talked about the various permissive and restrictive open source licenses. I couldn’t resist doing a slide on open core software since it is my own personal goal to make sure that open core is seen as the commercial software business model it is versus an open source one, and this being Europe I think it was well received. While I think it is quite possible for open source and proprietary software to live side by side, I don’t think this is possible within one company (well, at least a small company – IBM might be able to pull it off).

The reason is simple: If there are proprietary features that drive software revenue you can bet that they won’t ever become part of the “community” edition. In fact, I bet that any contribution from the community that threatens that revenue stream will be refused. The goals of an open source community and a commercial software company are hard if not impossible to align.

I then talked about the OpenNMS business model. Since our mantra of “Spend Less Than You Earn” allows us to exist year after year, there is no danger of OpenNMS ever going away. With our active and growing community we will keep improving OpenNMS and thus provide pressure to our commercial competition. In our target market of large enterprises and carriers, solutions are driven by knowledgeable professionals both within these companies and via outside consultants, and by making OpenNMS the best tool for the job we expect to see widespread adoption both through the commercial side of OpenNMS as well as from the community.

It may take ten years, but I fully expect OpenNMS to one day be the default platform for any large scale management solution.

The people in the room today together spend more than 10M€ a year on network management. They have suffered through expensive solutions that never delivered on their promises and they have had few options but to switch to another expensive solution.

While downloading OpenNMS doesn’t instantly fix their problems, combined with the right hardware, services and perhaps some custom development it can immediately start to reduce costs while increasing functionality. Once in place OpenNMS does not require expensive maintenance contracts and can represent a much lower cost of ownership than a commercial product.

But most importantly OpenNMS represents freedom. The fact that the code is 100% open moves the power from the vendor to the client. This seemed to be important for the people in the room.

I managed to get all this and more in my allotted time, and I think it was well received. We have a number of large projects going on in Italy and, while challenging, it gives us a chance to shine.

Just like today’s sun.

Another Reason to Use Open Source

Posted on by tarus

Even though OpenNMS is a open source project, we do sometimes receive support from commercial vendors. For example, when we do demonstrations where Internet access isn’t available, we often use Gambit’s Mimic software to simulate a network. In exchange for temporary licenses we place a link to their website in the footer of the OpenNMS wiki.

Back in 2007, Johan Edstrom, one of our OGP members, really liked the IntelliJ IDEA IDE. While most of our developers use Eclipse, he was just more comfortable with the IDE from JetBrains and since they offered free licenses for people who work on open source projects, he wrote to them and asked for one. Here’s the response he got:

We are pleased to support the Open Source community and we look forward to seeing your project’s progress. If we can be of any additional service, please don’t hesitate to ask.

Also, while it’s not required, we would be very appreciative if you would add an IntelliJ IDEA banner to your project’s site in support of IntelliJ IDEA.

[snip]

This is absolutely not required. This is a no-strings-attached license, but we would be very grateful for any help leading people to info about IntelliJ IDEA!

Again… welcome!

Best regards,

Ilia Dumov
Product Manager
JetBrains, Inc

So I went ahead and added the banner to our site and all was right with the world.

The license was good for one year, and so in 2008 he renewed, again with no problem. But this year he received quite a different response:

Hi Johan,

We can’t give you free license because it will be used on your paid support services engagements. You can buy commercial licenses if you want.

All the best,

Victoria Dumova
OS Support Program Manager
JetBrains, Inc

I never tire of pointing out that the OpenNMS Project is independent from the commercial services company, The OpenNMS Group. Johan is not an employee of the commercial business, so he doesn’t perform “paid support services engagements”. In fact, his involvement in the project has not changed in the last two years but for some reason he didn’t qualify for a free license this time. Furthermore, since 100% of OpenNMS is free and open software, what would it matter? The IDE is used to help develop code, and all of that work gets released back to the community.

I must wonder what types of projects qualify as open source for JetBrains. Only those that make no money whatsoever? I can see the next e-mail: “Sorry, your license will be used to get donations on Sourceforge so you have to buy one.”

My point here is not to bash JetBrains. To complain about not getting a free license is like complaining that the bisque in a free soup kitchen is a bit salty. But it does illustrate the dangers of commercial software.

In two years we went from “This is a no-strings-attached license” to “You can buy commercial licenses”. The rules changed. Luckily for us we can probably get Johan to use Eclipse now, but what if we depended on IDEA? We’d be screwed.

With open source software the power lies in the user, not the provider. With commercial and open core software companies the revenue model is to sell licenses, and thus to maximize profit these companies are motivated to increase license revenue. This may mean selling to you licenses at a discount to get you using the product, only to change the rules a couple of years down the road.

If you are a decision maker in your company, I think you owe it to your employer and your shareholders to question any commercial software purchase. Are you willing to base your operations on software that may double in price without warning? Maybe the vendor will go out of business, leaving the code in limbo, and what will you do then?

Transitioning to open source is not easy. Although the software is free, there is a cost in time, perhaps consulting services and in getting your staff up to speed on the product. But in the long run the cost is worth it, if just to lose the reliance on outside vendors who, as this situation demonstrates, can be very fickle.

How Much is that Project in the Window?

Posted on by tarus

It’s snowing here today. For many who live in cold climates you are probably saying “big deal” but it is rare to have snow where I live and this is the most significant snowfall we’ve had in four years. By the end of the day we could have up to six inches (15 cm).


Sortova Farm in the snow

Since it happens so rarely we don’t have the equipment to clear the roads quickly so everything pretty much shuts down. At the OpenNMS Group we’re used to working from home several days a week so it will be business as usual, but I did cancel two meetings today and it frees me up to watch the coronation at noon.

It also allowed me some time to browse through my news feeds, and I came across an interesting post by the 451 Group.

I like the 451 Group, mainly because they realize that OpenNMS exists (grin). In addition, they seem to have a good understanding of the open source marketplace.

Today Matthew Aslett wrote that Intalio has raised funds to acquire 8 to 10 open source companies in the next year. It was interesting to me for a number of reasons. Most open source business models that I’m aware of have being acquired as the exit strategy, but many of them take the VC route to get there. Most VCs are looking at a big payout, say north of US$100 million, but the number of companies that can spend US$100 million on an acquisition is small. However, the number of companies that can spend, say, US$10 million, is much larger, so it would seem that the safer way to get acquired would be to either bootstrap the company (like we did) or get a small amount of angel funding to get started and to keep the company small and focused. Plus the model of acquiring smaller companies worked well for JBoss.

Another reason I found this post interesting was Intalio’s list of requirements for a possible target:

Small (25 employees is a maximum, less than 10 is preferred, mainly engineers)

The OpenNMS Group has six employees, and half of those were added in the last 18 months. We are all technical – there are no full time sales or marketing people.

Open Source or ready to go the COSMO way

Duh. We’re free and open to a fault.

Exceptional technology that took many person-years to develop

OpenNMS has been around since 1999. A tremendous amount of work has gone in to building it, both from the commercial side as well as the community side.

Architecture compatible with the one built for Intalio|BPP

From what I can tell, OpenNMS would be a good fit. We’re written in Java utilizing a lot of the new enterprise technologies such as Spring and Hibernate.

Support for industry standards (J2EE, WS-*, etc.)

Got that. The newest OpenNMS code adds REST-style interfaces, we support most industry standards (SNMP/WMI/TL1/HTTP), and there is always lots of XML.

Active user base (the larger, the better)

With 50,000 unique visitors to http://www.opennms.org and 5000 downloads each month I think we can check that off.

Committed customer base (the larger, the better, but small is OK too)

We’ve had over 100 customers in 18 countries, with over 50 current support customers, and our first commercial support customer (from December 2001) is still a client.

Committed employee base (location irrelevant, we’re in 13 locations already)

I’ve never worked with a better group of people. I think “committed” is too weak a word to describe their dedication to both the company and the project. While most of us are near RTP in North Carolina, Jeff is in Atlanta, so the fact that location is not important is a plus.

Profitable or break-even

Yup, got that. Since our business model is “spend less than you earn” we’ve been profitable since our first day in business.

Little or no debt

Heh, since we’re bootstrapped the opportunities for debt have been pretty limited (banks are a little wary of loaning money to companies with no liquid assets). So while that has caused us to grow more slowly than I would like, the company remains closely held and well positioned to ride out the current economy.

So it looks like we’re a pretty good fit, which gives me a little more confidence that what we are doing is the right thing (remember, I’m making most of this up as I go along so any reassurance is nice).

Since snow gives me time to reflect a bit, I’ve been thinking about what kind of company I’d be willing to allow to acquire us. They’d have to be doing cool things and provide a great work environment. They’d also have to have a serious interest in investing in the OpenNMS project itself, versus just buying it for the name or to get us out of the way. Their business would have to fit in with our mission statement of “Help Customers – Have Fun – Make Money”.

In exchange they would get the best bunch of guys on the planet. Seriously, each day these guys amaze me. They’d get a solid customer base and a mature, profitable product line.

One problem would be that they’d also get me. I’ve often wondered about my role should we ever be acquired. When I search Monster for “loud-mouthed, opinionated, free and open source bigot” I get no hits [Update: heh, actually I get eight]. My job at OpenNMS has always been to hire people smarter than me, which I’ve succeeded at beyond my wildest dreams, so next to them I start to lose my relevance.

I think the role I’d be best suited for would be Community Evangelist, or Vice President of Openness. I hate the term “community manager” because it seems to refer to the open source community as a resource to be manipulated, versus something to be nurtured and grown. Would Community Gardener work? God knows I’ve got the fertilizer (grin). I’d love to see if I could get as excited, and thus get others excited, in projects that compliment OpenNMS as I do with OpenNMS itself.

Fun thoughts for a cold day.

Matt Raykowski, OGP

Posted on by tarus

Some days I absolutely love my job, and today is one of them. Today we inducted Matt Raykowski into the Order of the Green Polo (OGP). The OGP is the governing arm of the OpenNMS Project and it is made up of those people who have made (and continue to make) major contributions to the application.

This is what makes OpenNMS so great. Building on Matt Brozowski’s highly scalable collection engine, Matt Raykowski added native WMI support so that OpenNMS can now gather Windows performance data. I want to emphasize the word “native” since there is no proxy or additional software (such as the SNMP Informant agent) required to be installed.

There is still some ways to go before the feature is ready for the stable branch, but it should be included in the 1.8 release later this year. However, it is in trunk and thus people are encouraged to test it by either building from source or by installing the nightly “snapshot” packages. I am looking for some people with large Windows networks who can help us test its scalability. My guess is that it will be orders of magnitude greater than the other solutions that are out there.

When I go on and on about the ideals of true “open source” it is work like this that illustrates exactly what I mean. While there is a myth that just by calling your project “open source” thousands of qualified people will give up nights and weekends to work on it, it is possible to build, over time, a small but dedicated group of people who do just that. But to make that happen requires a level of trust that the work won’t be commercialized, that it will remain open and continue to be appreciated and developed for time to come.

This is the biggest flaw in the “open core” model and exactly what makes “open source” so powerful. Sure, the open core guys get contributions, but I doubt they get such powerful features. Even if they did, they’d probably want to make them “enterprise only” and try to sell them. At OpenNMS we encourage work like this and have built a platform to make such things possible, and a major part of that is keeping all of the software free and open.

I’m humbled that Matt trusted us enough to spend the months it took to create this feature, and I hope in at least a small way his membership in the OGP provides some compensation. I’m sure his dedication will continue to make the project even better, and move us closer to becoming the de facto network management platform of choice.

FUD from SAS

Posted on by tarus

My friend Phil dropped me a note today about an article in the New York Times (registration required) about the R project. R is a language designed for data analysis, and it’s open source. It appears to compete against SAS, once of the most ubiquitous enterprise software packages out there, especially within academic institutions.

Now the SAS Institute is a local company (many years ago I did an OpenView installation for them) and it is one of the world’s largest privately held software companies, if not the largest. It consistantly ranks toward the top of the best places to work in the country.

But the somewhat isolated environment that SAS thrives in is now being challenged by open source. Of course, SAS is taking the old school approach of spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. Commenting on R:

“I think it addresses a niche market for high-end data analysts that want free, readily available code,” said Anne H. Milley, director of technology product marketing at SAS. She adds, “We have customers who build engines for aircraft. I am happy they are not using freeware when I get on a jet.”

This is a common battle cry of the commercial software industry that no quality software can be created unless you pay for it (and of course, commercial software has always made flying much safer).

The fact that she’s willing to throw that out says to me that R is scaring SAS far more than they care to admit.

The CentOS Test

Posted on by tarus

In many of my last few posts I’ve talked about the meaning of the term “open source”. While it may seem like splitting hairs for many, I hope it can be made simpler by applying what I am calling “The CentOS Test”

The Community ENTerprise Operating System (CentOS) project takes Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), removes all of the trademarked images, etc., and recompiles the code into a separate set of binaries which it then distributes.

For all practical software purposes, there is little difference between CentOS and RHEL.

When thinking about a purchase of the paid or “enterprise” version of something labeled open source software, ask yourself “does it pass the CentOS test?” Examine the license to see if it would be possible for you to take the source code, compile it and distribute it. If you can, I claim it is likely the software is truly open. If not, then you are looking at commercial software, with all of its limitations.

The test explicitly covers the first three criteria of the Open Source Definition. If you can’t redistribute it, access and compile the source code, and create derived works, it ain’t open.

The War for Open Source

Posted on by tarus

Starting about the time that Bill Gates wrote his infamous Letter to Hobbyists, the commercial software industry has sought to control and restrict access to source code. Before that time, code wasn’t explicitly free, but it was often freely exchanged. The rise of the commercial software industry put an end to that.

When the modern open source software movement was formalized by Bruce Perens and Eric S. Raymond, the commercial software establishment pretty much ignored it. There was no way that useful software could be created for free. Then along came the Linux kernel, the GNU operating system and applications like the Apache web server, and suddenly open source software was not only useful, its adoption started growing phenomenally.

Since it is hard to say software isn’t useful when millions use it, the commercial software industry changed its tactics. A campaign of Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt was started. Can you trust software made by a bunch of anonymous hippies? Who will support it? Who can you hold accountable?

In response came companies like Red Hat, who said “hey, I’ll support it, and I’ll give you better, more responsive service than you get from the commercial software guys.” Slowly, the FUD argument started to fade.

Now I’ve seen the next front on the war for open source. Commercial software companies are attacking the term itself. They are trying to say that commercial software and open source are actually the same thing, even though there is a huge difference between companies that garner most of their income from the support of software and those that earn most of their revenue from the sale of proprietary software licenses.

Words are important. One of my favorite philosophers, the late George Carlin, based much of his work on the examination of how words are used to control people. Take the invasion of Iraq by the United States. Following on the heels of the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York, the US government sought to justify it by associating Iraq, even though not a single terrorist charged in the attacks was from Iraq and studies showed no link between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists. Yet in 2007 a Newsweek poll showed that 41% of Americans thought that Iraq was responsible, which was actually an increase of 5% from September 2004.

Now it is not the purpose of this post to start a debate about the war, but I wanted to demonstrate that if you say something enough times, even if it is false, people start to believe it. The commercial software companies know this.

For example, let me pick on Matt Asay (I could probably pick on Dave Rosenberg but I don’t read his blog). On December 22nd he ran a blog post with the paragraph:

Five years from now, I’m not even sure what it will mean to talk about “open source” and “commercial software” as if they are two separate and distinct things.

See, Matt works for an open core company that makes their money from selling commercial software licenses on top of a core piece of software that is published under an open source license [Note: see comments below – after researching it, it seems that Alfresco is not “open core” but neither is Alfresco Enterprise “open source”]. To drive value to his company he has to make the argument that while open source is good, it can’t produce value unless someone pays for it, thus there must be a commercial software component. I disagree.

He follows this up on Christmas Day with a post about an InfoWorld article on the future of open source:

Dave Rosenberg writes that 2009 will be the year when open source becomes paid software, but I think we’re already there. We’ve been there for at least two years, in fact. We just didn’t know it.

Once again the association that open source and commercial (paid) software are one and the same.

Now I have no doubt that commercial software companies will have to become more open. They’ll have to provide better and more free APIs and they will have to work hard to build communities around their products, but that doesn’t make them open source.

Finally, the next day Asay follows up with a very paternalistic post on the struggles that the data portability field is having on defining what is “open”. I say “paternalistic” because he comes across as if the whole topic is boring and beneath consideration.

See, we in open source have been through this (attribution/badgeware debate, anyone?), and we resolved it by throwing up our hands in despair and moving on.

Oddly enough, that was probably the right thing to do, as the only people that really care about such things are the vendors involved. Customers don’t care

I claim that customers don’t care because they don’t understand. It’s posts like Matt’s that really blur the lines between open source and commercial software. They didn’t care about Linux when no one used Linux, but suddenly less than a decade later Linux is doing well. Now as open source moves up the stack it’s the same situation. Once true free and open source software becomes a viable alternative it will cause customers to care.

But it’s comments like this that make the process take longer. I’ve helped build a business around OpenNMS, which remains 100% open source software, and as I try to explain the value to potential customers I can no longer rely on “it’s open source” to mean what it used to mean. We still get replies like “yes, it’s open source, so how much is the enterprise version?” It’s “free food” all over again.

Now some of my detractors will say that I just make up terms to suit me, and that my understanding of “open source” is not valid. I get mine from The Open Source Definition by the Open Software Initiative. If anyone says that it is not valid, I’d love to hear the reasons why. What I love about it is that it starts off with “Open source doesn’t just mean access to the source code” (emphasis mine). The commercial/open core/hybrid/shareware folks would love for people to believe that’s all it means.

I can’t say that I blame them. I’ve seen the power of open source in action and if I ran a commercial software company it would be in the best interests of my shareholders to leverage anything I could, including even the most tenuous association with it. But likewise it is in my best interests to point out how wrong they are.

I’m not going to have any effect on those companies, and I realize this. Heck, Matt has his bully pulpit on cnet and my three readers get to visit my rants on an old Dell server with donated bandwidth. But who I really want to reach are those that might consider buying these companies. As Matt says the clients don’t care about open source so the investors shouldn’t either. They need to judge the value of a commercial software company against other commercial software companies.

And they need to keep in mind that projects like OpenNMS are growing stronger every day. While our open core competition might have prettier interfaces and more features, we’re catching up. We’re also focusing directly on the needs of our community, and not the buzz-word du jour. How much value does a piece of commercial software have when we might be able to replace it in six months? Customers might not care about truly open source software in large numbers now, but I’m willing to bet they will. I’m wondering who’s betting they won’t?