Community Software:
The Why and How of Open Source Participation
Matt Asay
General Manager, Americas
matt.asay@alfresco.com

Agenda
● Leaving the cave
Why it matters
●
● The power of open source
● How it can help you
● Engaging with open source communities
Principles of community involvement
●
Making OpenBravo successful
●
● The future is open

The Open Source Opportunity

Beyond the cave
You have shown me a strange image,
and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see
only their own shadows, or the shadows
of one another, which the fire throws on
the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see
anything but the shadows if they were
never allowed to move their heads?...
And if they were able to converse with
one another, would they not suppose
that they were naming what was actually
before them?...
To them, I said, the truth would be
literally nothing but the shadows of the
images.

Different ways to develop software
No man is an island, entire of itself I've built walls,
every man is a piece of the A fortress deep and mighty
continent, a part of the main That none may penetrate...
if a clod be washed away by the sea, I am a rock, I am an island
Europe is the less, as well as if a ...
promontory were, I have my books
as well as if a manor of thy friends or and my poetry to protect me
of thine own were I am shielded in my armour
any man's death diminishes me, Hiding in my room, safe within my
because I am involved in mankind womb,
and therefore never send to know for I touch no one and no one touches me.
whom the bell tolls
it tolls for thee.
I am a rock, I am an island

The world is discovering an
alternative
20th Century
● IP protection first, customers second (?)
● Achieve ubiquity through
Expensive sales and marketing
●
● Focus on sales, not product
● High conversion rate of limited prospects
● Customers first, product follows customer
needs
● Achieve ubiquity through
Exceptional software
●
● Focus on product to drive self-selected sales
● Low (but growing) conversion rate of hundreds
of thousands of leads
21st Century ● Superior service
6

Connected world, connected
software
The significant problems we face cannot be solved
at the same level of thinking that created them.

Unstoppable
“Open source software solutions
●
will directly compete with closed-
source products in all …markets.”
By 2008, 95% of Global 2000
●
organizations will have formal
open source acquisition and
management strategies
● Approximately 10% of key
enterprise on-premise software in
2007, increasing to between 15%
and 20% by 2010
Today, 81% have deployed or are
●
considering deploying open source
applications
● 60% believe that open source
drives “significant business value”
● 72% plan to expand its use
Sources: Gartner (2005), CIO Insight (2006), IDC (2006), Saugatuck (2007)
10/27/07

The secrets of open
source's success
Why?
● “Open source produces better software.”
65% say open source has
●
sparked innovation inside their
companies
● 67% … for lowered costs
● 81% … for better quality software
Other reasons, according to a
●
Saugatuck survey (2007):
● Ability to customize and use the
however required (Flexibility)
● Reduced vendor dependence
My experience?
●
● Price
● Involvement (Community)
● Value
10/27/07
Sources: Gartner (2005), CIO Insight (2006), IDC (2006), Saugatuck (2007)

Open source delivers value
● Open source respects IT's time
Support direct from the engineers
●
who write the code
● Domain experts on staff
● Open source respects IT's
money
Pay for value, not licenses
●
Term Proprietary Software Open Source
● Dramatically lower cost Included in annual
License Fees Large Initial Fee subscription fee
● Open source respects IT's Included in annual
Upgrades Additional Fee subscription fee
intelligence Included in annual
Maintenance Additional Fee subscription fee
Aligns vendor interests with
●
Included in annual
customer interests Support Additional Fee subscription fee
● Deliver customer value or the
License Term Perpetual or Time-Based Perpetual*
customer doesn't pay – allocates
risk appropriately

Every proprietary vendor
is vulnerable
Consider Oracle's customers: But not in the ERP market!
● >33% are running production ● Oh, really?
open source DBs SAP introduces Business ByDesign
●
● Oracle “owns” NetSuite
● 13% are running >50% of
applications on open source ● Weak attempts to be OpenBravo
>50% will increase their use of open
● Likely to fail – difficult for big vendors
●
source in the next year with heavy cost structure to go “down-
market”
● “Express” editions have not slowed
open source penetration ● No community help
● Open source allows ERP to be
● Use cases? developed by and for disparate users
63% for single function systems;
●
● SMEs don't look to proprietary
37% for departmental applications;
●
incumbents for agile, open source
34% for customer facing web sites;
●
and/or SaaS
12% each for ERP and BI;
●
7% for transactional
●
10/27/07
Sources: Independent Oracle Users Group survey (2007)

The open source ecosystem:
Alfresco example
Breakdown of Linux Variants
Evaluation Deployment
14%
22%
Linux - Debian
16%
Linux - Fedora C ore
Linux - Other
Linux - RHEL
Linux - SUSE
Linux - Ubuntu
14%
13%
21%

The open source ecosystem:
Application servers
Evaluation Deployment

The open source ecosystem:
Databases
Evaluation Deployment

Building and Engaging Communities

How open source can help
you

Open source focuses innovation
Innovation

Open source opens doors to
customer innovation
Let OpenBravo partners
and customers and
community members
customize OpenBravo to
suit their individual needs

Community is very hard
● Project sponsor will do 85-
100% of core development
Portrait of the Successful
1000/10/1 (Users/ Bug
●
Company as a Young Project
Reporters/ Patch Submitters)
● <15 core developers will
always do 85% of dev
● Most projects (55%) get no
outside involvement at all, and
72% have fewer than 2
● The key to community?
● Interesting project
● Accessible code (Modularity +
documentation)
● Transparent roadmap and
interaction
10/27/07 Sources: Marten Mickos (MySQLUC 2005); O’Mahony & West, 2005; Mockus et al., 2005)

Make it interesting

Licensing is critical
● The license sets the tone for a
project
● Helps to overcome barriers to trust
Project must be bigger than the
●
company behind it
● Right to fork essential
● GPL best for commercial projects

Embrace open source
● “Open source” is not a marketing gimmick
● Open source success depends on being different, on disruption

“Control” comes from sharing

Sharing can be profitable

Can you do succeed here?

Among the
most
significant
open source
projects.
Not a single
one of which
was born in
Silicon Valley

One final warning
● A true community gives and takes
● Systems integration partners should not be parasites
Feed the project and its sponsor or it will die
●
● Customers benefit from a strong project sponsor, and not merely zero-cost
software acquisition
● Contribute code and cash to ensure a rich, symbiotic relationship
● Project sponsors must be careful not to consume all revenue
opportunities
Avoid professional services (Alfresco limits its PS involvement to two weeks)
●

Conclusory Remarks

The opportunity is ripe
● ~10 open source vendors will do
over $10M in sales in FY 2007
● “Free” as in price no longer the
primary driver of open source
Open source = value
●
● Geographical differences
US: Corporates | EMEA:
●
Governments | APAC: No one
● More free use in EMEA; more paid
use in the US
● Partner-driven in EMEA; more direct
in the US

The open source manifesto
(Burn the boats)