Stu Cohen, CEO of the Collaborative Software Initiative has written an article in a BusinessWeek special on open source. I wrote the following comment there but thought I'll blog it too as I totally disagree with Stu.
Stu, I couldn't disagree more. If the open source vendor offers nothing other than bug fixes, then yes its hard to sustain itself.
However, a true technology provider is a partner of the customer in helping them navigate technology to solve business problems. If you achieve that then you don't need to hold some proprietary IP and use open source effectively as a trojan horse to get your software in.
That's what we're doing at WSO2 and doing very well with it. ALL of our IP is open source and we don't hold anything back - we have lots of big and small customers who pay us because we deliver real value to them. The fact that we are not holding something back as a way to force them to pay for it has not been a problem at all.
Let me also point out another flaw in your argument: if collaboration is really happening, then how do you prevent the community from re-inventing your precious, closed-source value-add? So you're clearly not interested in doing truly open collaboration in that case!
Monday, December 1, 2008
Thailand airport attacks
This is beyond belief: take over the country's two main airports illegally and then ask the police to protect you?! That's like the Mumbai bombers calling the police saying they're being attacked by anti-terrorist commandos!
Its an utter shame that a military general leads this type of unlawful behavior.
Its an even bigger shame that a country with such a strong military ignores this. Clearly the government has lost its head up its own rear end and can't deal with the situation - allowing a tourism dependent country to shut down air traffic for nearly a week is proof that they've lost the will and ability to act. Imagine how much cleanup would be required at the Swarnabhoomi airport? If you've been there, you know the size (and beauty) of that airport .. a tragedy. (If you want an analogy imagine taking over O'Hare forcefully and occupying it with thousands of people for a week.)
Just blow (with water, tear gas, rubber bullets or worse if that's what it takes) those damned people up and get on with it. This is not civil unrest any more - these people are terrorists holding the entire country hostage!
Its an utter shame that a military general leads this type of unlawful behavior.
Its an even bigger shame that a country with such a strong military ignores this. Clearly the government has lost its head up its own rear end and can't deal with the situation - allowing a tourism dependent country to shut down air traffic for nearly a week is proof that they've lost the will and ability to act. Imagine how much cleanup would be required at the Swarnabhoomi airport? If you've been there, you know the size (and beauty) of that airport .. a tragedy. (If you want an analogy imagine taking over O'Hare forcefully and occupying it with thousands of people for a week.)
Just blow (with water, tear gas, rubber bullets or worse if that's what it takes) those damned people up and get on with it. This is not civil unrest any more - these people are terrorists holding the entire country hostage!
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Open source alterternative for RogueWave HydraExpress: WSO2 WSF/C
If you're a RogueWave HydraExpress customer looking for an open source alternative check out this article by Damitha Kumarage comparing it with WSO2 WSF/C, our Web services framework in C.
Damitha does work for WSO2 and has been contributing to the Axis2/C family (which is what WSF/C is) for a long time .. so he is likely somewhat biased! We'd welcome an alternative comparison from the RogueWave side too :). Also, anyone want to do a performance comparison too; I'd love to see how much extra the customers are getting for the money they're paying!
Damitha does work for WSO2 and has been contributing to the Axis2/C family (which is what WSF/C is) for a long time .. so he is likely somewhat biased! We'd welcome an alternative comparison from the RogueWave side too :). Also, anyone want to do a performance comparison too; I'd love to see how much extra the customers are getting for the money they're paying!
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Small WSO2 re-org
Its my pleasure to announce a small re-org of WSO2 to help us better execute on the business side:
The official announcement of these changes is here.
Congratulations Jonathan & Devaka!
- Jonathan Marsh, previously Director of Mashup Technologies, has been promoted to Vice President of Business Development. Jonathan will of course continue to provide vision to our mashup work (its his baby after all!) but he will focus more on helping us improve business execution.
- Devaka Randeniya, previously Manager of Business Development, has been promoted to Director of Business Development. With this promotion Devaka takes more ownership of business development and sales activities and will of course be working with Jonathan.
The official announcement of these changes is here.
Congratulations Jonathan & Devaka!
Sunday, November 16, 2008
Sri Lanka += Maldives ???
I saw this article in a tweet by Mark Nottingham.
Give citizenship to 300k people in return for making Maldives part of Sri Lanka? That's a damned good deal!!
I hope our country's leadership step up to the plate and negotiate something with the Maldives. Failing that we can always take them over too ... after the LTTE war is over we're going to have a HUGE military (much larger than UK's for example) without much to do! Time to take over our neighbors ... watch out India!
Give citizenship to 300k people in return for making Maldives part of Sri Lanka? That's a damned good deal!!
I hope our country's leadership step up to the plate and negotiate something with the Maldives. Failing that we can always take them over too ... after the LTTE war is over we're going to have a HUGE military (much larger than UK's for example) without much to do! Time to take over our neighbors ... watch out India!
Friday, November 14, 2008
WSO2 adjusting to the times
As you have probably seen in various blog posts, every VC is advising their companies to cut back, tighten belts and overall get ready for a rough ride in the immediate future. Smart companies do this pro-actively and decisively, not when its too late.
Paul and I started WSO2 more than 3 years ago. We've seen amazing growth - more than doubling revenue each year, seeing amazing technology adoption, seeing us becoming more and more influential in the industry and growing the company from the original small team to nearly 70 people globally. The net result has been the rock solid revenue growth and the quality and quantity of our customers, ranging from Fortune 100s to SMBs in far flung places in the world.
Despite all the positives, we want to be conservative and ensure that we are around for the long run. While we fully expect to be able to at least double revenue next year too, we can't accurately predict how customer spending may decrease. So we want to be cautious to ensure that no matter what happens we're here for the long run.
In fact, I fully expect that the downturn will be a positive thing for us as customers look for greater value in whatever they're paying for. Is it justifiable to pay $25-50k for an ESB license when you can download ours free and maybe pay us $8k for commercial support, better software and greater productivity?? We're seeing more and more customers come to us with that mindset and commit really fast.
So how are we cutting costs? First thing we've done is reduced all the stuff that we really didn't need to do and were doing because "that's the way things are done." No more of that nonsense. Secondly, we've had to let go of a few people in order to bring the costs down to the level that is right for us.
After having built the company up and after having personally selected every single member of our family, its very difficult to make cuts that involve people. I know we would not be here today if not for the totally incredible team we have built. Despite the tough decision, I know we're doing the right thing looking at the larger picture.
To the people who are leaving us: my personal gratitude for your contribution is unblemished and will never be forgotten.
After the overall operational cost reductions and the few headcount reductions, we feel we're in a rock solid financial position. Overall, WSO2 is incredibly well poised to dominate the markets we play in with our strong team and global structure further favoring our ability to weather the storm.
Paul and I started WSO2 more than 3 years ago. We've seen amazing growth - more than doubling revenue each year, seeing amazing technology adoption, seeing us becoming more and more influential in the industry and growing the company from the original small team to nearly 70 people globally. The net result has been the rock solid revenue growth and the quality and quantity of our customers, ranging from Fortune 100s to SMBs in far flung places in the world.
Despite all the positives, we want to be conservative and ensure that we are around for the long run. While we fully expect to be able to at least double revenue next year too, we can't accurately predict how customer spending may decrease. So we want to be cautious to ensure that no matter what happens we're here for the long run.
In fact, I fully expect that the downturn will be a positive thing for us as customers look for greater value in whatever they're paying for. Is it justifiable to pay $25-50k for an ESB license when you can download ours free and maybe pay us $8k for commercial support, better software and greater productivity?? We're seeing more and more customers come to us with that mindset and commit really fast.
So how are we cutting costs? First thing we've done is reduced all the stuff that we really didn't need to do and were doing because "that's the way things are done." No more of that nonsense. Secondly, we've had to let go of a few people in order to bring the costs down to the level that is right for us.
After having built the company up and after having personally selected every single member of our family, its very difficult to make cuts that involve people. I know we would not be here today if not for the totally incredible team we have built. Despite the tough decision, I know we're doing the right thing looking at the larger picture.
To the people who are leaving us: my personal gratitude for your contribution is unblemished and will never be forgotten.
After the overall operational cost reductions and the few headcount reductions, we feel we're in a rock solid financial position. Overall, WSO2 is incredibly well poised to dominate the markets we play in with our strong team and global structure further favoring our ability to weather the storm.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Eclipse kills open-source SOA projects
The Register has an article about some SOA projects being killed in Eclipse.
This is exactly why IMO the Eclipse Foundation model of open source is broken. Basically, you can buy yourself a board seat in the Eclipse Foundation by putting up cash - on the order of $250k/year I believe .. so not for us little guys for sure. But then, does money guarantee that a project will attract developers and users?? Of course not!
I'm of course biased, but I think the Apache Software Foundation principle of "community over code" is critical to making successful open source projects.
This is exactly why IMO the Eclipse Foundation model of open source is broken. Basically, you can buy yourself a board seat in the Eclipse Foundation by putting up cash - on the order of $250k/year I believe .. so not for us little guys for sure. But then, does money guarantee that a project will attract developers and users?? Of course not!
I'm of course biased, but I think the Apache Software Foundation principle of "community over code" is critical to making successful open source projects.
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