Wednesday, November 4, 2009

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State of open source software at 25

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A few months from now, it will have been 25 years since Richard Stallman issued his “Gnu Project Manifesto.” Just as assuredly as Marx and Engel launched a revolution in the political world with their Communist Manifesto, so also did Stallman in the world of information technology — and much more quickly. Today, the communist experiment has largely run its course. To read the business press, you might be inclined to think that the free and open-source software (FOSS) movement may have lost some of its vitality as well. Where, after all, are the new VC-backed startups based on FOSS development, or the new Red Hats preparing for IPOs?

The answer, of course, is that free and open-source software is doing just fine, and that venture capital and IPOs were never what FOSS was about to begin with. But its impact on global technology has nonetheless been profound — not only in the server software arena, but in other important markets and niches as well. Its impact is felt in the burgeoning world of mobile devices of all kinds, embedded systems everywhere and much more.

Perhaps most fundamentally, the advent of FOSS has reoriented the way in which many of the largest IT companies in the world compete. Companies like IBM, Intel, Nokia, Motorola, Oracle, and of course Google, use FOSS as both an enabler and a weapon. As an enabler, the model spreads development costs across multiple hardware, software and service model partners. Successful projects in turn attract independent software vendors (ISVs), both companies as well as individual engineers, to the expanding ecosystem to take advantage of the opportunity — and the access to the code. As a strategic weapon, FOSS frees up project partner development dollars to invest in proprietary products that incorporate, or run on top of, project code. R&D savings can also be used to beef up marketing campaigns to drive sales. At the customer end, using FOSS frees up IT budget funds previously spent on proprietary software, which can now be used to buy project partner products and services. Meanwhile, a non-participating, proprietary competitor must continue to bear the full R&D cost of its products, and of marketing and selling them as well. As a result, even Microsoft is beginning to tentatively embrace FOSS in support of its own business model.

If this sounds like the commoditization of software, and a return to the days when big iron came with software preinstalled at no additional cost, you’re right — but only up to a point. Where mainframe software kept competition out, FOSS opens systems up and allows new market participants in. It also lowers switching costs, allowing customers to swap vendors out if they aren’t meeting expectations. Today, millions of individual developers around the world continue to resonate to Stallman’s call for “free software.” But vendors and customers everywhere have also opted in to a quieter, less idealistic, post-revolutionary world of “open software” because of the purely economic benefits they gain by doing so. The result: FOSS is here to stay — in the enterprise, in small and midsize businesses, in government and in academia.

I believe we need to be more aware of this new, post-revolutionary reality here in our VC-driven New England IT culture. Nurturing FOSS projects is an art, integrating FOSS into business strategies is an emerging science, and FOSS licensing is a challenging legal discipline. If we’re not at the cutting edge in each of these areas, we’ll be at a competitive disadvantage. And that’s not a good place to be in revolutionary times. 

Andrew Updegrove is a partner at Boston law firm Gesmer Updegrove LLP, where he supports the Linux Foundation and other FOSS clients. He was named a Mass High Tech All-Star in 2003. He can be reached at andrew.updegrove@gesmer.com.