][ 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).

While some on FSFE discussion mailing list debate whether the term ‘open source’ is good or not, the world out there is running fast adopting the THING (whatever you prefer to call it) and considering its adoption. Matt reports about Actuate 07 Open Source Survey Whitepaper which has interesting data about perception of FLOSS (page 9):

The main perceived benefit of open source software is that there are no licence costs (56%). The second tier of main perceived benefits are flexibility (48.4%) and access to source code (47.1%). These are followed by vendor independence (38.7%), not being locked into Microsoft (38.7%), being built on open platforms (35.3%), standards-based technology (32.5%) and scalability (30.5%).

Cost is still #1 reason for adoption and high risk is still #1 reason for non-adoption. The Free Sw communities have been communicating other values besides cost for many years now, some of which are visible in the survey (vendor independence, freedom from lock-in, open standards) but these rank lower.

The Open Source Initiative, with all the weaknesses of its mission, has the merit of having taken the lead and implemented successfully a clear marketing strategy. FSF made the right strategical choice opposing OSI’s approach. FSFE had the right approach too, with a softer position (not two movements, but one movement with different terms) and the idea of the GNU Business Network. Unfortunately, GBN didn’t receive enough attention and FSFE was distracted by other issues. In the end, the results of FSFE marketing aren’t as good as those of OSI, according to the surveys.

Isn’t it time to implement a new marketing strategy for software freedom? There is a clear window of opportunity now, but it’s not going to be there forever.

Roberto’s latest comment reminded me of his presentation at quifree.  One of the points he made was about the missing ‘perception’ of Free/Libre software, a constant discussion theme during the years at FSFE.  What are the values of Free Software? How to make such values meet the needs of users, citizens and companies? While many people in the community dismiss the issue easily marking it with the bad word ‘marketing’, I don’t think it is neither bad nor simple to address the perception issue.

In my recent public speeches I focused on one value of Free Software:  business ethics within digital society.  In short, my argument is that since the society has changed to an economy of information, those that write software have the power to control information and therefore control society. Modern societies evolved systems, like democracy, so that big powers could be balanced. Free Software helps introducing ethics in digital environment, empowering the users thus balancing powers.

There are more values in Free Software that can be found and communicated and I hope others will join the effort.  It is marketing, and we better not be afraid of it… otherwise good messages for our values will remain in the hands of our competition.