Engaging Silicon Valley

Yesterday

For the most part, Silicon Valley was considered more as a curiosity. Database and personal computers are powerful tools, but there had not been much thought on engaging and shaping what Silicon Valley makes.

Today

There is a now a recognition that Silicon Valley is a place full of ideas and technologies that potentially accelerate and open up new venues for the companies willing to make the investment.

With that in mind, increasing number of companies are setting up scouting offices as a way to introduce pieces of Silicon Valley back to the BU and headquarters. Some have also set up venture arms targeting specific aspects of technologies that the mother-ship is interested in but may not have the right expertise.

Tomorrow

I am seeing an increasing number of companies expanding their representative offices into bone fide operation in Silicon Valley. In other words, instead of hosting meetings and visiting other companies, these offices are starting to build concept prototypes and co-develop with other Silicon Valley companies.

The key attraction is that this allows a company a much deeper integration into the Silicon Vally ecosystem as a way to build credibility and gain early insight into developing technology.

Conversely, these design centers also provide Silicon Valley windows into specific challenges that is not readily available locally. For example, automobile companies are exploring how to incorporate the latest in human-machine interface (HMI) into the driving experiences.

Three examples of open source projects

Firefox

Firefox came out of Netscape and is currently under the Mozilla Foundation. As an open source project it is most notable in that it competes directly and successfully against software heavyweights such as Microsoft (Internet Explorer), Apple (Safari), and Google (Chrome).

On the licensing front, it employs a tri-license strategy under the MPL (Mozilla Public License), GPL (GNU General Public License), and LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License). This allows different projects to be combined and gives users the option to pick a particular license. Its revenue is derived from fees paid by Google and other search engines to be included in Firefox.

In a conversation with Asa Dotzler of Firefox, adoption started to take off when Microsoft stopped investing in Internet Explorer. With fear of hackers, both personal and corporate users began to massively adopt Firefox.

MySQL

MySQL is one of the poster child of commercial open source which was sold to SUN Microsystems for US$1 billion in 2008. Many have argued that Oracle's SUN acuqisition in 2009 for US$7.4 billion was really about buying its biggest database competition, MySQL.

On the licensing front, it employs a dual-licensing strategy. Its open source version is available under GPL. It also offers a more traditional proprietary licensing option for users who want to incorporate MySQL into their own system or use additional libraries developed by MySQL AB.

I invited (former) MySQL CEO, Marten Mickos to give a Forum talk at Xerox PARC in 2010. It is a talk worth hearing. In separate conversations, he indicated that one of the major drivers for MySQL adoption was the fact that it has a specific niche that nobody was filling at the time, namely providing database service for web servers.

Defensive vs offensive open source

Traditionally, open source has been a way for corporate giants to create potential insurgencies in their competitor's backyard. For example, IBM and Oracle have been active supporter of Linux operating systems as a way to counteract Microsoft's dominance in the PC OS market.

Google seems to have taken a new approach with Android as an open source project. Instead of being a defensive strategy like IBM and Oracle, Android is used as an additional avenue to engage users, i.e. beyond desktop, and foster new ecosystems, i.e. working with consumer device makers. By becoming the best selling operating systems for mobile devices according to Gartner, Google has demonstrated how to use open source as an offensive strategy to penetrate new spaces outside of a company's core business.

Open source

Open source in software

A quick definition so we are all on the same page. Generally "open source" refers to making software source code available to the public under relaxed copyright restriction, aka copyleft. It also requires any change/modification be made available under similar conditions. In practice, selection of one or a set of compatible licensing models, e.g. BSD license vs GPL (GNU General Public License) vs LGPL (GNU Lesser General Public License), is an important consideration.

The obvious attraction of open source is the ability to tap into a much wider spectrum of talents that may be too expensive or impractical to assemble into a development team. As a collaborative endeavor, it also allows for divergent perspectives, i.e. developer vs users and personal vs corporate, to push the product forward instead of relying on the same set of product managers in a company. With multiple constituents involved from the development cycle, open source can make the marketing costs lower and go-to-market faster. Finally, many have argued that open source can result in higher quality products.

Open source as a commercial endeavor

To succeed as commercial operation, open source companies have adopted different business models. An early model is to offer value-added services such as technical support around the source code. Several companies have done well by having a multi-licensing strategy where the public can access the open source version while enterprise users often opt for the proprietary version with feature extensions. While others would offer the latest version with a fee but becomes open source when a new version becomes available.

One common myth about open source is that it does not require dedicated engineering resources. Nothing is further from the truth. In order to start an open source project, there has to be enough ground work done to ensure that people take it seriously and can use it productively. As the project ecosystem grows, development and management resources are important to keep the work on even keel.

On the other hand, open source approach brings two distinctive advantages in the development process. One is that it allows dedicated people to be involved in a way that is not possible otherwise, e.g. language localization. The other is that it allows for the "survival of the fittest" in features where anyone can propose and add a new feature but only the truly useful ones survive the new release.