Utah Open Source Planet

Introduction

If you have followed this blog for a while, you will know about my passion for open source software. I have always predicted that open source software would revolutionize the software industry, but I didn't quite understand how this would happen. My initial views expected that open source would disrupt traditional software companies so much that it would eventually put them out of business. I am now realizing that the future of open source software looks much different than I first expected.

Proprietary software will be quietly built on open source software

One of the primary benefits of open source software is that it reduces the cost to produce software. Gartner agrees with this point; open source software is the most efficient method to create software. Traditional proprietary software vendors are realizing this fact, and are beginning to quietly build their closed software products using lots of open source software.

I say "quietly" because these companies are not going to announce that they are using open source software. In fact, they will prefer if this fact is not known by their customers. There will even be some software companies who choose to use open source in violation of its license, and it is important for us to detect and prosecute this exploitation. However, most companies will abide by the open source licenses.

Gartner has predicted this trend of building closed software with open source elements:

By 2012, 80 percent of all commercial software will include elements of open-source technology. Many open-source technologies are mature, stable and well supported. They provide significant opportunities for vendors and users to lower their total cost of ownership and increase returns on investment.

Ignoring this will put companies at a serious competitive disadvantage. Embedded open source strategies will become the minimal level of investment that most large software vendors will find necessary to maintain competitive advantages during the next five years.

Re-using code is not a completly new idea to software companies. These companies have developed internal libraries of software that they can use in multiple products without having to re-write the entire application from scratch. Open source simply expands on this concept. Rather than being limited to an internal software library, open source software provides an enormous global library of software that is worth $25 billion dollars!

Another way to look this is with the example of building a car. Open source software can provide the wheels, frame and engine of a car. This allows a proprietary software vendor to simply add the final touches that make the car unique to them. This development method greatly reduces the cost to build the car, because the software vendor does not have to "re-invent the wheel".

I see open source software being used all the time when I look at closed products on the market today. Let's look at the example of a DNS appliance. You can bet that over 90% of the code used to create the appliance is likely to be open source code. The operating system is Linux, the DNS server application is Bind, and a variety of subsystems are probably open source. The DNS appliance vendor adds their 10% of value and then sells it to you as it they created the entire thing! This is not necessarily a bad thing, I just want you to realize what is happening.

Open source software vendors will become more closed

There are many open source companies who have formed to meet the need of supporting open source software. These companies are experimenting with various business models that take advantage of the large user base of open source software. Most of these models started by simply offering support services, and the software project remained 100% open source. As the global economy goes through hard times, I believe that these types of business models are not sustainable.

What we are going to see are open source vendors who continue to contribute to a 100% open source project, but they will also add some special value that is only available to paying customers. This is already being done successfully by companies like Digium, the creators of Asterisk. Their Switchvox appliances are based on the open source Asterisk PBX, but it adds proprietary features that give customers a reason to buy the product.

Both Savio Rodrigues and Matt Asay have predicted this evolutionary trend of offering proprietary elements to an open source project. Savio Rodrigues has even gone as far as saying "that proprietary is going to be the savior of the OSS business model".

Before you get upset about proprietary software tarnishing open source, please look at the bigger picture. Open source vendors have paid for enormous amounts of new development to open source projects that would have taken many years of volunteer work. These resources were paid by venture capitalists who invested funds to develop open source businesses. If these business do not succeed, they will no longer be able to employ full-time programmers to work on open source projects. Hopefully you can see how this would have a negative impact on open source.

In my opinion, open source vendors and open source communities provide mutual benefit to each other. The community gets free development resources, while the open source vendor gets money from the subset of paying users. This relationship needs to thrive to realize the maximum benefit to both parties.

So, is this change good or bad?

My prediction is that proprietary vendors will use more open source, and open source vendors will become more closed. The line between these categories is going to become very blurred as they converge around a common middle-ground.

While this evolution of open source is not what I had predicted, I feel positive about these changes. If you are an open source advocate, you should be excited. In the future, not only will you have the same access to open source software that you do now, but successful companies will hire full-time programmers to daily improve upon that software.

If you are a proprietary software user, you should also be excited. This is because open source software will reduce the overall cost of developing software. In the long-run, competition will force these cost savings to be passed to the consumer.

What do you think?

Do you agree with my predictions? Do you agree that this is a positive change? Either way, please let me know with a comment below.

If you use a VOIP provider for PSTN calls, you will be able to relate to the frustratingly boring caller ID names that get passed down to you. Very infrequently do I get anything better than a city name. Even if you have a direct PSTN connection into Asterisk, you may find the caller ID names from cell phone users (maybe just about everyone that calls you) are less than precise. Here's a solution.

We want to store alternative names in some kind of database that Asterisk can access when a call comes in. AstDB is perfect for this. We also want to leave things unchanged if we haven't manually stored a name for this number. The following will do the trick:

    Set(CALLERID(name)=${IF(${DB_EXISTS(cid/${CALLERID(num)})}?${DB(cid/${CALLERID(num)})}:${CALLERID(name)})})

Now, we just need a way to update the database with names. At first I had grandiose ideas of an AJAX-enabled website that shows you the last few CDR records and lets you edit the names with a spiffy in-place editor. You could still accomplish it, but in the end I came up with a much simpler if less elegant solution. At least, it's simpler if you use the terminal all the time like I do. Put this script in your path:

#! /bin/sh
# usage: $0 number "name"
user=`username`
host=falcon
exec ssh $host asterisk -rx \'database put cid \"$1\" \"$2\"\'

Combine this with jabber notification as I've discussed before, and a little cut & paste from your jabber window, and updating names is cake.

I have noticed a trend developing in the business models of successful open source companies. These companies are implementing a business model that is based on dual licensing their software.

This press release provides an excellent summary of what dual licensing means.

The guiding principle behind dual licensing is "quid pro quo," or a fair exchange. Under this model, vendors offer their products under both an open source license and a commercial license. This allows open source projects to use the software at no cost, which contributes to widespread use and testing of the software and the fast growth of a large installed user base. Companies redistributing the software as part of commercial products can also get the benefits of the open source software by purchasing a commercial license, which releases them from requirements to publish their source code. Commercially-licensed customers generate revenue for the open source vendors, which contributes to the rapid development of high-quality software.

In an recent blog post titled "Giving and Taking", Asterisk creator Mark Spencer explains why dual licensing can be a good thing for open source.

The dual licensing model that Digium has chosen introduces an explicit monetary cost to choosing the proprietary route, thus providing greater direct incentive to people to choose to open their changes, and further allowing people who do not choose to open their changes to subsidize the work that Digium does with Asterisk by allowing us to add more open source resources (think Green Energy Credits here). In fact, our staff of open source dedicated programmers has more than doubled in 2007 alone!

The only people with a real reason to be upset feel that way because they cannot choose the proprietary route without paying a fee. In other words, it gets in the way of their desire to make money through proprietary add-ons without having to share in the cost of development of the underlying technology.

Alfresco explains why they prefer a dual license model.

Alfresco is an open source software company. We license 100% of the source code of our products – Alfresco Enterprise and Alfresco Community – under the GNU General Public License (“GPL”). This does not mean that Alfresco has released its software into the public domain – like any software creator, we own and retain copyrights, trademarks, and patents. Rather, it means that we author software like any software company, but license our software under an open source license that permits and encourages access to our source code, modification of this source code, and redistribution thereof.

For developers or organizations who wish to embed Alfresco into proprietary software products, we can accommodate this with a commercial license to our software (“Alfresco Enterprise”), which provides the benefits of our software without the requirements of the GPL. While we encourage everyone to use the GPL, we recognize that some prefer not to. For this purpose, we can provide a commercial license to Alfresco Enterprise.

The popular open source database MySQL (soon to be part of Sun Microsystems) also follows a dual license business model. They do a great job of briefly explaining the different license options on this page, and they also have an excellent FAQ on this subject.

MySQL's dual license model supports the company's mission: to make superior database software available and affordable to all. The dual licensing creates a circle that sustains both innovation and growth: MySQL channels the revenue from this viable open source business model back into support for its open source user community that, in turn, supports MySQL AB's commercial business.

The dual licensing business model is a "win-win" for all parties:

• MySQL's open source community gets superior software for no cost
• MySQL's commercial customers have the option of using reliable, community "battle tested" MySQL software for a relatively low cost
• MySQL's business is healthy and viable, which also strengthens the open source movement

Open source legend Eben Moglen speaks highly of dual license business models.

"Dual-license products give customers who redistribute a choice in license terms," said Eben Moglen, professor of law at the Columbia University Law School and recognized as one of the world's leading experts on copyright law as applied to software. "Proprietary commercial licenses can offer customers fewer restrictions on inclusion in closed source products and enable open source software developers to grow strong businesses. This model is a win for the free software movement too, as it ensures that dual-licensed software products will be developed and supported by viable companies, and also remain available for free copying, modification and redistribution for the long-term."

Funambol is another open source company that believes in a dual-license business model. In fact, CEO Fabrizio Capobianco has blogged about why they selected this model.

My epiphany with dual licensing happened in London some years ago. I met Marten Mickos and I decided that was the way to go. I loved the "quid pro quo" concept: you either give back code to the project or you give back cash, so we can put it back in the project itself. That's being honest.

Conclusion

It is my strong opinion that open source software will become the dominate model for software development in the future. The only question left to decide is just how long will it take for open source to replace the traditional software model? The dual license model provides incentives for open source businesses to protect open source and at the same time allows them to make money from selling proprietary licenses. This model creates strong businesses that provide a lot of value to end users. Therefore I believe that the dual license model will accelerate the adoption of open source.

So what do you think about the dual license business model for open source companies? Is it a good thing or a bad thing?

Scott Lemon shows off his XO Laptop (click to enlarge)

We started off this morning discussing AsteriskNow, an easy install of the Asterisk VoIP system. Scott Lemon and I talked to Jared Smith a while back on that. Apparently it's pretty easy to set up and get working. Scott claims 3 hours start to finish.

I brought up ProQuo, a service that aims to stop junk mail. I signed up on Halloween and I've got to say I've noticed a real drop in the amount of junk mail I get. Score one for us!

Scott brought his XO laptop and so did Bruce. This was the first time either one had had their laptop near another one. They found each other and established a mesh network that we could see from other Wi-Fi devices. We experimented with seeing whether they'd see each other or not. They're little, light, and pretty cute.

XO Laptop (click to enlarge)

There's a 1Gb solid state drive. The keyboard is too small for my large hands. The software seems a little crude. With software updates available, getting the hardware right seems like the highest priority.

We got into a discussion of the impact that putting lots of these into developing countries is likely to have. The Hole in the Wall PC has some lessons. I think it will pull gappers into the core. That's good.

I brought up my Christmas hacking project of building a family information center from an old iMac. It's gone well. The kids have taken to it and use it all the time. One of the things we like best on it is FlickrFan.

I'd asked Scott to give a short demo on writing Facebook applications. The whole thing is based on Facebook making Restful callbacks to an application you write. There are tons of configuration options and FBML (Facebook markup language) let's you give your applications a Facebook look and feel. The development libraries Facebook provides (in various language flavors) provide good interfaces to their data and services. It was a good demo and writing FB apps seems quite easy.

Tags: cto breakfast events asterisk xolaptop facebook

I arrived in Raleigh today for FUDCon.

What? A little early, you say? Sure is, but I thought I’d get an entire week’s head start and help out the crew with preparations.

Okay… That’s not really true, but I am in Raleigh already. Because of my employment at Guru Labs, I asked if I could fly into Raleigh after my classes on Friday. Instead, Dax, my boss made the deal even sweeter. He sent me to Raleigh to teach two Red Hat classes at Red Hat! Because of this, I’m currently teaching a RH133 this week, and a RH300 next week downstairs at the Red Hat home office.

On Thursday, my good friend Jared Smith, of Asterisk fame (and a good boardgame buddy) will be arriving just prior to FUDCon. I’m guessing he’ll be there to help F9 do more with Asterisk. Maybe we’ll have time for a quick game of Settlers or something, if he brings it - hint, hint Jared.

Over the weekend, I’ll be hacking away (or maybe just testing the eeepc) on the F9 release with the likes of Max Spevack and Greg De Koenigsberg. And since I’m already on Red Hat’s campus, I’m prepping my trip by making sure I know where all of the locations are for the events.

So, if you are at Red Hat this week and want to burn some time, come on by and say hi to me and my class. We’ll be learning about installation, filesystems, RAID and LVM, and much, much more.

I’m so stoked for this weekend! Its going to be an awesome FUDCon. Hopefully, I’ll be able to convince the boss to send me to the next FUDCon as well.

Cheers,

Herlo

Background

Digium is the company behind Asterisk, the popular open source PBX. Digium was founded in 1999 by Mark Spencer, the creator of Asterisk. Since then, Asterisk has been deployed around the world on millions on computers. Despite that fact, Asterisk still does not have a large market share of the PBX market. Why is this? In the past, there were many reasons for this:

• No brand recognition of Asterisk
• No proven track record of successful implementations
  
• Commercial support was needed
• No Linux expertise on staff
• Afraid to use open source software

These concerns were once valid, but today most of them have been addressed by Digium.


They made Asterisk easy to use

Digium has been working hard to overcome the historically steep learning curve associated with implementing Asterisk. They have accomplished this with two major improvements. First, Digium created an open source software appliance called AsteriskNow! that bundled Asterisk inside a pre-configured version of Linux. Most of the work for this appliance was done by the magic pixie dust known as rPath.

Secondly they have developed a simple web-based interface called Asterisk GUI to configure the PBX. This is a great improvement when compared to manually editing multiple text-based configuration files!

More recently, Digium has acquired a company called Switchvox. This was done so that Digium could take advantage of the advanced GUI that Switchvox had created. The best part about this acquisition is that Digium is going to be releasing the Switchvox code under the GPL license! Check out this quote from Mark Spencer:

So as a contrast right, look at what Fonality did. They bought an open source project [trixbox/asterisk@home] and then turned it into a proprietary product. What we are trying to do is go the other way. Take something that started out as a fully proprietary product and to try to leverage that to bring some additional technologies into open source.

They offer professional services for Asterisk

Digium now offers a wide range of professional services to meet the needs of any organization. This includes consulting, training, and technical support. They also offer a product called "Asterisk Business Edition", which benefits from the usability improvements listed above.

Digium appliances


Digium has also recently started selling a hardware appliance called the Asterisk Appliance. This appliance is designed for deployments of up to 50 users. It supports 8 analog ports, and can process 25 concurrent calls. There are no moving parts in device, which means no hard drive to crash. Instead, it uses an upgradeable flash card to store voice-mail, greetings, configuration settings, and recorded calls. Digium offers three levels of support for the device, including a 24x7 option.

This appliance is great, but it only serves the small business environment. I have heard that Digium is working on a larger appliance that will support hundreds of users. This is a great thing, since it will allow Asterisk to be deployed in a majority of businesses around the world. Only the largest deployments would require more than the this new appliance can deliver.

It was also recently announced that 3com would be selling a 3com branded Asterisk Appliance. This means that Asterisk will reach a much larger audience through the 3com brand. 3com is offering support services for their version of the appliance.

What does the future hold?

Digium has made great strides in making Asterisk both powerful and easy to use. However, one area that I see lacking is scalability. Asterisk works great for a few hundred phones, but how about a few thousand phones, like you might see at a University? The most common way to increase scalability of Asterisk systems is to use a SIP-proxy such as SER or OpenSER. For instance, the University of Pennsylvania is rolling out a 15,000 unit Asterisk-based phone system. To achieve the scalability they needed, they decided to implement SER along with Asterisk.

How does Digium expect to support large Asterisk installations if they require a third-party SIP-proxy that doesn't even offer commercial support? My guess is that Digium will acquire a SIP-proxy like SER or OpenSER so that they can offer a complete solution without needing any third-party software.

Another obstacle that Digium faces is Microsoft. Microsoft is about to enter the small-business VOIP market with a product called Response Point. The biggest advantage of this product is that it includes intelligent IVR, or speech recognition technology. This will allow users to dial anyone in the phone directory simply by speaking their name. This commonly used feature could persuade businesses to choose Microsoft over Digium.

Digium has several options to respond to this threat. First, they can try to create a working system based on open source projects such as Sphinx. I have no clue as to how much work this would be, but I expect that it would be difficult and time-consuming to achieve high-quality IVR. If you know anything about the current status of Sphinx, please leave a comment. How well does it currently work? Can it provide a voice directory feature like Microsoft Response Point does?

The second option for Digium would be to partner with a commercial IVR company. They are already partnered with Lumenvox, but I am not sure what this includes. For instance, I do not know if this will provide the voice directory feature mentioned above. I think it would be a good idea for Asterisk to provide advanced IVR functionality that is integrated with their software. The easier it is to implement the better!

Two days of working the floor at Astricon, and 'm already tired.  I'm definitely not used to talking quite so much.  I've been very happy with the reception we've had with the Asterisk community though.

Coming into the conference, Ivan and I figured we'd be able to have some good discussions with people looking at ITSP (Internet Telephony Service Providers), as we have a package that fills their needs far better than other open source solutions.  Heck, we beat out proprietary ones too :). What has been nice though is to really get a feel for the needs of other markets, such as call centers and larger enterprises.  We've found we can already fulfill a large part of their needs also, and can quickly extend to provide even more capabilities that no other products are fulfilling.  Many of these groups are realizing that they need to perform internal "billing", accounting for departmental expenditures, or track individual callers usage.  Freeside's provisioning system makes it much easier for many groups to setup users, manage inventory, and automate rollout procedures.

Many people are really seeing a future of Freeside powering a lot of their Asterisk process, and we couldn't be happier.  Now we need to get more documentation on how to do it up on the wiki :-/

As a last minute trip, I'll be heading out Wednesday to Astricon to assist Ivan in presenting Freeside to the Asterisk community.  Hopefully we'll be able to help a lot of people and companies understand how their billing needs are already met with open source.

Oh, and the hackathon time will be really nice too.  Thanks to jsmith and sisd for helping me out with the trip.  If you want to learn about how to bill, or even account for Asterisk calls with open source, look us up, we'll be featured in the Open Source Showcase.

I’m happy to learn that Asterisk 1.4 is out.