Earlier this week I delivered a presentation at OSCON 2006 entitled "Making Sales While Making Friends: Lessons Learned from Open Source Businesses." I've been involved with commercial open source since 1998, and have learned a lot over the years (including how to fail spectacularly and slightly more gracefully). I'm in the middle of a string of successes, though, and figured now was the time to pretend to know-it-all. You can view my OSCON 2006 presentation here. It was an extension of some JBoss analysis I did recently, as well as an attempt to pass on some of the lessons I've learned so that the next round of open source commercialization will avoid my mistakes.

My basic premise is that an open source business is hard work, and requires that entrepreneurs spend as much time thinking about the "second sale" as they do about the first sale. In the proprietary world, you sell a big upfront license and then promptly forget about the customer. In open source, however, every business model variant I've seen requires ongoing customer service to help ensure a "second sale" (i.e., renewal of an "Enterprise" license or support contract).

There is a range of ways to help secure a second sale, but the most popular of which (but still nascent) is the "network" offering. Hyperic offers the infrastructure to build such a network - others (including Red Hat, MySQL, and SugarCRM) have built their own. A network offers real value to the customer, above and beyond support, and should be on the shopping list of every open source company.

I argued that the type of sales model an open source company has should directly correlate with its market penetration...

Your Model Depends on Your Market Penetration

...which is perhaps best measured by its downloads:

Downloads and Push/Pull Models

Regardless of the sales infrastructure (starting with inside sales, usually, and moving to direct sales over time), marketing is critical to success, because marketing improves conversion rates and builds deal size as brand value intersects with download rates:

How to Push the Pull

I also suggested that startups be realistic about outside development assistance. The Sourceforge (and other) data doesn't lie: you're going to do the bulk of your core development work. You need to worry about building a user community. The development assistance will come, and it is significant, but don't wait for someone else to build your product for you. (As I've written before, some projects - like SugarCRM - see a lot of partner-assisted development. In Alfresco's case, nearly all of our outside development comes from our customers. Not sure as to the reason for the difference....)

User Communities, not Development Communities

Despite my incessant harping on Silicon Valley, I argue that you need to be where your market is, and today the paying open source market is overwhelmingly in the US (with Europe starting to catch up):

Be where your customers are

And, among other things, I revisited the idea of what it takes to make a successful open source project, commercial or otherwise:

Basic ingredients of a successful open source project

There's more to the presentation which you can see in the download above, but this was the baseline "gist" of it. I really enjoyed giving the presentation, and expect to give a revised version at OSBC 2007. See you then/there.
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  1. Excellent article, thanks

    Making revenues from free & open source software is one of the most frequently asked questions these days. While there have been a few successful examples of companies (like MySQL, Red Hat etc) which are making money, I’d surmise that these are still very early days for open source revenue & profit models.

    While open source as an operational paradigm certainly has been having exceptional success against proprietary and closed-software models in the recent past, in my opinion, a lot more thought need to be given and experimentations done before the emergence of viable revenue models for the free & open source models that can successfully compete with the current proprietary software revenue model. Some specifics of the business models are emerging fast, but it will take a few years for the market to test each of these out and hopefully, the fittest will survive.

    I co-ordinate a site that focuses exclusively on revenue models from open source is Follars.com – Free, Open-source Dollars! I plan to include this blog article in this page, thanks again

    Ec @ IT, Software Database @ eIT.in

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  1. Getting off Instagram and Facebook was one of the best decisions I've ever made. I went dark on Instagram on May 25, 2017. My last post on Facebook was February 25, 2017. I dumped Facebook for a variety of reasons, but the final spark was a political debate with someone I didn't know in the comments section of a friend's (political) post. Instagram was harder and had nothing to do with politics: I just didn't like how I felt when I posted: skewing reality to game the most "likes". It brought out the worst in me.

    Months later, I wish I could quit Twitter. Actually, a few days ago, I deleted the app on my phone and removed the open tab on my laptop. So far, so good. I have kept Twitter alive because it's quite helpful when I write. I'm not sure, however, that it's worth it, given all the negativity I have to wade through to get those nuggets of wisdom.

    So maybe Twitter is dead for me. Next (and final) would be getting rid of Strava, which a neighbor last night described as "Oh, it's Instagram for athletes." It's somewhat true, and somewhat destructive because it leads me to FOMO at all the cool lines or vert that others are getting. But it's also where I gauge safe places to ski, so I'll try to manage it for a few more months.
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  2. A friend sent this to me this morning:
    C:  “H, did you know that every week Matt Asay goes to England or France just to get fancy candy to give to our primary kids at church on Sundays?”
    It's not true. I only go every few months or so (and, yes, I do buy "fancy candy" that the kids also look askance at because it's not what they're used to), but it's the kind of rumor I wish were true.

    It's also the kind of thing that reveals just how amazing kids are, that they would even think that was possible or likely. Made my day.
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  3. Sweltering through the smother of rush hour on the Central Line this morning, jet lagged and missing family, I felt profoundly weary. I had to prepare for my meetings, but all I could think about was a favorite passage from Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment:
    We're always thinking of eternity as an idea that cannot be understood, something immense. But why must it be? What if, instead of all this, you suddenly find just a little room there, something like a village bath-house, grimy, and spiders in every corner, and that's all eternity is. Sometimes, you know, I can't help feeling that that's what it is.
    While I don’t believe in such a heaven (even though I still struggle to square the Mormon worker bee mentality with “eternal rest”), it’s very much what life is like. At least, my life, and I know I'm not alone in this. (Cue "Eleanor Rigby."). I keep finding that Facebook isn’t so much a projection of real life as it is a desperate aspiration to the lives we wish we had. 

    When we let down our guards, though, and admit that we're hurting, we discover compassion from and companionship with others.

    But first we have to allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be crooked.

    Two women did that in our Sunday meeting, sharing the burden of motherhood from the pulpit, exposing their fears and weaknesses, while also offering hope in its joys. I'm not a mother, but I felt so happy after listening to their talks, because each helped me see some light in the darkness of my own personal afflictions. 

    It happened again today, when a dear friend from high school reached out to comfort me. I love close friends like this, people for whom we needn't pretend at Potemkin lives. We bleed and they aren’t too bothered by the mess.


    I never thought life could be so surprisingly, amazingly hard. So unfair. So relentless. 

    And yet people can be even more surprisingly, amazingly good. And fair. And devoted. I'm so grateful to the guardian angels, living and probably dead, who help make this life wonderful, even when it's not.
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  4. Each Mother's Day I get flowers for Jen, but also for my three daughters. I have long wanted them to reverence the calling of "mother." It took me 20 years to appreciate my dad, but I came out of the womb loving my mom.


    I think many of us grow up feeling this way.

    I could offer up a range of reasons for this disconnect (It's not as if my dad wasn't/isn't an exceptionally generous and thoughtful person who coached me and helped me in numerous ways - he was), but perhaps the best came from my recent reading of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, in which he says: "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children."

    "Mother," in other words, is childish shorthand for mercy, love, and forgiveness. But of course it's not "childish" in the pejorative sense. Mormon that I am, I can also rely on Eliza R. Snow's expression of our doctrine that if we have a Father in Heaven, we surely have a Mother in Heaven ("In the heav’ns are parents single? / No, the thought makes reason stare; / Truth is reason—truth eternal / Tells me I’ve a mother there"), one that is deeply concerned with our well-being, even as our Father in Heaven is. They are equal in that loving concern for us.

    However, one other thing I've learned is that no mother really feels up to being idolized as some earthly imprint of heaven. I first learned this from Jen.

    Jen is away today, on a trip that unfortunately coincided with Mother's Day. "Unfortunate" for me and our kids, but not so much for her. Jen has never liked Mother's Day, at least, since she became a mother. Though I and the kids think she's wonderful, it's not a "job" that she ever aspired to have, and it's not one that she feels she does especially well.

    So for her and many others, Mother's Day can feel like one big guilt trip, not a celebration. This is why we stopped having "my mom is perfect" talks in our ward five years ago when we began hearing from women in the ward about how painful the day and that meeting were for them.

    Which leaves us here.

    I'm trying to find ways to celebrate what Jen does, and what my daughters will do, without making them feel the burden of unrealistic expectations. I'm trying to find a way to express love for who they are, not some stylized Mommy Blog version of who they could be If They Just Tried A Little Harder™.

    I don't want, in other words, a seemingly abolitionist To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus Finch divorced from the reality of segregationalist Atticus in Go Set a Watchman. The best people do noble things in the midst of gross imperfection. They struggle. They're ugly at times. They're real.

    For my daughters, this means they may have less-than-perfect homes. They may raise their children alone. They may not have any children, whether by choice or circumstance. They may be divorced or never choose or be able to marry.

    And yet they can be mothers.

    When they are, I hope they will be as wonderful as Jen. Or as my mom, Vicky. Or as my mother-in-law, Kathy. Not because these ladies are perfect. They're not. But because when we're struggling to reach our merciful God, they will be adequate shorthand for Him...and Her. Someone to listen. Someone to care. That's enough.
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  5. I think I've struggled my entire life with how much I was supposed to be a real person, or how much I was supposed to plaster on a facade of what the perfect me would look like. Some day. When I was perfect.

    The problem, however, is that it's far easier to appear perfect than to be perfect.

    Or maybe not. After all, I'm pretty good at spotting the sanctimonious Pharisee, having spent so much of my life being that person. You know, the person that makes rule-keeping obnoxious; the person that has every commandment nailed (except for that minor one to love thy neighbor).

    And if I find it so easy to spot them, maybe everyone else does, too?

    I was thinking a lot about this during our LDS stake conference the past two days. One of my friends, Dave, spoke, and he talked about a principle he now uses to guide his Sabbath-day observance: he basically tries to do things that build his personal and family relationships.

    That's it. No long list of Do's and Don't's. Just that guiding principle.

    Then another friend, Harland, spoke about how we need to ask ourselves if we're giving our best selves to our church, work, or anything other than our families. I care deeply about my family, but I'm pretty sure they get second or third place in my attentions quite often.

    And then another friend, Laura, spoke about the need for empathy, and how Christ shows perfect love and understanding of each of us, whatever our trials. It struck me that being Christlike isn't about keeping rules, really. It's about developing profound respect and love for others, such that we want to carry them even despite their flawed, sometimes annoying selves.

    As if that wasn't enough, on my flight today, I decided to read more from Way Below the Angels, which has been such a refreshingly honest assessment of LDS missions (or, at least, mine):
    But then just like in the dismal upstairs bedroom in Hasselt long before, and sort of like in the attic just a few hours ago, came that calm that I now recognized as the closest thing to sure I ever felt about God. And that feeling said, without any words, that I didn’t have to baptize Lieve or even 83 other people to feel good about what I was doing.
    The whole mission business, it hit me for at least a nano-moment, was more about suffering a little with people and feeling connected to them than it was about baptizing them. 
    It was about being a friend, however trite that sounded, however much breaking-up boyfriends and girlfriends debased the term by saying they just wanted to be friends without even really meaning it, however much leader types were always saying to missionaries you’re not here to make friends, like that was some bad thing. Jesus had a pretty strong view about friends, as in laying your life down for them, which went way beyond the casual sort of relationship most people meant by that term. 
    That’s what the whole mission business was about, it now seemed to me. Maybe even the whole religion business. Maybe even the whole life business.
    This feels profoundly Right to me. Though it's also not who I've been for much of my life.

    I was the missionary that took 18 months of my 24-month mission to realize I wasn't there to keep rules (which I did, to an amazing degree). I was there to love the people of France and Belgium.

    And I was the father that didn't really understand until my eldest was nearly 18 that my job wasn't to block-and-tackle my kids into rigidly living every commandment that I had failed to keep as a youth, but was instead to help them understand how to become clean once they found their way to dirty. (And everyone, everyone, does, though some don't recognize pride as the most pernicious of all "dirty.")

    And I am the husband that continues to struggle to truly partner with Jen on all this parenting without becoming so consumed by it that I forget that she's my first priority. Or should be. If I were actually a good husband.

    In short (or, not, given how much I've already written), I think I've pretty much failed at life so far. The good news, however, is that I can do better for the rest of my life (and the remaining gazillion years we Mormons believe all of us go on - sorry to break that to you), and be much happier by living "after the manner of happiness."

    Which is not really to make a fetish of commandments. Instead, it's to keep the two great commandments of which Christ said, "On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Namely love God and love our neighbor.

    Only two. That seems easy. :-)
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  6. Yesterday wasn't Ryan Hobson's best race. Nor did it go according to plan for Matt Hemmert.

    And yet both of these Adobe colleagues ensured that I would complete a race that I desperately wanted to quit. They saved me when I desperately, frantically needed saving.

    Ryan and I started Lotoja together, but we were never going to finish it together. He's faster/stronger than I am on the bike, as were the others in my Adobe race group. As we started to climb Strawberry, I fell behind, only to plod along in the 100-degree heat until I gasped my way, solo, into Montpelier and then on to two more climbs and a descent into Afton, Wyoming.

    At that point, I felt like heat exhaustion had claimed me, and I just wanted to quit. I was done. Cooked.

    Maybe literally.

    However, my ride support (Matt - more on him in a minute), told me that some other Adobe colleagues had just left two minutes beforehand, and I figured I could catch them.

    That's when I saw Ryan.

    Ryan had flatted two or three times already, and was clearly frustrated. As he said, "I've trained all season for this, only to have the work wasted due to bad luck with pinch flats."

    Except that it wasn't wasted. Ryan's place on the podium had been ruined by his flats, but he accomplished something much more profound:

    He saved me.

    I tried to give him my wheels, hopeful that it would give me a great reason to quit the race. He refused, and instead insisted on pulling me all the way to Alpine, powering through brutal headwinds for 37 miles. He had to go slower than he wanted, but he saved me.

    At Alpine we ran into a group of Adobe colleagues, and I finished the race with them. Some were struggling even more than I had, and now it was my turn to help others, as Ryan had helped me. We rode that final quarter of a 202-mile ride together, sometimes going painfully slow.

    But I didn't care. I was with my team, my family. I have always been alone the last half of Lotoja. Today I crossed the finish line with a team. Every time I think about it, I tear up, because I was so close to abandoning all hope (actually, I had abandoned hope), and my Adobe team saved me. They resurrected me, as it were, and gave me strength to complete the ride.

    Which brings me to Matt.

    Matt was supposed to be riding yesterday, except he's had some medical issues (an issue with his Achilles, if I remember right). So he volunteered to help me, feeding me throughout the day. Every time I pulled into a support zone, he was there, encouraging me, clearly anxious for my welfare. Matt and I attended junior high together, and neither of us back then would have scored high on empathy.

    But today he, too, saved me.

    So today I feel grateful. Grateful for the good people with whom I work. Grateful for my Adobe team, my Adobe family. And particularly grateful to these two men. It wasn't the day they had wanted for themselves, but it was exactly what I needed for me.
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  7. Go Set a Watchman was written first, but it's right that it has been published after To Kill a Mockingbird. And, fittingly, well after.

    After we've had time to prop up Atticus as a hero, as a perfect man who stood against white racism. He was that. He is that, segregationalist and all. Precisely because he is complicated and sometimes wrong.

    I have heard friends talk about not wanting to read Watchman because they're afraid it will ruin their conception of Atticus. But this is foolish. It just means they want to maintain a false conception of Atticus, one that Harper Lee (the author) never intended.

    As Dr. Finch (Atticus' brother and Lee's primary speaker of truth) tells Scout,

    As you grew up, when you were grown, totally unknown to yourself, you confused your father with God. You never saw him as a man with a man's heart, and a man's failings - I'll grant you it may have been hard to see, he makes so few mistakes, but he makes 'em like all of us.
    So, too, did we deify Atticus in a way that even a fictional character couldn't sustain. And we, too, were like an "emotional cripple, leaning on him, getting the answers from him, assuming that [our] answers would always be his answers."

    But in Lee's mind, Atticus was always messy. He was a segregationalist in her mind long before he defended Tom Robinson.

    Or, actually, he was both defender and segregationalist at the same time, because both are covered in Go Set a Watchman. This is Atticus. Messy. Human.

    Like you. Like me.

    It's easy to blank the bigots, damn the racists, and sideline the various people that don't agree with us. But as Dr. Finch points out to Scout, "You'd better take time for 'em, honey, otherwise you'll never grow."

    That growth doesn't come from relaxing our standards or principles, but rather in seeing and caring for people. That is, Lee (through Dr. Finch) is urging us to take people on their terms, and love them for who they are, for who someone is will always be dramatically more complicated than the symbolic what we assign them.

    Which is why I believe anyone that loves Mockingbird should read Watchman. The writing isn't as good, though some parts are exceptional. But the challenges it imposes on facile thinking are desperately needed now, even more than they were when Lee wrote the two books.

    Scout, Atticus, Aunt Alexandra, Henry Clinton...they're all painted in much more complexity, and precisely because no one comes off looking perfect, they each look all the more beautiful.

    That's why as writing it's just good, but as an exercise in making us think it's great.
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  8. In a note to some close friends today, I said this:
    One of the great things about community is that it puts us in contact with all sorts of people who are different from us. That's also the terrible thing about it. 
    One of the great things about the gospel is that it gives us perspective on why life can be so crappy and hard at times. That's also the terrible thing about it, as it can prevent us from venting and grieving and hating life for being hard. And unfair. And unrelenting. 
    I don't want to turn this into PDA (public display of angst), but I did want to reach out to others who, like I, may feel burdened by what they know. That is, they feel compelled to act in a certain way because of truths they know (religious or otherwise), but sometimes are tired out by the seemingly endless list of demands made upon the "knowing".

    There are times I just want to check out. When I don't want to be kind. Or diligent.

    Times when it would be easier to sit at home and read a book, or go on long bike rides, or ski, or do anything other than fulfill obligations to my various communities (family, neighborhood, church, work, etc.), and live up to what I know.

    Everyone feels this way at some point, because only a jerk is completely selfish.

    The rest of us are jerks, but only in part.

    For we minor to moderate jerks, we may not want to do half the things we will end up doing today. But we will. Because we know.

    But we don't have to like it. Not always. At least, for me, not today.
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  9. I remember driving with friends up Provo Canyon sometime around 1990 to The Cure's "Fascination Street." Actually, it was the whole Disintegration album, but that's the song I remember, particularly this morning when my iPhone shuffled its way to that song's pulsing bass and slippery guitars.

    It's an incredible song.

    It's also a reminder of all the broken promises of youth. At least, that's how I hear it. I'm not someone to pine for the past, and particularly my high school past. I feel for my children who have to go through the slog of adolescence in today's world. It was so hard for me. I imagine it's much harder now.

    All of which is captured in the music and lyrics of that song.

    Robert Smith, the lead singer and magician behind The Cure, once explained the song is meant to capture the thrill of adoring crowds, the mania of the concert. It does that.



    But it also points to the emptiness of it all.
    I feel it all fading and paling and I'm begging
    To drag you down with me to kick the last nail in
    Maybe Smith felt that emptiness then, the emptiness that comes through in Bob Seger's exceptional "Turn the Page":
    Out there in the spotlight
    You're a million miles away
    Every ounce of energy
    You try to give away
    As the sweat pours out your body
    Like the music that you play...
    Here I am
    On the road again&nbsp
    There I am&nbsp
    Up on the stage
    Here I go
    Playin' star again
    There I go
    Turn the page
    The other day I watched a recent Cure concert on Palladium. They were playing "Fascination Street," but it was a much different Smith on the guitar and vocals. He still sounds pretty good. He doesn't look quite as good:


    At some point we grow up (hopefully) and realize that the so much of the glitter of youth isn't gold. That it's not worth "pulling on the hair and the pout" to pretend that our youthful indiscretions were actually all that interesting or fulfilling.

    But somehow inescapable. And important.

    In boring old marriage with all the accoutrements of minivans and mortgages we discover a joyful serenity. Or can. It's not flashy. You wouldn't want to see it in concert. But it's stable, it's healthy, it's happy.

    Not always, of course. And not everyone has this opportunity, or the chance to have children. Yet all of us have the chance to raise children, ours or otherwise. (A reminder of this came today as I drove past my kids' school and saw our wonderful crossing guard. I think that's the job I want: to get to greet the kids each day on their way to and from school. Also, I wouldn't mind aggravating drivers that want to zoom by....)

    As much as I might want the energy of my youth, and at times the opportunities that were still so open. Yet I wouldn't want to drive back down its fascination streets. But I do love raising kids, my own and those of others. 

    Nothing makes me happier. Or as frustrated. Or as tired. But happy, too, and happy, mostly.

    Life is better when you're old....especially when you get to help your kids navigate their own youth.

    Not sure where this is going (I think I just wanted the opportunity to juxtapose The Cure with The Book of Mormon), but it felt like it came to a happy conclusion this morning when I read Lehi's words to his son, Jacob:
    And now, behold, if Adam had not transgressed he would not have fallen, but he would have remained in the garden of Eden. And all things which were created must have remained in the same state in which they were after they were created; and they must have remained forever, and had no end.

    And they would have had no children; wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin.

    But behold, all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things.

    Adam fell that men might be; and men are, that they might have joy.
    No children, no youth, no misery. But eventually, because of these, joy. I guess the point is to move on, to at some point stop trying to be a child and instead become happy with raising them. Not always easy, but it has been worth it.
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  10. I don't write as often as I used to. Not on my blog, not in my journal. Because, well, Facebook. Or Instagram. It's just easier to pretend to be witty in a sentence or two than demonstrate I'm not in a blog post.

    Which is another way of saying it's harder to be honest in a blog.

    It's not that I try to lie about my life. It's just hard to encapsulate the messiness of life in an Instagram picture or a hash tag.

    Instagramming lies

    But last week I went backcountry skiing with a friend, and as we skinned up to Little Water Peak, we talked about the reality distortion field that is social media. As just one example, here's the Instagram post from that outing:


    With the associated text: "No lift lines up Mill D."

    I'm not sure what people thought when they read that - the picture gives off an idyllic vibe - but the reality is that the absolute best things about the day were the exhausting climb and the chance to talk openly about how broken we are as people much of the time. In other words, my day was made by learning that my friend's challenges are just as bitter and hard as mine. Sometimes more so.

    It wasn't a great day because the powder was great (which it was). That was probably the least interesting part of the outing, but it's the only thing captured for everyone to else to envy.

    If anything, the picture conveys a carefree life which is unfortunately not the one I happen to lead.

    Look at all the lonely people

    Just as it's likely not the life you lead, either. But that's not what your Facebook posts say. Unwittingly or intentionally, we tend to project our best selves on social media. a-Ha sang that "the sun always shines on TV," and on Facebook we're always smiling, our kids are always smart and the food is always beautiful.

    Which is why those browsing Facebook end up depressed, as several studies have found. We just lost our job, got divorced, learned our child is addicted to pornography or simply burned dinner, but everyone else on Facebook is AMAZING!!!!

    At least, until we talk to them offline and learn that they, like we, are kind of messed up. Just like us.

    In my church calling I get to assign talk topics to our sacrament meeting speakers. My counsel to all speakers is always something along the lines of: "No one wants to hear how perfect you are. We want to hear how you've overcome trials or are trying to do so, because we're all broken to some degree and need help."

    When the speakers take this to heart, our meetings are incredible. I wish our Facebook posts were as enlightening.
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