][ stefano maffulli

Lots of talking about Microsoft lately.  As I expected, Ray Ozzie’s public appearances are increasing with declarations of love for the magic word interoperability and with a new, more open, attitude.  I believe it’s true that “Microsoft fundamentally, as a whole, has changed dramatically as a result of open source,” as Ozzie said.

Roberto wrote a long post about Microsoft Open Source strategy. Having talked to him long enough, I know he sees the big potential for new Open Source firms to prosper on Microsoft ecosystem.  I suspect he is right, given the fact that the *nix competitors have lost 15 years of evolution fighting each other instead of building a common (superior) platform. Only with GNU/Linux such common platform arrived, but it probably came a day late and a dollar short.

Contrary to Roberto, I think that Microsoft change is not sufficient yet for Free Software advocates like me to merrily lift the precautions. I can still hear Ballmer shouting threats and see him trying to twist the arms of the EU Commission (as Carlo remembers very well). I’m not confident yet that these moves represent a new strategy and they’re not merely tactics to penetrate the FLOSS market and break it from the inside (patent lawsuit?).  If I were a developer I wouldn’t trust any promise not to sue by Microsoft, even if that promise uses the same (murky) words of IBM’s promises. I don’t care: Microsoft track records on Free Software is bad, bad, bad and worse. Microsoft must do better than IBM, it must be perfect (they can, if they want to).

Some disappointing news today: Wengo stopped developing Wengophone, the VoIP SIP and XMPP/Jabber multiplatform client.   They announced it in the developer’s mailing list.

Update: the development of OpenWengo software has been taken over by an experienced Wengo programmer.

I wonder why Google isn’t contributing its gtalk code to free software projects like Kopete, Gaim or Adium: they use an open standard (XMPP) and they should have all interests to increase their user base.  My quest for a free software alternative to Skype continues.

Now, this is surprising: Nokia acquired Trolltech, makers of toolkit QT, GTK’s competitor. What surprises me is that Nokia is using GTK on its tablet products (the 770, N800 and N810). So now Nokia has a stake in many platforms: its own flavour of Symbian for its cell phones, GTK/Gnome on the internet tablets and now QT… for what? It’s hard to guess. Is Nokia interested in QTopia, the platform used in embedded devices, including the dead sold out Trolltech Greenphone?

I haven’t been updating the blog too much in the past week and the reason is that I have a new job as community manager at Funambol. The company develops the free/libre software Funambol application server (formerly known as Sync4j). The server allows mobile backup and PIM synchronization to contacts, calendars, tasks, notes and other data, push email (blackberry-like), mobile device management to manage cell phones remotely.  Funambol also has clients for most cell phones available on the market.

The software allows also extensions, as plug-ins and connectors. One of my duties will be to help external developers to contribute plug-ins like the iPhone, Yahoo and Gmail connectors.

The office is in Pavia, which is 45 minutes away from my home in Milano. The company is located in Redwood, California, giving the international touch I like in this creative Italian venture.

I am already getting used to the new rhythm and in the next days I’ll start posting more regularly.

Riporto un’iniziativa segnalata da Roberto Galoppini per imprenditori italiani che vogliano presentare idee ad un gruppo di dirigenti esperti e potenziali investitori.

Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO di Funambol, è presente nel comitato selezionatore quindi mi aspetto che anche le iniziative FLOSS saranno ben accette. La scadenza per presentare i progetti è il 20 Dicembre: è ora di spolverare il sogno nel cassetto.

Italian Startups: a Bridge to Silicon Valley | Commercial Open Source Software

“Mind the Bridge” is an opportunity for Italian entrepreneurs to present their ideas to a core group of experienced executives and potential investors in the Silicon Valley.

I’m not sure that Bill Hilf’s declarations about Microsoft’s Open Source strategy give a complete picture of the corporate strategy in the near future to compete in a sector that radically changed since Windows came to light in the ’90s. I think that Microsoft is being disrupted and will have to split and go on two different paths. One will continue developing its flagship products (Windows and Office) the usual way. This path is the one that Ballmer and Mundie follow, I’d call it ‘Classic Microsoft’. We all know Classic Microsoft and I agree with Shaun Connoly’s (JBoss/RedHat employee) and Savio Rodrigues regarding its Open Source Strategy:

Microsoft has no plans on flipping any of its flagship products to open source. Period. [...]
Microsoft will aggressively fight/compete with products (open source or closed source) that pose a threat to its core products.

It makes perfect business sense. The main problem with this path is that it can’t last forever as it’s being disrupted. A symptom is that Microsoft’s revenues grow slower than competing products: Microsoft growth is stable around 7%-8%, while Google sports two-digits growth and Apple almost goes off scale. Plus there are many signals of decreasing licensing costs under pressure from FLOSS (see Gartner’s report, for example).

Microsoft’s other path is far more exciting and it revolves around a main transition set to happen on July 2008. Microsoft Chief Software Architect (Bill Gates) has quit and has already appointed the successor, the visionary Ray Ozzie. Where is he and what is he doing down there? I couldn’t find many public sign of his activities after his last post on his blog. I heard rumors from Seattle that he is working silently with his group, waiting for gates to open and run free (bad pun ). Fortune reports that “Ozzie’s assignment is to Webify everything” at Microsoft.

My guess is that Ozzie will lead Microsoft on the second path, the Disrupting Microsoft. On this path only speculations apply, but I bet that Disrupting Microsoft will be different: with a different strategy and a different approach to open source and the web revolutions than the one we are used to from Classic Microsoft. The Disrupting Microsoft will have to slowly take over Windows and Office, when they will be too tired (or expired) to sustain Microsoft’s hunger for revenues.

Realizing that Microsoft is being disrupted, Microsoft itself is creating its own subsidiary that will follow the disruption to eventually cannibalize Classic Microsoft (something Adobe should consider doing too). Bets are accepted, Ozzie will emerge from the salt mines next summer and we’ll see.

Ieri ho partecipato alla tavola rotonda dopo il convegno Open Source come modello di business da cui sono rientrato poco impressionato: mi sembrava tutto troppo 1.0, già visto. Non mi hanno impressionato le ricerche presentate da un dottorando di ingegneria, I modelli manageriali dei progetti Open Source e Qualità e costi del software Open Source. Non so perché, ma davo per scontato che fossero noti i lavori di Rossi e Bonaccorsi (2002), Daffara (COSPA, FLOSSMETRICS), IDABC, UNU-Merit, ecc che “Open Source” non è legato ad un solo modo (distribuito) di sviluppare software, che i repository di SourceForge contengono pochi progetti attivi ed economicamente significativi, che la qualità del codice è mediamente alta (ma che non ci sono termini di paragone con la qualità del codice proprietario, essendo questo invisibile) e altro … Pensavo di sentire qualcosa di nuovo almeno dagli USA, invece il professor Anthony I. Wasserman (Executive Director of the Center for Open Source Investigation, Carnegie Mellon West) si è limitato ad un’introduzione generica al tema. Interessante l’intervento di Massimiliano Magi Spinetti di ABI Lab, sui risultati dell’analisi domanda e offerta nel settore bancario. È stato un convegno introduttivo al tema, speriamo che la Fondazione Politecnico ne organizzi presto una nuova edizione con nuovi contenuti. Evidentemente c’è ancora molta comunicazione da fare.

Nel mio breve intervento alla tavola rotonda ho provato a spiegare che il Software Libero o Open Source non è un settore distaccato, non è un mercato diverso. Il settore è lo stesso, quello dello sviluppo software e le regole del business rimangono tutte valide. La differenza la fanno solo le licenze, gli strumenti legali che concedono diritti di uso, studio, modifica e distribuzione ai clienti. Punto. Open Source non è un modello di business ma è una leva strategica a disposizione del management, sia di chi compra che di vende software o servizi. E ho aggiunto che è una leva imprescindibile: nel settore è in atto una disruption, uno sconvolgimento degli equilibri stabiliti destinato a buttare fuori dal mercato tutti gli incumbent (e i fallimenti di Silicon Graphics e SCO o le nuove strategie di IBM e Sun lo dimostrano). Un caso da manuale di innovazione radicale con cui tutti gli attori, domanda e offerta, devono confrontarsi senza esclusione.

Per questo alla domanda “cosa possono fare le aziende italiane? L’Open Source può aiutarle?” non potevo che far notare che il FLOSS va valutato obbligatoriamente anche per le aziende italiane, se vogliono sperare di continuare ad esistere. D’accordo con il prof. Fuggetta: molte opportunità esistono nei sistemi embedded, tutti i sistemi di automazione meccanica, automotive, negli elettrodomestici. Solo con il FLOSS si può sperare di restare sulla curva dell’innovazione e mantenere la speranza di non essere buttati fuori dal mercato.

Update: Andrea Genovese su 7thfloor dà una visione più ampia del convegno in generale.