Flooring the Accelerator:
How Open Source Is Reshaping an Industry
by Rick Palkovic, Sun Microsystems Staff Writer
I thought I'd take a break on Tuesday from all the code-intensive technical sessions and have a look at the big picture. So, I strolled into TS-5606, "Flooring the Accelerator: How Open Source Is Reshaping an Industry."
As I reclined my seat, figuratively speaking, and looked down from 10,000 feet, I could see the whole communications software landscape. And who better to pilot the flight than presenter Terrence Barr, senior technologist and community ambassador to the mobile and embedded community? Barr took us on a tour of the mobile communications industry, which is being radically changed by open source software and standards.
The Conflict
The conflict that is producing the move to open source is between the "walled garden" approach, which uses proprietary software and services to produce scarcity and product demand, and the open source and standards approach, which makes software a commodity and makes it tough to add value.
According to Barr, there really is no choice. Where consumers have an open source alternative, they invariably take it, and the proprietary approach can never recover the market. As an example, he cited AOL, which tried to contain the user experience in a subspace of the internet. Users demanded full access to the broader internet, however, and AOL was required to break down the garden walls and set its users free.
As another example, Barr described the attempts to limit recorded music copying with digital rights managment (DRM). "Lead users" -- aggressive consumers who blur the line with developers -- demanded the freedom to copy the files they owned, and the MP3 format eventually conquered proprietary encryptions. Consumers are the ones who lead the open source revolution, abandoning proprietary suppliers when they do not fill consumer needs.
But these examples are from the desktop software world, and Barr's expertise is in mobile communications. This industry is in a great deal of flux at the moment, and the adoption of open source software is complicated by several factors.
Open Source and Profitability
The technology stack supporting mobile devices is more complex than the one for desktop computing, and the capital investment in infrastructure is high. Moreover, the demands for reliability and security are higher than in desktop computing. The open source development model of continuous beta release doesn't produce the bullet-proof quality required for mobile communications. And then there are the myriad devices, each with their own special features and peculiarities, as well as the sheer volume of devices deployed -- billions and counting.
Barr touched on monetization in a mobile industry that is trending towards open software. Proprietary products produce high profits at low volumes. Open-source products quickly become high-volume commodities. Barr noted that the largest companies typically sell commodities at low profit per item, but still are very profitable overall.
To differentiate themselves and profit, open source companies must innovate, sell intangibles, build side channels for content add-ons, and tune the overall user experience to gratify consumers. The challenge for software vendors in the mobile space is to make the user experience as comfortably similar as possible on many dissimilar devices.
Open Source: Problem or Solution?
So, is the move to open source/open standards the solution to the problem of disruption in mobile communications, or did it cause the problem? Neither, actually, if Barr is correct -- it is merely a symptom of the changes being demanded by consumers who want more options, and developers who want to write code to open standards.
With the shift to open source and open standards, people's expectations have changed. There is no going back to the old proprietary model. Even naive consumers know that an open source company offers them more choices, and that its products integrate better with others. It is still not clear how the mobile market will fit into the overall IT market, but clearly old models of doing business are coming undone. For now, open standards are more important to mobile communication than open source, since only open standards can simplify the technology stack.
For more ideas from Terrence Barr, see his blog.
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