Two things from CIO Insider:
(1) SAP's Ecosystem is thriving.
(2) It is possible to build an Open Source Business.
Showing posts with label ecosystem. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ecosystem. Show all posts
OSS Ecosystem Presentation (not by me)
An OSS developer at 55thinking.com has come up with a presentation on open source ecosystems. While I think it is a beautiful presentation, I think it is a good overview of the 'correct' approach one needs to take with respect to getting into open source.
Open Source Ecosystems Research
In doing a scan of open source related news and blogs, I came across Alex Fletcher's blog posting on open source ecosystems. Imagine my surprise, since my dissertation is directly concerned with this very topic (and I've blogged Alex on a similar subject before). I admit it is a fairly involved set of concepts, but it can be boiled down pretty simply. Thus, the paragraphs that follow are a very, very brief summary of the framework and results of my research as it relates to open source ecosystems.
Generically, we can define an ecosystem as it is defined in Ecology: as a set of communities and the surrounding environment forming an interacting system. A community in turn is a set of populations of species living closely enough together for the potential of local interaction, or alternatively, the populations that are found in a defined region. Within previous organizational literature, a community is a bounded set of similar organizational forms (c.f. Ruef).
By contrast, an ecosystem consists of the various populations and communities of these similar species that interact within a given region along with the elements of the environment that affect these interactions. The two terms (ecosystem and community) are a conceptual cluster (Jax 2006) that result in two terms so similar as to be nearly synonymous. Here, we view ecosystems as being more inclusive than communities, reserving the latter for subsets of the ecosystem that exist and interact largely independent of the larger ecosystem.
In software, there are (at least) two communities that matter: the development community that includes those who write the software, testers, and support staff as well as those of the components that are included in the final product, and the user community that includes the end users (OEM/ISV, end users, and consulting partners), not to mention the CEO/CIO/management team of these organizations. The temptation is to combine both sets of people in a single community, but in reality we find that these developers interact with the end users only rarely, especially those for upstream component providers. Pursuant to our previous definition of communities as existing and interacting independently of each other, we find in reality that the developers largely work separately from the efforts of the sales/marketing team on the user side particularly as the organization grows in size.
With that as a background, applying the term 'ecosystem' to open source would include more than downloaders, QA testers, and source code committers. Additionally (especially in the current commercial open source environment), we have to include corporate CIOs, analysts (yourself included, of course), investors/VCs, competitors (e.g. IBM and Oracle), sponsors (e.g. IBM and the Apache Software Foundation), and a wide range of customers from perspectives such as OEMs, ISVs, end users, and more. We continue to define the OSS ecosystem in terms of developers (including the QA testers and committers and others) and users. Forrester Research includes four functions around open source: product development, distribution, services, and marketing. All of these are required by somebody in the ecosystem whether that is a central firm or the members themselves.
The problem is not necessarily in identifying or quantifying these members of the ecosystem at large, but in fully defining their contributions and inducements. In other words, what do they provide and why do they do so? For instance, why does IBM participate in the Geronimo project and what do they provide? How they provide the sponsorship and services they provide is a tactical issue that can be identified from the various analyst and media reports. But the reasons behind the decision are not always so obvious. Would IBM have participated in the Apache project so heavily if the ASF had standardized around the GPL license instead of a BSD derivative? Would they have participated in Geronimo specifically if JBoss had not done so well? Have they been able to appropriate the anticipated benefits of the Gluecode acquisition yet?
Similar questions can be asked for any participant in an open source ecosystem. In the final analysis, it boils down to a question of the health of said ecosystem. What makes one ecosystem more healthy than another? What I have found (so far) in my research is that the health of an open source ecosystem is based on three issues. One, how much productivity (vigor) exists in terms of the capital being invested, produced, transformed, and exchanged. It is important to note that capital includes more than just money, but intellectual/human capital, reputation capital, and more. Two, how organized is the ecosystem. A loosely connected band of developers and users are not as healthy as one in which the communications and exchange pathways among the members of the development and user communities are solid and repeatable. Third, how resilient is the ecosystem. Mere stability implies that an system can remain at a given level of functionality but resilience implies that it can adapt and recover from significant changes in the system.
In a later post (or send me an email at dewynn at uga dot edu for an advance "Cliffs note" summary), I will discuss the concept of a 'mechanism' and how successful (healthy) open source ecosystems have been able to develop and use specific types of mechanisms to improve and maintain their health.
Generically, we can define an ecosystem as it is defined in Ecology: as a set of communities and the surrounding environment forming an interacting system. A community in turn is a set of populations of species living closely enough together for the potential of local interaction, or alternatively, the populations that are found in a defined region. Within previous organizational literature, a community is a bounded set of similar organizational forms (c.f. Ruef).
By contrast, an ecosystem consists of the various populations and communities of these similar species that interact within a given region along with the elements of the environment that affect these interactions. The two terms (ecosystem and community) are a conceptual cluster (Jax 2006) that result in two terms so similar as to be nearly synonymous. Here, we view ecosystems as being more inclusive than communities, reserving the latter for subsets of the ecosystem that exist and interact largely independent of the larger ecosystem.
In software, there are (at least) two communities that matter: the development community that includes those who write the software, testers, and support staff as well as those of the components that are included in the final product, and the user community that includes the end users (OEM/ISV, end users, and consulting partners), not to mention the CEO/CIO/management team of these organizations. The temptation is to combine both sets of people in a single community, but in reality we find that these developers interact with the end users only rarely, especially those for upstream component providers. Pursuant to our previous definition of communities as existing and interacting independently of each other, we find in reality that the developers largely work separately from the efforts of the sales/marketing team on the user side particularly as the organization grows in size.
With that as a background, applying the term 'ecosystem' to open source would include more than downloaders, QA testers, and source code committers. Additionally (especially in the current commercial open source environment), we have to include corporate CIOs, analysts (yourself included, of course), investors/VCs, competitors (e.g. IBM and Oracle), sponsors (e.g. IBM and the Apache Software Foundation), and a wide range of customers from perspectives such as OEMs, ISVs, end users, and more. We continue to define the OSS ecosystem in terms of developers (including the QA testers and committers and others) and users. Forrester Research includes four functions around open source: product development, distribution, services, and marketing. All of these are required by somebody in the ecosystem whether that is a central firm or the members themselves.
The problem is not necessarily in identifying or quantifying these members of the ecosystem at large, but in fully defining their contributions and inducements. In other words, what do they provide and why do they do so? For instance, why does IBM participate in the Geronimo project and what do they provide? How they provide the sponsorship and services they provide is a tactical issue that can be identified from the various analyst and media reports. But the reasons behind the decision are not always so obvious. Would IBM have participated in the Apache project so heavily if the ASF had standardized around the GPL license instead of a BSD derivative? Would they have participated in Geronimo specifically if JBoss had not done so well? Have they been able to appropriate the anticipated benefits of the Gluecode acquisition yet?
Similar questions can be asked for any participant in an open source ecosystem. In the final analysis, it boils down to a question of the health of said ecosystem. What makes one ecosystem more healthy than another? What I have found (so far) in my research is that the health of an open source ecosystem is based on three issues. One, how much productivity (vigor) exists in terms of the capital being invested, produced, transformed, and exchanged. It is important to note that capital includes more than just money, but intellectual/human capital, reputation capital, and more. Two, how organized is the ecosystem. A loosely connected band of developers and users are not as healthy as one in which the communications and exchange pathways among the members of the development and user communities are solid and repeatable. Third, how resilient is the ecosystem. Mere stability implies that an system can remain at a given level of functionality but resilience implies that it can adapt and recover from significant changes in the system.
In a later post (or send me an email at dewynn at uga dot edu for an advance "Cliffs note" summary), I will discuss the concept of a 'mechanism' and how successful (healthy) open source ecosystems have been able to develop and use specific types of mechanisms to improve and maintain their health.
More on SW Ecosystems (long)
In this article, the author presents ecosystems as consisting of the partners that surround and support a software package. In this blog posting, the author presents several different components of open source ecosystems, including ISVs and other downstream firms. In yet another article, Business Week includes customers, stack aggregators such as SpikeSource, and (to some degree) the VCs. In a typically comprehensive fashion, Gartner defines an open source ecosystem explicitly as
Finally, Forrester Research says that
Forrester also says that
All these quotes leave me with the impression that (a) there is something to the concept of an ecosystem in open source and more generally, in software, (b) the ecosystem concept must include a wide range of participants/units/members/etc., and (c) there is a lot of resource flow in a healthy ecosystem but measuring it will be a hot mess. And I'm just the man for the job.
the set of policies, processes, individuals and organizations that can influence, support, staff, finance, train, and educate users and developers of a community for the purpose of making it self-sustainable over a period of time that is compatible with the life cycle of technology investments for the user community.
Finally, Forrester Research says that
"An open source ecosystem is emerging that serves the same functions as a traditional software company — but through multiple organizations. In the past, your software supplier would supply the software, support, maintenance, training, and consulting. The new open source ecosystem provides these services through communities, companies, consortia, and other means. As a result, customers have access to the same services they are used to from traditional suppliers, but they have to understand how to make the open source ecosystem work for them." (note: I do not have access to these Forrester reports as they costs $795 which is not in my budget. However, slides corresponding this first link can be found here.)
Forrester also says that
An open source ecosystem is emerging, however. Though this open source ecosystem is made up of many new types of organizations, such as communities and consortia, the organizations deliver the same four functions as closed source vendors: product development, distribution, services, and marketing. This map of open source players will enable firms to follow a practical approach to build their own open source ecosystem to suit their software needs.
All these quotes leave me with the impression that (a) there is something to the concept of an ecosystem in open source and more generally, in software, (b) the ecosystem concept must include a wide range of participants/units/members/etc., and (c) there is a lot of resource flow in a healthy ecosystem but measuring it will be a hot mess. And I'm just the man for the job.
Successful Open Source Companies
Yes, the focus of the title of this post is on the companies, but I would argue that much of the discussion is (of course) on the ecosystems surrounding them. Two links here, which I will do my best to summarize a little later (but I did not want to lose the links):
I'm sure there are other posts out there (in particular,look through Matt Asay's interesting and voluminous blog posts), but these will do for now. I'll recap and summarize later.
- An Entiva Group Analyst posts his ideas about what makes for a successful commercial open source operation, and it's a pretty good list.
- A principal with venture capital firm Hummer Winblad opines that the three most important letters in open source are CYA. This article confirms much of what we have discussed and/or encountered several times in talking with other folks about the OSS business.
I'm sure there are other posts out there (in particular,look through Matt Asay's interesting and voluminous blog posts), but these will do for now. I'll recap and summarize later.
Last post (for tonight) on the OSS ecosystem
Matt Asay discusses a ZDnet article on the "War of the Ecosystems" that makes several points that I should keep in mind when developing a presentation on this stuff.
Further on the "open source ecosystem" chain
Speaking of the blog by the "Director of Ecosystem Development for the Eclipse Foundation", he posted an entry discussing an interesting study on the success of OSS projects, in which he made the following comment:
BINGO! I think I have an interested reader here...I DEFINITELY need to give him a shout out when I get close to an answer.
To me, success would be a healthy ecosystem with lots of commercial and non-commercial activity. This would be pretty difficult to measure, not only to find publicly available data, but because it's not clear how to measure the "health" of an ecosystem. There is hopefully an opportunity for research in this area moving forward. (emphasis added)
BINGO! I think I have an interested reader here...I DEFINITELY need to give him a shout out when I get close to an answer.
More on Open Source Ecosystems
There are other sites out there discussing the phrase 'open source ecosystems'. Here are a few interesting ones:
All this to suggest that I am certainly not the originator of the term nor the only one interested in it. Here's hoping I can add to the conversation in a truly meaningful way.
- An interesting post by one of the guys who helped develop Ruby on Rails, which is a great new OSS language for Web 2.0.
- A news article about the importance of third parties such as Pervasive to form an ecosystem around open source projects (in this case around PostgreSQL.
- A 2005 research article by IBM stating (among other things) that an open source project "needs to build an ecosystem" in order to reach a critical mass for viability.
- What looks like a wiki-evolving definition (or is that 'wikivolving'- is that a word yet? should I TM it?) of an open source business ecosystem on ObjectWeb.
- A blog from a guy whose job is Director of Ecosystem Development for the Eclipse Foundation. (I ought to try to ring him up sometime just for a chat)
- A presentation on Collaboratively Evolving Ecosystems in the context of government-sponsored open source projects, essentially laying out the case for moving from "N*build to 1*build + N*improve" (an interesting way to look at the benefits of OSS.
All this to suggest that I am certainly not the originator of the term nor the only one interested in it. Here's hoping I can add to the conversation in a truly meaningful way.
Linux Ecosystem to be worth $40B, per IDG
According to this report by IDG, the Linux ecosystem will be worth $40B by the year 2010. The actual figure is not as interesting as the fact that they used the term 'ecosystem', which is pretty cool.
