Open Source Solutions

Matt has signed off, and the music is back as we await the first Keynote Presentation. With the music, an interesting slide show is going on, with pictures from the late 1800's and the 1900's and statements from folk like the chief of the U.S. Patent Office and Thomas Edison, all mistakenly saying that innovation was dead, but then showing things like the Wright Brothers, and Amelia Earhart and a very young Bill Gates.

And now "The Evolution of Open Source in the Enterprise by Matthew J. Szulik, Chairman, CEO & President of Red Hat.

There are more opportunities and more choices for the enterprise than at any other time, in part because open source is now in the second and third generation of providers. [As an aside, the room is really filling up - I'm crunched between two others, one typing, one not, and I can hardly keep Vate on my lap. Er, if you don't know, Vate is my MacBookPro. ] The industry has changed, and it's a wonderful thing that some folk in the industry today doesn't know what VSAM is. The opportunities being presented to IT customers today cover new abilities in BI to virtualized appliances from developers around the world. The opportunities for the industry is to unlock trillions of dollars in critical data still riding in legacy systems like Pick. [This I know from experience when we did a dW for a large, F100, organization whose ordering data was still in Pick/Universe.]

For the customers with whom Matthew speaks, it's not the bits, it's how fast open source can scale and apply project management skills to solve their needs today and in the future. All interesting systems change. But where do these skills come from to meet these opportunities?

Lock-in vs. interoperability, proprietary vs. open source... There are no open source vendors that have a problem with interoperability. The transparency of the source code leads to open standards, federated data models, better BI, real-time, effective decision making information.

Governments around the Globe are putting money into thinking about and implementing open standards, such as ODF. Customers are thinking about new data models, federating data, and how this will happen in 2010, 2020 with thousands of virtualized clients, virtualized servers and virtualized appliances. Companies like Greenplum are looking at this now.

Patents... Focus on what is original, what is truly an invention. Patents can stifle innovation. The EU is addressing this in a multi-year legal action. Another point brought up by Matthew is that the relation between the customer and the provider of IP has changed, the customer is much more involved. Matthew brought up a project Red Hat is doing right now with J.P Morgan. Another example is what's occurring in DRM free digital music. One of the most compelling arguments for open source is that the customer is an active part of the process. Education about patents, trade secrets, copyrights, and differing patent law from country to country. Open development is creating an open, federated portfolio of intellectual property. Open source is building on the last 30 years of the IT industry without barriers to sharing knowledge. An hardware example, as brought up by 60 Minutes last week, is the One Laptop per Child project - all open, all about sharing. The OSBC assemblage has an opportunity to meet this challenge through dialog and discussion. Matthew also brought up generational issues; the younger generation embraces sharing much more than those over 40. [As a 51 year old, once hippie, I dispute this idea by the way. Though as hippies became YUPpies, hmm].

The discussions don't center on VC funds and the exit strategy, but on innovation strategies around technology. Matthew knows he has been chasing windmills for over 10 years, and he is amazed at faces in the audience today, of people who wouldn't return his phone calls 7 years ago.

Projects coming out of Rice challenging the traditional text books and their cost... Indiana University Sky project... Throwing away 11 years of Breast Cancer research because of system incompatibility...

How will we create a vibrant culture around the value system that is open source? Don't be held hostage by the past. Really think about this exciting industry, this value system, that can unlock human potential, solve new problems, in all areas.