Sep 07, 2006
David Wheeler from the Bricolage project just posted the results from three Google Summer of Code projects. It looks like the program was a success for Bricolage. Three contributors were sponsored: Marshall Roch, Christian Muise, and Andrei Arsu. These developers added some AJAX slickness to the UI, improved the way content types are defined, and (drum roll) added MySQL 5 support for Bricolage.
I really like PostgreSQL. From a functionality perspective, it has always been well ahead of MySQL. I think that more people will consider PostgreSQL now that EnterpriseDB can give it commercial software style support and provide an easy migration path from Oracle. However, lack of MySQL support was a constant nag on the mail lists and, for some, a barrier to adopting Bricolage. It is nice to see that that obstacle has been eliminated.
Sep 07, 2006
Late notice, but if you are looking for things to do in the Boston area tonight, the Boston PHP Users Group will host Siobhán O'Mahony's presentation on Open Source Governance. Unfortunately, I will not be able to attend. If you go, please blog your notes and post a link in comments.
Sep 06, 2006
My colleague, Jeff Potts, just posted an excellent article on the tension between centralization and decentralization of I.T. I have had these same ideas rolling around in my head for a while but could not voice them as eloquently as Jeff did. So in the spirit of reuse, please read on.
Sep 06, 2006
Zak Greant wrote in his blog:
It is interesting to note that Seth, despite being a CMS wizard (or perhaps, because of), uses Blogger for his blog. No point in using a 10-ton pneumatic press when a tackhammer (that someone else cleans and polishes) will do.
I don't know about being a wizard, but going with Blogger was somewhat intentional and calculated. I had gotten up the initiative to start a blog and I didn't want an excuse of fiddling with technology to stand in the way of actually writing. As you can probably tell, I didn't spend a lot of time on the name either. Since making that choice, there were times when I was happy with the decision (like when my friend's self hosted blog was down half the time due to a broken fan in his server), and times when I wished for more than Blogger was able to give. Having a cutting edge blog platform was never enough of a priority for me to invest in an alternative and migrating. So I decided to wait for really nice to have features like categories.
Well, the wait (at least for categories) is about to be over. I just noticed that new Blogger version currently in beta will support tagged categories. There are a bunch of other features that I don't really care about but categories are going to be great. Of course, it is going to take me a little while to upgrade - priorities and all ;)
Sep 05, 2006
Sandro Groganz, from eZ systems, just stepped down as president of OSCOM after taking over from Michael Wechner when Michael resigned.
I think an organization like OSCOM has the potential to deliver great value and it is puzzling (at least on the surface) why a group of open source project leaders, who have proven their ability to lead collaborative initiatives, have failed to keep OSCOM on the rails.
I think that the problem is an uneven balance of effort and reward. In a good open source project, you get more than you give because every contribution that you make will be maintained and has the opportunity to be improved upon. Plus, it is likely that you needed to make the fix or add the feature for yourself anyway. OSCOM, on the other hand takes people away from the immediate things that they need to do to make a living. The rewards are too abstract and distant to affect an immediate decision of what to do with your time.
OSCOM is all about the greater good and provides very little immediate personal good. A less influential open source project might invest time in OSCOM to get exposure and establish a name for itself. But the larger projects have their own communities to worry about and are less concerned with open source content management in the abstract.
So, if the OSCOM concept is flawed (I don't know this for sure, but lets say it is for sake of argument) what are alternative ways to deliver the benefits of promotion of standards, collaborative innovation across projects, and promotion of the open source alternative? Here are some ideas.
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Get involved with some general content management organizations such as AIIM and CM Professionals.
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Submit standards to existing standards bodies. For example there was a lot of open source input into the JCR standard.
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Attend each others conferences. By attending another project's conference, an open source developer can get new ideas and also build professional relationships with other developers that he can potentially collaborate with on shared components.
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Establish joint projects for share components.
The other constituency that also loses with the collapse of OSCOM are the users who were not really contributing but would have benefited from a centralized place to learn about open source content management software. The CM Matrix, which never really lived up to its full potential, was a valuable resource but not quite as good as CMS Matrix or Open Source CMS. Planet OSCOM that aggregated a bunch of open source developer blogs does not seem to work any more. Perhaps, that could be moved over to CMS-News or some good del.icio.us tagging.
Sep 04, 2006
Systems integrator and web design shop Lullabot is redesigning and implementing the British MTV site mtv.co.uk using Drupal. I find it interesting how Drupal, which has historically used as a digital community building tool ("Community Plumbing"), is turning into a real option for media companies. On the one side, Drupal has demonstrated itself to be serious, reliable software capable of handling heavy traffic. On the other, you have media companies shifting from a broadcast model to more bidirectional publishing where their readership actively interacts with and posts content. Traditional media companies with established audiences are realizing the need to evolve the relationship with their audience to a more collaborative network or else risk losing attention to upstart Web 2.0 sites which have been so successful in growing virally.
Aug 31, 2006
I was recently catching up on my blog reading and saw Matt Asay's article Making Sales While Making Friends. Through his work at Novell and now at Alfresco, Matt has developed deep experience in this business so his thoughts on the topic of how open source software companies work are definitely worth hearing.
Matt's core model is that a community of open source software consumer is composed of "friends" and "customers." Friends are the people that use your software, customers are the ones that pay you for it. I think it goes without saying that you hope that your customers are also your friends. I like this perspective. Although I didn't see the OSCOM presentation that the article is based on (I am sorry I missed it), Matt's blog post implies that the primary value of friends is that they are potential customers. While I don't disagree with that point (companies need revenue to pay their employees and grow), I think that friends offer much more than just potential customer conversions.
A strong community of users (regardless of whether they pay) brings new ideas, testers, buzz, market share (so that other software component builders recognize your software as something worth integrating with), and sometimes contributions to the software. I agree with Matt's point that you need to have modest expectations for external contributions especially when you start out. You need to get the software to a point where it is close enough for people to take it the last mile before you can get anyone interested in it. Also, communities are fickle things and building an active, contributing community can be like catching lightening in a bottle (unless you are Microsoft and you can build something like MSDN and constantly pump money into it).
So you need to convert some percentage of friends into paying customers. I guess it is really a question of percentages. If you can live with a low conversion rate, friends that don't and won't convert start to look a lot less like freeloaders and more of an opportunity to tap other forms of value from. The conversion rate depends on what kind of software you are providing. Something like Firefox is a simple application that everyone needs. Gazillions of people download Firefox so Mozilla only needs a small percentage people to donate money or improvements to the project. Many of the people that do not donate code or money, build Firefox extensions which bring other forms of value to the Firefox community.
Probably most open source companies are not attempting to be like Mozilla. Mozilla is a non-profit (yet with a for profit subsidiary - figure that). Mozilla's purpose in life is not to make money but to make an alternative browser that is not controlled by Microsoft. Many companies and individuals benefit from the existence of Firefox and support the project in different ways. So assuming that you are funded by someone that wants a return on their money (VC or your in-laws) how do you manage your open source company to profitability? You need to keep your costs low. Open source creates an economy where potential customers can self select. You don't need and can't afford an expensive sales force or marketing department. You don't want to waste your resources selling to friends that are not likely to buy. But you do want to invest your resources in encouraging behaviors that your non-buying friends are more likely to engage in. eZ systems has a points program where partners can get points for various contributions (answering questions on the forum, attending training sessions, submitting sites to the references section, fixing bugs, writing documentation, etc.). Points reduce the cost of services that eZ systems sells: training, support, monitoring, etc. It seems like a pretty good system but I don't know how it is working in practice. Perhaps someone from eZ can chime in here.
These companies need to make the dollars and cents work. We learned from the bubble that you can't lose money on every transaction and make it up on volume. But you can challenge conventional wisdom on what kind of conversion rates you need and the cost of reaching customers. Anyway, I find this stuff immensely interesting. If you do too, you should read Matt (http://asay.blogspot.com/>>>) and Stephe Walli (<<<FLOATING LINK: http://stephesblog.blogs.com/) who has really helped me understand this market - or contributed to my delusion ;)
Aug 30, 2006
This morning I was meeting with a client and going over the list of outstanding issues. The client chose to wait on some low priority issues because someone from the community was planning on fixing the bug in the next release. There were other features that the client didn't think it was important enough to add. In other cases, the client really needed the feature quickly so they wanted us to take care of it. During the conversation I stumbled on this metaphor that resonated with me: buying commercial software is a little like living in a condo while using open source is like owning a house.
When you live in a condo, you pay a monthly fee and the condo association decides what to spend the money on and who does the work. Having been part of a condo association, I know first-hand how groups make different decisions than individuals would. When you own a home, you have a lot more control over what gets fixed/enhanced and who you hire to do it.
Of course, the metaphor breaks down in the case of the community making a fix and you benefit without paying for it. House ownership is not like that - although I am holding out hope that someone will just show up and fix our garage door.
When you use open source software, there can be several ways to get a feature fixed or enhanced:
The point here is that with open source you have many more options for how you invest in the software's continued evolution. You can opportunistically adopt new features that others have built and you can finance the implementation of features that you absolutely need to have right away. If the software is just perfect for you as it is, you don't have invest anything. In the commercial software world, you are required to pay but you have very little say how your money is spent - a little like that condo fee.
Aug 28, 2006
The Fall CM Professionals Summit is going to be great this year. We are doing a much better job of early planning and advanced marketing thanks to the tireless efforts of Scott Abel and we have a great topic: Internationalization.
I don't know about you but it feels like localization is more important than back in the Web 1.0 days. Maybe this is related to the Clue Train Manifisto's assertion that markets are conversations and language mismatches are more obvious in conversations than one way broadcasts. It could be the trend towards globalization. It could be that the rest of the world is tired of putting up with a U.S. dominated Internet. Whatever the driving force is, localization is no longer that road-kill requirement that gets cut out of scope on the first round.
Recently, much of my work has had localization aspects - either the whole site needed to be translated into multiple langauges or the client wants to make certain content available in different languages. There is also the question of how autonomous the localized subsites are. Different levels of localization suggest different architectures and management processes.
I am considering having a round table at the Summit to discuss a system for classifying levels of localization. Something like WCAG levels for accessibility. Just like with the accessibility standards, companies need to make trade-offs based on audience need and cost in deciding what level to pursue. Does anyone else think this would be an interesting idea? If you think this is interesting or stupid, put up a comment or send me an email.
Aug 28, 2006
I was pleased to see that at least someone agrees with me about the dangers of using overusing email.