Thursday, May 10, 2007
Monday, April 16, 2007
Open Source meets Demand Generation
(UPDATE: If you have no clue what Demand Generation is, take a look at my Layman's guide)
Applying open source business models and development methodologies to middleware have seen increasing popularity in recent years. Needless to say, the model has worked with notable companies such as JBoss, Red Hat, Pentaho, Hyperic, and others. Of course, it takes more than just an open source business model to stay in business. These companies all needed sales to close deals, and in turn, sales needed marketing to provide qualified leads. One thing all of these companies have in common is efficient marketing and sales teams, powered by Demand Generation Technology. The use of demand generation, allowed these companies to scale quickly by providing increased ROI in marketing and increased efficiency in sales, via automation of the lead qualification and nurturing process. In essence, sales personnel aren't wasting their time on cold leads, and marketing isn't wasting time trying to corral leads that "leak" out of the sales funnel.
Roy Russo
Applying open source business models and development methodologies to middleware have seen increasing popularity in recent years. Needless to say, the model has worked with notable companies such as JBoss, Red Hat, Pentaho, Hyperic, and others. Of course, it takes more than just an open source business model to stay in business. These companies all needed sales to close deals, and in turn, sales needed marketing to provide qualified leads. One thing all of these companies have in common is efficient marketing and sales teams, powered by Demand Generation Technology. The use of demand generation, allowed these companies to scale quickly by providing increased ROI in marketing and increased efficiency in sales, via automation of the lead qualification and nurturing process. In essence, sales personnel aren't wasting their time on cold leads, and marketing isn't wasting time trying to corral leads that "leak" out of the sales funnel.
I recently wrote an article that mentions why Open Source Companies are uniquely positioned for maximizing demand generation technologies. You can see the article here. In essence, these companies have been able to identify and "upsell" their community in to their support, training, and consulting services. The unique position of OSS companies relying heavily on their community, makes demand generation a high-value proposition for them, and a near-necessity to any OSS company wishing to tap in to its user-base.
If you don't believe or don't know of the power of automating your marketing and sales efforts through demand generation, simply look around at the successful batch of open source companies, and you'll see them using it, or on the brink of implementing it. Proof enough? ;-)
LoopFuse, is an open source company, founded by myself and Tom Elrod. After working for years at JBoss and with close to a decade of email marketing experience under our belt, we saw first-hand what demand generation could do when applied to an OSS business. Oddly enough, when we looked across the landscape, all we saw were a hand-full of proprietary players, that we felt were charging way too much for the value they were providing. Applying what we have learned over the years with regards to increasing marketing and sales efficiency, open source business models, and enterprise-class software development, we were certain we could be a disruptive force in this market, innovating faster, providing a complete services offering, and helping expand the market, so "the masses" could benefit from this critical technology that is increasingly becoming a necessity to those wanting to grow their businesses. Additionally, leveraging an open source business model allows us to innovate at a faster-pace than our proprietary competitors and keep our costs low - passing on those savings to our customers.
With that being said, we have recently released our first version of "One View", our OSS demand generation solution. It is distributed under the GPL, complemented by an Enterprise Edition that is part of our ASP, or SaaS, offering.
Additionally, we will be launching even more enterprise-level features in our second version, due in May 22 (Yes, we move fast). Just in time, for OSBC, where we will have a shiny booth and you can watch me yap away during our presentation, about how implementing LoopFuse's demand generation solution is painless, and frankly, a no-brainer. ;-)
Roy Russo
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
Marc Fleury, JBoss, and Entrepreneurship
How much should an entrepreneur make once his company is sold? What percentage of equity is "fair" for founders to hold on to? Personally, I despise the word "fair", because it always leads to some bed-wetting liberal socialist ideal of what they deem to be "right" and "just". Why I ask these questions, is due to the meandering and degraded thread on TSS, regarding Marc Fleury leaving Red Hat, and what was a "fair" amount of equity he and his family should've kept.
Anyone that has ever tried to start/build/market his own startup, fully realizes how much risk, sleepless nights, knots-in-stomach, overwhelming stress, etc... are associated with such an endeavor. A founder absorbs 100% of the risk in the early stages, often going without pay, insurance for himself and family, and simply living life trying to fulfill a dream. This is why most of us stick to working for "the man" where a paycheck and benefits are assured, because we simply don't have the stomach for it. Its that point, that many of the incessant little whiners on TSS seem to overlook, or simply have never experienced. Whether Marc Fleury walked away with two dollars or a hundred million dollars, is not my problem. At the end of the day, what matters, is what *I* got out of JBoss, because at the end of the day, its all about me. ;-)
Clearly, the whiners on TSS feel the same way. Don't let them fool you with their march against "the evil corporate greed monster". No, many of these guys are angry, because they weren't part of the equity-event - or didn't receive their "fair share" (waah!). In fact, most of these clowns decided long ago to leave JBoss and launch a competing product, even while wearing their red floppy shoes. As Bill Burke put it, it was a coupe. Would you reward half a dozen employees of yours that decided to fork off and launch a competing product? Specially, during the most critical times of a startup? I don't know about you, but I would move to crush them like little grapes.
So that leads me to what everyone "got" out of JBoss, ignoring for a minute the peanut gallery throwing their boogers at Marc. Many of us didn't make enough to retire - clearly, most of us are still working. What JBoss did for the industry was prove that OSS was able to compete toe-to-toe with commercial vendors, and further proved that the business model was viable. So what do we have now? Alfresco, Mule, Sugar, and others, all emulating (in some form or fashion) the JBoss model. What does that mean for you? More jobs, more growth, more success, and hell... maybe even turning your own OSS project in to something that makes money! In this respect, the whiners should be thanking Marc for putting OSS on the map, as it will, in turn, benefit their own projects (These guys are a bit too shortsighted to see that, however).
For me, there is something more important than immediate cash benefits. There are also intangible benefits to the entire JBoss story for those working here. JBoss projects were, and still are, mostly controlled by their project leads. For our own Portal project, we didn't just sit around coding all day like a bunch of cube-farm coders (I'd kill myself) taking orders from some clueless architect. No, among other things, we were responsible for marketing, evangelizing, answering support cases, delivering and writing the training materials and certification exams, interfacing with customers/partners/analysts, etc... Essentially, we are a business within a business. This is not only empowering to the project developers but it also exposed them to areas outside of "the code". From my point of view, in my 2+ years here, I've learned the marketing/sales side of the software business better than any MBA could hope to, from some windbag professor. (Some studies show that getting an MBA makes your dumber, but anyway...)
So what was my net benefit working at JBoss? Not only did I put a little cash in my pocket, but more importantly, Fleury taught us all how to run a successful software business. You can let that bake your noodle all you want, but I don't think *anyone* can put a price tag on that sort of experience. When I could've sat in a cube and worked at some bottomless pit of a corporation, I chose rather to work at JBoss, and I am much wiser for it. So not for the immediate cash, but for my future career potential, do I thank Marc for working things the way he did. What *I* learned here at JBoss, no one can ever take from me and likely will have a severe positive impact on my future income potential. However, another tenth of a percentage point of equity, would've just meant nicer rims on my car. Which would you choose?
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
Anyone that has ever tried to start/build/market his own startup, fully realizes how much risk, sleepless nights, knots-in-stomach, overwhelming stress, etc... are associated with such an endeavor. A founder absorbs 100% of the risk in the early stages, often going without pay, insurance for himself and family, and simply living life trying to fulfill a dream. This is why most of us stick to working for "the man" where a paycheck and benefits are assured, because we simply don't have the stomach for it. Its that point, that many of the incessant little whiners on TSS seem to overlook, or simply have never experienced. Whether Marc Fleury walked away with two dollars or a hundred million dollars, is not my problem. At the end of the day, what matters, is what *I* got out of JBoss, because at the end of the day, its all about me. ;-)
Clearly, the whiners on TSS feel the same way. Don't let them fool you with their march against "the evil corporate greed monster". No, many of these guys are angry, because they weren't part of the equity-event - or didn't receive their "fair share" (waah!). In fact, most of these clowns decided long ago to leave JBoss and launch a competing product, even while wearing their red floppy shoes. As Bill Burke put it, it was a coupe. Would you reward half a dozen employees of yours that decided to fork off and launch a competing product? Specially, during the most critical times of a startup? I don't know about you, but I would move to crush them like little grapes.
So that leads me to what everyone "got" out of JBoss, ignoring for a minute the peanut gallery throwing their boogers at Marc. Many of us didn't make enough to retire - clearly, most of us are still working. What JBoss did for the industry was prove that OSS was able to compete toe-to-toe with commercial vendors, and further proved that the business model was viable. So what do we have now? Alfresco, Mule, Sugar, and others, all emulating (in some form or fashion) the JBoss model. What does that mean for you? More jobs, more growth, more success, and hell... maybe even turning your own OSS project in to something that makes money! In this respect, the whiners should be thanking Marc for putting OSS on the map, as it will, in turn, benefit their own projects (These guys are a bit too shortsighted to see that, however).
For me, there is something more important than immediate cash benefits. There are also intangible benefits to the entire JBoss story for those working here. JBoss projects were, and still are, mostly controlled by their project leads. For our own Portal project, we didn't just sit around coding all day like a bunch of cube-farm coders (I'd kill myself) taking orders from some clueless architect. No, among other things, we were responsible for marketing, evangelizing, answering support cases, delivering and writing the training materials and certification exams, interfacing with customers/partners/analysts, etc... Essentially, we are a business within a business. This is not only empowering to the project developers but it also exposed them to areas outside of "the code". From my point of view, in my 2+ years here, I've learned the marketing/sales side of the software business better than any MBA could hope to, from some windbag professor. (Some studies show that getting an MBA makes your dumber, but anyway...)
So what was my net benefit working at JBoss? Not only did I put a little cash in my pocket, but more importantly, Fleury taught us all how to run a successful software business. You can let that bake your noodle all you want, but I don't think *anyone* can put a price tag on that sort of experience. When I could've sat in a cube and worked at some bottomless pit of a corporation, I chose rather to work at JBoss, and I am much wiser for it. So not for the immediate cash, but for my future career potential, do I thank Marc for working things the way he did. What *I* learned here at JBoss, no one can ever take from me and likely will have a severe positive impact on my future income potential. However, another tenth of a percentage point of equity, would've just meant nicer rims on my car. Which would you choose?
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Design Patterns Repository
This one's all over the internet, but whats another blog linking to something this useful?
A repository of GoF Design Patterns with Java demo sources.
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
A repository of GoF Design Patterns with Java demo sources.
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Badgeware and Open Source... again
So the debate continues... First, Matt Asay dives in on his blog, and now my good friend and former colleague, Andy Oliver, has decided to reply to my blog post on what I see wrong with OSI's stance on badgeware licensing. You can view his post in its entirety here. To add fuel to the fire, there's an interesting thread on TSS, regarding MuleSource that has degenerated in to a licensing discussion, and now Matt Asay has given his opinion on that. This goes to show exactly how passionate the open source community is, when defending/defining "open source".
On Andy's Blog...
I have only the most respect for Andy, having worked with him in the past, and his being a critical member of the early days of JBoss, but... he's just plain wrong. My telling Andy he's wrong is nothing new, but this time, he's just REALLY wrong. So wrong, in fact, this post is purely dedicated to his twisted view of "open source" and OSI's stance on badgeware. ;-)
Andy tries to make a point that if most/all libraries used by JBoss required attribution, JBoss would have been unsuccessful as a company. He contends that the sheer amount of screen real-estate would've crippled any application built on JBoss.
I hate falling in to the trap of what could've/should've, but lets entertain Andy's thoughts for a little bit. IF this licensing scheme had taken off, JBoss had a few choices:
On Andy's Blog...
I have only the most respect for Andy, having worked with him in the past, and his being a critical member of the early days of JBoss, but... he's just plain wrong. My telling Andy he's wrong is nothing new, but this time, he's just REALLY wrong. So wrong, in fact, this post is purely dedicated to his twisted view of "open source" and OSI's stance on badgeware. ;-)
Andy tries to make a point that if most/all libraries used by JBoss required attribution, JBoss would have been unsuccessful as a company. He contends that the sheer amount of screen real-estate would've crippled any application built on JBoss.
If this licensing scheme had taken off in the early days
then, depending on the most prevalent terms regarding UI persistence, I think
JBoss would have been inviable as a company and Alfresco would have never been a
customer. In fact, forget the amount of screen real estate. Some "exhibit B"
licenses are requesting SPECIFIC screen real estate. If that happened then it
would have been inviable to create aggregate works using two packages which use
the same licenses.
I hate falling in to the trap of what could've/should've, but lets entertain Andy's thoughts for a little bit. IF this licensing scheme had taken off, JBoss had a few choices:
- Include those libraries AND their attribution. He's right, this would've made for a really ugly web application.
- Sign agreements with the underlying component authors to remove the atributions.
- Find another package that does the same thing and doesn't require attribution.
So there it is... is choice diminished? Is the code any less "open" and free? Is its redistribution negated? Nope. Take his mention of Alfresco... They require attribution, so what are my choices if I want to bundle Alfresco with my web application?
- Build a competing product, myself.
- Sign an agreement with them for attribution removal.
- Find another JCR-compliant DMS. (Magnolia, Nuxeo, Jackrabbit, etc...)
- Include the atribution.
- Go cry on TSS about their licensing.
I do agree, in this scenario, that badgeware licenses *may* affect adoption of a product. People still have choice, and most, will likely choose the free options rather than the costly ones. However, its a calculated move by these companies, as they are probably betting that those who choose to sign agreements will offset the lost revenue of those who went elsewhere. My own opinion on attribution licenses is that they will slow down adoption and decrease market share. Is that a price worth paying? Apparently some of these companies think so.
Next, in Andy's rant... err... rebuttal...
...you guys are potentially creating a class software that can't be aggregated
together even under the same license! A class of software that you wouldn't use
in your product for practical reasons (every screen has millions of pixels
dedicated to ads). You want to call that open source?? Get real! (BTW none of
their licenses have been approved by OSI YET)
This software can be aggregated just as before. The one clause in many of these licenses is that I must display some attribution in some part of my app (this differs from license to license). So it may appear distasteful to you, Andy, to add the attribution in your application, but guess what? It may also be distasteful for some to bundle their applications with MySQL, being GPL. So what does MySQL offer? A commercial license!
Andy, being Andy, does a good job at self-promotion at the end of his blog about his company BuniSoft and its product, MeldWare. It wouldn't be fair if I didn't mention that his product does compete with Zimbra, which just happens to have its own license, ZPL, which just happens to have an attribution clause. Imagine that! ;-)
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Badgeware and Open Source
A few months ago I stumbled across this well-written article on ZDNet that discusses whether "badgeware" should be considered "Open Source". For those of you that may not know... the "official" definition of Open Source is maintainted by some self-appointed organization, known as OSI. You can view their definition, in its entirety, here. OSI is responsible for defining "open source" AND adding their stamp of approval for the many licenses that are floating about nowadays. To my knowledge they refuse to add any "badgeware" licenses to their approved list - even though most of these licenses are simply derivatives of the Mozilla Public License.
The term "badgeware", generally means that a licensee must leave in-place certain image/text hyperlinks that normally point to the author's website. So yes, you have access to all the source code, but are not allowed to remove these images that identify the original authors. Is that "open source"? To me, it is. To the OSI, it isn't.
Why does badgeware exist?
Simply put - It stops the Larrys of the world from taking your code, branding it with their big fat "O", making a mint off of it, and never paying you a nickle. Its another method that open source companies have found to create cash from "free" (or "monetizing" - stupid word).
A lot of these badgeware companies own all of their product's IP. In other words, they own the rights to the code. This is an important distinction from the opensource companies/projects of before, because when you own all of your IP, you are able to change licenses whenever it pleases you. For example, if Apple wanted to rebrand OpenSourceProductX, its authors could change the license to something Apple would think is appropriate, in exchange for $. So badgeware has two positive effects, 1. Free branding, and 2. Cash.
In fairness, I will also mention that another avenue for a badgeware company turning their products in to cash is that the "badge" serves as a nag of sorts. The MuleSource CEO is pretty clear about his motives in this posting, regarding that:
Is badgeware open source?
I know... why there's a stink over this is actually quite silly, but there has always been an overabundance of sillyness and religious fighting in the opensource world, so its par for the course. Why OSI won't approve of these new licenses, I could not gather from the article. After reading the OSI's definition of "open source", I could not find any bullet-point that forbids "badgeware".
Working for JBoss, I've had to listen to the pinheads at BEA launch public crybaby fits over "JBoss is not as open source as BEA, as open source as IBM, as open source as Apache, as open source as your mom". From them, I expect the ridiculous and incoherent ramblings of a lunatic... from the OSI I would simply expect a coherent and reasonable bulletpoint in their definition of open source.
The term "badgeware", generally means that a licensee must leave in-place certain image/text hyperlinks that normally point to the author's website. So yes, you have access to all the source code, but are not allowed to remove these images that identify the original authors. Is that "open source"? To me, it is. To the OSI, it isn't.
Why does badgeware exist?
Simply put - It stops the Larrys of the world from taking your code, branding it with their big fat "O", making a mint off of it, and never paying you a nickle. Its another method that open source companies have found to create cash from "free" (or "monetizing" - stupid word).
A lot of these badgeware companies own all of their product's IP. In other words, they own the rights to the code. This is an important distinction from the opensource companies/projects of before, because when you own all of your IP, you are able to change licenses whenever it pleases you. For example, if Apple wanted to rebrand OpenSourceProductX, its authors could change the license to something Apple would think is appropriate, in exchange for $. So badgeware has two positive effects, 1. Free branding, and 2. Cash.
In fairness, I will also mention that another avenue for a badgeware company turning their products in to cash is that the "badge" serves as a nag of sorts. The MuleSource CEO is pretty clear about his motives in this posting, regarding that:
So, if you use Mule in your software product and sell itSugarCRM is probably the best known example of this. If you were to download their open source CRM application, you would find their SugarCRM logo at the bottom of every page, and are bound by the license terms to not remove it. Sorry, Larry, you can't take Sugar and rebrand it Oracle.
commercially, then you are required to either make a licensing deal with us or keep the "powered by Mule" logo visible.
Is badgeware open source?
I know... why there's a stink over this is actually quite silly, but there has always been an overabundance of sillyness and religious fighting in the opensource world, so its par for the course. Why OSI won't approve of these new licenses, I could not gather from the article. After reading the OSI's definition of "open source", I could not find any bullet-point that forbids "badgeware".
Working for JBoss, I've had to listen to the pinheads at BEA launch public crybaby fits over "JBoss is not as open source as BEA, as open source as IBM, as open source as Apache, as open source as your mom". From them, I expect the ridiculous and incoherent ramblings of a lunatic... from the OSI I would simply expect a coherent and reasonable bulletpoint in their definition of open source.
Badgeware is certainly not going away, and my fear is that if the OSI chooses to ignore it, or worse, refuses to approve the licenses, they will find themselves as irrelevant as the UN in short time.
STAY METAL!
Roy Russo
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