MySQL AB – a new product and an IPO

February 1, 2007 Leave a comment

Speaking of Open Source companies that understand their market and core strengths, MySQL AB has also been on a tear. Earlier this week, the company announced its MySQL Enterprise Unlimited program. From the press release:
MySQL AB, developer of the world's most popular open source database, today unveiled a simpler way for large and growing organizations to acquire and adopt enterprise software. Designed with a customer’s perspective in mind, a one-year MySQL Enterprise Unlimited subscription offers a company-wide enterprise site agreement at the unprecedented low price of $40,000 (EUR 32,000, GBP 24,000).
“MySQL Enterprise has made it significantly easier to purchase database software and technical support for our entire organization,” said Glenn Bergeron, systems manager for Instaclick Inc., one of the first companies to take advantage of MySQL Enterprise Unlimited. “This new offering is ideal for corporate IT organizations with a growing number of projects but a tightly-fixed budget.”
MySQL Enterprise Unlimited is designed for companies with existing site licenses for Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Sybase and IBM DB2. Last year, a survey of the Independent Oracle User Group showed that a full third of its membership also used MySQL1. With a MySQL Enterprise Unlimited subscription, an organization can develop, manage and fully support any number of MySQL database applications — significantly reducing IT time, cost and risk.
“Due in large part to advantages in distribution and volume, open source has the ability to disrupt traditional enterprise software pricing,” said Stephen O'Grady, principal analyst for RedMonk. “MySQL is attempting to prove as much with its latest site wide agreements, which offer customers the ability to support every database across their enterprise at a fraction of the traditional cost.”
Make no mistake about it, MySQL AB could have actually raised the price of their main product and still sold more. Instead they have chosen a plan which I think has a higher upside potential long term. Matt covers some of the reason the company is able to do this:
Zack told me over email (in response to my question, “How can you possibly make money at that price?):
The reason we can make money is because:
-The software really works
-And we don't have expensive Armani-wearing Ferrari-driving sales reps closing 40K deals.
Expanding on that is a post on Zack's blog. This isn't just about Oracle, it's about disrupting the industry. That's why this is a long term play. It's game changing. A lot of proprietary companies may have raised their rates as mentioned earlier, to boost the bottom line in the short term. It all looks very nice on the balance sheet. MySQL represents what I consider the future. Vibrant sustainable companies that treat their customers like partners and not like prey.
I see that the company is now looking at an IPO. As you may have guessed by my previous comments, I'll certainly try to get in on that. As you may have also guessed, I also regularly recommend and implement MySQL and run it on a site that gets a considerable amount of traffic.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, MySQL, Open Source, Oracle, Red Hat

Red Hat's Volley on Linux Management Offering

February 1, 2007 Leave a comment

A recent article on InternetNews.com points to some moves by Red Hat that could have a large impact on Open Source in the Enterprise. From the article:
The leading Linux distributor told internetnews.com that it is rolling out online monitoring tool this year Red Hat customers.
Rich Friedman, director of product management for the Red Hat Network, told internetnews.com the management tool is already in use with a select group of customers with expanded rollouts planned throughout the year.
“We provide a set of services that can monitor systems and we handle the background work of collecting metrics, analyzing them, sending out availability and performance alerts,” Friedman said. “We provide reporting charting and history and even more capabilities in terms of managing how you set up alerts and it's all from an online perspective.”
“What we'll be doing with RHN 5 is providing support and capabilities around virtualization management,” Friedman said. [This includes] “focusing on what we do from a Red Hat RHEL perspective and the capabilities we have and the ability to control the system from a central place.”
Red Hat is taking a different angle than a one-console approach to managing all the enterprise components. “One console to serve all purposes is not as important as managing RHEL with the best capabilities,” Friedman said. “That's where we focus.”
And it's not just Oracle with which Red Hat wants to contrast its approach. Freidman said Red Hat's goal is to integrate with the big systems management vendors and work with them in a complementary manner.
Though Red Hat's goal is not be like the big systems management vendors, it is pursuing an effort to open up RHN so that it can manage more applications.
By opening up the infrastructure like this they will be allowing other companies to use it as a framework to build all kinds of compelling applications that can be brought to market much faster and for much lower costs. All the while they'll be cementing themselves as a core piece of the puzzle. This sums it up nicely:
Friedman explained that Red Hat is currently working on a platform for systems management that open source projects will be able to leverage to provide systems management out of the box. “Not to be an OpenView (HP's enterprise management product) or any one else in that arena but really as a way that you can integrate a base platform, and then provide a plug-in that will mange your product set,” Friedman said.
It's that kind of focus along with an understanding of their market and core strengths that allows Red Hat to do so well. I for one hope they are able to continue to execute as they have been. With moves like this, you have to think they well. Well done.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source, Red Hat

The meaning of FREE

January 22, 2007 2 Comments

A recent blog post by Mark Shuttleworth has sparked quite a bit of debate. His assertion:
We have to work together to keep free software freely available. It will be a failure if the world moves from paying for shrink-wrapped Windows to paying for shrink-wrapped Linux.
As free software becomes more successful and more pervasive there will be an increasing desire on the part of companies to make it more proprietary. We've already seen that with Red Hat and Novell, which essentially offer free software on proprietary terms – their “really free” editions are not certified, carry no support and receive no systematic security patching. In other words – they’re beta or test versions. If you want the best that free software can deliver, a rock solid, widely certified, secure platform, from either of those companies then you have to pay, and you pay the same price whether you are Goldman Sachs or a startup in Rio de Janeiro.
That’s not the vision we all share of what free software can achieve.
With Ubuntu, our vision is to make the very best of free software freely available, globally. To the extent we make short-term compromises, for drivers or firmware along the way, we see those as bugs, and ones that will be closed over time.
Basically, he's calling the two main Enterprise Linux distributors proprietary companies. Greg DeKoenigsberg, the Community Development Manager for Red Hat (aka quite active in the Fedora community) fires back:
You can call Red Hat “proprietary” all you want. That doesn't make it true.
The difference between Red Hat Enterprise Linux bits and CentOS bits is virtually nil; we make all of our source RPMs available to anyone who wants them. (Ask Novell if they do the same. I'll save you the time: they don't.) What is “proprietary” is the brand, and the quality of service you are entitled to receive by being a paying customer. Oh, and the notion that “the price is the same whether you're Goldman Sachs or a startup in Rio de Janeiro” is ludicrous.
If you want to duplicate that quality of service for Ubuntu users, that's noble and admirable. That's competition. But leave the FUD at the door, dude. You're better than that. Aren't you?
The discussion gets going from there. My opinion lies somewhere between the two, although that's not surprising considering they're basically diametrically opposed. I think calling Red Hat a proprietary company is a bit disingenuous. The bits are 100% freely available and Red Hat is extremely active in contributing code back upstream. I don't think there is any danger of there becoming a shrink-wrapped only Linux situation. Matt seems to think that Mark doesn't “get” enterprise Linux. I think it might be something else though, and that's that Canonical has an entirely different business model. The Red Hat business model has turned into something along the lines of (yes, these are *gross* oversimplification meant to illustrate a point) “If you want Linux for free, we have a release that is primarily aimed at developers that you are free (in every sense of the word) to do what you please with. The maintenance window is really short and we make no guarantees, but here it is – enjoy. If you'd like a solid and stable version of Linux that comes with support, ISV certifications and long term maintenance, we also have RHEL but it costs”. I've express my desire to have a maintenance without support version of RHEL (for a fee mind you, just a low one) in the past, but that may never happen. If you start with Fedora now and end up wanting official Red Hat support, you basically have to start 100% from scratch with RHEL. The Canonical version seems to be more along the lines of “Feel free to download any version of the product we have, be it LTS or not. If you'd like support, we'd be happy to provide it for a price.” For those not familiar with Ubuntu, LTS is “(Long Term Support”. This does give companies the added advantage of being able to try the official product while maintaining the ability to easily move to the supported product. That is nice, but if you want anything in the line of ISV certification at this time, Ubuntu doesn't have much to offer you (and that is important).
The one great thing that stands out to me here is that, due to the way that Linux is licensed both companies get a chance to prove their models. What's even better, they are doing so with essentially the same bits. Everyone in the community has the potential to win! No vendor lock-in on either side, so comparisons to “Microsoft of Linux” are non sequitur. See how great choice really is? The one final comment I'll add is that Red Hat has done a good job of proving their model works. Can Canonical do the same? Will they?
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source, Red Hat, Ubuntu

Alan Cox Files DRM related Patent

January 19, 2007 Leave a comment

I've seen quite a bit of buzz about the patent application recently filed by Alan Cox. Here's the summary of the patent:
The present invention provides a technique for preventing the unauthorized use of a computer application, operating system, or other program without causing the loss of any information or data. Specifically, the technique of the present invention monitors a computer program for use that is not in compliance with acceptable terms. These terms may be defined, for example, through the use of a license agreement between the computer program provider and the user. When unauthorized use of the computer program is detected, any information and data is saved and the computer program and/or a portion of the computer system is disabled. The specifics concerning data that is saved may be determined, for example, by the computer program vendor or the user upon installation of the computer program. Similarly, a conventional “suspend to disc” operation may be utilized. The suspension of the computer program and/or a portion of the system may be maintained for as long as the violation exists, thereby permitting the user to, for example, renew any expired license terms. Once compliance has been reestablished, suspension of the computer program and/or a portion of the system is terminated and activities resumed. In situations where compliance is not reestablished, the data may be transferred to the user.
My interpretation is that it's a way for DRM to save data in the case of non-compliance, or to suspend the program until compliance is reached. Some seem to think this indicates Red Hat will go after Microsoft after Vista is mainstream. I can't conceivable see that to be the case. Issues such as prior art aside, that seems unlikely to me for two reasons. First, it's way outside the current operating parameters of Red Hat. They're not the kind of company I see going on a patent offensive. They get that software patents are inherently broken. Next, they can't at this point in their lifetime (young, small and growing rapidly with a sustainable business model) want to get into a legal battle with Microsoft, who has piles of cash and a legion of battle tested lawyers. So why the patent application? I'd say it's part of a plan that they've been building on for about two years now. The systematic buildup of strategic defensive patents, with the goal of amassing enough defensives to avoid being the target of a patent related suit. With Ballmer making thinly veiled threats, what choice do they really have. While they know the system is broken, that doesn't mean they don't have to play the game.
–jeremy

Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Open Source, Red Hat

Where does open source code come from?

January 16, 2007 Leave a comment

From this article:
The European Commission has published its final report on the Economic Impact of FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software) on innovation and competitiveness of the EU ICT sector.
Weighing in at 287 pages it will take some time to digest, and contains enough data and statistics to fill a blog for a whole year.
One interesting nugget in the report (which I've not had a chance to fully read yet) was a “top ten business contributors” list, based on number of Person-months. To be honest, I was a bit surprised by the list. Sun was number one, which was no surprise. Rounding out the top three were IBM and Red Hat, also very much expected. The rest of the list:
4 Silicon Graphics
5 SAP
6 MySQL
7 Netscape
8 Ximian
9 Realnetworks
10 AT&T
That's where the surprises came in. Many companies I'd have expected to be there are suspiciously absent. SAP was also a surprise up that high. I'll have to look into what else aside from MaxDB they've donated. Just goes to show that code isn't always coming from the places you think it is. I'd guess I'll be posting more about the report as I get a chance to read it.
(originally from Matt Asay)
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, MySQL, Open Source, Red Hat, Sun

Red Hat CEO on Microsoft, Novell customers

December 26, 2006 Leave a comment

The Red Hat stock continues to increase (RHT up almost 30% on the month), mostly as a result of beating Wall Street expectations last week. During the earnings call with analysts, Red Hat CEO Matthew Szulik was asked about Microsoft's announcement of three joint customers with Novell this week. His response:
“Those were existing accounts and there is at least one of them that I can speak definitely that is also a Red Hat account,” Szulik said. “So those were older engagements and we were not involved in competitive situations with those two or three years ago when they became Novell accounts.”
The existing Red Hat account would presumably be Credit Suisse. And one of the existing Novell customers is Deutsche Bank, whose chief technology officer, Clemens Jochum, said in the joint news release that the Microsoft-Novell deal “gives us the benefit of choice of platforms and tremendous flexibility that will help make our company more competitive and efficient.”
On that subject, the VAR Guy blog pointed out this week (see Dec. 20 post) that Deutsche Bank, “was an early investor in SuSE Linux, so it's hardly surprising that the firm's IT team now praises the Novell-Microsoft deal.”
An interesting perspective on the announcement, which I covered here. It should also be noted that Deutsche Bank was also subpoenaed by IBM in the SCO case. Google for more details, but while not directly related to this, it could give you some insight into their general mindset. I'm a bit intrigued into how 2007 will treat both NOVL and RHT.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

Novell Linux Certificates

December 22, 2006 Leave a comment

One of the parts of the Novell/Microsoft deal that hasn't been getting much press is the 70,000 SLES certificates that Microsoft purchased for distribution. I was a bit surprised to see that 16,000 of them have already been doled out. Three major companies have even gone on the record about their involvement: AIG, Credit Suisse, and Deutsche Bank. From the article:
Two banks and an insurance company have accepted Microsoft's offer of technical support for Novell Inc.'s Suse Enterprise Linux.
One of the three, Credit Suisse Group, does not yet use Suse Linux, spokeswomen for the two software vendors said.
As part of its marketing support for Suse Linux, Microsoft agreed to distribute “subscription certificates,” each one entitling customers to technical support from Novell for a server running Suse Enterprise Linux. Microsoft intends to distribute around 70,000 of the certificates a year for the next five years. Customers have already activated 16,000 of the certificates in the seven weeks they have been offered, Microsoft said.
The companies declined to put a price on the certificates, but Microsoft's general manager for customer advocacy and licensing, Susan Hauser, warned: “Don't assume that we're giving them away.”
It still strikes me as odd to have your main competitor sell your product, especially when that competitor is Microsoft. There's some interesting discussion about this going on at Matt Asay's blog. A snippet:
Again, one problem I have with this announcement is that each of these companies was already using both company's products prior to this announcement and the pact. They're not net new customers of either Microsoft or Novell, making the announcement as such somewhat deceptive. Fine. It's marketing.
But it also overlooks the fact that some – perhaps all? – of these companies are also heavy Red Hat users. Hence, the real question whether this early adopter program with Novell/Microsoft will actually pull them away from Red Hat. Early signs are a clear “No,” even despite the dramatically lower prices Novell is offering for its pilot program. It's tough to beat free. ;-)
All that said, I still think it's good that customers are buying into the interoperability story. This part of the Microsoft/Novell deal is useful and important. I buy it.
It's unclear in the announcement whether the patent bit of the agreement had anything to do with any of the companies decisions. That would be an interesting question to get the answer to, although I'm not going to hold my breath. This story continues to get more interesting from my perspective. And I said I wouldn't blog about it any more ;)
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

Novell: Hubert Mantel Returns, Jeremy Allison Resigns

December 22, 2006 Leave a comment

Quite a bit going on at Novell over the last couple days. We have Hubert Mantel returning and Jeremy Allison resigning. For those that don't remember, Hubert is one of the Suse founders and had resigned from Novell a little over a year ago, saying: “”Too late for me. I just decided to leave Suse/Novell, this is no longer the company I founded 13 years ago.” Jeremy, who is a core Samba guy, joined Novell a bit over a year ago and resigned over the recent Microsoft Patent agreement, saying:
I know you don't want to hear this, I know *nobody* wants to hear this but I'll not be able to live with this if I don't say it publicly at least once.
Whilst the Microsoft patent agreement is in place there is *nothing* we can do to fix community relations. And I really mean nothing.
We can pledge patents all we wish, we can talk to the press and “community leaders”, we can do all the right things w.r.t. all our other interactions, but we will still be known as GPL violators and that's the end of it.
For people who will point out to me we don't “technically” violate the GPLv2 here's an argument I recently made on the mailing lists.
“Do you think that if we'd have found what we legally considered a clever way around the Microsoft EULA so we didn't have to pay for Microsoft licenses and had decided to ship, oh let's say, “Exchange Server” under this “legal hack” that Microsoft would be silent about it – or we should act aggr[i]eved when they change the EULA to stop us doing this?”
The Microsoft patent agreement has put us outside the community, and there is no positive aspect to that fact, and no way to make it so. Until the patent provision is revoked, we are pariahs.
When asked about that deal, Mantel said:
6. What do you think about the Microsoft/Novell deal?
I think it is a good thing especially for the users. If you think some years back, Linux was not taken seriously. Now even Microsoft acknowledges that it exists and will not go away. I understand that many people don't like it as Novell is collaborating with the “evil empire”. But I don't like this way of thinking; we are not working against somebody, but we are working FOR Linux. Fundamentalism always leads to pain. What's important is that Linux is free and will remain to be free. The source code is open to everybody, this is what counts for me. Some people seem to be torn in an interesting way: On one hand they want “world domination”, at the same time they don't like the feeling that Linux has grown up and needs to deal with the real business world out there. We have a saying here in Germany that goes along the lines of “wash me, but do not make me wet”. If you want Linux to succeed, you cannot live in your own separate universe.
One thing is clear, a rift is definitely forming on this issue. Was that one of the goals of the agreement from the Microsoft side? Some are speculating that, but I'm still unsure what the motives were. It took Jeremy about 30 seconds to find a job as he seems to have landed at Google. Regardless of what you think of the patent agreement, you have to applaud Jeremy for sticking up for what he believes in. He put his money where his mouth is and gave up a job he clearly enjoyed because of it. You have to respect that kind of conviction. It will be interesting to see what direction Novell heads in over the next 6 months or so. Meanwhile RHT seems completely unaffected by this or the recent Oracle news. Today they beat analysts expectations handily and the stock jumped over 25%.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Oracle, Red Hat

A Correction to a Recent OLPC Story

November 29, 2006 Leave a comment

In a recent post about OLPC I erroneously stated that Jim Gettys was a Red Hat employee. Dave Jones has kindly pointed out that Jim is in fact an OLPC employee. My apologizes for that and thanks for the correction.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Open Source, Red Hat

Microsoft CEO says Linux "uses our intellectual property"

November 17, 2006 3 Comments

That didn't take too long, did it. From the article:
In comments confirming the open-source community's suspicions, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer Thursday declared his belief that the Linux operating system infringes on Microsoft's intellectual property.
In a question-and-answer session after his keynote speech at the Professional Association for SQL Server (PASS) conference in Seattle, Ballmer said Microsoft was motivated to sign a deal with SUSE Linux distributor Novell earlier this month because Linux “uses our intellectual property” and Microsoft wanted to “get the appropriate economic return for our shareholders from our innovation.”
“Novell pays us some money for the right to tell customers that anybody who uses SUSE Linux is appropriately covered,” Ballmer said. This “is important to us, because [otherwise] we believe every Linux customer basically has an undisclosed balance-sheet liability.”
The full transcript of the conversation is also available. I think it's a little more clear now what Microsoft's intentions were with this deal. At least Ballmer is being a little more forthcoming than in some previous situations:
“So we built a technology bridge, and we built an IP bridge and a commercial framework that supports that. Novell said to us, 'Hey, look, if you're serious about this stuff, you better help us promote Suse Linux.' To which we said, 'You know we're trying to sell Windows, that's what we do for a living! Windows, Windows, Windows, baby! We don't do Linux that way here.'
“What we agreed, which is true, is we'll continue to try to grow Windows share at the expense of Linux. That's kind of our job. But to the degree that people are going to deploy Linux, we want Suse Linux to have the highest percent share of that, because only a customer who has Suse Linux actually has paid properly for the use of intellectual property from Microsoft.”
So the question becomes, will Microsoft move forward with litigation or are they just trying to create enough uncertainty in the Linux market to hinder Linux adoption. I'd guess they may not have a solid plan yet and it could potentially go either way. One thing that might hold them back from litigation is something a bit like the mutually assured destruction of the cold war. If they really start the patent suits flying then IBM, Sun and others (who also have massive amounts of patents) could retaliate. The result would almost certainly be ugly for Microsoft. The EU, and to a lesser extent the DOJ, may also be weighing on the mind of Microsoft if they were to sue. I'm sure they don't want any more monopoly headaches than they already have.
As for Novell, I think they are now realizing that the community is strongly against them. It will be interesting to see if this has any impact on their bottom line over the next 4 quarters or so.
–jeremy
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Filed under Linux, Main Page, Microsoft, Novell, Open Source, Red Hat

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