Dispatch #1 JavaONE

Business Day track #1

The Business of Open Source

Simon Phipps is on the stage talking about the change from the hub and  spoke model  to the peer to peer model.  We are beginning to  experience the mesh.  People are defined by their  time zones, or when you are awake.  Marketing ceases to be the polishing and firing of messages to targeted audiences, but instead in community. He talks about the virtuous cycle of code use and code contribution. Open Source is not about abstract behavior. Instead it is about creating richness. This is feeling rich in whatever way is meaningful for you. It's different for Sun than for Sao Paulo, Brazil. The enriched code gets sent back to the code commons as a part of this virtuous cycle. If you keep the code to yourself, then the effects are negative.

This virtuous cycle is very important because it's cost saving.

1.0 Software was indivisible from hardware. Hardware came with software.

2.0 Software was decoupled from Hardware and sold unbundled. This model cannot hold up in the face of the free software movement.

3.0 Software is paid for at the point of value.  In this model, the glossy box model is no longer needed, because its contents are not seen as valuable. We can now purchase what we need when we need it. The value is not that you get software free, but instead, that you get to select and pay for only what you want.

Patrick Finch is brought to the stage, and he talks a little about the Value Flows in Open Source. He expands the simple diagrams that Simon was talking about. It's a little complicated, but fairly self evident. There is a difference here between businesses that see IT as a competitive weapon, vs. IT as a cost center. Most of Sun's customers are the former. Users will only pay for things that have value add. He's written a white paper about this, and it will be available soon.

Sun, the original open source company! We really need to here your feedback on this material.

Sun has, for years, been interested in monetizing this, as well as facilitating our partners and customers to do this.

Then he talks about the Java/Linux opportunities. Now the Java source code availability is making Linux part of the Java family. Now Customers have a choice about whether to license the Java software from us, or to join the development community and directly affect the code. But you have responsibility to pay your developers, respect the open-source license, and to deal with the community.

The license is GPL v2, along with a classpath exception. That excepts some of the applications that live on top of the Java code.

He looks a bit at the history of open sourcing Java. Then a guest comes up to talk about the mobile and embedded community. PhoneME. All of Sun's Mobile development is now being done out in Open Source. There are already 60 projects since November.

The application development communtiy is being nurtured here, along with other tools communities around open source communities. He talks a bit about who benefits from the open source model. They include Handset OEMs, application developers as well as Operators Tools/component vendors.

Ken Drachnik talks about Project GlassFish. Now licensees take about 1/3 the time to develop implementations. Anyone can join the community. Lots of people can now contribute. Ericsson has contributed communications APIs to Java EE. This allows communication bits to be built on top of GlassFish. Lots of different customers have contributed to and built on the work of this community.

Finally, OpenJDK.java.net Rich Sands runs us through the JavaSE version of this. Our community is about 3 hours and 10 minutes old. All of the JDK is now available. A few bits of encumbered code still exist. Please help us remove it. You can open it in NetBeans, and compile it there. We are working on governance and a constitution. OpenJDK is based on JDK 7, not JDK 6. It's significant that this is the ongoing live tree.

Simon continues. This is the perfect time for free and open source Java. The potential is huge in many areas, especially in Linux. Last year, 97% of the software written in China is open source.