Closing notes on the first day of OSBC

Overall I have to say I’ve really enjoyed the first day of OSBC. I’m getting an entirely different perspective on many things, which is good. It’s easy to get a bit insular when you are only exposed to a single side of an argument. After my last post, I noticed many more “community” members too, which is great. It’s amazing how often a few general themes have been brought up, even in sessions with widely disparate topics. A few notes from attended sessions:

What’s Next: Emerging Opportunities + Strategies
* It’s interesting that many Open Source projects do very little or no marketing, but have extremely powerful and well known brands. That’s one of the power of ubiquity.
* The value that can be derived from non-paying users should not be underestimated.
* Transparency, at all levels, is critical in an Open Source community. So is respecting user privacy and data.
* One reason cost per customer acquisition is less expensive is due to customer self-selection through quality experiences via gratis downloads.

A New Breed of P&L: The Open Source Business Financial Model
Larry gave an interesting look at the current state of Open Source software in relation to what he calls the golden age of software (mid80’s through late 90’s). His assertion is that things, such as the percentage of revenue spent on sales and marketing, have gotten way out of whack in the software industry. Open Source may be bringing us back to that golden age. Red Hat was one of his primary examples. More data will be available in the coming years, as the current crop of Open Source companies have a chance to mature.

Copyleft Business Models: Why it’s Good Not to Be Your Competitor’s Free Lunch
Eben is such a phenomenal speaker that I really can’t do this talk justice with a simple summary. However, here are some highlights:

* When he worked at IBM, software was a free lunch… used to sell hardware. Customers often submitted patches with their bug reports. For a variety of reasons this has changed in the current day and age, much to the determent of general software quality.
* An example of this is the comparison of how far hardware has comes since 1979. When IBM had 29G is took massive space and was very expensive. Now it takes up 2.5″ and is $40. Software on the other hand has almost become worse. He describes the situation as deplorable.
* An analogy for what the lack of standards can do. During the civil war, the north had a standard gauge for railroad ties. The south did not. This meant items often had to be unloaded just to be reloaded in the south. This became crippling and is an example of how much work can be wasted when there are no open and available standards.
* In his opinion, community adds a huge amount of value to a project, for a variety of reasons.
* The next draft of the GPLv3 should be Apache license compatible.
* With regard to the recent speculation about Microsoft, the GPLv3 and the fact that the Novell coupons do not expire; he can not say as much as he’d like, due to an NDA (one he thought would have expired by now, but hasn’t due to a Novell SEC filing delay). What he did say was that you need look no further than his actions and the actions of Microsoft to see what the Microsoft opinion on the matter is. He asserts they are quite concerned.

More to come tomorrow. Now to partake in the very nice spread that has been offered to all attendees.

–jeremy