Funambol is a 2007 AO 100 Top Company

Last year we made the Red Herring 100. They do not name companies twice, so this year we won something else ;-) We made in the 2007 AO 100 Top Companies, which is a pretty trendy list.

Looking at the list, I noticed:

1. 13% of the companies in the list are mobile (thanks to the iPhone!). For example, there is AdMob, which is a cool company. Some of the others are mobile play but they do not know it yet: for example, Jajah (believe me they are a mobile play)
2. 5% of the companies in the list are open source, such as rPath, MuleSource and others.

Bottom line: MOBILE OPEN SOURCE RULES :-)

Look, what a nice icon!

Unfortunately, the quality of the picture is quite bad... But those with a good eye might notice a Funambol icon on my iPhone (my apologies to Safari ;-)

How to escape (iPhone) jail

I have a bet out (with myself) that someone will be able to completely hack the iPhone in less than two weeks. I am running out of time but it looks like people are getting very close. There is an (open source) tremendous effort on the iPhone Dev Wiki (that I am not linking because they asked not to), which is starting to bear fruits.

In a nutshell:

1. They know how to activate the iPhone without at&t (not how to unlock it, yet)
2. They apparently have gained full access to the file system, a.k.a. "How to Escape Jail" (although they have not posted software yet, so this is just a rumor)

Bottom line, I believe we'll have something before the end of the weekend. The issue is that Apple will be able to wipe every effort out with a single firmware update. It looks like a crazy race where evil (close as in jail) will sadly prevail against good (open as in free), but it is fun to watch anyway ...

You know for which side I am cheering ;-)

The iPhone nano is coming soon(er)?

I have been convinced from day one that the current iPhone will be a niche. After using one for a while, I am more convinced than ever... Too expensive, too slow, too closed. A fantastic device, do not get me wrong, but I am not giving up my Windows Mobile device with Funambol installed. I simply cannot live without push email and push calendar anymore. Or without a real keyboard. It looks to me like the same experience I had with Tivo and the DirecTV DVR. When you get spoiled, it is hard to go back. Even if the new device has more features and it is gorgeous. The basic is missing and I simply need it.

Now, if I am not switching to the iPhone (and I am a smartphone user), then who would? People that do not have an iPod and are planning to upgrade their dumbphone. What will suffer? The iPod sales numbers...

Yep, the iPhone will eat into the iPod market.

What can Apple do? Launch the iPhone nano as soon as possible... I wrote about it many times, this will be the killer device (and it would be a dream if Apple agreed with at&t only for the iPhone and they would made this completely unlocked...) but the rumors are now stronger. JP Morgan reported that it could happen even before Christmas. It is the only way for Apple to avoid iPod numbers to collapse...

Will it look like this?
Probably not, but it would be interesting to guess which features would they cut from the original to the nano. What would I cut? Let me try:

1. Calendar -> only for geeks and if it is not synchronized, useless even for geeks...
   
2. Stocks -> only for geeks with money (very small category)
3. Calculator -> only for geeks that forgot how to divide numbers, due to excessive use of computers
4. Notes -> who takes notes on a mobile device with a supercrippled keyboard??
5. Clock -> believe me, you have another device on you that tells you what time it is...
   
6. Weather -> well, this would be really nice to have but I am out of room... You'll have to use the browser for it, sorry.

What would you cut? What do you really need on a phone? Can you live without weather or would you rather sacrifice maps?

iPhoneDevCamp starts Friday night

Here is an event not to be missed if you live in the Bay Area. Tomorrow night (Friday) starts iPhoneDevCamp, "Making the web a better place for iPhone". It is a developer meeting, going on for the entire weekend. The outcome? An unlocked iPhone (just kidding)...

Funambol is sponsoring the pizza on Saturday night. Hey, it is developers on a mobile platform, we just launched the first contacts app for the iPhone, built by a bunch of Italians... we definitely could not have missed it and pizza clearly fits the bill. Just to keep your expectations in check, it is going to be American pizza ;-)

I'll see you there.

IT Conversations

For those who like podcasts and do not mind my Italian accent, I had a (pretty long) chat with Scott Mace of IT Conversations a few weeks ago.

myFUNAMBOL: your contacts on the iPhone

So I listened to the imaginary suggestion of Steve Jobs and I showed up Friday at 6 pm at the Apple store in Palo Alto. I saw the long line (about 150 people), but not as long as I would have expected. I did not see Steve Jobs (who appeared from the sky in the store, some say). However, I saw a guy tearing one iPhone apart, in front of a camera (just for fun, I guess). The wait was too long, so I went out and had few beers with friends (that is what you are supposed to do on a Friday night, not standing in line...) and I came back at 10 pm (ok, maybe the beers were not few :-) Five minutes wait, and I got my iPhone. Went home, tried to activate it, waited until the next morning and had it working (and no hangover).

Now, the iPhone is an amazing device, with one missing feature that makes it just a toy for me, not something I can use everyday. It is missing over the air sync. That is, you cannot sync your address book or calendar, unless you are at home, your PC is on and you are connecting the iPhone to it with a cable.

I need my address book on the iPhone. Having wifi and cellular connectivity and being forced to use a cable is insane. I could do cable sync in the nineties with my Palm.

So... we decided to launch myFUNAMBOL.

myFUNAMBOL is a demo installation of our Carrier Edition (without push, in most cases). You can get email on your device for free (that is, your RAZR, Nokia, but also Windows Mobile) and you can sync your address book and calendar from whatever phone you have. It includes Outlook and iPod sync, but you can use the community plugins to sync Thunderbird, Yahoo, Evolution and so on. More info about it is on our web site.

The coolest thing is that you can use it with the iPhone.

So, if you have an iPhone and an old phone, you can sync your old phone and access your contacts on the iPhone. Or you can use Outlook, Thunderbird, Evolution to keep your address book updated in real time. Even Yahoo address book is there. Steve Jobs would say "this is the best portal we ever did".

For now, the myFUNAMBOL portal is beta and we are open it slowly. We received hundreds of requests in the first few hours and we are processing them. It is an early beta, so... be patient with us. In any case, more to come. This is just the beginning...

My imaginary review of the iPhone

I was surprised when I received the call from Apple Marketing. They asked me to review the iPhone two weeks in advance. I thought they could not give a damn about open source and the largest mobile community of developers, but I was wrong. They wanted me to review the iPhone.

I spent the last two weeks with the iPhone. The bottom line is: it is an awesome device, too pricey for many, too slow for most, too closed for sure. But just right for me (a niche of one).

It is really small and light. The screen is fantastic. The virtual keyboard sucks, despite the marketing hype, because it does not have tactile feedback. If you got used to T9 on cell phones, this is immensely better, so just suck it up. If you got used to a BlackBerry, keep it because you will still be much more productive, but you will still look like the salesman that you are, even with a camera and an MP3 player.

Other reviewers probably live on the North Pole and do not sweat. I live in California and I do. The screen is greasy after the two weeks and I have to clean it once a day. But who cares? It is so cool to take it out in public that I am even happy to keep cleaning it. Yesterday, I was at a Starbucks and I took it off to clean it. Girls attacked me. If you are single and geek (not that I am), spend the night in front of an Apple store. It will pay off during the weekend.

I still do not get why I had to activate it by myself, instead of having someone nice doing it for me in the store. I am working for Steve Jobs for free and I should feel better. But, hey, I did it in the comfort of my home and I could buy it at an Apple store... So it must be good for me.

Not having third party apps on the iPhone is just insane. "The first kit for software developers that is not an SDK (software developer kit)!" said Steve Jobs during WWDC. Yep, it is called a browser... Hey, many will do their best to build web apps but I miss some of the ones I have on my Windows Mobile. Again, who cares? No girl ever was attracted to a BlackJack.

Being forced to sync it via cable is so Palm HotSync and last millennium... Man, I have wifi and cellular connectivity (albeit slow like my 56k modem), and I cannot sync it over the air with my Outlook or Thunderbird. I would love to see the address book of my old crappy cell phone on the iPhone. I would really need Funambol for it (stay tuned...).

When I was about done with my review, I received a call from Steve Jobs himself. I was shocked. He told me to stop writing dumb things about the iPhone and Apple. He made sure I was informed that he does not read my blog. Before hanging up, he screamed "wake up and go get yourself in line in front of one of our stores, or you are not going to get one, you idiot!!".

I woke up.

Teens and mobile email

There is a debate out there about teens and their use of email vs. Instant Messaging (IM). Anecdotal evidence suggests they use more IM than email on desktops, these days. If you translate it into mobile - where they spend a ton of time and cash they did not earn - this might indicate that mobile email is not interesting for this segment. Not a small thing, since teenagers represent the fastest growing segment and the most technically savvy. On top of it, kids become adults one day... They will be the market-makers for the next 40 years...

A recent report in the UK from the BBC surprised me a bit.

In a nutshell:

1. 50% of 25 to 34-year-olds told ICM researchers they would not be able to carry on without e-mail
2. 44% of 35 to 44-year-olds said e-mail was vital
3. 41% o of teenagers said they relied on e-mail

I actually thought the gap between young and less-young would be bigger. Maybe young Brits are too shy to use IM ;-)

Anyway, the debate is interesting but, in my opinion, moot. Email and IM solve two different needs. Email is for asynchronous communication, IM is for synchronous communication. If I send you an IM, I expect you to answer right away. If I send you an email, I expect you to answer in a reasonable timeframe. IM does not kill email or viceversa. Both nicely co-exist.

IM requires people to have more time for others and be "available for interruption" (it has presence). It works well when you are a kid. IM time is higher over email time for teens (but email is not zero, you still need asynchronous communication...). When you grow up and start working, your IM time diminishes and your email time increases. I would bet that email time wins over IM time as soon as you join your first job.

Bottom line: teens are using email and will embrace mobile email (although maybe using it less than mobile IM, which is the SMS killer). Once they turn 24, I believe the switch happens. New generations with mobile experience will transform themselves in avid mobile email people. Consumer mobile email is going to be even bigger year after year.

The iPhone is going to change my world

No, I haven't changed my mind. I believe the first iteration of the iPhone is going to be for a niche. However, it is going to be a niche with a bang. The next three months will be iPhone mania. The first wave of buyer is going to be strong and iPhones will fly off the shelves. There is a cult around Apple products. They never gave up believing. They feel different. They are going to buy it at $600 + taxes, plus a $50/month voice+data plan (my prediction ). [update on June 26th: I missed by a bit, it is $59.99...]

Whatever happens next, I do not care. The iPhone has already changed the mobile world forever. More will happen from now to the end of the year. There is no way back.

Why? Because a carrier (at&t) completely gave up to a device manufacturer (Apple), opening up its entire network. This will force other carriers to compete ("my friend can do it with the iPhone on at&t, why can't I do the same with you?"). The wall garden is going to collapse quickly. Data plans will emerge to compete, because no carrier wants to give up its customers to at&t and the iPhone (the same is valid for Europe and Asia, they just have few months to prepare themselves).

If you are a carrier, what can you do? Offer services. Go beyond voice and SMS. Even with the network open, you still control your users. But you have to offer them a reason to stay with you. Give your consumers push email from wherever they have email, give them IM, give them content. Do not let device manufacturers and portals eat in your plate. React, embrace and remain relevant. Do not let them transform you into a dumb pipe. You still have time (not too much, though...).

The iPhone is the best damn thing that ever happened to mobile.

Look at portals... Google and Yahoo have been turning up the mobile volume by three notches. Yahoo is all about mobile. There is even a big board on 101 about Yahoo Mobile (that's THE sign of a turning point ;-)

Look at Microsoft... They just launched MSN for mobile, a week ago. "We firmly believe there is an inflection point here," said Phil Holden, Microsoft's director of mobile Web services. "There's a new battle, a new frontline developing on the mobile phone."

Look at device manufacturers. Nokia and Sony Ericsson brands are as strong as they ever been. They have a phenomenal opportunity to come back and play the Apple game. They are putting more and more open standards on devices. Nokia is even putting web servers on a phone (and it is open source). Imagine the chances of that happening with a wall garden...

June 29th is the turning point for the mobile market, the one we have waited for years. The fun starts now.

The Open Source CEO Series

Matt just started a new blog at CNET and needs to attract visitors. Since he is a marketing genius, he came up with the idea of hosting other open source people on it that would tunnel visitors to his blog (just kidding ;-). He started with Dave Rosenberg, then Marten Mickos, then his boss John Powell and finally Javier Soltero. He quickly ran out of good names, so I ended up being the fifth. Glad to be in such a good company. I recommend reading what the other CEOs are saying, because they are very smart people.

For those curious but affected by hyperlink-laziness here you have the content of what I told him (his blog has some additional comments, but mostly around his inability to choose a soccer team that can actually win something, instead of just talking about it...).

Name, position, and company of executive
Fabrizio Capobianco, CEO, Funambol

Year company was founded and year you joined it
The company was founded in 2003, but I was working on it before then.

Stage of funding and venture firms that have invested
We raised a Series A round in 2005 from Walden International (Mary Coleman) and HIG (Fred Sturgis). We then did a follow-up round in December of 2006, for a total of $10.5 million.

Background prior to current company
Funambol is the third company that I have started. The first one, in 1994, was Internet Graffiti - the first web company in Italy. The entire operation was run on Linux machines, loaded with the slackware distro (yep, that's A1, A2, ... floppies). In the late 1980s I was enlightened to the path of open source by Alessandro Rubini, a colleague in my university lab, where he wrote the Linux mouse device driver. My last serious job was at Reuters in 2002, where I ran operations around an online trading platform.

Biggest surprise you've encountered in your role with your company
The speed at which the industry has warmed to commercial open source. In late 2004, people started to believe me when I told them that I had found a way to balance being open source and making money, also known as funambolism or tight-rope walking. Before that, people dismissed me with "Yeah, right. Good luck with that." It changed so quickly - almost overnight. I was shocked.

Hardest challenge you've had so far at your open source company
Convincing salesmen to filter out 99% of their leads. The biggest issue for an open source company is defining its focus in the sales process. Going after anybody that comes to your door - even if they want to pay you - is guaranteed suicide. Commercial open source is all about qualification and filtering. It is tough to tell someone, "Sorry, we are not going to sell to you, even if you want to buy," but particularly if you're a salesperson. But you must if you want to succeed.

If you could start over again from scratch, what would you do differently?
I would try harder to hire Matt Asay. Letting him go to Alfresco was a mistake. Hey, you makes mistakes here and there.... :-)

Top three pieces of advice for would-be open source CEOs

1. Do not chase every lead that comes in the door. They might be few at the beginning, but if your project is a success you will be inundated by them. Build processes and tools to qualify your leads and make tough choices or you will drown quickly.
2. Fire anyone that says "We win simply because we are open source." Being open source is just a component of your strategy and most likely your big differentiator. But if all you have is that you are open source, someone else will do the same and kill you.
3. If you realize your project is not growing fast enough, maybe you made a mistake to make it open source in the first place. You need a big market to have a large open source project. If you attack a niche, you won't make it. If this is the case, look for the next gig. There is probably nothing you can do about it. De-open sourcing is not an option.

Why is Yahoo collecting my cell number?

It might be the open source soul in me, but I always hated companies collecting information about me. However, I realize sometimes it is a necessary evil and I can live with that. At least, I expect something tangible in exchange. If you just get my data and you give me nada, I get pissed.

One spectacular example is Yahoo Go, advertised quite a bit lately. There is an ad to get you to download Yahoo! Go 2.0 for Windows Mobile, shown below. I would suggest you click on it...


If you followed my suggestion, you have been presented with a page that starts with:

We found 79 phones that work with Yahoo! Go

However, if you scroll that list, there is NOT EVEN ONE phone that works! They all say "Coming Soon"... The message should say "We found 0 (zero, nada) phones that work with Yahoo! Go"...

Why would Yahoo do it? Because there is a clear invitation on the right to put your phone number in. They will gladly collect it, send you a message (for which, you'll pay in the US) and have you walk into their site from your phone. At the end, they will tell you your phone is not supported, but they will notify you once it is ready.

If they know my phone is not supported, why are they collecting my cell phone number? Why am I spending my money to receive a message? What do I get back? Nada de nada... I am pissed...

Let's hope the Chief Yahoo! now Chief Executive Yahoo! turns his company around. It starts from the small things, like this one. Don't be evil.

My personal review of the Helio Ocean

A few days ago, I walked into the Helio store in Palo Alto, talked to a cool store guy and walked out with an Helio Ocean. I am clearly biased on the device, since Funambol powers it, but I hope I can still be balanced in my review ;-)

Done with the caveat, a first impression: the Ocean is an awesome device :-)

The thing that makes it unique, for starters, is the sliding dual keyboard. That is, you slide out the keypad from the bottom when you need to call someone; you slide out the keyboard from the side when you want to type (and the screen turns into landscape).

I am a fan of tactile feedback, maybe because I descend from monkeys. I believe having a keyboard to type is a must, if you want to do email or IM. I am willing to change my mind in two weeks (the iPhone birth date), but I had confirmation of my suspicions last week at the Apple WWDC. On the Apple site, check the video of the VP iPhone Software typing on the iPhone : he wants to type "john". He does "j", then "o", then "j" again (oops), then backspace, then "j" again (ooooooops), then backspace and finally "h" and "n". Agreed, he was on stage and everybody was comparing his performance to Steve Jobs... but if the VP iPhone can't type on it under pressure, I sure will have the same issue while driving (note: there are studies that say that the vast majority of mobile emails are typed while driving...).


The communication features of the Ocean are astonishing. You can do email with Yahoo, Gmail, AOL, Earthlink, Windows Live and your POP/IMAP. With Yahoo, it is even push (nice ;-) You can do IM with Yahoo, MSN and AIM (no Google Talk). You can sync your address book with Helio, Yahoo and AOL (via SyncML, that is). It is a messaging monster.

To be honest, all those options and brands are even overwhelming. Trying to pack every email, IM and sync brand on the phone is confusing and limiting. For example, it does not scale (imagine adding even more brands, like MySpace, Facebook, and so on). Also, you cannot filter anything (and I do not want spam on my phone or - worst - to be notified when there is spam waiting for me...). My recipe for this is: one Email client, one IM client, one Sync client. They all talk to a server (or gateway), branded by the operator, where you can easily define filters and set whatever sources you have. Packing everything in the phone won't cut it in the long run.

Other nice features are Google Maps, with GPS support, and a search tool that looks into different search engines. Even Yelp. That is: you are looking for an Italian restaurant, you do a search based on where you are (the phone knows it...), you get results, you check what people say about those places and call the restaurant to make a reservation with a click. That's the power of mobility, localization and a device that has an unlimited data plan...

When you have GPS, cool things happen. For example, you take a picture and it gets "geotagged" when you send it to Helio Up. That means you do not need to write on the back of your picture where you were when you took that picture. Pictures tagged with date and location are the future of photo albums.

There are shortcomings, though. For example, you cannot add another sync server... Although I have inside information that it would work ;-) And you cannot sync calendars (well, also that one I know it can be easily done...). Even if you have a pIMAP capable server, it does not push emails to the device (it is Yahoo only). Even more, you cannot download Java apps on the device, if they are not on deck. That's insane: it has a fully open browser but you can't add apps to it?? If you are an open source developer, good luck trying to find a way to post applications on the deck. They do not even give you a link or an email of someone you can talk to... When will they understand this is what makes such a phone really useful??? Even Steve Jobs realized it recently. Give the power to developers, they will shock you.

Bottom line, the Ocean has a sliding keyboard. Big plus. It also costs $195 (vs. $500+ of the iPhone). Huge plus... It has 3G (vs. 2.5G). Big difference, since you do not need wifi.

It feels light, it feels fast, it is packed with a million features, it is reasonably priced. It is an awesome device.

The iPhone killer? Probably not (brand matters), but if you are looking at an iPhone alternative to spend less money and have great features... it is probably it.

Europe and New York

I am in Europe this week. I will be in Milan today, Rome tomorrow for an interesting event I am speaking at (with the US Ambassador and great entrepreneurs), Frankfurt on Friday and then back to the US, on the East Coast for a few days (New York). If you happen to be living in any of my stops, send me a note and I will be happy to meet.

The knight in shining armor

Writing nice things about your own product is bad manners. Linking someone else is pretty much the same, but you can always say "he said that, not me" and "I do not know the guy at all, I never met him and I did not pay him!".

Today, I was forwarded this post of someone I swear I do not know, never met and definitely did not pay...

Finally, Funambol
Several weeks ago, I got a Motorola Q–a very nice Windows Mobile based smartphone. I went back to Google and my “knight in shining armor,” Funambol, appeared (formerly Sync4j). As a commercial product with almost everything open source, I got an enterprise solution for free. First step was downloading and installing the server–which I put on my Ubuntu server. After 20 minutes of that and configuring my firewall, I was onto getting plugins. I installed one into Thunderbird that syncs Lightning and my contacts. I installed one on my new Motorola Q, one in my old PDA, and one in Outlook for good measure. The plugins have nice integration into Thunderbird, Outlook, and Windows Mobile, while not using Activesync. One awesome benefit is that I can now sync through the internet–no more USB cable. It just works.

The Winner
Funambol, in my mind, is the clear winner of syncing solutions. Cross-platform, open source, free, nice UI, remote syncing, and solid performance. There are plugins for Blackberry, Palm, Evolution, SugarCRM, Exchange, LDAP, iPod, and quite a few others. I now have my calendar and contacts synced on multiple computers and smart devices. I am happy since I am free of Windows and getting the most out of my smartphone.

Wow, I feel I should meet this person, know him/her and offer him/her at least a beer (so that s/he won't be able to write about us anymore ;-)

Arriving #1 at Monaco

Nope, I did not win the Monaco Gran Prix. And Ferrari was actually very slow this year in Monte Carlo...

However, Funambol yesterday won Best Messaging Infrastructure / Platform at the 4th Annual Global Messaging Awards. This was part of the Global Messaging 2007 conference in Monte Carlo.

This was "awarded to the product that has enhanced the existing messaging network by providing greater capacity, security, reliability or adds an additional application." (uuhhh, nice ;-)

As part of this, they provided us with a nice looking glass trophy. And nope, Caroline was not part of the ceremony and they did not give us good champagne to spray around (well, I believe, I wasn't even there accepting the award, Daniel was...)

Don't be dumb, give it an A (GPL)

Today the FSF has introduced the latest draft of GPL v3 and, at the same time, of AGPL v3. I am not going to comment on the changes of the GPL v3 (although the compatibility with Apache licenses is a great step forward), but I would focus on the AGPL v3 (a.k.a. GNU Affero GPL).

In a nutshell, AGPL v3 is the same exact document of GPL v3, with an additional paragraph on Section 13, which says:

Notwithstanding any other provision of this License, if you modify the Program, your modified version must give all users interacting with it remotely through a computer network (if your version supports such interaction) an opportunity to receive the Corresponding Source of your version by providing access to copy the Corresponding Source from a network server at no charge.

What this means is: if you run this software as a service (SaaS), everything else here applies. You must give back the source code. It closes the in(famous) ASP loophole.

Now, my suggestions on the last draft were:

1. Do not make the provision as in the current Affero license, that forces the ASP to offer a service to download the source code while you are using the program (insane, think how you could apply this to mobile phones)
2. Do not let Affero Inc. own the license but make sure it is managed by the FSF
   
3. Make it OSI approved

It might be my lucky day... since they just created the next HPL (but compatible with the other licenses) and:

1. The provision stated above is just perfect. You have to give the users an opportunity to receive the source code. CVS will do it.
2. They changed the name of the license, adding GNU at the beginning. It is pretty clear who owns it now ;-)
3. It is exactly as GPL v3 and I bet it will be OSI approved the day after it is final
   

The FSF did another interesting thing, compared to the last draft: they changed the license number of AGPL to v3 (from v2, as in the previous draft). So... there is no AGPL v2, like there is no Funambol v4... Aligning the two version numbers makes a lot of sense to me and it will prevent confusion.

Bottom line: if GPL v3 and AGPL v3 are exactly the same document and are 100% compatible, why would an open source developer choose to allow people to run its software as a service without returning the code to its community? It does not make any sense... Zero, nada... Every single developer that will have to choose between GPL and AGPL will go for AGPL. I guarantee it.

The only risk is ignorance. Therefore, the next fight is making sure that the entire open source community knows about AGPL. Let me start here.

Do not use GPL. Don't be dumb, give it an A. That's AGPL (and yes, I might have a t-shirt for OSCON ;-)

Steve Jobs is reading this blog?

I was reading Om transcript of an interview Steve Jobs gave today and he said pretty much what I wrote on Apple in the last months...

No, he is not reading this blog, but I still like what he said...

In a nutshell:

1. iPhone will support third party apps by the end of the year. I actually had a bet on this: thanks Steve from the entire Funambol community. We promise you'll get the best push email and sync experience on that device from us.
   
2. iPhone is the best iPod we ever made. It sounds like someone trying to make it less of a niche, focusing a lot on music and hoping to get people to upgrade (BTW, fantastic news yesterday on iTunes selling non-DRM music. It is a world revolution)
   
3. Apple TV is a "hobby". Nice way to say video quality on it sucks, but that's all we can do for now... Adding YouTube videos is just highlighting it.
   

Gotta love Steve Jobs and Apple!

Foleo: when open source is not enough

Palm announced the Foleo mobile companion today. Jeff Hawkins was forced (I believe, he is a myth for me) to present it and say it is "the most exciting device he's worked on" (probably since this morning, but tomorrow will be a different day).

Bottom line: yawn... I am not impressed. Jeff must not be impressed himself, since he just sold 15,000 shares of Palm stock ;-)

Ahh, what about the device? It is a sub-notebook with wi-fi and bluetooth (and a keyboard). It has two buttons, one for on/off and the other one to pair with your smartphone, to sync your email.


It is a 600 bucks mobile companion to your 300 bucks smartphone... It weights a heavy 2.5 pounds... It has only 256MB of memory... It runs just for 5 hours (hem, my smartphone runs longer...), and it will drain the battery of your smartphone too via Bluetooth :-)

Any good news? YES! It is Linux. It is mobile open source!!

Does it matter? NO. It is still a useless device that nobody will carry around.

I do not even know where to start, but if the iPhone is going to be a niche and the Nokia 800 is looking for a segment, this is a niche of a niche with no segment. Too expensive, too limited in features, too big (I would need to buy bigger pants to fit it in...).

I cannot believe this is the way out for Palm. I wrote many times that Palm needed open source, but - apparently - it won't be enough.

Hey, I could be wrong. After all, the device is all about synchronization (I am the #1 believer in it). Maybe an enormous community will jump on the Foleo and will make it great. And Palm will make it cheaper, faster, smaller, with more memory and battery life. Or maybe by that time Palm will be called something else...

When phishing gets good

A few days ago I received an interesting email with subject "BBB Complaint for Fabrizio Capobianco". Wow, I thought, someone in the open source community complaining about me? What did I do?? The content of the email was:

Dear Mr./Mrs. Fabrizio Capobianco (Funambol)

You have received a complaint in regards to your business services.
Use the link below to view the complaint details:

CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD AND VIEW DOCUMENTS FOR CASE #F9F137

Complaint Case Number: F9F137
Complaint Made by Consumer Mrs. Marcia E. Worthington
Complaint Registered Against: Fabrizio Capobianco of Funambol
Date: 05/14/2007/

Instructions on how to resolve this complaint as well as a copy of the original complaint can be obtained using the link below:
CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD AND VIEW DOCUMENTS FOR CASE #F9F137

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The BBB offers its members a binding arbitration service for disputes involving marketplace transactions. Arbitration is a convenient, civilized way to settle disputes quickly and fairly, without the costs associated with other legal options.

© 2007 Council of Better Business Bureaus, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Now... an email with my name not misspelled is already a rarity... plus they did not misspell the name of the company. It must be legit, I thought... Nah, it can't be... We are open source, the code is open, who can complain? ;-)

I was already googling Mrs. Marcia E. Worthington when I noticed that the links in the email were not pointing to the BBB web site. A phishing scam, very well done. I trashed the email.

Apparently, the scam worked. 1,400 US executives clicked on the link... The authors of the scam sent this email only to executives after researching the web. It turns out the link installs a malicious post logger that transmits all information submitted through Internet Explorer to a website controlled by the attackers. It does not work on Firefox :-))

Now, I stopped because I could not believe anybody could complain about an open source company (yeah, right!), what about the other 1,400 non-open source executives using Internet Explorer? Man, I would love to put my hands on that list!

Funambol cracking the US market

In the office, I have a year-old framed article from RCR Wireless, where I am quoted saying "We haven't cracked the US market yet. US carriers have never been fast movers". I look at it every time I play foosball on our Garlando table and I always thought I had to do something about it. The US is three years behind the rest of the world (when it comes to mobile), but I live here. My board members live here. Most of my friends live here. We have carriers going live anywhere on the planet, but I wanted (at least) one here. And I was not willing to wait three years ;-)

Today we have announced Helio is using Funambol. It is the coolest MVNO around. Their shop in Palo Alto (in front of Caffe' del Doge, my favorite coffee place in the Bay Area...) is gorgeous. Their new device, the Ocean, is one of the hottest device today (an iPhone killer...). And Funambol is powering it...

The nice thing is that we got to Helio through Earthlink, which is also using our software. It is really a great deal for us and for open source in general. If you look at what OpenXchange is doing with 1&1 and what Zimbra is doing with Comcast, you can tell open source is conquering the service providers market.

Since I had few people asking me questions about the deal, here you have the Q&A directly from Earthlink.

Q. Is this arrangement targeting all of EarthLink's mobile devices?

A. There are two components to the arrangement - one is a server-side component and one is a client-side component. The server-side component is targeted at supporting future Helio devices (starting with the Ocean that just started shipping). Note, Helio is the MVNO joint venture between EarthLink and SK Telecom. The client-side component will support EarthLink desktop clients (see below)

Q. What desktop email clients will be supported?

A. EarthLink is developing a next generation email client coming out in beta later this year. This client will use Funambol's syncML client code to sync the client address book with the server-side EarthLink address book.

Q. Will the sync service be limited to an EarthLink customer bundle, or is it going to be a service that is available independently?

A. Our future vision is that any application or device that has a syncML client on it will be able to sync with the server-side EarthLink address book. A customer would have to have an earthlink.net address to take advantage of our server-side address book.

Q. When will EarthLink roll it out?

A. Helio is already using the syncML server. The desktop client will roll out later this year.

Another good day for Funambol. Another good day for mobile open source.

The nice face of the evil empire

This morning I attended a portion of the Microsoft Open Source ISV forum. Unfortunately, I had to leave early, but I feel I was there for the juicy part of the event: the Q&A about the Fortune article...

Sam Ramji did a phenomenal job. Being a punching bag for 30 minutes is not easy. He responded to every question politely and called the Fortune article unFortunate... I truly believe his intentions are genuine. He really thinks Microsoft is going to do with open source what they did with the Internet: in 1995 they were not an Internet company, in 2005 you can tell they definitely embraced it. In 2005 they were not an open source company, but he said they will become one by 2015. They still have a long way to go...

The issue I have is with the rest of the company... Although I get the press is always ready to position Microsoft as the bad guy, I cannot believe the CEO is saying one thing and he does not mean it... That the top Microsoft counselors (they are lawyers, best paid in the world, not the last people on the street) release statements to a journalist they did not want to be released. If you spend millions analyzing 235 patents vs. every open source project, and you talk about it, maybe there is some evil plan behind it. At least, it is easy to think there is.

My suggestion? Use the patents you have to indemnify open source companies that are willing to partner with you. In an open way (not as in the Novell deal). You have the patents, you claim you love open source. So do we. Let's all make them disappear.

I know it is hard, but showing a nice face to open source is not enough. You have to back it up with something. You cannot ask to partner, hiding a hammer over our heads...

I'll see you tomorrow at OSBC. I am on a panel at 10:30, talking about innovation and open source. I believe we will also have a desk there. With some of the t-shirts left from the Microsoft event (although Sam took three of them ;-)

235 more reasons to love open source

The news about Microsoft claiming to have 235 patents against open source bugged me. I totally signed up to Larry's reaction (shut up or put up). The fact that Microsoft later clarified they are not going to sue anyone (for now), does not change the situation that much. I knew it already...

Why?

Because a superpower does not start a nuclear war.

They simply cannot attack. The retaliation from OIN with IBM, Red Hat and others will be instantaneous. Microsoft would be attacking their own customers (every single enterprise today is using Linux and Microsoft together), which will fight them back. It is simply not going to happen.

What Microsoft is trying to achieve is to spread some more FUD (fear uncertainty doubt) about open source. They are hoping to slow us down. However, the more I look around, the more I am getting convinced it is actually already backfiring.

What Microsoft is showing the world is why open source is much better. No open source project will attack you. Not only the software is better, with a community supporting you, where you control your destiny thanks to the source code (and no lock in). But you also have assurance nobody is going to sue you because you want to use a competitor... Better and cheaper software, with no objective risk associated.

What Microsoft is giving us is really 235 more reasons to love open source. I made a t-shirt of it.

Monday, at the Microsoft Open Source event in San Francisco (a PR attempt from MSFT to show the open source community still loves them) I am going to wear it. Actually, I am going to bring some with me, in case you want to also show Microsoft why we are thankful of their latest move. I'll bring some at OSBC as well on Tuesday, just in case nobody shows up at the Microsoft event :-)

The club of the 1,000,000 downloads

I was looking at our stats on ObjectWeb today and I saw we passed 1,000,000 downloads also there (the number on OW does not consider our initial downloads in SourceForge). Almost 800,000 of them happened in the last 18 months.

A couple of years ago, when I was raising Series A funding (nope, not the Italian soccer league, the first round of Venture Capital funding), I used the boom of our downloads as the key to convince investors we were going to get big. John at Sugar did the same. Everybody in open source did it. Downloads were the key metric.

The question I have now is "does it still matter?"

Probably, it does... At least as a threshold to separate successful open source projects from wannabes. However, when you get to the club of the 1,000,000 downloads, I feel it just does not matter that much anymore.

I am not sure how many open source projects we have in the club (but it would be fun to count them) and how many commercial open source projects (another interesting statistic). However, if you are a commercial open source company with 1M downloads, it does not matter if you have 2M or 3M of those at the end of the year. What now matters is if you were able to translate that into sales...

I have a feeling VCs do not invest in downloads anymore (and I would like to see Larry's statistic including only Series A deal). They are back investing in sound business models and customer traction.

Actually, my sense is that VCs are now looking at revenues more for open source companies than for any other company. You have to prove you can make money, if you are an open source company. If you are YouTube or one of the thousand Web 2.0 company, you are off the hook. For now, until the wind will change...

Bottom line: if you are out there working hard to join Funambol in the 1,000,000 club, make sure you do not forget the top line ;-)

Funambol v6 is GA (General Availability)

Getting software to GA or General Availability (that is, all features completed, no major bugs) feels always very good.

During the weekend, Funambol Community Edition v6 got the stamp. The stable release is now out and we are suggesting all our users to migrate to it (not very hard, since the clients are backward compatible, so are the connectors). Exciting stuff.

You can download it at the Funambol Open Source Download page.

Great effort from the Funambol DEV/QA/PM teams (about 40 people) in conjunction with our wonderful community (thousands and thousands, considering we just passed 1,000,000 downloads). I am very proud of you guys.

Lots of people are asking me "Why v6? Wasn't your last release v3? What happened to v4 and v5?". The answer is that Sync4j started in 2001 as a server-only component. The server evolved during the years. When we began adding clients components and we created bundles, we bundled them as v1, v2 and v3. In the meantime, the server kept evolving and we ended up having a v3 bundle with a 5.x server... That created some confusion, so to clean up the mess we had to bump everything up to the server level. Here you are. I promise the next release will be v7, not v9. Although we could start calling it Vista or 2007 or who knows? ;-)

A preview of the iPhone nano

An Apple patent has surfaced today, which looks very cool because it might solve The Mobile Conundrum: making devices smaller and still easy to use. The issue is not trivial. You need a crisp big-enough screen to use data applications on a device, but you need an appropriate input mechanism to be able to interact with it (in particular, if it goes beyond a simple wheel or phone pad).

I criticized the iPhone quite a bit, also because I am not a huge fan of touchscreens. In particular, because you have to put your sweaty fingers on the screen to interact with it, forcing you to keep cleaning the surface and, eventually, scratch it for good. On top of it, when you type, your fingers are covering part of the screen so you actually give up screen resolution.

The patent seems to solve most of these issues. For those who are familiar with patents (and have a lot of imagination), here you have the diagram.

For the rest of us, here's the idea. The front of the device is 100% screen (as the iPhone). The back is a force-sensitive touch-surface. That is: you move your finger on the back of the device and you see the cursor move on the front. So... you are actually not sweating on the front and your screen remains clean. And you do not cover your view while interacting.

Seems difficult to use? Have issues with hand-eye coordination? Well, you are using a mouse to scroll this page and you are not looking at your hand. You can make it. And the iPhone gets smaller and smaller, becoming mass market...

The iPhone nano, the biggest selling device of 2009.

TV?? I want messaging on my phone!

The GSM Association has produced a global report on consumer awareness, trends and expectations of emerging Mobile Services across Europe, North America and Asia (based on over 3,000 interviews in 15 countries). The findings are summarized in the following table.

I can't say I am surprised, but it is hard not to notice that the top 5 preferences are all messaging. Browsing comes sixth and mobile TV eleventh... Porn seems to be missing because I would have expected it to be high in the list, or maybe it is in the "content" category, or maybe the GSM Association was just shy to ask...

On messaging, there is a quite interesting finding, although not surprising:

The survey uncovered some significant regional differences. North American respondents ranked mobile email as the service they most prefer, ahead of text messaging and mobile instant messaging. In Europe and Asia, text-messaging scored highest, followed by mobile email and MMS.

Bottom line: messaging is king. I do not see this changing any time soon. The phone is a communication device, people need to communicate when moving, they use their mobile device. Everything else is gravy.

Are you an omnivore or a lackluster veteran?

Today, the Pew Internet & American Life Project released the results of a survey designed to classify Americans into different groups of technology users. They asked people if they had gadgets and connectivity, what they were doing with them and if they liked it or not.

The findings are quite interesting, in particular because they put them in a table with funny names. You find it below. If you click on it, it gets bigger (and you can even read it ;-)


In a nutshell, there are three big categories: the Elite (Web 2.0 savvy), Middle-of-the-road (funny enough, they put mobile centric people here, like Mobile is not Elite :-) and those behind the curve (for many different reasons).

The game is to put your entire family in the boxes. I would probably end in the Omnivores; I would put my wife in the Connected but Hassled, my parents in Light but Satisfied (they would be lost without a Skype video chat every week), my sister-in-law in Inexperienced Experimenters (she blogs but could do way more), my grandma in Off the Network (but my mom prints out for her every email and post by any relative) and so on...

We should put points on every box and see which family scores higher.

Next week is JavaOne

JavaOne has a special feeling for me. It is one of the first conferences I attended, after moving to California in 1999. It is the one where we announced Funambol to the world in 2005. This year, we are coming back. But, for once, I am not paying... Sun invited us.

They're highlighting Funambol as they view us as one of the best and most exciting open source technologies (or so I hope...). We are one of a handful of open source projects, out a gazillion that Sun looked at, to be invited in the Application Showcase area of the exhibit floor (in the Mobility Village). We will be showing there our new open source Java ME push email software that runs on hundreds of millions of Java-enabled mass market handsets (Edo will be at the booth, so do not miss him because he is THE Java ME guy). Sun really liked our application because they told us it is a highly innovative business application that leverages many of Java ME's capabilities, such as push registration, SMS message receiving, network connection, playing sound and advanced low-level implementation of the user interface. In other words, our software pushed the envelope of Java ME's capabilities and really allowed Java ME to shine.

In a way, we are a perfect technology for Sun to highlight, as our software heavily utilizes Java for both our server and client components i.e. it consists of an open source Java EE mobile data synchronization server (i.e. 100% Java app) and our Java ME push email client that runs on commodity mobile phones.

Sun also invited Funambol to participate in their .Org zone and CommunityOne events (the former takes place during the three main days of the conference, Tue-Thu of next week, the latter is a one day event on Monday and precedes the conference) , which focus on bringing together developers and community members from a diverse range of new and emerging open source technologies (cool idea by Sun, they seem to be now trying hard to be the dot in dot.org :-) Both are essentially casual environments where we will be demoing our software and talking to open source developers and community members from a wide range of open source projects.

I look forward to seeing you there, it should be fun.

The cool factor

Engineers are good at developing efficient and stable code. Some also get User Interfaces (UI) and can design them, but most don't. Once a good UI is designed, you need to make it cool. Some UI designers can make cool UIs, but most don't.

In my experience, the best combination is to have:

1. a person that can design a UI and
   
2. gives precise directions to an engineer for development and
   
3. gives precise directions to a designer to make it look cool.

Now at Funambol we have all three (before we had just one, I let you guess which one ;-). It took a while to assemble the team, but if you look at the two pictures in this post, you can tell there is a bit of a difference between Funambol v3 and v6 clients...

Actually two: someone who designed the UI and someone who made it look good. Plus the great developer that makes it actually work, fast and stable.


The result is shown below: it is the Funambol Outlook plug-in released in v6 (now beta, soon GA). Above, the old v3 client.


When I showed to my wife for the first time, she asked me: "who developed it?". I answered "Funambol". She asked me: "no, I mean, which company made this application?". I answered (thinking she was making fun of me...): "Funambol". She finally said "Ahh, you mean it is Funambol software? I though it was Apple. Very cool".

Well, I cannot ask for more than "cool" and "Apple-looking" from my fashion-minded Italian wife...

A couple of weeks ago (maybe after seeing the cool client;-), Gartner put us in the "Cool Vendor" category... It is cool to be cool :-)

If you are devleoping software, do not underestimate the importance of cool. Open source software, in particular, is usually ugly-looking. It does not have to be. For open source to become mainstream, you need cool looking apps. They will look at your ugly app and say "naahh, they are not ready for prime time. It is just open source". Invest the $$ for someone to design the UI and someone else to make it cool.

BTW, if you are using Funambol v3 already, you can use the v6 clients today. They are backward compatible with the v3 server. No need to ask your IT Manager to upgrade the server. Download the betas with confidence, they are of a very good quality. Did I mention also cool?

The world championship of funambolism

When it comes to sports, I am a fan of pretty much everything. Soccer, baseball, American football, tennis, ski... Even some bizarre sports. For example, funambolism, also known as tight rope walking or high wire walking. The name of my company and the logo might have given you some hints about this ;-)

Korea is hosting this week the World High Wire Championships. People walking on a rope, crossing the Han river (that's about a kilometer...). The Washington Post ran an article about the competition.

The fastest guy so far finished it in 11 minutes (Chinese). The American did it in 17 minutes. Some fell, like the Russian, jumping in the river fifty meters to the end. I am not sure if there is an Italian, but I bet s/he would do well :-)

Funambolism is the art of commercial open source. I believe we should organize a local competition between CEOs of commercial OS companies, crossing the San Francisquito Creek, and see who's best at it. I am the mobile guy. I should make it even wireless...

Anybody out there willing to accept the challenge?

A ribbon for open source

Roberto Galoppini wrote a post a few days ago, asking my opinion on his idea of an Open Source Awareness campaign. He wrote:

Besides the need for open source lobbyists, the biggest issue with Open Source awareness might be the clique phenomenon, resulting in open source advocates, analysists, customers, developers and users bound to each other. In other words there is also a need for connectors.

Googling around I found a pretty long list of ribbon campaigns - among them the ASCII Ribbon Campaign and the EFF’s Blue Ribbon Campaign - but there is no Free Software or Open Source awareness campaign.

So... the idea is to launch a campaign to make sure everybody understands what Open Source and Free Software are. A battle for freedom, I guess... A Ribbon to FLOSS (well, that's an idea for convergence...).

I believe there are more important battles to fight (AIDS, cancer, hunger in Africa...) and I feel my brother might kill me if I start walking around with an open source ribbon (luckily for me, today he is far away in Kenya, fighting hunger). Also, I would prefer to stay away from being associated to battles such as "against HTML mail, vCards and proprietary formats" (that's the ASCII Ribbon Campaign cited by Roberto)... I have the feeling there are more important things in life. Let's all fight for a better world without vCards :-))

Jokes apart, open source is a serious movement and a battle for freedom. It can free your mind and keep big brother at bay, so it is definitely worth fighting for. I am positive on the awareness campaign. Since Roberto's question was "which color would you choose for the ribbon?", I would say: blue, green-white-red or black & white (but I doubt Matt would support the last one...).

A review of the Nokia N800 Linux tablet

Last week I attended the Nokia Mobile Mashup event. The nice surprise was the gift of a N800 Linux tablet. That's definitely Mobile and Open Source, so I spent a Saturday morning playing around and here you have my review.

Let me start saying I do not understand this segment. I might be stupid, but I do not get why a consumer would need an Internet Tablet... It is a device with wi-fi but no cellular connectivity, no keyboard and a pen. Soooo... you can't make a call (yes, you could with VOIP but try to put it close to your ear and you look like a fool) and you can't write emails (no keyboard, c'mon...). What you can do is browse the Internet (clicking on links with the pen...), read RSS feeds and listen to music/video. In a nutshell, it is an entertaining device not meant for consumers ;-) Similar to an enterprise device not meant for enterprises (the iPhone). A niche.

That said, the device is absolutely great. The screen is gorgeous, so crisp it shocks you when you turn it on. The device feels nice in your hands. It has a few buttons on the left to navigate the functions, but I rarely found myself using them. The music sounds good, even when streamed over the Internet. It also has an extremely cool tiny retractable webcam, for videochats. It supports wi-fi (although not my office network) and I was able to pair it with my Verizon Treo 650 via Bluetooth to navigate the Internet (it took me a few steps but it miraculously worked!). The virtual keyboard on the screen is small when your pen is out, big when it is in its pocket (so that you can use your fingers): nice touch! Browsing with Opera is pretty good and the RSS reader is fully featured: I sucked in my feeds in an OPML file from Netvibes (nice feature, BTW) and I got all my feeds instantaneously.

The Home interface is made with Applets. Sort of widgets, with the info you should need when turning the device on, for example your latest feeds, your speed contacts, a Google search and so on. Clearly, the hope is that the Linux community will create many more (weather and so on). The idea is good, but the feeling is that it lacks applications, yet.

As obvious, the first need for me was synchronization (ok, I am biased, but why did Nokia not add any way to sync the device? Where do Nokia people have their address book???). Luckily, there is an open source client called SyncEvolution, based on the Funambol sync client. I went on the site and tried to download the app. There is a debian package available, plus the source code. Unfortunately, the N800 Application Manager did not like the debian package...

I am a stubborn geek so I did not give up. I started looking at the open source community at maemo.org (quite lively, I have to say. Good job by Nokia). I downloaded an Xterm application and in a second I was browsing the file system with a terminal. Using vi without a keyboard is a pain, so I thought "this thing is connected to my network, if I find a telnet server I could access it from my PC"... I had first to upgrade the firmware to the latest version (quite easy, with a USB cable), then I downloaded an ssh server from maemo. A second later, I was accessing the wireless device from my PC, with a real keyboard and a mouse. Very cool. It gave me the feeling of power, in particular when I found out how to become root (that's the ultimate feeling of being God for people that grew up with Unix).

I then installed the debian SyncEvolution package, configured the files to connect to a Funambol v6 server and boom, my address book was synched. It worked like a charm. Amazing. The power of freedom.

The beauty of the device is that it is open as in open source. They have a good community building lots of apps. For example, I needed an IM for Yahoo Messenger and I found Gaim was available. It works great. They need more apps, but I am sure they will come.

As I wrote before, the problem is really who would really use it, apart of a bunch of geeks. Maybe it could be used in hospitals or other specialized niches, but definitely I have no use for it in my life (I am a part-time geek ;-) If I am close to a PC, I use that for browsing or emails. If i am running around, I use my cell phone with 3G. If I want to listen to music, I use my iPod.

Since I did not have a use for it, I tried the ultimate consumer test: I asked my wife if she wanted it. She looked at it and said "cool, I'll take it!". I asked her what she was planning to use it for... She said "I'll browse the Internet when I am in the backyard" but a second later "or maybe not, I'll use my laptop there". Then "maybe in the kitchen"... "or I could print out the recipes so I do not fill it with flour". Then she said "I would definitely not go around with a thing that big in my purse". And the final "actually, you can keep it". End of story. The device is not for consumers. I really hope there is a segment somewhere for it, because it is really a beautiful device. But it is likely to be small. And if Nokia gave it to me as a gift, it is probably not selling that well ;-)

Free Telematics and a enforcing open source SaaS

This morning I received an email from Rufo Guerreschi of the Telematics Freedom Foundation. I honestly never heard of this organization - until today - but it looks like a very interesting initiative. And it is based in Italy, which makes me proud ;-)

Rufo wrote a post on his blog about a model for the democratic control of telematic services. In a nutshell, he is trying to close the ASP loophole of GPL (v2 and v3...) with something quite more elaborate than a simple license.

He is envisioning a world of free services based on Software as a Service (SaaS), where Reviewers can be appointed as Auditors for the software behind the service. And Modifiers can modify the code of the service and obtain free or at cost hosting.

It is a very interesting approach. The issue behind the reasoning seems to be enforcement of the license. I heard about it before, many times. If your software runs behind a firewall, how can you (the user) know what really is the service running? What if they change the code and do not tell you? What about your freedom as a user to see the code?

Rufo's answer is: let's appoint Auditors. Mimicking the voting process, where Auditors are making sure nobody votes twice. These people might have conflicts of interests, but the entire system usually works (unless you live in Florida).

I have never been a fan of enforcement. Maybe because I trust people by nature. Or because I am just pragmatic. Enforcement is tough to achieve. For example, the Affero license has a provision that forces the hosting service to give a user a way to download the entire source code while accessing the service. I always found it too restrictive. Forcing software implementations through a license seems odd and hardly applicable to the millions of different cases we are going to see in the future (think about a mobile phone accessing email on a Funambol server... How can I give you the entire source code to download on your device?) .

Is the old good GPL enforceable? In theory... If I take a GPL library in C, modify it and I compile it with my product, then ship the binary in a commercial product, who can tell I am violating the GPL? Probably nobody. Does it mean GPL is useless? No, it is based on trust. If you do not GPL your code, you are violating the license. We could catch you and enforce it.

The same for SaaS. If you run a service based on HPL, you must open source your code. If you don't, you are violating the license. We could catch you and enforce it.

To me, a piece of paper that says YOU HAVE TO, is enough. It is practical. It is based on trust. It simply works. Anything more complex would work as well, and maybe limit open source thieves, but adds so much complexity to also limit adoption. Which would turn people to use something else, less restrictive, even giving up copyleft (which would mean the death of open source). I am willing to give up on enforceability, to see open source also thrive in the SaaS world. That's where the world is going.

Copyleft is based on trust. It would work in SaaS as well. Trust me ;-)

Virtual BlackBerry sounds like Real trouble

RIM is trying to recover from last week's disaster. They finally explained why it happened, although nobody really understood it (a software upgrade??). What I know is that our phone has been ringing uninterruptedly for days... At the end of the line, disgruntled IT Managers looking for an alternative to BlackBerry. Why do you want to lock you in with a single-point-of-failure when there is an open source alternative you can deploy in-house for zero dollars? No lock-in, open standard bases, huge community... You do the math.

Today, RIM is trying to get out of his unexpected misery with an announcement which signals more trouble. RIM is planning to roll out "Virtual BlackBerry" software for Windows Mobile 6.0 in fall. In a nutshell, it should be an icon on your WM; you click it and you enter a BlackBerry world, with all the common apps you are familiar with, if you are a BlackBerry user. I am guessing email and address book, with calendar.

Let's put aside that virtual apps usually do not work (try reproducing the push email experience on a device you do not control...) and that RIM has one of the worst developer team for client applications (good on networking, do not get me wrong, but really lacking on UI skills). Who is the target for this new fantastic app?

New customers? I do not think so. Who in the world wants to have another email client, another address book and another schedule, when you already have them in Windows Mobile? Why would I ever buy a Windows Mobile to run a virtual BlackBerry?? I would buy a BlackBerry instead...

Old customers? Are we talking about people that own a BlackBerry, that decide to throw it in the trash because the service sucks, and then move to Windows Mobile to get a virtual BlackBerry? Isn't it insane? If you realize BlackBerry sucks, you just want out of it...

OK, maybe I got it: it is for IT Managers that need to manage a transition away from RIM. Buy Windows Mobile for everyone, get the CrackBerry addicts on them, give them the same environment they are used to, then finally move them to WM as everyone else and say good bye to RIM.

Who could be pushing RIM to do this? The mobile operators...

Doesn't it sound like trouble? You are investing R&D dollars on giving Microsoft a path to take customers away from you. You are building a solution to move people on a different platform, while your revenues are all on hardware. You are pushing all the revenues on software, where you lose your lock-in...

Please keep calling, RIM is not looking good.

The day RIM business model blew up

A major outage of the RIM service has hit the news big time today. I am wondering how journalists are filing their stories, since their BlackBerry are not working ;-)

In my opinion, this has highlighted a major flaw in RIM business model. Not because BlackBerry has been famous for being reliable and it is not anymore. But for a more profound reason. RIM customers are mobile operators. Today at&t is not even able to tell if THEIR customers have service or not... The reason?

RIM is a single point of failure, that a mobile operator cannot control.

Today operators are forced to realize that, on top of having dissolved their brand in favor of RIM's, they do not have control or even good visibility into the levels of service that RIM is able to provide to their own customers. Hence, an at&t user that bought a BlackBerry device and service from at&t today is not getting its email, and at&t has no idea of the status of the service or what customers are affected. Think of the Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that carriers such as at&t have with their enterprise customers. The carriers are in no way, shape or form able to monitor or enforce their compliance...

Now... the entire business model for RIM is based on extending its reach to the consumer market. They built the Pearl for it. It is their #1 goal.

Unfortunately for RIM, mobile operators will not do this mistake again for the consumer market. Carriers will own, control and brand the infrastructure for consumer push email, which is THE big opportunity and what RIM is shooting for (not really making it, looking at the latest financial results).

This will kill RIM growth. The days where they had full control of carriers are over. The pendulum is swinging back. The operators want control of their destiny (and the one of their customers), not lock-in with a single point of failure. They need a white-label solution managed by them. Add low-cost, standard-based and open source push email and you understand why I am having a good day ;-)

You go on vacation for a week...

Mobile is a super fast paced market. I have been in Hawaii for seven days enjoying sunsets with Mai Tai on my Lanai, and a million things happened (although they definitely did not ruin my vacation ;-) Let me try to recall some of the more important news.

After announcing it is opening some APIs, RIM came up short in the analyst call and the stock collapsed 8% in one day. The two news are not related but highlight the two main issues RIM is facing: first, RIM does not have a developer community (instead of opening some random APIs, why don't they go open source or, at least, help our community which is struggling to interact with the APIs they are filling with bugs to kill the competition?) and probably won't ever have it (while Microsoft and Linux do...). On the other side, they are trying desperately to move into the consumer space. Unfortunately, people are not buying enough BlackBerry Perl, which is their critical path to consumers. Therefore the forecast is bad and the stock value sinks. The Perl is not a consumer device. It is a cool replacement for older BlackBerries. Unfortunately, the iPhone is also a cool replacement for older BlackBerries, which makes their outlook even worst. Bottom line, RIM is not a consumer company and it is not likely to become one soon. They are likely to miss the train.

Quietly, SUN bought the IP of SavaJe, the maker of a 100%-Java mobile operating systems (the other one is RIM, if anybody noticed it). SavaJe died not-so quietly a few months ago, after burning a pile of cash ($120 millions...). SUN did not even announce how much it spent, because it was peanuts. What is really interesting is what SUN will do with it... After all, it is a hardware maker... If Apple was able to move from PC to iPod, SUN could move from servers to phones (the iSun ;-) Nah, looks too stretched. But it could mean a full mobile OS from Sun, licensed to device manufacturers. Or, at least, a lot more code in Java ME, including vertical apps, which would be great. Everything will be unveiled Apple-style at Java One in May. We'll be there with our Java ME open source push email client as well, so... another good reason not to miss the show...

In the meantime, Apple announced it will delay the shipment of OS X Leopard from June to October (that's four months...) because all the Apple QA people are testing the iPhone. I have the feeling they made the usual mistake of thinking "well, it is a small device, it won't require the same QA cycles of a server...". Oopss, it is actually the opposite. A small device, when it is a smartphone (a not a single purpose device as the iPod) requires way more QA cycles than a server. The sad reality of mobile. And they are using one single network (Cingular) and are not planning to allow developers to add applications, which cuts QA by 90%... Anyway, it also shows how much effort Apple is putting on this device. It simply cannot fail (but it might...).

Lastly, Palm announced they will have their own Mobile Linux OS. This is much better than saying "we sold the company because we have no idea what to do" (the current rumor) and answers a suggestion I made in this blog, summarized by Unstrung as:

Going with Mobile Linux, argues Capobianco in a recent blog post, would enable Palm to cut its ties to Good and to Microsoft, to solve its OS issues, and to go after the consumer market in a new and effective way. The alternative is continued stagnation and eventually acquisition.

So... one very good for Palm (it was about time... and it is probably too late as well), one good for Sun, one bad for Apple and one ugly for RIM.

A week is a long time in mobile...

ASP loophole: what if the FSF got it right?

It is Sunday, the weather is nice and my rage against the last draft of GPLv3 is gone. Now I can analyze the FSF move on the ASP loophole from a different angle.

I exchanged a few emails with Brett Smith of the FSF, after my blog was posted. He also wrote a comment on the FSF site about the issue. The feeling I have is they were forced to drop the ball, but they have a clear strategy in mind to get it back. If that works, they will achieve what the movement needs, in a very subtle way.

In essence, the strategy of the FSF is simple (I am paraphrasing here, nobody said these exact words to me):

1. FACT: we simply could not get GPLv3 out with the ASP provision or it would have been DOA. It is hard to disagree...
2. TRICK: we are creating another specific license that includes the ASP provision (AGPLv2) and we added in GPLv3 that the two will be compatible. The end result is license proliferation, but not license incompatibility which is the key issue.
3. GOAL: GET AGPL TO BE THE REAL NEXT GPL

People will talk about GPLv3, but if they can get enough notoriety for AGPLv2 and projects will start moving to it (as they should, you DO NOT WANT someone to run your code as a service, make modification and not giving back to your project, it is plain stupid), they will have reached their goal.

So, what is my next move? Working on AGPL to make it the best possible license. I always said that HPL was a stop-gap. If AGPL has what I need and it is generic enough, we should all switch to it (including Alfresco, SugarCRM, Zimbra, Compiere, OpenBravo and so on) and make it THE license.

Things I do not like about AGPLv1, which forced me to create HPL:

1. The provision to close the ASP loophole is insane. It requires you to create a service in your product to allow your users to suck down the source code. What if your users access your service from a terminal in the library? Licenses should not force implementations. In HPL, we just say "if you give this to the public, everything else applies". That is, you have to give the world access to the source code. How you do it, I do not care. Enforceability is not the key element. You should trust your community. Looking at Brett's post, I have the feeling the FSF is going in the right direction.
   
2. I do not like the fact that AGPL is Affero branded. It is a vanity license. I do not know anything about Affero Inc. but that it is a corporation. Corporations tend to cater to their needs (rightly so). I would rather have a generic license managed by the FSF. Called AGPL where A stands for ASP. "The GPL for ASP". Just perfect. Unfortunately, the FSF wants to make AGPLv2 backward compatible with AGLPv1 (BTW, is anybody using it?), therefore they might be stuck with the Affero name. It would be a mistake, but manageable from a marketing standpoint.
   
3. AGPLv1 is not OSI-approved. The OSI is an important element of the ecosystem. AGPLv2 (and GPLv3, for that matter) must be OSI approved. I am sure this could be done quickly.
   

Well, the fight it is starting to look good ;-)