GPLv3: the FSF dropped the ball(s)

Last night, I read the last draft of GPLv3 on my cell phone during dinner in Orlando. I went looking for the provision they had in the last draft, the one that closes the GPLv2 ASP loophole that forced me to create HPL. In a nutshell, it is the ability of running GPLv2 software as a service (SaaS) without returning any changes to the community, because distribution of software as a service might not technically be considered distribution of software (therefore circumventing the copyleft clause that made open source what it is today). That is what Google does, making gazillions of dollars thanks to Linux and open source but keeping its secret sauce concealed from the rest of the world (but contributing in many other ways, therefore cleaning its conscience, I guess).

The provision is not there. Gone. They dropped the ball. Actually, it has been made very clear that the ASP loophole is not a loophole anymore. It is perfectly fine to change GPLv3 software and offer it to the public as a service, without returning the changes to the community. Bryan Richard on Linux Magazine, wrote an interesting article on it titled "The GPL has no (networked) future". I agree...

That means 75% of the future software (which is going to be SaaS) could be offered by leeches, that suck the soul of open source for their pure benefit. They make money, while others work for them for free, to make them rich. Rich without returning anything that could benefit the community of whom they are parasites. As you can read in this interview, Google is really happy about the GPLv3 draft. Of course they are!!

I am honestly upset. My feeling is that the Free Software Foundation (FSF) did not have the balls to push this forward. I can understand it, because the special interests involved are big and you need to pick your fight. But they picked the wrong ones. Covering the use of open source in SaaS was the one to fight. You cannot go after TiVo because puts Linux in a box, but not after Google because it puts it behind a firewall. Just because it is Google. The vast majority of software will be run as a service, not in appliances. The world is not going there. The world is going SaaS.

Again, I understand the political reasoning behind the decision (GPLv3 has enough problems to be accepted, adding the SaaS provision would probably have killed it) but I am questioning the merit. The FSF writes:

We have made this decision in the face of irreconcilable views from different parts of our community. While we had known that many commercial users of free software were opposed to the inclusion of a mandatory Afferolike requirement in the body of GPLv3 itself, we were surprised at their opposition to its availability through section 7.

I bet they were ;-) That does not mean you give up. You fight. It is a fight on principles. You cannot be a sucker in open source. You have to give back. It is true for TiVo and for Google. There should not be exceptions. Copyleft is the soul of open source. The soul of the FSF. Without it, we would not be were we are now.

In an attempt to give something to the people that agree with me, they added a backward compatibility clause of GPLv3 with Affero (which is a license with an insane requirement to close the ASP loophole and with a vanity name of a company behind it) and claimed they will work with the community to create Affero v2. That means we'll have GPLv3 and GPLv3_with_SaaS, Affero branded. One in favor of the proliferation of licenses, which is the major issue this movement is facing already... Affero is not even OSI approved, but it is the only license backward compatible with GPLv3... Double-insane (and I would be offended being on the OSI board...).

OK, I am really upset. I'll give myself a few days to think about it. I could just hope the FSF will reconsider and add the provision in the last draft, which will never happen... A first step could be to bring HPLv1 in front of OSI. GPLv2 is a good license after all, with just one problem that is fixed by HPL. And we could always create HPLv2 later and merge it with the FSF effort. I really would like that license to be compatible with GPLv3 and work with the FSF on it. License incompatibility is killing us...

The issue with licensing is at the center of open source, and it should not be. We just need to get one license that works in 90% of cases and get over with it. GPLv2 is the closest thing to this goal, and used by the vast majority of the projects out there. GPLv3 simply does not cut it. I am really really sorry about it. But I am not going just to sit and watch the disaster unfold. I am ready to fight.

Second day at CTIA

The second day of CTIA is usually the busy one. The day nobody misses (some come late, most leave early). However, it was still slow, like yesterday... When the door opened this morning, there were few dozen people waiting, not the hundreds of 3GSM. Being CTIA, I would rethink having the show here again in 2009...

The other buzz of the show, together with mobile advertising, is mobile payments. Visa said that it would become an investor in dotMobi and that it was working with Qualcomm to create phones that allow you to swipe the phone, instead of your credit card. They added that Kyocera agreed to support the Visa mobile payments platform on its phones. Yesterday, at&t announced that its customers will be allowed to manage bills and bank accounts through their service.

Mobile payments have been a success in Japan, as many other technologies that never saw the light outside Tokyo. This one, though, has the numbers to be a great success also in the US. Fast food chains are trying to find a way to move out of cash transactions. Not everybody has a credit card, but everybody has a phone. Link it to your phone bill (postpaid or prepaid) and you have millions walking around with a debit card in their pocket.

The issue: you can put the chip in the phone but you also need a reader in the shop... Apart of some original but bizarre ideas (like using the infrared chip on the device to simulate the swiping of the card on the reader), I have not seen anything practical that would not require all the shops on the planet to change their card readers (or add a wireless one). That will require time. We are talking years, not months. But it is going to happen and it will be a huge market.

Another trend (but not really a buzz) is that device manufacturers are adding Yahoo or Google in their phones. LG announced they will have some phones with the Google apps (search, maps, email) pre-installed. Nothing crazy, but it would not require you to download anything, which is great for consumers.

Few problems here (sorry to turn everything down):
1. At least in the US, the carrier will took the apps off. Sorry, they control the market here, not the device manufacturer (unless you are Apple, of course). They want their brand to be visible to the consumer, not Google or Yahoo.
2. You still have to configure the application on the device. I know it is easy on a PC, but typing an email address (the @ symbol in particular) is an unsurmountable obstacle for many.
3. If you are not a Google user, or if you have more than one email address (for example, if you have a job...), you will need something else. Luckily, I am seeing the device manufacturers adding support for open standards as well. That is the way to go. We just need to force Google to provide open standard support for devices. That will happen, let's just keep pushing. We have enough proprietary email standards in mobile and they are not what the world is needing and asking for (nor the carriers...)

That's it for me at CTIA. I am flying out tomorrow at dawn. Unfortunately, I am going to miss the Clinton/Bush keynote, which is probably the only reason for many to stay. Too bad. I'll check it on YouTube tomorrow on my PC. But not on my cell phone: yep, the buzz for mobile TV is dramatically diminishing, the mobiTV booth was in the furthest corner of the show and always deserted. Apparently, it is uncool to talk about something that works but nobody uses. That's what happens after the buzz is gone.

First day at CTIA

CTIA is in Orlando this year. Weather is nice, a bit on the humid side. The show is in one enormous hall. It reminds me of New Orleans a couple of years ago. You just keep walking and walking and walking... I am not sure about the attendance numbers but it seems slow to me. Inside the hall and outside (since the attendees are dispersed in the city). Orlando is not the best place to have a show like this one, in my opinion. Lots of people probably remained home.

Anyway, the tone is still upbeat. The buzz is around mobile advertising. I am not sure why we need a different buzz every show, but welcome to the mobile world ;-) Many believe mobile advertising could be the key to start delivering compelling data applications to phone, for cheap. It makes sense, until you realize you still have to pay for data (e.g. the carrier). Once and if the carriers become a dumb pipe, the model will make sense. For now, it does not. But it is interesting to play around with the concept and, if the data plans become a commodity, this could really be the right train to catch. We'll see, I am optimistic.

I saw a lot of cool devices, just launched today. Man, I should count the number of different devices on display at the show. It is unbelievable. Works for me and Funambol (and sustain my segmentation argument) but it is quasi schizophrenic... Anyway, the Samsung Upstage looks like the closest thing to the iPhone mini (the one I was expecting from Apple and never came). It is thin like an iPod mini. Unfortunately, one side looks great, the other side looks ugly... Apparently, you need Steve Jobs to make both sides nice.

The other device that competes in the iPhone mini category is the Sony Ericsson W580. Very nice device. Cool music phone. With everything you need, including sync and push email. Also, it sports a pedometer, that is very useful to check how many miles you walked down the aisles of CTIA... The more I look at Sony Ericsson phones, the more I am getting convinced they are on the right track. And they seem to be supporting open standards and SyncML on every single device. Which is quite smart.

Lastly, a new startup came to the spotlight. Mostly because it was launched by Microsoft and it looks like an attempt to answer the iPhone usability challenge (BTW, the iPhone was at the show in the hands of AT&T CEO and it disappeared three seconds after...). ZenZui will promote a new "Zooming User Interface" that is designed to streamline and enhance the mobile Web-surfing experience. It does not look like anything out of the ordinary, but as a usability guy I am always supportive of initiative targeted to enhance the user experience. We still have a long way to go on this, and it is THE key factor.

End of day one. Thankfully, the show runs only from 11 am to 5 pm... Just to recall the good days at 3GSM in Barcelona, I am going out and have some tapas. I have to admit it, Orlando does not cut it for me. I am looking forward to go back to Vegas next year (I am sure there is good Spanish food there as well ;-)

Consumer mobile email is ready to boom

First of all, let me thank all the people that participated in our survey. If you know me and you already received the ten bucks, please keep them because you clearly owe me a beer :-)) A good opportunity to pay back is CTIA in Orlando, starting next week. We'll be there. Stop by our Funambol booth #1177 and BYOB...

At CTIA, we'll have the cool phone holder but also the results of the survey. The latter are quite interesting, for example:

Previous studies have reported that consumers want mobile email but are not willing to pay much for it. Funambol's survey found that consumers indeed want mobile email, and that the majority is willing to pay for it, on average about $5 per month. Furthermore, many will be making the move to adopt it within the year. Consumers also indicated that they are looking for mobile email that is easy-to-use and that seamlessly interoperates with their web and PC email systems.

Consumers are willing to move fast (thank you so much!) and pay $5/month (that is even nicer, but since you pay over $5/m for SMS today, I was kinda expecting it...).

Other key findings:

-- There will be hundreds of millions of new mobile email users in the coming years and they are more likely to be consumers than business users. Almost half of the survey respondents who do not use mobile email said they expect to start using it within a year.

-- People use a wide range of mobile devices all over the world and a mobile email solution aimed at the mass market needs to support a broad set of devices. Of the mobile brands used by survey respondents, the second most popular choice was "Other," meaning other than Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Motorola or BlackBerry (RIM).

-- Non-users of mobile email want mobile email that is easy to navigate and read, easy to use and that allows them to reuse email addresses from their web/PC-based email.

-- For existing users of mobile email, the main inhibitors to increased usage are functional and technical limitations, and cost. The top reason to consider switching to a different mobile email service was better interoperability with web and PC email.

-- There are significant differences between users and non-users of mobile email. These include brand of mobile device, how much they paid for it, how many emails they get or expect to get, how much they are willing tospend on mobile email and their attitude toward technology adoption.

Very interesting stuff, in my opinion. And it is quite fun to go through the report and see all the graphs with the differences between prosumers (already hooked on email) and consumers (still wandering, but interested). Obviously, the report is free (and open ;-)

See you at CTIA, do not miss the report!

Apple TV sucks

I had lunch in Palo Alto today and I did not resist the urge to check the new Apple TV. I was shocked.

The usability is great, the picture slideshow and the music are perfect but the quality of the video SUCKS. The pixels are so visible, it seems impossible to believe Apple is shipping the device, when people are used to High Definition now... Man, the stuff is meant to be used on a TV!! And for it to work, you need the latest and coolest TV screens!!!

God I hope the iPhone is much better because there must be something going horribly wrong at Apple these days...

Forever sync

Today, I had a deja-vu. I was having lunch with a friend from HP and he asked me "do you still believe there is a need for synchronization in mobile? Network are fast now, you know, and reliable". My mind went back to 2003, to the very first presentation I gave about Sync4j (two years in the making, at the time). Someone asked me the same question, albeit more generic: "do you still believe there is a need for synchronization? Network are fast now, you know".

To both, I gave the same answer: "You bet! It is not about the network, it is about usability".

Then I checked the announcement that Apple TV finally hit the stores today. They have one page on the web site where the word sync is used 12 times... Wow, sync is still here today... And there is no network more reliable and faster than the one you have at home... Why is that? Apple could have created Apple TV just streaming info from your devices, taking content from the web. Instead, they went for a sync solution (as they did for the iPod). Why?

Think about your Apple TV. It shows your video and pictures and music on your TV. Where do you have them? On your PC. On your iPod. On your mobile phone. They are spread out. Every device captures the information and you have to sync it back somewhere. The devices are many, the data could be just one, but it is distributed. Each device has a piece of the puzzle. Again, why?

Because on your iPod you want music to start instantaneously. Five seconds wait and it is unusable. Because the experience of listening to your music on your iPod in the subway could not be replicated if you needed a wireless signal (yes, I know, some subway now have wireless signal). Or when you fly (yes, I know, some airplanes now have wi-fi, but did you notice Connexion by Boeing died?).

On your Apple TV your data is stored. You flip through it in an instant. It works even if your laptop is off, your iPod is in your bag, the batteries of your cell phone are toasted. You can use it. And the experience is great (Apple is the master of usability, after all). You get that only if your data is already on your device. And it gets there through synchronization. Usable synchronized data. Even in a fast and reliable network, imagine on a cellular network...

Forget killing synchronization. It is here to stay. Long life to sync.

Why Google needs a phone (now)

Boring as it was, the rumor about the Apple iPhone turned out to be right. Recent estimates quantify at 400 millions the marketing saving by Apple, after the announcement (not a small deal...). Now the rumors filling the blogs is that Google is working on the Goophone or whatever they will call it (but I like Goophone... I should trademark it then sue them later ;-)

There are pictures on the web from Endgadget and Gizmodo (two smartphones, again, please...), rumors from a VC that Google has 100 people working on it (hey, they have 100 people working on pretty much everything, where's the surprise?), a recruiting site that says "Google is experimenting with a few wireless communications systems including some completely novel concepts" (surprise!, as before) and the head of Google operations in Spain and Portugal, Isabel Aguilera, who said it is pretty much all true. Actually, she started all the rumors. A lady of latin blood that could not keep a secret? Wow. It makes the story even more interesting...

Jokes apart, Google is certainly putting a lot of effort in mobile. The holy grail of advertising is here. You are in front of a computer a few hours, but you wear your phone all the time. How can they ignore it?

They don't. So you have Google Mobile with search, maps, Gmail and stuff. All pretty nice.

The problem? The mobile operators... They do not like Google. They made a mistake, some time ago, to embrace RIM and the Blackberries. Their brand is totally diluted with high end email users. If you ask a Blackberry user "who's your carrier?", it will take them a few seconds to answer. The loyalty is with the device, not the mobile operator. On the contrary, if you ask anybody on the street "who gives you SMS?", the answer is "my carrier, xyz!". That's gold in marketing.

The carriers cannot afford to make that mistake again, or they will turn themselves into a "dumb pipe". Give room to Google (or Yahoo) and you are dead. They will take your device and make it theirs. Gone. You are history, you are just a provider of an IP address fighting in a commodity market with crashing prices (sounds like Web 1.0 and the ISP market, right?).

For Google to be relevant, they either have to wait until the carriers lose their grip (good luck with that) or jump and build a phone with its own network. Possibly, NOT a smartphone. A mass market device, to maximize their ad market. We already have the iPhone for niches. And it is cool enough.

Would Google do it or go the carrier way, praying to get some room on their phones and wait for the better? With all that cash, it would be tempting to change the world... They need to conquer the mobile market. They can do it if they have a phone.

Would they make it? I doubt it, but I sure hope they will, because it will be fun (and it would give my segmentation argument more legs ;-)

Mobile operating systems and fashion

Yesterday, the New York Times published an article about mobile operating systems. They called me and asked what I thought about the topic and, as usual, captured my thoughts in just one sentence ;-) However, I believe the synthesis is right: I do not believe in operating systems convergence in mobile. At least, not in the short term.

This is the same story that I heard many times about convergence. It is not happening in hardware, I do not see why it should happen in operating systems. Actually, the more devices are there to solve specific needs (or segments) the more specialized operating systems will show up.

Granted, a convergence in mobile operating systems is needed and I would be happy to see it. Carriers are obviously pushing for it, but the market is going somewhere else. The iPhone is yet-another platform, albeit closed for now (but I am ready to bet they will open it sooner or later). Then there are a bunch of different Mobile Linux implementations to be added to the list, like OpenMoko. Once the Google phone will be out, it is going to make things even more complex.

The reason, once again, is simple: the mobile market follows the fashion industry. You wear a phone. It is not a techie thingy, although we want it to be. It is fashion. You have to change it every year because it looks old and you look no-cool with it...

Think about it, the Italians are all over the mobile industry. You have the cool gold RAZR Dolce e Gabbana. And the LG Prada. Now they launched the Gucci phone. Have you ever seen convergence in Italian clothing? I don't think so... You thing you caught up with it and it is changing again... Who cares about the operating system? We'll wear a different one next year. It will match the color of your shoes.

What a difference a year makes

Last week, I spent a couple of days attending the Open Source Think Tank. Great setting (Silverado in Napa), fantastic organization by Andrew Aitken and Mark Radcliffe (great wine and weather, for starters), spectacular list of attendees (from the open source perspective).

I attended the same event last year. Pretty much the same people. Back then, we talked about what open source will be in 2010. The answer: everywhere. Open source will be the dominant way of developing and distributing software. Open source will conquer the world. I left that meeting complaining to Andrew I did not learn anything... I felt there were issues we should have discussed, instead of just talking about how good we were doing.

This year, everything changed. The useless hype is gone. The entire two days were about the issues facing open source. About licensing and GPL3 and what the OSI can do to make things simple for OSS customers. About Oracle and RedHat. About the Novell and Microsoft pact. About monetizing and sustaining the business model.

It was absolutely great and extremely useful.

At the end, the outcome was exactly the same of last year: open source will be the dominant way of developing and distributing software in the next years. But we did not talk about it. Open source is so mainstream that CIOs are considering it by default. It is treated exactly as proprietary software. They adopt it because it is better and cheaper, only if well supported. In that case, they want to pay. OSS is treated as commercial software. They do not even care about the source code. The field is totally leveled. We made it there. Since the game is on quality, price and support, open source companies will win hands down.

As an example, SourceFire went public last Friday. Great IPO, a gem in this confused stock market. Today up 13% while I write. 400M+ of market cap. An open source software company. A dual licensing company. I remember I heard Martin Roesch talking at JavaOne few years back and explaining the model that works in open source. The one that allows you to build public companies... It was fascinating. There were three companies in the first paper I read about dual licensing: SourceFire (public), MySQL (about to go public) and SleepyCat (acquired by Oracle). It should tell you something. Dual licensing is the model of Funambol, SugarCRM, Zimbra, among others. We just started a few years later but we are catching up fast...

The Think Tank reinforced all I knew about open source: the anxiety around open source licensing and indemnification is going to stick around. Dual licensing takes it all away. It is the model forward, the one CIOs go for. And the market is just following, as usual.

The big change in the last year is that the hype is gone. Open source is mature and mainstream. Proprietary vendors are adding open source wherever they can. Dual licensing is the way. It is clearly winning. Results are solid.

Let me add to this self-celebration a funny episode during the Think Tank, which happened when Microsoft was accused to "split Linux". The Microsoft representative stood up and shouted "that is not true!!". He later went on stage with the Novell representative (nice move by the organizers, since they were the key sponsors ;-) and explained what the deal meant. Sorry, I forgot what he said, since I had my Marketing BS filter set to on. But I recall someone from the audience asking why Steve Ballmer explained the deal saying "Linux uses our intellectual property". And the answer about Steve Ballmer being hard to control and that "he recognized his statement was counterproductive". Yeah, right... Talking about a guy who does not know what he says, while he runs the largest software company on the planet. Pleeease. Just try to be nice open source citizens: it will be the dominant way of developing and distributing software in a few years and you can clearly use dual licensing, you know?

Consumer mobile email survey

Our very creative marketing department has created a survey to analyze usage and needs by consumers on mobile email. That is, we are listening to you... And we pay you to do that!

The survey takes 5 minutes and we are offering a $10 PayPal payment to the first 500 people who complete the survey (one payment per person, must be able to accept PayPal, feel free to forward to anyone -- friends, relatives, etc.).

Ten bucks for five minutes means 120 bucks per hour, which makes a hefty $250,000 a year... We really value your time ;-)

To take the survey you can click HERE. In the first few hours we already received over 300 responses, so you better move quickly or we will just listen.

SMS push is the killer for JavaME email

I started using the Funambol v6 push email client for JavaME, which has been released in alpha a few days ago (it is open source, GPL, available on the ObjectWeb Forge), and it blew my expectations.

I know I am biased, but compared to Gmail Mobile the experience is totally different. I am not talking about the client being better (although I like it more because it is simpler). The big difference is that I am really using it, while I used the Gmail Mobile client just five times after I downloaded it...

Why?

Because I have SMS push...

What does it mean? It means that every time there is a new email on my Yahoo account (yep, we are not locked to Gmail ;-) a message appears on my RAZR and the phone beeps. From the cover, I can see it is a Funambol message. I open the phone and it says "do you want to open Funambol?". I say yes and I get my email downloaded from the server.

With our portal (now in pre-alpha, we showed it at 3GSM, come and see it at CTIA at the end of the month if you are interested), you get the client pre-configured on your device. No typing necessary. Just click on a message and you are done. The app is on your device. Your email appears magically.

I count 8 clicks on my T-Mobile RAZR phone to open the Gmail Mobile client... I have to go through "Fun&Apps" (the icon looks like a movie!), then "Games & Apps" (the icon looks like a joystick!!) to get to it. What are the odds that 95% of the population would never find the client once downloaded, because to get their email they have to be willing to watch a movie with a joystick? HIGH, VERY HIGH.

Instead, you downloaded the Funambol client. You lost it somewhere in your phone (it goes where GMail Mobile goes, there is nothing we can do about it...), but then someone sends you an email. You get a message, you click on Yes and your Funambol client pops out. You are using it. And you will keep using it, because you are going to get more emails.

What about battery? No difference: SMS reception is active on your phone anyway.

What about the cost? Well, that's a different ballgame. But we are not proposing this to enterprises (although it would be nice to try a price comparison with a BlackBerry monthly fee...). We give it to mobile operators. They bundle it for you, poor consumer, in their offering. You won't see the cost per message.

Up to a few weeks ago, I thought SMS push was a cool feature for a killer app. An important one for usability purposes. I just found out not having is the killer of the app. Push is the key for JavaME email. Without it, there is no consumer email. At least, not on Java phones, which are just 1.5 billions out there... Hello consumers, email is mobile and it works for you :-)

Who is going to buy Palm?

As you might have noticed, Palm stock is going up like crazy. That means someone is about to buy it (or the market has gone nuts, which is usually not the case).

A few months ago, I wrote a post about The Palm Opportunity, just after Motorola bought Good. My humble suggestion to Palm was: move fast, embrace open source and open standards, focus on mobile and moving data over the air. I added "Stay the course, support Microsoft and proprietary approaches and you'll be another Symbol, bought by a silo". Honestly, I can't say I have seen any particular move by Palm since then, apart from buying back its own proprietary OS... They definitely stayed the course. They are going to be bought.

Now, how is going to buy Palm? I have no clue, but let me put some candidates in order.

1. Motorola: they bought Symbol and Good. Good's preferred platform is Palm. The Q is not enough for an enterprise play on mobile email and it is a lock-in with the devil. It is a nobrainer.
2. Nokia: they bought Intellisync (and the rumors say the acquisition is not working too well) for an enterprise play. They came out with the E61. They clearly need to be more present in the US. Palm is the best enterprise play. Another no brainer.
3. HP: they are moving actively in the enterprise. They bought Bitfone in December for that (so... HP is powered by Funambol now, like Computer Associates ;-) Their iPaq business is not enough and they just announced a more phone-like device. Buying Palm would be a smart move.
4. Dell: as above, if they really want to get into mobile, Palm is an easy way to do it.
5. Sony: they were behind Palm and Palm OS for a while. Why not?
6. RIM: ok, I am pushing it a bit far, but that would be a nice way to kill a competitor that has been way more successful in the consumer and prosumer market, and learn something.
7. Sony Ericsson: hey, everybody is going enterprise, a good herd mentality would push them to Palm (let me add LG and Samsung in the same category, then).
8. Apple: what? Nonsense. They have the iPhone coming out and they feel they are better than anybody on the planet. Palm is the past...
9. Some private equity fund with a lot of money, but I just do not see it happen: too many companies in this list.
10. Funambol: man, that would be cool. We would turn it around and make it a full open source company from software to hardware. If you have 2 billions to lend me, you know where to find me :-)

In any case, they are about to go. It is sad because Palm has been made history in this space. They lost it recently and this is not a market where you can miss one big and recover. It moves too fast. Long life to Palm.

Saving lives with open source

Open Source is not just a way of developing software. It is a philosophy. Innovation through sharing. A community effort. A way to make software affordable, while increasing its quality.

The concept is expanding beyond software. My brother sent me an email from Dar Es Salaam yesterday, highlighting a very interesting project (not on SourceForge, yet...): ASAQ, a revolutionary pharmaceutical product to treat malaria, launched today.

Revolutionary because it is built OSS-style by the Drugs for Neglected Diseases initiative (DNDi) with Sanofi. DNDi is attacking markets neglected by the Big Pharma because they are considered not profitable (Africa, for example). The "code" of the new pill is shared, anybody can take it, improve it and give it back to the community. The license might not have copyleft (although it would be a smart idea...), but the net result is a sub-$1 drug to treat kids in Africa. It will save a lot of lives. That is big news.

Behind this: Bill Gates and its foundation... It is a strange world... but let's hope we can get more of the same.

Segmentation is a way of life, so is messaging

There is a post on Mike Mace's blog that I would recommend to everyone in the business. It talks about the shape of the smartphone market. There are many arguments I am not fully subscribing to (although it is hard to argue with someone with market data ;-) but it is a great read.

I met Mike a long time ago at one of the PalmSource conferences in Munich. Great events, because they were coinciding with the Oktoberfest. I remember more the beer than anything else, but I have a picture of Mike on stage with a slide with Funambol on it. I pitched to him the concept of a synchronization portal for mobile developers and he loved it. Too bad we did not really make anything out of it because his company was not interested. Anyway, time has passed, Mike has left PalmSource and they have lost all their developers...

What I like about his post is the concept of segmentation. I have written about it many times. Call it divergence if you want, but the idea of a uber-device for everyone will not fly. Specialized devices will win. Squeezing a PC in a phone is not a good idea to get the mass market. I do not believe Apple really wants to do it with the iPhone: they are more catering to their captive segment (Entertainment, in Mike's diagram), adding a telephony feature.

However, I have to disagree on one major item. Mike puts "communication" in a separate bubble. While I agree on putting the communication freaks in one separate area (and leave them there because they are annoying), there are two elements of communication that are common to every telephony-enabled device and every segment:

• voice
• messaging

You see also in his diagram, pictured below.



That "and SMS outside the US" hides the fact that people believe a basic phone feature is messaging. Not heavy stuff like a BlackBerry and a keyboard. Light stuff, like voice and SMS. Or the next SMS.

It is not just Europe and Asia, it is also in the US. Messaging is horizontal and a basic need country-independent. Like voice.



The Zone of Death does not have devices but two simple and basic features: voice and messaging. Those are for everyone. The mass market.

Sun doing quite good, anybody noticed?

It is tough when you get off the spotlight. The dot in the dot.com bubble burst. Everybody saying you are a dead company. A very cool CEO stepping down. A young guy taking the helm (and with a ponytail...). A big shift towards open source, the coolest thing in town, but few talking about your new directions and improvements. Just assuming you are a walking dead.

That has been Sun Microsystems for the last six years. However, they lost market share for five in a row, then they turn it around. Now Sun has gained market share for four quarters in a row. IDC figures show Sun garnering 10.8% of all server sales in 2006 vs. 9.5% the year before (Gartner says pretty much the same). With a 2% market gain, while IBM and HP saw declines. In the firm's fiscal second quarter ending Dec. 31, the company finally got back in the black with earnings of 4 cents per share, its first profit since 2004...

That's a lot of good stuff and shows they are executing the plan. On top of it, there is open source. I am not advocating that their turnaround is all about open source. But there must be something about it...

Sun is the #1 contributor of open source code among companies. They had OpenOffice, then Solaris, then Java. A ton of code. Everything they are doing now smells of open source. They wandered a bit around OSS licenses, with Jonathan Schwartz saying GPL sucked in a famous OSBC keynote, then going for CDDL, then back to GPL (which, apparently, does not suck anymore ;-) It is never easy to do a U turn for a large company, but it is a sign of being smart. Change and adapt fast, as a startup.

They are thinking as an open source company, albeit big. And with JavaME, they are mobile. Big time, considering how many phones out there support JavaME. In a way, they are the biggest mobile open source company around...

Moreover, they are well positioned to gain from the GPL3 mess, the Red Hat vs. Oracle mess, the next mess (we are good at creating them in open source). OpenSolaris might well be what people will go for. It is OSS, it is stable and good (nobody ever questioned it), it has a company behind it that does not look it is going to disappear soon.

In a nutshell, open source allows them to sell more boxes... That's all they need to be successful. On top of it, they will start making money with subscriptions, which won't be marginal in their top line anymore. You can "use" open source in multiple ways. They are looking smart about how they are doing it.

Anyway, I have the feeling Sun is doing quite good. They have nice numbers, they are going in the right direction, they are taking advantage of the open source paradigm shift, they are well positioned in mobile (another paradigm shift). Unfortunately for them, the press does not like them anymore. Maybe if they built a cool smartphone...

Vista: good for Microsoft or Apple?

I had the opportunity to look at Vista yesterday. I know, I am late, but it is not mobile or open source so I thought I could wait...

First impressions: WOW. Nice looking interface (looks like a Mac), it has search (like the Mac, a year or more ago) and gadgets (those are called widgets in the Mac world), they improved security, file sharing and the movie editor (you know the drill... already there in a Mac).

Sooooo, the big news is: Vista is a step closer to a Mac.

Now, I am not a Mac user. I never had a Mac. I had to buy a Mac for my wife because it matched her iPod. I now have to buy Macs for all salespeople in Funambol (a tip for CRM vendors: build Mac integration fast and you will win). And even for techies, like Stefano, Kincy, Harrie and others. I am chased by Macs...Macs crash like Windows. The hardware is not superior because I have seen many return their laptop, including Dave and Matt.

However, my brain works in strange ways. The moment IE7 came out and finally had the features of Firefox, I switched from IE6 to Firefox, just because Microsoft was pushing me hard to upgrade. Why would I get a browser that had the same features that Firefox had months before? Firefox had to be more stable and I assumed "they must be working on the next features, while Microsoft is chasing them"...

Therefore, I have the feeling that the moment they will force me to upgrade to Vista, I might jump to the light side of the force (anything that is not Microsoft is light, I guess).

Am I alone? Probably so... Or maybe not. Why would you upgrade to an OS that is like the one that has been out there for more than a year and can run your Windows as well (the opposite not being true)?

Since I am talking about switching, let me ask Steve Jobs for two necessary features:
1. Please give me a VGA output. My life is giving presentations (sad, I know) and I will lose the dongle in a month... You switched to Intel, you can switch to VGA too...
2. Please give me a touchpad mouse with the right button. Yes, I understand I can achieve it with an external mouse or a click on the keyboard. But it is not the same. If it is just for advanced users, put it in the high end laptops only. Please...

That said, I believe I might be close to switch. Definitely closer than I ever thought. If I am not the only lunatic out there, Vista might be good for Microsoft - as they said - but it might be even better for Apple...

3GSM - day 3 (and last for me :-)

Day 3 is a strange day at 3GSM. The first half is fast and furious, then - after the storm - the calm builds in. At noon, the taxi line outside the show is already long. By 2 pm, they are all gone. Therefore, your Wednesday morning agenda becomes absolutely crazy, with ten meetings per hour, since everybody is trying to squeeze in one last meeting. Past lunch time, the wind is gone.

Left alone, in the afternoon I spent some time visiting Hall 8. The hall where the money is. Where the exhibitors are the device manufacturers, who plunk unbelievable amounts of money to look bigger and more successful than the others.

Nokia announced a good amount of devices. Huge booth, an enormous amount of phones, each with a Finnish person ready to help you, if you had any question. A strong angle on music, which is not surprising looking at the competition. Some device updates, but mainly lots of boring phones that give you the impression they are not going in the right direction... Still, I found one that I liked. The E65. The first Nokia E series device in slider format. Nice format, appealing to the Italian eye, also powered with email and "business" features like conference calling and mute/unmute (a business feature? since when?). It supports 3G and wi-fi, but it also sports a 2 megapixel camera, and 50MB built-in memory expandable with microSD cards. A mix of features that should appeal the prosumers, that want advanced features (such as VOIP on wifi in the office) but also a compact format and a good look. I bet it is going to be a winning device for Nokia. At least, it shows something innovative and thought for a precise segment, which is growing fast.

Motorola had a smaller booth and really claustrophobic. Again, a million phones with the feeling they also lost their touch (it is hard to compete in this market...). The MOTORIZR Z8 was supposed to be the star of the show. But with that yellow line, I did not even bother opening it. It is just ugly. Some updates on the Q were pretty cool, but I can't say I felt innovation was there.

The Sony Ericsson booth was full of cool music phones. Still, it wasn't crowded. Although as a company they might not be considered trendy, they are in a fun hip trend and I feel they are creating devices that people want to buy. There is a clear segment for a music - phone convergence and they are hitting it big. Kudos to them, I believe they will keep doing great.

The LG booth was very sophisticated, with the Chocolate everywhere. Classy, almost upscale, it gave you a feeling of wanting in. As in a party where you do not know if you will have to stay outside for an hour to wait or if you will be chosen to join the lucky ones. The superstar was the one LG Prada phone (a.k.a. the iPhone killer or KE850), in the hands of a nice lady who was cleaning it after each use. Sleek, cool, it was screaming "buy me because I will make you look rich and famous". Rich for sure, since it is going to cost north of 600 euros... But I have to say it had a very nice interface, easy to use and attractive. Not having a keyboard or buttons does not prevent a call, but still makes selecting a contact a bit of a challenge. Typing a message is hard, and they offer only a simulated phone keyboard with just numbers (imagine how hard it will be with a full simulated keyboard as in the iPhone). The fact that the lady was cleaning the screen every 5 minutes makes my point on this kind of input interface... If they invent a way for humans not to sweat (Prada could), then it will be perfect. Once again, a niche device like the iPhone but quite innovative. Too bad they were copied by Apple who jumped the gun and make it all look exactly the opposite. Man, I love Steve Jobs!

That's it. I did not visit Samsung and others because I was tired. And I had to catch a flight to leave Barcelona. Tomorrow, the show is only for the exhibitors, who will visit each other since there are no visitors anymore. Enjoy the rest of the show, I am out of here :-)

3GSM - day 2

Day two of 3GSM is usually busier than day one. It does not happen in any other conference I know, but it is common here... Today, it was no different. Our booth was inundated by people, mostly mobile operators and partners. What a difference a year makes: a year ago, people were stopping at our booth, looking at us with a strange face and saying "what do you mean with mobile open source?". This year, they come and already know about us. Strange feeling.

I also found out you can use our cell phone holder also to juggle (works well to attract visitors and you can build on the funambol story), as a soccer ball and even to play catch. Multipurpose cell phone holder...

I had a moment to walk around, talking to Trolltech and Access (both doing mobile open source stuff). They had two nice parties inside the conference. Lots of people and not just for the good wine. Mobile open source is going mainstream. No surprise.

Lastly, I was intrigued by a new device by Neonode, a Swedish company. Extremely small and light, iPhone-sque on the input side (no keyboard, you use your fingers) but based on Windows Mobile. Fully featured, with even too many apps on it. But also open (or so they claim) to accept applications for third parties (Neonode Friends). If it takes off, it could be a cool device for our community to build applications on. Porting our Windows Mobile client on it would be a breeze. Once again, it is just another sign of divergence and segmentation. There will be more, I am sure.

The interesting part, though, was the marketing tactic they used to launch the device. The campaign was built around the actual birth of the device ("a new breed is born"). That included a lot of girls dressed up as nurses... In a male-only environment (3GSM is the only place on the planet where the restroom line is longer on the male side) it is old but working tactics. The traffic on their booth was unbelievable. Lots of cameras and dark suits... It is a sad lesson for marketeers, which repeats itself year after year.

Tomorrow is my last day at 3GSM. I can handle three days but then my body starts complaining. It has been fun so far, let's see what Wednesday has to offer. I haven't seen a shocking announcement since the beginning, but the mood is definitely upbeat. Maybe tomorrow is the day of the iPhone killer...

3GSM - day 1

Busy day in Barcelona, as expected. Lines not as long as in previous events, though. A smoothly organized event, considering the size... The weather is gorgeous, which helps going through the 9 am - 7 pm crazy marathon.

For the first time, mobile entertainment has a big presence. We are used to have it at CTIA, but here it is new. At CTIA, you have Hollywood. At 3GSM, you have Bollywood, with a mobile film premiere. I am sure the Festival people in Cannes are asking themselves why their counterparts in Barcelona had to go all the way to India instead of Europe, but that is another story...

After a good amount of years (when GSM became 3GSM...), today everyone is talking - again - about mobile bandwidth. HSDPA is everywhere. The carriers have to defend themselves from the message Intel is proposing (this year for real, I guess): "WiMAX is here"... In reality, we all know that nobody really needs that much bandwidth. A phone does not really need video... Messaging is going to be light in size because people cannot even type a long message without a keyboard. Who cares about bandwidth? 3G is more than enough...

Lots of announcements about push email as well, both on the enterprise side (e.g. a ton of new Nokia phones, the Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 that I played around with, and so on) and - finally - also on the consumer side. I have the feeling our "mobile data for the masses" story is hitting the wires big time and people are noticing it. Competitors are embracing the idea (that's flattering, but I would rather be alone, thanks :-) Mobile 2.0 is happening now. Messaging is a key part of it. Let's get people what they want: a cheap way to send their pictures from their phone to their families at home. Forget bandwidth and movies on phones (please...).

So long from Barcelona, I won't talk about the parties because I am here to work (yeah, right ;-)

A good reason to visit 3GSM

Just in case you are still doubtful if you want to take a flight on Sunday to get to Barcelona, here you have a good reason to visit 3GSM. We are giving away cell phone holders...

They are soft, you can squeeze them to lower your tension, you can throw them to your dog, you can put them on your nose to look like a clown and make your kids laugh, they can even hold a cell phone on your desk.

The ball represents the world, since our downloads are coming from any corner of the planet (212 and counting, the Vatican still missing though...) and the community makes our server tested on every device with every firmware version on every carrier in the world.

Brace yourself, 3GSM is next week

It is that time of the year. The time for 3GSM, the largest conference in mobile. The craziest event in wireless...

As usual, PR people started bombarding us with announcement the week before, to avoid being buried among a million press releases. So you already have Microsoft announcing Windows Mobile 6, Nokia rolling out a free mobile map service and Samsung launching a would-be iPhone beater.

On our side, we announced a preview of our Funambol v6 release, including a very cool Open Source Java Push Email Client for Mass Market Devices (all capital, do not ask me why but that's how marketing works) and a Mobile Email Portal for Consumers. If you want to see them, we are at booth 1J46 in Hall 1 (same as last year, close to the coffee break table ;-)

Barcelona will be flooded by mobile people. Last year, Barcelona did not know what 3GSM was (since it was in Cannes before... BTW, I loved that show). This year, they know. Prices for rooms skyrocketed... A room that normally costs 200 euros (I was in Barcelona around Christmas...) is now well over 1,000 euros... Taxi drivers will try to rip you off, if you do not speak Spanish. Restaurants might follow suit (hey, you want to eat paella, right?).

In any case, it will be fun, as usual. Day and night. Mobile is hotter than ever. If you are going there, stop at our booth and let's chat about it. See you in Barcelona.

Hello, Dave!

One of the interesting announcement of DEMO 07 has been DAVE (Digital Audio Video Experience) by Seagate. It is a very small storage drive (credit card size) with Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support. It boasts up to 14 days of standby power and 10 hours of continuous use, it can be accessed from anywhere up to 30 feet (9.1 meters), it will ship in May/June and it will cost around $150.

What does it mean?

It means you can store 20 Giga of your stuff in it, put it in your bag and access it from your cell phone. Wirelessly.

In theory, it makes a lot of sense. You have a growing need for storage. You want your data always with you. Therefore, you go out with Dave at night. It speaks to your cell phone, PDA, mp3 player, iPhone (yeah, right, like you will be able to write an app on it), your PC at home and so on. DAVE kills the need for synchronization. It is a one-stop-shop for your data storage.

In practice, I do not think the concept will fly. IXI tried something like this with the PMG (Portable Mobile Gateway). Devices that only solve an infrastructure problem, but require no physical interaction with the mobile user, have no appeal. The thing does nothing. No beep, no lights, no tactile feedback, nothing. It is in your bag. Still. It appeals to geeks but not consumers. I can see people showing it off in a coffee place in San Jose, not in a bar of Milan. It is not fashionable, it is geeky (and black).

As you probably know, I am not a fan of mobile convergence. I believe in divergence. DAVE pushes divergence, taking care of a basic task (storage) and adding yet another device. I should like it. However, I just can't see it as a viable mass solution. I believe phone will just add more storage (see the iPod Nano, does it have enough storage in a limited space?). Storage won't be a good reason for divergence. User interfaces will. Usage segmentation will. Multiple devices with local storage, same data, to be synchronized.

One thing I really like about the way Seagate approached the software component of DAVE: open source. The API to access the device will be all open source. That's mobile open source, by the way. That will generate a ton of innovation. Someone very smart will build something we are not even thinking about today. Maybe one day you'll put your DAVE in your car and leave it there. Or it will be strapped to your purse. We'll see. Let open source people take care of it. They know better.

Sexy as in Open Source

Roberto Galoppini has a blog on commercial open source, that I would strongly recommend to anyone interested in the topic (not just because he is Italian or because he interviewed me some weeks ago). Lately, he has been blogging about open source franchising. Very interesting stuff.

His last post is about a presentation he gave at Barcamp, titled "Free as in Business: lucrative coopetition".

He is presenting a few taxonomies to categorize commercial open source projects. We all like taxonomies, since the game is trying to put your own project somewhere (then you should build a quadrant and put yourself in the upper right corner ;-)

I guess Funambol is Hybrid, Symbiotic, Externally Funded. Or maybe not... That's the fun part of taxonomies, you never fit squarely in one category...

There is one sentence in the post, though, that I strongly disagree with. Roberto writes:

Open Source is not sexy yet

Open Source is sexy. The problem might be that we show too much. The code is there, there is nothing we hide. Fully naked. Always. However, I would not go back to proprietary fully clothed software. Code hidden under ten tons of clothes. And you know they will not show you anything, as much as you try to convince them. THAT is not sexy.

Go naked.

Billing, billing, billing...

In my Mobile 2.0 Manifesto, I mentioned that a key element for the success of Mobile 2.0 will be moving everybody in mobile to flat fee (item 4). It is the only possible model for people to embrace data usage on a cellular phone.

Luckily, we are getting closer to this goal in the US. Sprint has a $15/month unlimited plan which is fantastic (too bad is not based on GSM...). T-Mobile has a $5.99 plan with some limitations, but the price is right (and there are ways around the limitations ;-)

It is not all good, unfortunately. Cingular (sorry, at&t) unlimited plan is $49.99, which is a non starter for consumers... If you look at the recent data ARPU from their last quarter, it was $7.19... A number that include SMS, which still represent the largest chunk. I honestly believe they would be better off with a $15 unlimited plan. Higher data ARPU, simpler plans, happier customers. What's wrong with that?

When you look at Europe, it is even worse. Almost everywhere you find only pay-by-kilobyte plans. I wrote it before, but... how the heck do I know how big is a kilobyte? If I am downloading my email, how can I know how much data will I consume? I will not know, because I am not going to use it... And it does not help when you hear horror stories, like the guy who got a €50,000 bill for data usage in a month... It scares people away (rightly so).

There are bright spots, however. 3 in particular (that's Three, like H3G). They have in Italy a €19 plan, with 5 Gigabyte of traffic. I do not know how big is a kilobyte, but I know a Giga is big enough for a lot of emails... In the UK, they launched the X-Series: X-Series Silver at £5 (including Skype calls) and X-Series Gold at £10 (including Sling TV). They call them "unlimited plans", but they are limited (e.g. 1G/month for browsing and 5,000 Skype to Skype minutes per month)... Still, they are a great deal and a great start.

It is funny: Europe had the best SMS plans and SMS exploded. US had the worst SMS plans and SMS never took off (please, I beg you, stop asking me to pay 15 cents for receiving an SMS...). For data plans, it is exactly the opposite. The US is ahead. Therefore, the initial growth will happen in the US. Europe will follow, hopefully fast.

In essence, item 4 of my Mobile 2.0 Manifesto is still a bit far from becoming mainstream. In particular in Europe. But if you look back at a year ago, the jump was impressive. It is getting close to reality. Let's just wait for a few months more and the iPhone is going to crack the data plans market open...

Remote sync your smartphone with SyncML and Funambol

Once again, browsing the web, I found an article on SmallNetBuilder about how to synchronize your smartphone with Funambol. It is quite detailed, so I would recommend it as a must-read for anybody having a smartphone and looking to sync contacts and calendar over-the-air (and, no, it does not talk about the iPhone, sorry).

The article is: Remote sync your smartphone with SyncML and Funambol

Open Source conferences are boring

Yesterday, I spoke at the "Open Source meets Business" conference in Nuremberg. The atmosphere was magic, since it snowed the night before and the city was all white (a bit of a change from the meeting I attended in Miami last week, where we had dinner pool-side). They had to postpone the program for an hour because of the snow, which forced lunch at 2 pm. I am Italian and I adapt easily, but you do not want to talk at 1:59 pm in front of hungry Germans...

Everyone in open source was there. It was amazing how many people they were able to get together. However, it felt kind of boring... Been there, done that. With the addition of 90%+ of the people in a dark suit, the highest percentage I have ever seen. Even more than at 3GSM, where half-naked girls in the booths balance the dark of the just-male visitors. Political incorrectnesses at his highest.

Open source conference smell of deja-vu. Same stories (we are good, they are bad - we are conquering the world, they will all die), same people. All the time. I wrote this before. This conference was flawlessly organized. The place was great. The castle at night was fantastic, as it was the beer (and the bratwurst). The right people were there. All perfect. But still boring...

In open source conferences, the excitement is gone. Open source is mainstream. It is everywhere. It is not news. In particular, when we preach to the choir.

On the contrary, it is still very exciting when you push open source in front of an audience that does not know about it. Such as 3GSM and CTIA for us, coming up in the following weeks. That mobile crowd finds open source interesting. Mobile open source is exciting stuff. They get excited. I get excited.

So... you are all invited to visit our booth at 3GSM in Barcelona next month. And no, sorry, we are not going to have half-naked girls in the booth (however, Daniele will be there). Sorry, we are open source, we do things differently. We are fun. We are not supposed to be boring.

Right?

A port to push

I found out yesterday that the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) has assigned Funambol an official tcp/udp port. Port 4745 belongs to fmp, a.k.a. Funambol Mobile Push.

What does it mean? I am not totally sure, but I believe it is cool to have a port assigned by IANA, that nobody else can use...

Jokes apart, the port is assigned to our TCP-based push mechanism, to push email (and more) to mobile devices. That is, to notify a device there is email ready to pick up. The famous beep of your BlackBerry: "You got mail!".

We also have an SMS-based push mechanism, which is linked to the OMA standard, but it is sometimes a bit too expensive to use, in particular for enterprises (not a major problem for mobile operators, since the cost for them to send an SMS is pretty much zero). TCP-push is a better solution in some cases and we offer our users to choose the best option suiting them.

This gives me another opportunity to talk about why push is important for mobile email. Some people tell me "I do not really need push, I can pull my email when I want and it will be enough". That is true, but let me tell you a secret: you won't...

You won't check your email often on your phone. You will do it rarely, when you have spare time and you are not going to get close to a PC in the next 30 minutes. When you are mobile, you are most likely about to go home or the office, or you just got out of the home or the office. You have a PC there, you do not really feel the need to check your email on your phone right away. You can wait.

If you are around and your phone beeps, showing a message from your boss (that is, either the one at work or your wife), you will answer. You will not delay a reply. You will react. You have to. You cannot wait.

The usage of a mobile phone is all about reacting, not acting. Pull is acting. Push forces reacting. That's why it works. That's why it is addictive. That's why you use a BlackBerry. That's why you use SMS.

And do not tell me you wait until you get home to answer a SMS from your wife ;-)

Steve Jobs blew it?

The day after the the launch of the iPhone I really felt alone... I wrote a negative post about it (actually, two), while everyone else was writing great reviews. Now the pendulum has swung...

In one comment on Computerworld, Mike Elgan went all the way. The journalist simply said "Steve Jobs blew it". Here are his reasons:

1. Jobs raised buyer expectations too high.
2. Jobs raised Wall Street expectations too high.
3. Jobs gave competitors a head start.
4. Jobs undermined Apple TV hype.
5. Jobs put iPod sales at risk.
6. Jobs wrecked Cisco talks.

I believe it counts as heresy, punishable with a life with Zune...

Top forty under 40

America Venture Magazine named forty "Leaders in the Emerging Growth Technology Industry" under 40 years. Somehow, I made the list. It is quite funny to read what they say about the other 39 people:

Call it 2006’s most promising young guns. The top 40 under 40 list is our remarkable selection of those talented young leaders who, with deep understanding of today’s fast changing technology, had the extraordinary ability to develop a new variety of business models with a vision for the future and community involvement. The incredible part, that each of them made their dreams come true at a very young age. In the selection process, American Venture Magazine considered the nominees' achievements and ground-breaking efforts in the following areas: vision, leadership, development strategies, innovation and achievement. [...]
Through their passion, they embrace risks and commit to what they believe in. They are definitely doing something right.

This is a bit too much, even for my big ego. Anyway, let me focus on one good thing: I am still considered young despite the gray hair I saw this morning looking in the mirror :-))

Two principles of successful open source businesses [InfoWorld blog]

I met with Matt in Salt Lake City over the weekend (yep, I went skiing at negative Fahrenheit temperatures...) and we talked during a nice dinner. He blogged about things I wrote here in the past. It is funny to see that other people are better than you at explaining your own thoughts...

I would therefore suggest you to check his post clicking here.

I just want to add a comment to "Sell open source to those who don't like/trust open source". Selling to someone that does not like/trust/use you is nothing new. Skype does it. They make money because people do not use Skype (that is, calling a landline). If everybody had Skype, they would be out of business. That's an interesting tought for eBay ;-)

Apple, please do not forget the developers (again)!

I wrote my last post on the iPhone at midnight in Europe, right after "watching" the launch, then I went to bed. I woke up and I found out I was the only idiot who wrote something negative on the iPhone... It is sad to be alone... Since I am currently alone at home in California with family 10,000 miles away, it is even worst...

Jokes apart, I thought about it a bit more and I did not change my mind (double idiot). It is a smartphone, it has a limited market, you are going to sweat on the good looking screen while calling someone (I know you sweat as well, Steve) and it is nothing terribly new (check this image about an LG phone and let me know how different it looks... If LG had Steve Jobs, it would be a cool company ;-)

Probably, it is a great Video iPod with network connectivity. A cool looking PDA. A small networked tablet PC. Three niches. It is going to be all over Silicon Valley (and I am going to get one) but I stick with the idea that is never ever going to challenge the RAZR, until they have a mini or a nano.

That said, one thing is really bothering me, if it is true (never trust Apple rumors...): they plan to lock the phone completely, so that nobody will be able to add any application. According to the NYT, Steve Jobs said:

“We define everything that is on the phone. You don’t want your phone to be like a PC.[...] These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them"

I beg to differ.

A locked device works well for single-purpose ones. Like an iPod. Multi-purpose devices (also known as smartphones, like the iPhone) do many things and letting the user decide what to do is key. We are quite different out there. The ability to add third party apps has been the reason why Palm has been successful (together with the synching capability). You can't lock a smartphone or people will develop for different platforms and innovation will go elsewhere.

Since I sort of represent the largest development community in mobile (we are getting close to one million downloads...), what I am reading is: go away, we do not want you. We won't be able to have the Funambol plug-in on the iPhone. No open source push-email. No open source PIM synching. No way to put all the apps that people built on our platform on the iPhone.

That is stupid. Where will our community go? To OpenMoko, first. To Microsoft Windows Mobile, second. If you are a startup and you have a cool app in mind, where will you develop it first? On Windows. Same happened for the Mac. If you have the next killer VOIP client, you will build it for Windows Mobile, not the iPhone. There, you will be stuck with whatever Apple gives to you. Even if it sucks or you do not want to get locked on iMac... Innovation will go elsewhere.

Outside developers are a phenomenal resource. Look at Google. They have the brightest people on the planet but the coolest products were written by non-Google people (then they bought them). Innovation came elsewhere. It is not different for Apple.

Apple, you chose to build a smartphone, not me. I was not expecting it. Now it is much better for you to let us develop for it... Niche smartphone with no developers is a niche of a niche. Lock the iPhone nano, which will do just two things well, it will be fast, small and supercool. Not that smartphone.

Man, I feel alone...

Yikes, it is a smartphone!

As you certainly know, Apple launched the iPhone today. Great show by Steve Jobs, as usual. And surprising announcement, at least for me. Everybody is excited about the device (the stock market for sure, with AAPL up 7% and RIM down 7%...), I am not that much. Obviously, I need to get my hands on it and play with it, but one thing is clear: it is a smartphone!!!

It is funny how nobody noticed it with surprise. I was not expecting a smartphone... Apple is a great consumer company... Smartphones represent a minuscule size of the mobile market. The smartphone market is not even considered "consumer". It is an enterprise market, prosumer at best. Apple target is 1% of the entire device market in 2008. That's nothing. That will be a rounding error in Nokia or Motorola or even Samsung market share... The iPhone is not a RAZR, not by a mile.

Moreover, the iPhone does not even look like an enterprise device. It just looks like a smartphone for geeks (and I love geeks, do not get me wrong, but we are not the majority out there...).

On top of it, it is pricey... At $499, you need to be a wealthy geek... Did anyone notice that the BlackBerry Pearl is much smaller, looks pretty cool and cost you $199?? When I saw it for the first time I thought "wow, that might get into the hands of consumers". I have a hard time thinking the same for the iPhone...

When it comes to the UI, I am happy to hear from Steve that our fingers are designed for interacting... But touching something requires a tactile feedback. If I touch a screen, there is no feedback. When I touch buttons, I get it. Did anybody notice a difference between the buttons in a BlackBerry, Treo, Q or E61? I do. They feel different when I touch them or push them. You are going to miss it with the iPhone... Look at the iPod: it is all about tactile feedback. The wheel is just perfect. It feels perfect. A screen won't. Never. It is cold and flat.

How innovative is it? Well, have you looked at the OpenMoko device? Gulp, it is a smartphone and it does not have a keyboard as well. It is based on the same idea. Steve said they patented everything about the iPhone. Good for them... If you are a geek developer and you have to choose between a fully proprietary solution and a fully open source device, what would you choose? They are both based on a Unix derivative... I would go with OpenMoko, where you can freely build any kind of application without paying a toll to Apple.

Lastly, and this is for geeks, it does not support 3G. No UMTS, only EDGE. That's slooooow for a geek. I am happy about the wi-fi support, but this is a device that is supposed to change the way I interact with the world when I am mobile (and I do not have wi-fi everywhere today). It is going to be sloooooooooow!!

Ok, I believe I have been a bit too harsh on this one. I really want to play with it and say I was wrong. But I won't be able to do it for the next six months... That's an eternity in mobile. Where is the Apple that announced a device and it was available in store the same day???

In a nutshell:

1. It is just a smartphone
2. It is a smartphone for geeks only
   
3. It is pricey even for a geek
   
4. Input is going to be clumsy
5. It is not that innovative
   
6. It is slow
   
7. It is going to take six months before we see it

I might be wrong on everything, and I hope to be. I am an Apple fan. I bought dozens of iPod Shuffle before Christmas, after all... If I look at it with a positive angle, the iPhone is very similar to the first iPod. That one was for geeks only, as well. Heavy and big. Then they made the mini and the nano and the last shuffle. Fantastic devices for the masses. Everybody got one.

I guess I will have to wait for the iPhone nano...

Five things

I promised myself and my family that I would not work during the holidays. That included this blog (which is more fun than work, but...). I have been good and maintained the promise (although I still checked my email few times a day on my mobile since I am addicted to my own software). Now it is time to start writing again...

When I was about to go on vacation, my friend Mike Olson at Oracle (a.k.a. Mr. Sleepycat) tagged me with the "Five Things" game. It is a pyramid scheme. I am supposed to write five things you do not know about me and tag five more people to do the same. Pyramid schemes are interesting because are social phenomena, like open source, where a group of people get together with a goal in mind (or just for fun). They die because of party poopers, killing the chain. I'll be happily one of them.

FIVE THINGS YOU DO NOT KNOW ABOUT ME

1. I lived in a mental institution for three years. Actually, not as a patient... My parents are both shrinks and worked there. It was easier for them to live in a apartment inside the hospital for the night shifts. Therefore, I spent the first three years of my life in a mental institution. It was a great experience, although I do not remember it, and it might explain a lot of things about me...
   
2. My high school was a "Liceo Classico". That is, I studied a lot of Ancient Greek and Latin and pretty much zero math. My grandma, a Greek and Latin teacher, always told me that classical studies "open your mind". I really hope so. It seemed not very helpful while moving into high tech, but it gives me a good amount of topics for boring social dinners.
3. I hate carrots, of any shape or form.
4. The girl I married attended my same kindergarten and was sitting in front of me for five years in high school. She was one of my preferred target for spitting paper balls with my pen during not-so-interesting lessons.
   
5. I am the only Italian on the planet who is crazy about baseball. It resembles soccer, after all. It is slow, there is a lot of strategy, it is all about episodes. The difference is that you can munch cracker jacks and talk as much as you want, knowing you are not going to lose the key moment: when you hear the crack of the bat, you have time to turn your head and watch the ball land in McCovey Cove. When the ball is in the net, it is too late... You need to wait until you are home to see the game again (yes, I do that as well).
   

That's it, I am not going to write the other 45 for now...

BAIA invited post on the Funambol model

The guys at BAIA - Business Association Italy America - asked me to write a post on their blog ("The Voice of the Italian & American Business Community") to explain the Funambol model and how I feel it could be replicated.

BAIA is an independent, nonprofit, member-based network whose mission is to create tangible business value by establishing a professional forum through which information, knowledge and opportunities can openly and effectively be exchanged between the business communities operating in the United States and Italian business interests. BAIA's new approach to business networking is based on an Open Source Governance model. BAIA aims to enjoy the support of anyone who shares the BAIA vision of an open exchange network.

I share the vision and I like the people running it (and I am not really a shy individual...), so here you have my post.

The Funambol model: US capital and Italian heart

Life as an emigrant is tough... You look back at your native country and you struggle between love and hate. Emigrants flee home because they go looking for something they could not find where they were born. They leave their heart in their home country, hoping to come back one day to find that everything has changed.

I left Italy for California in '99 and I go back home quite often. Not that much has changed, but I am not planning to give up that fast...

After founding a couple of companies in Italy and working for a public US company, I founded Funambol in 2002. Funambol is the mobile open source company, bringing BlackBerry-like capabilities to the masses. A Red Herring 100 company and the largest open source project in mobile with almost one million of downloads, Funambol has been funded mainly by US Venture Capitalist. The headquarter is in Silicon Valley, but the R&D is in Italy. In Pavia, close to the local university.

US capital and Italian heart.

Italy is a beautiful country, but in a state of crisis. The economy is suffering. Globalization is killing our small manufacturing companies. Competing with China in these markets is simply not doable. Protectionism attempt will fail. We need to move on.

Italy can compete on high tech and software in particular. Our labor cost in this sector is highly competitive. It might sound strange to many, but Italy has the lowest cost of software in Europe (35K/year Euro per engineer). That's extremely competitive with respect to Silicon Valley (the weather is still better here, sorry) and also with India or China, where wages keep appreciating every year.

In particular, if you compare the Intellectual Property protection Italy enjoys. I know of a few examples of outsourcing companies in India, where a group of employees took a product they were developing for a third party and started a new company... Outsourcing saves money and it is necessary, but can be risky in a country where the legal system does not support you. On top of it, Italy is the best with respect to loyalty of the employees (a key element in software, which is all about people)

When it comes to education, Italy ranks high. In my experience, the competence of Italian engineers is comparable if not better than American peers. Italy is the country of creativity. It is in our DNA. Software is creativity. Add some rigorous engineering and you have Ferrari, the most beautiful car on the planet, but also a technological jewel.

Software is great for Italy. It requires limited capital to start. If you use open source as a distribution model, it is even better. You can take advantage of globalization and reach markets anywhere on the planet.

When you are ready to go to the next step, however, risk capital is missing in Italy. The ability to manage risks of Silicon Valley VCs is unrivalled. All your connections are here, if you want to grow your company or find an exit via M&A. This is the place to be if you want to go big. Not just for cash, but for the mentality. Things move at a different speed in the Valley. And I do not believe it is going to change any time soon.

For now, I see a great opportunity for Italy to be a center of excellence for software outsourcing. Becoming a new Silicon Valley is the next step. We are not ready for that yet, but the Funambol model is a start. US capital and Italian heart. I hope many more companies will follow. It is simply the best of both worlds.

About Palm and buying back your own OS

I have tried to analyze the last move from Palm for a few days and I have found it an interesting challenge...

The story is quite complex, if you are not a Palm follower. Palm spun off PalmSource (their operating system) some time ago and launched a Treo with Windows Mobile. Then Access bought PalmSource for $324 million and pushed it even further towards Mobile Linux. Now Palm is paying Access $44 million for the license of Palm OS Garnet (the old version 5, the one that was supposed to be a transition to the version 6 that never saw the light of day, nothing to do with Mobile Linux).

So... You own an OS that everybody loves. You throw it into a separate company. You embrace a different OS that everybody hates (but you still launch a lot of devices on Palm OS, like the recently announced 680). Now you buy back an OS that is pretty much dead...

It sounds stupid, however:

1. $44M is a steal if you look at the $324M Access paid for PalmSource (THAT was crazy)
   
2. It protects your investment on the Palm OS Treo (650 and 680) and buys you time to move to a full Mobile Linux (which is a must to survive)
   
3. It puts you in a better position to negotiate with evil Microsoft if you are thinking to add another Windows Mobile device (please don't ;-)

Overall, I personally believe it was a smart move from Palm. However, the more I look at this and the more I am getting convinced that the need to get rid of Access means something: they can't work together. Therefore, I am ready to bet that Palm will announce a Mobile Linux device in the near future BUT it won't be based on ALP, the Access Linux Platform.

That's quite interesting. I look forward to seeing where they go with this...

The next SMS

I read an interesting article about text messaging today. For the lazy web link clickers out there (I subscribe to that list), here's a summary of the content:

Text messages sent to and from mobile phones will more than double over the next five years to 2.3 trillion messages sent by 2010, a survey said on Tuesday. [..] Total revenues from text messaging is forecast to grow to $72.5 billion in 2010 from $39.5 billion in 2005. [..] Gartner predicts the level of SMS messages will top 1.8 trillion in 2010" [adding that] "Wireless messaging is the most successful mainstream mobile data service to have emerged during the 30-year history of the cellular telecoms industry"

In a nutshell: mobile messaging rules when it comes to data and it will keep ruling for the next five years. Forget about mobile TV, games, picture sharing and such. Messaging is king.

I have a small question, though. If messaging is the driver of future data revenues, is SMS going to be adequate for the user needs? My answer is no...

1. SMS is limited in size of messages. It is not a problem when sending (people send Short Messages... fast and long SMS-typers are rare, although amazing to watch) but more when receiving. Screens are getting bigger, reading is not a problem. You can easily read a message sent from a PC on a mobile phone. Not with the current SMS. Combining more than one SMS is a horrible solution.
2. SMS just allows a single recipient. You cannot send a message to more than one person (and you pay for each message...). You cannot do reply-all (although there are some cool companies working on it). That's very limiting in this new age of social networking.
3. SMS does not support attachments. I am not talking PowerPoint here. That's power users. I am talking pictures... Every phone now has a camera. People want to send the pictures out. MMS has been a failure for the cost, configuration and clumsiness (in this order). The concept is still very valid. And a clear need is there.

We need messaging and SMS is not adequate. But it is pre-installed AND a standard working on every phone. That's the beauty of it. If you are in Europe, you know that half of the phones in a carrier network were not bought through that carrier. You take a SIM card, put it in. What works right away? Voice and SMS. Pre-installation and standard-based messaging is necessary.

So... that leaves you with the only option: the next SMS. Push-messaging (yep, SMS is push) based on standards, pre-installed on devices, capable of supporting attachments, reply-all and receiving your email. Your mobile life integrated with your web life. It's a SyncML client, or p-Imap or Lemonade. I do not really care. But I am convinced that is the future of mobile messaging for the three billion mobile users out there.

Not really a novelty, I know, but "Wireless messaging is the most successful mainstream mobile data service to have emerged during the 30-year history of the cellular telecoms industry". The funny thing is that it is not going to change any time soon...

It's the usability, stupid

In one of my past lives (I have plenty), I did a Ph.D. in usability. Since then, I can't resist from looking and playing with things, asking myself: why? Why are you asking me to do this? Why? Who designed this thing? How many real people (engineers belong to a peculiar species) ever looked at this stuff? Why?

A few weeks ago, my TiVo froze while playing. I called DirectTV and they made me re-format it. It froze again. They told me they were going to send me a new one for free.

They sent me the new DirecTV DVR instead.

I decided to give it a try. Although it was not built on open source as TiVo, all TiVo features were there. Actually, they even had a few more than TiVo. It was perfect from the requirements standpoint. The product manager checked all the boxes, QA did not find any bugs.

However, from a usability standpoint, it just sucks.

Nobody at DirectTV ever used it to watch a game. It is slow to respond to commands. It does not jump from one speed to another smoothly. You can just use it to watch a program as you would watch a tape on a VCR. Do not try to move around the program... All the features are there, but the consumer experience is just plainly bad.

What's the story here? The usability factor is key. Always key. Forever key. If you do not look at things with the eye of the user, you will build a perfect product that nobody will like to use. Emotions are everything.

When you look at mobile, the usability factor goes up an order of magnitude. You are dealing with a very small thing, that you carry around with you. Your attention span is measured in fraction of seconds, not minutes. You are not sitting on a couch or on a comfortable chair waiting. You are standing. You have people around you. It rains...

Still, so many products fail the usability test. Companies keep pushing the web paradigm to mobile users and complain about the network or the operators when their applications fail. They can't be used, they won't be used. Give me WAP a million times faster, I won't use it. Do not ask me to scroll and click. I won't. It should be simple but it is not. How many failures are we going to need for people to realize this?

I tried to send this message to DirecTV. I called them and told them their DVR sucked and I wanted my TiVo back. They said "Sorry, Sir, we do not have them anymore. And you just signed up for two additional years with us because you requested a new DVR. If you want, you can return it." That's interesting... My TiVo breaks. They send me a fake replacement "for free" and I am signed up for two more years... Or I can go back to VCR.

I went online, found a hacker TiVo site. Ordered a replacement hard drive. Assembled it. Put the TiVo back with double capacity. Sent the DirecTV DVR back to them.

I am back in TiVo heaven, smiling at how quick it is to respond to my commands and how well thought it is from the consumer standpoint. And I am now ready to move away from DirecTV directly to their competitors...

So much for usability. Believe me, I am not alone.