Have you heard the news of the day? . The two open source monsters are converging to deliver services and evolve together. “Being part of Sun will give MySQL more resources for everything from development, support, services, sales and marketing,” Zack Urlocker, Executive Vice President of Products at MySQL, said.
This acquision will surely accelerate the further adoption of MySQL and strengthen Sun’s credibility as an open source leader. Community members are already , who will by Sun afterwards. =) Oracle? Or maybe Google?
I’m personally interested to know if the guys are planning to offer any new technology solutions for Java platform and MySQL database. Another question is how will the deal change the communities. Though Zack claims that for Sun “it is a part of an overall strategy to change the world”, it would be interesting to know WHAT actually is going to be changed.
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Matt Assay about “open source style” in restaurant business. Denver-based restaurant chain gives its food away for free to attract new customers.
Instead of telling people about a product, you let them use it. For free. Then they come back to buy from you, if you make the experience relatively painless. Sounds like open source. But tastes better.
In fact, this “open” business model works almost everywhere. Open source software and fast-food chains are just vivid examples. Most food vendors, as well as parfume manufacturers, are used to product sampling. Once a customer recognizes the value of a product, he will come back again for more. This model is really brilliant!
1) You promote your products; 2) You give your target audience positive emotions (which is equal to positive responses); 3) You communicate with your customers and get the feedback on product quality, value, etc.
By all means, it is MUCH MORE PERSUASIVE than just using words. Giving your customer a possibility to try a product and “taste the value”, you already have him (or her) involved in using your services. If your product HAS a value, you WILL get a response. Fast-food, bubble gum, candies, nevermind.
However, that’s true, it is hard to imagine a restaurant, which could be giving its food away all the time, and getting its revenues from the additional services only. =)) Anyway, who knows…
David Van Couvering’s undergirds the idea that Wiki integration will become the next data integration trend soon. Incompatibility between heterogeneous Wiki formats is an issue, definitely. As a result, a number of software vendors are already developing some integrators between Wikis, blogs, e-mails, and so on.
Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) will surely accelerate this future trend. The more enterprises, as well as their departments, consolidate with 3rd parties, the more they need data-and-knowledge integration. As an “Enterprise 2.0” essential element, Wiki can be seen as a “service” inside enterprise’s SOA model, too. Therefore, some integration tools will be needed to weave Wiki-based data between either sources, or applications.
And you know what? Since Wiki is a collaborative-based effort, open source will be a winner in this game, sooner or later.
David Van Couvering gave to anyone who is interested in getting into IT industry. He wrote,
Ten years ago, I would have told you to get some training and try to get an entry-level position in a tech company. Things have changed since then. Now there is this fastly growing phenomenon of open source software. This means that you do not need to take a class, go job hunting, interview, etc., etc., to start getting some real-world experience and meeting and learning from other folks in technology. So instead what I recommend is to poke around and find out what open source projects there are that interest you. […] Then all you do is start volunteering your time.
Hmm, sounds a bit risky yet very interesting! It seems like the tendency is on the rise. Some might know that Matt Asay recently, “If I wanted a job, I’d be sure to go to work for an open source company.” Open source skills are up-and-coming, he-he.
The reasons are obvious. Open source model is currently one of the most competitive software model, “the 21st Century way of writing/selling/supporting/implementing software”, as Matt put it. In few years a lot of IT vendors will run bankrupt due to the success of their competitor’s open source projects.
However, this doesn’t mean that open source approach fits every job seeker. I totally agree with the comments to David Van Couvering’s post. A person should be an open source coder at heart, rather than money-motivated only. Otherwise, Real Estate career would be a better decision, that’s true.I can say the same about open source vendors.
Putting community and the end-user goes first, not the money. One of the major features of open source products is their quality. So, often a commercial open source company has to choose between investing in community (aka users) and investing in, say, advertising. Quality goes first, let me say that again. Otherwise, well, get into Real Estate!
Tim O’Reilly free music distribution and free book publishing with open source software, again. The most interesting part is his quote about awareness:
“A lot has to do with the ratio of possible consumers of the free product who might be converted to paying customers to the total market size. If I have awareness with .01% of the target market, giving copies away to raise awareness to 10% of the market, where 10% of those might convert (1% total) is a good deal. But if I have awareness with 60% of the target market, and give my product away, with a 10% conversion rate, I’ve lost a great deal.”
It’s hard to disagree with such statement, especially applied to software projects. However, some might think that proprietary model is for leading software vendors and open source distribution is for unknown SMBs only, but it’s not true.
Open source model may be appropriate for companies of any size, whether they are large or small. The point is to define the niches correctly and to manage the awareness selectively. Some products may be issued according to a proprietary model and others according to a viral model. One can support another if it is accurately positioned. Watch the ‘proprietary’ market leaders and you’ll see how they learn from their open source competitors.
Tim also writes, “For many types of publishing, I absolutely believe that giving away free copies is the best way to build the market.” And I can’t help adding, for many other types of publishing the best way to build the market is not to give away copies at all.
Matt Asay Tim O’Reilly’s post on ‘online promotion via viral distribution’ and comments:
…We buy things because they’re useful (or because we’re mindless sheep that can’t say ‘no’ to a well-marketed brand - I do think some of this goes on in IT, generally, and certainly with open source projects, as well). Open source happens to succeed because it’s available (in the sense that it’s easier for me to download and try it out than a proprietary product - not because of source code availability, but because of the licensing/distribution model), and because quality undergirds that availability.
Perfect words! A number of vendors forget that the major feature of any product is the value, rather than free distribution. Users download programs to satisfy their needs, rather than to sit and stare at the beautiful yet useless interfaces. That’s the same reason open source community improves the code and adds new capabilities. For the sake of the value and valuable result that is guaranteed by the program.
The value comes first. That’s why there’s no sense in expecting your product to bring you revenues if the very product is totally useless.
