Monthly Archives: April 2010

Making sense means more than just connecting the dots

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  • Microsoft is again at work undermining Linux by signing patent agreements with OEMs. This time, it’s HTC, and it’s about Android.  While it’s another sign that software patents should not exist and need to be taken out of the global IP system the WIPO and others are trying to develop, I wonder what Florian Mueller has to say about this.
  • Microsoft signs the Joomla! agreement, which basically means Microsoft will be contributing to a GPL (v2) project. It’s a progress for sure, but when you read my first news item of this post and the present one, you wonder how these two can make sense. Because they don’t, they even seem radically opposed in the impression they convey. More than merely connecting the dots, I have been trying to make sense of these two news. It turns out they are not that contradictory. Microsoft seems engaged into some sort of pincer movement, although it’s not exactly clear whether it is doing it out of necessity or out of an evil plan to nuke the entire IT industry cunning plan to weaken Free and Open Source Software on both legal and political levels.
  • Trying to make sense, again, out of the acquisition of Palm by HP. It seems HP is very interested by Palm’s webOS, which might become an excellent way for HP to differentiate itself in the smartphones and netbooks market. Things look exciting in this field, that’s for sure.

Is 90$ a confusingly good price?

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The other day I got somewhat puzzled, like many people by the new pricing of the former Sun ODF plugin for Microsoft Office. There was first this button “free download” that was really pointing to a page displaying a price of 90$ for the dowload. I then went back on it, and perhaps I did not read this page well or they changed something. In any case, I noticed the mention “free download” had gone away, simply replaced by a generic red dowload button and so I clicked on it. What I saw was very different from the odd perception I and many others had gotten.

The dowload page does indeed not bear any mention of the 90$, but allows different lengths of support contract that amounts maximum to 90$ (5 years support). Now you have to purchase this plugin by pack of 100, which obviously changes the price somewhat, but also indicates the plugin is targeted at medium or large organizations, indirectly telling much of what Oracle’s perception of the market of Microsoft Office users interested by ODF is.

I have read several blogs, dents and tweets on whether this 90$ a seat is a really good thing for ODF. Let me bring a very short, simple answer to it: It’s good for Oracle’s revenue. Whether it will work is perhaps too early to tell, but it’s somewhat assumed here that you can dowload ODF compliant office suites, such as Openoffice.org, for free, or choose the plugin, or even choose Oracle’s own commercial support of OpenOffice.org. What we’re witnessing here can be seen as harming the adoption of ODF, but I’m not convinced by this. I will not go over Openoffice.org’s tremendous and continuing growth, nor the development of ODF tools and APIs but I don’t think the Sun’s ODF Plugin, as strategic as it was at the time of Peter Quinn, was much more than an opportunity to try document conversions and different formats. At best, it was a good opportunity to have a conversation with a vendor. At worst, the new price tag might reduce these opportunities. But I think this, again misses the point.

What Oracle is doing here is what Sun should have done all the way back: extracting actual revenues from its expertise on ODF, whether by providing support on Openoffice.org or engaging into large migration projects. To be sure, Sun had such commercial offerings, but because of its internal organization and a certain market configuration, it never realized the potential revenue it could make. The key here is not to monetize on everything for the sake of it. The key is to realize that:

  • there is no market for OpenOffice.org nor any other non Microsoft Office suites. Surprised? The market as it stands today only applies to Microsoft Office versions. Procurements, measurements, feature requirements are all based on the assumption that one or several versions of Microsoft Office suites will be used and purchased. Until governments or large organizations change their own definition of requirements to stop matching Microsoft Office patterns and similarities, anything between OpenOffice.org to Google Docs will be the underdog and sales strategies embrace a “good enough” type of discourse towards the customer.
  • there are in fact very few companies customers can turn to that can deliver level 2, let alone level 3 support services on OpenOffice.org . The reason is that the code is complex, the community is complex, and that the technology itself is complex. OpenOffice.org is very much a standalone software suite. Microsoft Office gets sold by licenses, but SharePoint is becoming quickly the new cashcow for Microsoft. So the market is blurred by IT service companies that promise everything in the form of global service contracts but they seldom get reassurance from their own end at the original vendor or any other qualified party. I remember last year a very large IT service company had sold a several million general support contract to a large French organization, ensuring the customer it was able to offer level 3 support on OpenOffice.org. It turns out their level 3 was very much calling me on a Monday morning and asking me grave, but expansive questions, and by doing so they were not even expecting to pay me for my time. Now these guys never paid Sun  for an incident ticket, and that’s a practice that should be stopped. The customers will benefit, and so will the people who do the real job.  I think and I hope that’s what Oracle is in the process of doing: enabling the monetization of its investment on OpenOffice.org and ODF. Too bad if it’s shocking some people out there.

This being said, it does not rule out that this confusing notion of 90$ a MS Office plugin might prove a bad business decision for Oracle. ODF as a format and as an ecosystem will not be affected (too much) but what I see as a growing concern is somewhat different, yet related: Oracle needs to listen to the community, and not treat it as some sort of fan club. Community engagement means something, and trusting it also means a lot. Not everything can be sold, monetized, especially not people. Let’s hope Oracle will not remain forever silent with us on this.

Getting to know Ars Aperta’s business

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I usually don’t write about this topic often, but I thought it would be interesting -and perhaps enlightening- to explain a bit more what my company, Ars Aperta provides as a business. I think it’s the right time today, as we have almost finished our upgrade to Ikaaro’s new release. Ikaaro is developed by a french company called Itaapy, and you should watch these guys: Ikaaro is now able to produce content from and to ODF while using ODF document templates at the same time. You can try their demo online and see for yourself. But I digress, back to Ars Aperta.

We took the opportunity of this upgrade to clarify and revise the content on our website, and I think that what we offer as a team of consultants is now much clearer. Basically, we have three lines of business. The first, and the most generic one, is our consulting services.  Ars Aperta provides client assistance and strategic consulting services (sometimes dubbed as “management consulting”) in the fields of information technologies, with a focus on Free & Open Source Software and Open Standards. Our existing customers have also worked with us on non specific Free and Open Source Software consulting project, so I guess one could say we tend to have a broader scope than our original focus.  We also wished to highlight the fact that we provide specific services on software licensing and asset management, sometimes done with partnerships with established legal firms. Although these are services we have been offering almost since our inception we are raising the awareness on them as you will see more substantial announcements in this particular field coming in the next months. These services tend to be somewhat traditional, and in more than a way they are. However, Ars Aperta is able to offer a set of high value expertise in a term we have coined as “community relationship management”. This involves community management, skills assessment, collaborative processes and so on. This is something more “traditional” consultancies will not provide, as it requires personal background and specialized expertise on Free and Open Source Software communities.

Ars Aperta’s second line of business is our expertise on IT public policy. In Europe public policy is sometimes considered as a borderline business, and the mental representation of “men in black” comes to mind. I would just like to clarify Ars Aperta’s unique positioning in the field of public policy: We provide our expertise in the fields of digital economy and standards and we value our expertise as a construct of knowledge, practice and work that strives to serve citizens, openness, freedom and sustainability. In short, we pick our missions and do not work for tobacco companies.

Our third line of business, which in a way connects the two others, is our expertise on interoperability. This covers our expertise on standards development and dissemination, and also some more technical aspects of it such as what we do inside the the lpOD research project. We also help customers with their own questions and issues on interoperability, and this also falls in the line of our strategic consultancy services.

On our website you will also find another tab called Certifications. Our Certification programmes stand somewhat besides our usual business. They are used by organizations who want a clear assessment of their own standing in regard of open source processes or with respect to their own contributions to open source projects. As an addition, these certifications can also embrace broader cases of the involvement to a community.

Feel free to let me know about your likes or dislike on our website, and as usual, I am always pleased to start a conversation on what Ars Aperta can offer your organization.

Easter Links

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  • Alex Brown criticizes OOXML, claims it will not be implemented in MS Office 2010 echoes what many had predicted or knew for years. Perhaps someone’s monthly fee was not sent in time, go figure.
  • Microsoft’s troubles in court over OOXML and the i4i patent continue, and it’s serious.
  • I used to write that once or twice a year, I found Microsoft actually did some things right. Today, I would like to give a very special mention to its Courier project. There are some good chances that the combination of hardware and software will turn this device into something that is just as closed and proprietary as Apple’s IPad, but I find this one to be actually useful, beautiful, and seemingly quite usable. Kudos for the design, I hope you will not forget to use Open Standards.
  • the Songbird media player leaves the Linux platform… sort of. I understand there seems to be some resources problem, but then these guys either have a business model that’s not working out or something else is going on. What does “a version for engineer will be maintained”  mean ? Is that the perpetual beta or a broken, unusable version. And why can’t they fix that? Can someone else do it? Odd…
  • My attempts to package the lpOD project for Suse and Fedora have started, but they’re still hesitant.
  • I just got interviewed in French by Radio Libertaire on OpenOffice.org and its future, the podcast will be available soon.
  • BoycottNovell becomes TechRights and expands its scope. Good luck for this new project, Roy!
  • Ars Aperta upgrades its website and welcomes André Rebentisch among its team. André’s short bio is here.
  • A message to everyone who lives in SecondLife as well: Penzance’s Connolly Airfield in the Independent State of Caledon needs new maintainers and financial support. Feel free to participate!
  • Zaheda Bhorat is back on the web and I must say it’s good to know she’s healthy and active again.