Why Matt is wrong about Silicon Valley

My friend Matt is often right. For example, he was right when he bet Arsenal would beat Juventus in the Champions League, which forced me to start this blog. However, sometimes he is actually wrong. For example, when he told me Arsenal was going to go all the way and win the Champions League that year, which will probably never happen in the future as well.

Last week he wrote a post questioning my suggestion to Manel (CEO of OpenBravo, an open source ERP) to move the headquarter from Spain to Silicon Valley.

My suggestion: "move the headquarter because you can find funding, partners and the exit for the company here (see who got bought recently: Zimbra, MySQL, Trolltech, Xensource. Where was their headquarter?)."

Matt's suggestion: "don't do it. You won't find customers in Silicon Valley".

Now, let me question the basis of his statement: why should you have your headquarter where your customers are?? If you are an open source company (I know one fairly well...), you have customers everywhere on the planet. The first Funambol customers, when we were headquartered in Italy, were in Asia, then in the US. What should I have done? Move the headquarter in every corner of the planet?

Nope, you put the headquarter where it helps the company more. You put sales offices close to the customers, as many as you can (and if you are open source, you will probably end up with three: one in the US, one in Europe and one in Asia). Note: I would never put development here. Or a large inside sales team. Just the headquarter, with the CEO and the management team. My team in Silicon Valley represents 20% of the company employees (and yes, it is expensive, but it is worth every penny).

What does an open source company need from its headquarter? To get funding (check), to find partners (check), to deliver an exit (check). It might be cynical, but running a company is about delivering results and being cynical on making the right choices ;-)

Where's the best place on the planet to get all three? It is Silicon Valley. Sorry. No other place gets close.

Utah? Zero funding, zero partners, zero exit. Good for a sales office, maybe, if you have customers there (in Utah?). Or if you like skiing. If I wanted to ski, I could have lived in my home valley in the Alps. No customers or funding there, but a great life. I will go back one day...

London? The closest thing to Silicon Valley. Less funding, a lot less partners, but decent exits (especially on AIM). Boston? Just below London, in my opinion. Both valid options, do not get me wrong, but why settle for something less? Just because there is a lot of traffic on 101?? Being a CEO is about getting things done for your employees, customers and shareholders (in this order). And the Valley can also be a lot of fun, and it is just a quick flight to Utah. I do not consider living here a sacrifice...

Bottom line: I do not believe the story around customers, not for an open source company. Put your headquarter where it helps the company most. Customer will be elsewhere, always not where you live.

Manel, trust me, take a flight and stay here for a few months. I need your suggestions for the best restaurants in San Francisco. Your tips in Barcelona were awesome :-)

Mobile World Congress - day 3 (and final)

Wednesday is the unofficial last day of the congress. The official one is tomorrow, but nobody is there, they just stretch it to four days to give more people the opportunity to speak (and therefore pay for exhibiting). As the last day, it is the one where people chat about "was this one better than last one? What about Cannes?" and so on.

My takes:

1. It was better than last year and the one before. 2008 is the year of mobile 2.0. The year of the Mobile Internet. Everyone is getting ready for it.
2. There were few good hardware news. One was Modu. A very cool idea of a device that can have many "covers". The difference is that the covers transform the device from a smartphone to a dumbphone to a music player. Very interesting concept. Every carrier can build its cover and differentiate. And it is low cost. Wins the HW of the conference award from me.
3. There was a lot of femtocell. It is happening for real. This is the way mobile operators get in your house and have you pay for them not to upgrade their antennas. Very clever. It makes a lot of sense. Zero installation troubles, no changes on your phone, five bars everywhere in the house. It will spread like a virus if the operators realize they should not charge for anything but the device, since it makes their service sticky and high quality.
4. Location location location. Everywhere. It is happening. Finally. Nokia itself revealed four devices this week. All with GPS. Get ready for mobile advertising location based.

That's it for 2008. See you next year in Barcelona!

Mobile World Congress - day 2

Day 2 of the Mobile World Congress is always the busiest one, in the exhibition floor. Also, the one with the best parties. This year, same pattern (did I come too many times to 3GSM?). Tons of people stopped at our booth (most likely due to the models that are helping in the booth, although our sales team claims it is because our salespeople are handsome) and I tried four parties, most with excellent food and big crowds (the Access party wins for the food, hands down. Japanese people know their way around a good meal).

Ooh, I also worked hard (...) and picked some more signals:

1. BlackBerry had another major outage. At Funambol, we open a bottle of champagne for each one of those. Who said RIM had a reliable service? We just launched the first version of our new BlackBerry email client. Download the Funambol open source server and go for it, no outage in sight. RIM has a single point of failure. And it happens to support only BlackBerries...
   
2. Android, Android, Android. LG to rollout one device in early 2009, so is T-Mobile. I want to launch an Android phone as well, I am jealous.
3. I spent some time to think about Microsoft and Yahoo and Danger. Did you realize that once they all close (they will) Microsoft will have a monopoly of instant messaging? In the US, we also have a bit of AOL IM, but elsewhere it is all Microsoft and Yahoo. A monopoly of IM is going to be huge in mobile. As far as I know (I might be wrong), Danger is the only company in the world that had an unlimited license from both Microsoft IM and Yahoo IM. Once they merge, they can start raising the price for everyone else and kill the market. It is all about mobile...
4. I went around the device manufacturer stands: LG has the most impressive line-up, they will get a ton of market share. Samsung is not bad, but not as good as LG. Nokia is ok, they are the dominant player and added a few new phones, they are not going to slip. Sony Ericsson did not have anything interesting in their main line-up (last year it was great), but the Experia is a very impressive smartphone, despite the operating system (Windows Mobile). Motorola is so depressing I wanted to cry (actually, the people there were so depressed they wanted to cry).
5. 3GSM has never been a show with operators having booths. Operators have always been the buyers, going around the show and meeting people. Not this year. There is Vodafone huge stand, one from Telenor, Orange, NTT Docomo and probably more that I did not see. The operators feel they must remain relevant, in a world changing in front of their eyes. If you do not want to be a dumb pipe, you must be visible and push your services. It is a very strong signal of changing times in mobile...

Tomorrow is my last day at the show. However, I will stay in Barcelona for two more days for our management meeting (it makes sense, we are almost all here anyway ;-)

Mobile World Congress - day 1

Usually, day 1 at the show is slow because people fly in on Monday and there is an incredible line to get in (which forces half of the people to actually get into the show only in the afternoon). This year was no different, although I saw more people than usual (which is a good sign for the industry).

Things I noticed (in order of importance):

1. Funambol won the Mobile Monday Peer Award representing mighty Silicon Valley (take that, Matt :-)) Ok, it is not that important for the industry, but it is very good for us... I had the opportunity to get on stage and thank mom, plus I got a free ticket to Malaysia, which makes it even sweeter.
2. Microsoft bought Danger. This is huge. Microsoft is in a corner and they are trying to get out as quickly as they can. Very aggressive, with Yahoo and Danger. It is all about mobile, baby. That's where the action is these days.
   
3. Android is everywhere. Everybody is talking about it and there is some hardware now attached to the OS. Nothing special, but it is the talk of the show (for example, Samsung said they will have a phone in 2009, which is huge). Thanks to that, Mobile Linux is even more present. The LiMo Foundation is announcing 18 phones based on its platform. Trolltech is talking about Webkit integrated with QT. MOBILE OPEN SOURCE IS EVERYWHERE. Awesome.
   
4. Sony Ericsson announced a Windows Mobile phone. Odd.

More to come tomorrow, stay tuned.

Mobile World Congress - day 0

The day before the conference is always an interesting one. People are flying in from everywhere (some get in tomorrow) but the exhibition if full of bees putting together the booths. This year I was here ahead of time, so I helped our marketing team to assemble the booth, I put down the carpet and I got dirty.

I love the atmosphere in the exhibition, when there are no visitors around. It is a pure mess until a minute before the door opens. The carpet is missing, there are boxes everywhere. Magically, just when the crowd gets in, everything is ready. Polished. Like it was prepared months before.

I like our booth and where we are positioned (same place as last year, Hall 1, stand #1J46). We are going to have a lot of fun tomorrow.

Meanwhile, today I read an article about the EU pressuring operators on data roaming. I mean, they are getting hit from every corner. Now they are not only forced to be a dumb pipe, they need to be a cheap one as well. I am starting to feel sorry for them, with all the investments they put in the network... Oh well, cheap data plans are what we need, so who cares? I am happy ;-)

Also, I went to the pre-show party of the Mobile Monday crowd, called Mobile Sunday (how clever!) Barcelona. Lots of people, jam-packed (last year they had 70 people, this year we were 350... something good is going on...) and very interesting networking. The tone is super-positive. The opening of the networks and the cheap data plans are about to start a big wave. We are all so happy to be here to ride it.

I will report more in the next days, trying to pick the themes of the year and where the buzz is. Stay tuned.

Manel, OpenBravo and Silicon Valley

I am in Barcelona for the Mobile World Congress, but I managed to put in some time for open source. Last night I had dinner with Manel Sarasa, CEO of OpenBravo. If you do not know the company, they provide an open source ERP and they are based in Spain (HQ in Barcelona, development in Pamplona).

Manel happens to be a mobile guy. He always worked in mobile, then jumped on the open source bandwagon. In a way, is a mobile open source guy now ;-)

He is also famous for his love of food. He knows every chef in Spain and that helps him getting into any restaurant in the world. He managed to get a table at the French Laundry calling the same day (for those who do not live around San Francisco, that is the #1 restaurant in North California with a waiting list of months).

Therefore, I was looking forward to our dinner. I wasn't disappointed, it was exceptionally good ;-) And I just love once in a while to have dinner at 9:30 pm...

Manel told me how well OpenBravo is doing. They tripled revenues last year, they have three times the amount of downloads of Compiere (one of their open source rivals), they tripled pretty much everything (no, he is still incapable of tripling food, but I guess he is working on it). I have a lot of faith in his ability and I believe ultimately they will be the #1 company in open source ERP.

He is thinking about Silicon Valley. He has been thinking about it for a while, because I met him quite a long time ago (with Josep) and he was already thinking about it. But this is not a small jump. I did it and I would recommend it to anyone, including Matt who has lived in the Valley but keeps bugging everyone saying we should move to Utah. Why? When I need to ski I do a daily trip there from the Valley :-)

Why Silicon Valley for open source? Beside funding and partnering, think for a second about the open source companies that have been bought lately for gazillion of dollars: MySQL, Zimbra, Xensource, Trolltech. Where were they based? Utah? Barcelona? I do not thing so. They maybe started somewhere else, but they were headquartered in the Valley.

Manel, pack and come to the Valley. You will like it here (but go live in San Francisco, the Peninsula is not for you). I promise I will get you a table at Acquerello in the city ;-)

A day in my mobile life

SMS Text News asked me to log "my mobile day" ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (BTW, we are at Hall 1, stand #1J46, stop by and get your kite to fly high with Funambol :-) Here it is.

7:05 – the radio starts, somebody is talking about something stupid as usual. Why can’t I set up a system that wakes me up with the sound of waves like in the movies?
7:10 – wife is back snoring, better get up and prepare breakfast
7:15 – daughter (4 years old) asks for Topo Gigio, an Italian cartoon. I play it for her in my hacked DVD player, which plays movies from every region. The region thing is insane. How would my daughter learn Italian in the US, otherwise? Give us a worldwide open DVD system, please…
7:25 – Cappuccino is ready. It is the only thing I do around the house, but I do it with pride. Everything else in my life is done by my wife, who is just putting the finishing touches on my bag (I am flying out to Europe tonight). I would be in Frankfurt walking around in shorts in February, without her.
7:40 – I am in the restroom, where I substituted the classical magazine with the iPhone. I check email and read feeds via Netvibes (I have two tabs, one called mobile with the feeds I care most about. Otherwise, it is too slow on the iPhone, even with wi-fi)
7:45 – daughter comes looking for my iPhone. She wants to check the weather. Swipes it off, asks “is this Menlo Park or Pavia?” (she can swipe but she can’t read yet…). Darn, weather is going to be great in Menlo Park this week, why am I flying to freezing Germany tonight?
7:50 - Daughter disappears with the iPhone playing some crazy Mika music. I wish I was still four.
8:00 – On my laptop, connected with my external keyboard and monitor, I check email with Outlook and Skype away with colleagues in Europe (with one-ear headset and microphone, looking like a customer support representative which will be with you in a moment).
8:30 – daughter comes again, this time asking to see Sesame Street on TV. I fire up my SlingPlayer on the laptop, connect to my TV in the other room and select Sesame Street on my TiVo. Without moving from my chair. Laziness forever.
9:00 – drop daughter at the childcare where she tells me I should not go on a business trip for 10 weeks because it is too long. I try to explain it is 10 days but she still claims it is too long. I promise I will videoskype her the next day and she tells me she can’t hug me through the computer. I shut up and sadly kiss her bye bye.
9:05 – get on 101 just when the carpool lanes open. I love my seven minutes commute, especially later in the season when I can take the top off my New Beetle (in California, I can do it for seven months in a row…).
9:10 – in the office parking lot I check new emails on my Windows Mobile Treo 700w with Verizon (on EVDO, which is 3G). I know it is stupid, because I can walk upstairs and read them on my laptop, but this is my only addiction (together with Nutella), so please do not bother me.
10:00 – I spend some time installing the new Funambol JavaME email client, with mobile advertising powered by Amobee, on my RAZR. I use it only for demos, linked to my Gmail account. The guys in Italy delivered the client this morning (time zone difference rocks!). I see it for the first time. It shows me an ad with La Sagrada Familia and beeps when an email is pushed to it. Awesome, I am ready for the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week!
11:00 – meeting in the office, no mobile devices but great coffee. My Lavazza coffee machine delivers the best coffee in Silicon Valley.
12:00 – quick Capri panino at AG Ferrari in Belmont. Love the place and the food. They mix up the orders at least 50% of the times. I feel like home.
12:30 – I leave the office for a meeting at a customer site. To get directions, I take out my iPhone and try the Location feature and get direction to their office. It works smoothly. Who said you need GPS for location-aware services? Can Google give us that API on every phone where they have maps? Yes, they can and they will.
13:00 - I show off the JavaME client to the customer, and I get an “ahhh, if you do it like that it could work: it does not look like spam, the ad is not in the face of the user!”. Bingo, we are on the right track. Open source will finally be free.
15:00 – I am back in the office and I play a foosball game. I haven’t lost one game this year so far. This one is close, gets interrupted by the arrival of my next meeting, but we finish anyway (priorities are properly set at Funambol). Nope, streak still good, maybe next time, sorry Ata.
16:00 – I realize I am missing the notes for my iPhone (which I need for the trip) and I left them on my desktop at home. I use LogMeIn and take control of the remote computer, then use Skype to send a file back to my laptop. Just when I am done, my wife buzzes me on Skype and tells me to leave the computer alone. She got scared when the mouse started moving by itself. That’s life in the technology lane…
16:30 – The Windows Mobile phone won’t work in Europe (it is CDMA), so I sync contacts on my iPhone with the Funambol iPhone client. Works like a charm. I am ready to go.
17:00 – time to leave for the airport. Half a way I decide to use a different long-term parking than usual. Anza parking is nice, with the free valet, but their bus never shows up. I am going to try Fasttrack, because I always use it when I leave from Oakland and their bus is there right when I land. I search for it with the Google Maps application on the Windows Mobile. Found it, got direction. When I need to know where to turn, the damn thing shows an http error and the application quits. Didn’t they hire only PhDs at Google? I want to meet the guy who designed the map application sitting in his office with the lava lamps all day, assuming my phone will keep the connection when I am driving. I bet he lives in London. Dude, here the network sucks. Carrier ads are about “lowest dropped calls”… The connection will drop. And do not tell me I should not use the application while driving. The iPhone Google Maps works perfectly, because Steve Jobs tried it while driving and yelled at your team…
18:00 - despite missing the exit, I get to the airport on time, and while I check-in, it appears I do not have a ticket for my second leg of the trip (London to Frankfurt). But my email said “Booked and Confirmed”! “Sorry Sir, we’ll fix it”. I am sitting on the luggage scale and I open my SlingPlayer on the Windows Mobile. I am watching the news I taped on TiVo about last night’s election. I won on every proposition, that’s good. I feel I could vote for any of the three candidates left for President. That’s even better. A sad thought goes to the future Italian election, but then the BA lady gives me my ticket and I am off to the lounge (Tip1 for entrepreneur: never keep miles for pleasure trips, always use them to upgrade to business. Tip2: if you want to be Gold on BA, just switch your country of residence to Italy. It requires half the miles than if you reside in the US. Odd). I realize that watching TV on my phone for free, I am violating my contract with Verizon. Why did they give me a 3G phone with unlimited data? For email??
19:30 - I am on the plane. I forward my cell calls to my SkypeIn number. From there, I will forward them to my local cell phone in Europe and I will save a bundle (yes, Funambol is a startup, roaming charges are a rip-off). I call my wife to say good bye and turn off all my mobile devices. In a near future, I will be able to keep them on. My flight will be a nightmare. Flying is about a book, a movie and lots of silence. Please do not allow me to keep the mobile phone on. You know, I am addicted to it.
20:30 – Dinner is served. British are not really famous for food. There is a reason.
22:30 – I am ready to sleep. Tomorrow is going to be a short day.

Open source is finally free

Last weekend I had dinner at Larry's new place (awesome house, BTW) and he told the story of when they got together and decided to stop using the term "free software" and agreed to start using "open source" instead. I probably heard it 20 times from multiple people, but it is still a good story ;-)

Now, this week we have made an announcement that has received a lot of attention in the mobile world and a little in the open source world (our marketing dollars are all on mobile these days).

We have made open source free software.

We have announced a partnership with Amobee to deliver our push email product to the masses, supported by mobile advertising. The service becomes totally free. Nobody pays (but the advertiser), everybody is happy.

The application looks pretty much like the following picture. The ad is non intrusive (and it is about a soccer team, which can't bother anyone but Americans :-)) It is the browsing paradigm on a PC by Google (ads on the right, not in the face of the user), brought to the equivalent on a mobile device, the messaging client (ad on top, not in the face of the user). This is not spam. Not even close.


I am sure if anyone in the FSF has managed to get to read this post to this point, s/he is jumping to the comments section to flame me. "We did not mean free as you mean it!". Agreed, but this is really free as in beer. There are no strings attached. No limitation in distribution. No need to return the code back to the community. Just free.

I personally have a feeling that the combination of open source and advertising could be THE big transformation in the software industry of the near future. You must be a tight-rope walker to manage it, but if you are able to put together these two trends, you are golden. In a way, this is what Google has been doing so far, with open source software built by others. But this is a step forward. Because it is our community building it and this is the way the money gets back into it (ok, I know, it pays my salary as well...).

The source is open and the software is free. What a novel concept.

We have submitted AGPL to OSI

If you follow open source, or at least this blog, you remember the debate around GPL and the ASP loophole. In a nutshell, companies using a trick to avoid returning changes to the code back to the community. The last chapter is that AGPL v3 (the GPL version that fixes the ASP loophole) was finalized in November, and we switched the Funambol project to it.

One thing I mentioned back in April was that we would do it, as long as AGPL was approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

I wrote:

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.

I found out that the Free Software Foundation (which smartly chose to skip v2 and give AGPL the same version number of GPL v3) does not submit its licenses to the OSI for approval. Do not ask me why, but I have a feeling ;-)

Therefore, someone else has to do it. For GPL v3, it was Google. For AGPL v3, it was Funambol (last week).

Quite an interesting story...

Big Google, a company that could not stand the ASP loophole because they built their entire business on it, manages to get that provision out of GPL v3 and runs to get it approved by the OSI (BTW, it was approved).

Now it is the Funambol turn. Hoping more people will choose AGPL versus GPL, because giving hosters and portals a free lunch is just a bad idea. If they want to use it for free, at least get their code back. So many people have no idea how important would be for them to switch to AGPL, but I do not have the marketing dollars of Google to evangelize it (and mine is just a personal battle for open source, therefore my marketing people will not fund me anyway ;-) So, it is still a free lunch for Google...

Now let me hope the OSI approves the AGPL v3 license :-)

RIP Zimbra?

Some days I wish I could be so optimistic about open source as my good friend Matt. Even when someone sneezes, he can see something positive about open source (open lungs? It means an healthy person. That's the future! Open source everywhere...). Sometimes, I feel a bit more balanced.

One of his last posts talks about the Microsoft hostile bid for Yahoo. In a nutshell, he says that Microsoft will take the open source stuff of Yahoo (e.g. Zimbra) and embrace it.

I just can't see it happen...

Obviously, the assumption is that Yahoo accepts the offer... They should, give me a break, a white knight? A better company and fit than Microsoft?? No way. Remaining an independent company could be nice but when you do not know where to go and someone offers you a 60% increase in your stock price, you take it. The board might disagree, but shareholders won't. This marriage has to happen (citing Manzoni).

Now, if you have a rather successful product called Microsoft Exchange, what do you do with a competing product like Zimbra? You shove it somewhere else, for example to support the online calendaring of MSN+Yahoo. And that's it. This isn't Google. There are no competing products within Microsoft.

I do not believe to be the only one thinking this might happen... I am sure the Zimbra boys are all preparing their bags to leave the boat. They are too smart and too entrepreneurial to stay in a company like Microsoft, in the middle of a messy acquisition. They are rich. They had a fantastic exit. There is money out there for startups. They will get on a new exciting boat in no time, having great memories of the Zimbra days.

That alone spells the end of Zimbra. Even if Matt is right and camels fly, Microsoft will put its hands on an empty shell... There might be some open source code left, but no people around it. And open source is just about people. Code is secondary.

What can you do if you are using Zimbra today?

I am already out looking for an alternative to my hosted Zimbra environment (which works great, excluding the crappy Outlook plug-in, pain in the neck of my daily life)...

My alternatives? A hosted Microsoft Exchange, Google Apps Premier Edition or some other open source company about to be acquired and screwed.

What would you choose?

I guess Microsoft is pushing me to Google... That's interesting. Wasn't it what they were trying to achieve buying Yahoo? Mmmhhh, maybe not :-)

Open wins again

Many people in our industry (mobile) are following the 700Mhz Auction. It is something that might change the wireless market in the US, which tends then to spread the innovations to the rest of the world (not the case with the cellular market, but true in pretty much every other case, like wi-fi for example).

The one I was looking at was the C Block. It included a provision for open devices and open access. That means, who wins that block MUST provide open access and open devices. Which is huge.

The issue was that it had a reserve price ($4.6 billion). If they had no bidder over that, the open provision would have been screwed and the spectrum re-auctioned without the open access requirements.

Many thought the open provision would limit the bidding. Many thought the reserver price would not be met.

Instead, yesterday the reserve was met, with a $4.7 billion bid.

We will have open access in the US.

Open wins again. Now also in mobile. I'll go out and open a bottle of champagne. It is a great day for this industry, and software developers in particular. My thanks to Google for pushing this (although I do not believe they really want to win the auction ;-)

Funambol representing Silicon Valley

Although many people link Funambol with Italy, I have been living in the Valley for almost nine years and I call this place home (despite the current stinking weather... I am so looking forward to flying to Barcelona next week ;-)

Depending on how you look at it, Funambol is a Silicon Valley company with offshore development in Italy, or an Italian company with an offshore headquarter in the US (we do strategy, marketing, product management, biz dev, sales and operations here). Technically, the first is more close to reality...

It is also official: Funambol has been nominated to represent Silicon Valley at the Mobile Monday Peer Award in Barcelona, during the Mobile World Congress.

Now the goal is to beat them all and show why Silicon Valley is best, in particular if you combine it with Italy ;-)

Below is the list of all the nominations. Check them out, some are very cool startups. One has been founded by Funambolist (ViiF, out of Berlin), so I have two horses in the race ;-)

• Amsterdam - Movels
• Bangalore - Mobisy
• Barcelona - skuair
• Berlin - ViiF
• Boston - SnapMyLife
• Brussels - Mobixx
• Chennai - Mobile-worx
• Dusseldorf - Cellity
• Helsinki - Fromdistance
• Istanbul - Mobinex
• London - The 3G Dating Agency / Taptu
• Madrid - Kimia
• Milan - Waymedia
• Mumbai - Ziva Technologies
• Munich - hiClip
• New York - BuzzD
• Oslo - Adactus
• Paris - WebWag
• Rome - Nanology
• Shanghai - DuoGuo
• Silicon Valley - Funambol
• Singapore - mBit.tv
• St. Petersburg - 4Mobi.TV
• Stockholm - Momail
• Taipei - Toro

Funambol and Trolltech

Funambol hired another Stefano a few weeks ago (our CTO was worried they could outnumber the Andreas), Stefano Maffulli, as our community manager. He comes from the FSF, so he is a guarantee for keeping our tight-rope walker well balanced on open source.

He has a cool blog at http://maffulli.net/ which I guess will start hosting more mobile stuff than before (welcome to mobile open source ;-)

His last post is about Trolltech and Funambol, an initiative I find quite interesting, in particular after the acquisition of Trolltech by Nokia (which is already a partner and a customer of Funambol, BTW).

Why wait until summer to code and earn $3,000? Funambol has just announced the availability of a $3,000 bounty to develop a plugin to allow Funambol to run on Qtopia devices. Trolltech, the makers of Qtopia, was just acquired this week by Nokia and as a result, Qtopia will become more commonly used.

Trolltech and Funambol would like to make sure that Funambol software works on Qtopia, so we are happy to provide you with a free Trolltech Green Phone or OpenMoko phone, a free Trolltech SDK and, of ourse, Funambol software. This would involve developing a plug-in to sync PIM data (contacts and calendar to start with) and maybe push email later.

If interested, follow the procedure on the code sniper page and submit a proposal.

Developers looking for information on Funambol’s code should look at Funambol’s wiki and at code from other community contributions (like the Android plugin, for example or the simpler Jajah plugin).

It should be fun, do not miss it.

Android on Dell?

Today a news crossed my screen and caught my attention. The rumor that Dell and Google are working together to release an Android-based smartphone, to be announced at the MWC (a.k.a. 3GSM, as it will be called for another five years by us lazy people).

The announcement would be very cool.

Dell is clearly looking to re-invent itself, or at least find some growth somewhere. The mobile market might be it. Having a big device hit would drive a lot of revenues, and create some buzz around the brand (which is stale).

Google is clearly looking for some device manufacturers that can support its operating system. When the incumbents do not support you, you have to find someone else, which is eager to become relevant in a new space. Dell would be a good match.

When I shared the rumor today, someone asked me "with which carrier?".

Great question, but a 2007 one...

I would bet it would be with no carrier. An open phone. Actually two, one CDMA (that would work on the new Verizon open network) and one GSM (that would work on at&t and Tmobile). Just buy a SIM or walk into a Verizon store and you are activated, ready to go. Open phone, open network.

It would be really cool.

The issue is believing that Dell can create a cool phone, but... who knows? It might happen. Santa is a real person which is hiding somewhere, I believe.

Funambol Community Showcase #2: Yahoo Plug-in

This is the second showcase of Funambol projects. I started this with SyncEvolution a month ago. Today I am showcasing a contacts and calendar synchronization tool, to sync your Yahoo data with a Funambol server. It is a cool project, because it allows you to get your Yahoo data synched on all the devices we support (north of 800, these days... including iPhone and Android ;-)

The developer is Paulo Sergio Lopes Fernandes of Portugal. With his name, he could certainly be a Brazilian soccer player (maybe with a cool nickname, like Pele' or Kaka' or Zico), but he apparently prefers software....

BTW, we have a very active development community in Portugal. Their schools are extremely good. I have been really pleased with everything that has come out of there. Friendly people, good software, decent food. The future Silicon Valley?

Enough with my stuff, let's talk about the Funambol Yahoo plug-in.

Funambol Yahoo Plug-in

By Paulo Fernandes
pauloslf@gmail.com

Overview

The Funambol Yahoo! PIM Plug-in uses the Funambol API to synchronize PIM data between SyncML servers (such as myFUNAMBOL at my.funambol.com ) and Yahoo! The objective was to achieve two-way synchronization between both systems. Yahoo! has both a calendar and a contact manager so the goal was to synchronize the events and contacts in Yahoo! with the Funambol server.

Interesting Aspects, Challenges, etc.

My first big challenge was to find a way to interact with the Yahoo! server. My first try was to use html scrapping: first, I downloaded the page, then I analyzed the html. This solution had many problems, the first was the amount of data downloaded from server, the other was to create regular expressions to get the data needed from a huge html string.

I decided to look around for other software using Yahoo! services and I discovered the Yahoo! widgets (yes, I know they are quite popular but I am not a Windows user). I thought that the widgets might have a smarter way to access Yahoo! By looking around, I found out that the communication is done via simple XML. With a little patience, I understood the meaning of each xml tag and the links where it should be posted.

Another problem was that whenever two different systems are synchronized, you need to decide if a field in the server is equivalent to a field in the client. For example, Funambol stores email as personal email and business email while Yahoo! uses 'email' and 'alternate1' and 'alternate2'. I had to make lots of small decisions to allow safe synchronization.

Using the Funambol Yahoo! PIM Plug-in

The main purpose of Yahoo! PIM Plug-in is to allow users to keep their Yahoo! PIM data (contacts and calendar) in sync with their phone, Outlook, Thunderbird, etc.

The Funambol Yahoo! Plug-in is very easy to use! The first step is to download it from Sourceforge.

This plug-in exists both for Linux and Windows. On Windows, you just need to download the .exe file, install it and you are ready to go. On Linux, you need to download the .zip file, extract it, and run the script ./runYahoo.sh.

The user interface is the same, on your first run, you will see:

The first step is configure your personal data. To do this, use Edit > Communication Settings, then you will see a screen that allow you to configure your login for Funambol and Yahoo!

After this, you can also specify if you want to sync both calendar and contacts, or just one. To do this, go to Edit > Synchronization settings.

Future Plans

I plan to improve the functionality of calendar syncing and to keep an eye on how the interfaces to the Yahoo! PIM service evolves, to see if there is an opportunity for optimization. I would also like to see it get a new user interface, like the Funambol Outlook Plug-in uses, if anyone is interested, feel free to help :) ).

URL / pointers for more info: Firebug.

Going for that billion dollar company

A few months back, when Zimbra was acquired, I wrote a post about the (in)famous quest for the billion dollar open source company.

I wrote:

My prediction is that prices will continue to go up, buyers will continue to buy and at the end of this madness, open source will simply be everywhere. But there won't be a billion dollars standalone open source company.

Looking at the last week or so, I guess I am getting this right ;-) MySQL bought for a 20x multiplier. Trolltech for a 60% premium on their stock price... Any more doubts on open source companies able to have an exit?? And what an exit...

If I go back to the time I switched our model to dual licensing, I remember it started meeting Marten in London and then reading an article about MySQL, Trolltech and Sleepycat. They are all gone. Sun, Nokia and Oracle. Not a bad list...

We have been trying to organize a hike for a few months among open source CEOs. It was supposed to be me, Marten (MySQL), Haavard (Trolltech) and Chris (db4o). Every week we are losing a CEO :-) Now we also are adding Mike (Sleepycat), to make sure CEOs are a minority...

What about that billion dollar company?

Well, there are not many options left. To get to that size, you need a category leader in a space, like MySQL (DB), JBoss (app servers) or Zimbra (email). Sugar leads in CRM, Alfresco leads in Document Management (going with Matt's marketing statements...), Funambol leads in mobile. I have a hard time seeing someone leading in ERP (Compiere and OpenBravo are fighting hard), Business Intelligence (lots of players there) or generic enterprise applications. A lot of the players are addressing a niche, and I do not believe that can lead to a billion dollar company. I probably left out someone potentially big, who I know very well and will send me an email complaining tomorrow :-) Sorry in advance, I did not mean it.

If I am right, there are so few companies that can make it... We need to do something... Although reality seems to indicate there won't be a pure open source billion dollar company, what's wrong with trying? I am going for it.

Funambol is going to be the first open source billion dollar company.

P.S. still, if you have a billion dollar check ready today, do not be shy and feel free to give me a call ;-

Unbricking my iPhone - Act 2

So I finally found the time to book the Genius bar for Tuesday at 7 pm, at the Stanford Shopping Center.

Unfortunately, my life is quite busy these days and I was running late. People told me "they will never wait for you". I confidently thought "a Genius will wait for me", hopped in my car, called the Apple store (maybe I was not that confident, after all) and Joe answered with a reassuring "sure, take your time".

I walked into the store, my name was on the screen, the Genius wasn't there. I asked and a nice lady told me "the Genius is in the back of the store, he will be back shortly". Wow, they REALLY call him "The Genius"!!

John the Genius showed up, looked at the phone, rebooted it, virtually touched his lamp (the iPhone was not touchable) and exclaimed "I need to take your iPhone and give you a new one. Is it ok?".

HE IS A GENIUS, AFTER ALL!

Yes, it was ok for me. I signed a piece of paper, I received a probably refurbished iPhone 4GB (where did they get one is a mystery), which has the latest version of the OS and baseband 4.6 (unlockable, as of today). I went home, jailbroke it, put Funambol on it and the next morning I gave my first demo.

Impressions of Act 2:

1. The genius waited for me, even if I was late. +3 Apple
2. The genius swapped my phone with no questions. +10 Apple
   

Impressions of Act 1 + Act 2: not that bad (-2 Apple). Overall, the experience was very good, once I had the appointment set up. I agree with the idea of having a smart dude check the device before giving you a new one (sound business idea from Apple). However, they should not force you to wait the entire weekend for that. With a bit more people at the Genius bar (or a preference for iPhone issues, since you are paying them a monthly fee anyway), they would get a big round of applause from me.

Now I would recommend them to build more robust devices, but this is a different story...

Unbricking my iPhone - Act 1

Today I walked into the Apple store in Palo Alto with my bricked iPhone.

I looked around, trying to find the smiling dude (they have plenty of those in the Apple stores) and I walked towards him. I showed him my bricked iPhone. He looked at me with sad eyes, tried to unlock it, reboot it and finally agreed the touchscreen was dead.

I asked him if he has seen any other iPhone with a dead touchscreen and he answered: "many, the touchscreen simply stops working". Nice to feel I am not alone.

Then I asked him: "so, what's next?".

He said: "you need to go to the Genius bar" (I was less than a yard from the Genius bar). "They will look at it and give you a new one, since this one needs to be repaired". I asked if they had spare 4G iPhones (I believe I am the only one in the world left with a 4G iPhone). He said "sure".

Then he added: "unfortunately, the Genius bar is all booked today and probably also tomorrow".

He walked me to a laptop in the store where I could see when I could book my slot. The next slot was Monday at 1 pm.

Now, I told him I actually did not think I needed a genius to take my iPhone and give me a new one, any idiot could do it. He stopped smiling and told me "unfortunately, sir, you need to go to the Genius bar".

On a Saturday morning, to get an iPhone swapped, I have to wait until Monday. Sadly, I am working on Monday (actually, I am speaking at the .mobile Internet Forum in San Francisco, so I am not really working...). Therefore, I can't go and talk to the genius. I will have to wait.

And while I wait, I am paying at&t (and Apple) for a monthly subscription I can't use.

First impressions of Act 1:

1. The smiling dude was very nice with me. +1 Apple
2. The idea of needing a genius to swap an iPhone, when an idiot would be more than enough, is just dumb. In any other store, I could return the damn thing in two minutes. -5 Apple
3. The fact that the Genius bar is overbooked makes the wait even more upsetting. -10 Apple
4. Waiting from the beginning of the weekend to the beginning of the business week is really bad. -11 Apple
5. Thinking that I am paying over the weekend while I am waiting for the Genius makes all this worse. -12 Apple

In a few days, I will report back on Act 2, "the visit to the Genius". Maybe he will just touch my iPhone and it will start walking again.

MacWorld: blink

So, today is the big day of MacWorld. Jobs keynote. The magician at work.

Few things announced:

1. an ultraportable laptop called MacBook Air, very cool looking
2. an upgrade to the iPhone, called 1.1.3, that adds few new feature to maps (same we already have on other devices), web pages as mobile widgets on a customizable home page (features already available in the jailbroken iPhone, since months), group SMS (yawn)
3. an upgrade to the iPod Touch, adding all the apps that iPhone has always had and iPod Touch was missing (that makes it now equal to the iPhone) at $20
4. online movie rental (made easy)
   
5. an upgrade to Apple TV (a device I was not too enthusiastic about, when it was released...)
6. a wireless backup unit (boring but quite useful)

Blink:

1. Apple is leaking like a sieve. This is the first MacWorld ever with no surprises. The iPhone 1.1.3 was announced on blogs, with video, three weeks ago. Totally accurate
2. The MacBook Air looks awesome. I want one. They solved my issue of the right click of the mouse (the trackpad multitouch is a very cool thing), but added yet-another-dongle to carry on: the damn thing is missing the Ethernet port... I mean, go give a presentation and pray they have free wireless. No chance. I will need two VGA dongles and two Ethernet dongles. Mmhh, maybe I won't buy it after all. We'll see
3. The wiggling of the iPhone icons on the customizable home page is absolute genius. I want to hug the Apple designer who thought about it
4. The 20 bucks for the software upgrade of the iPod Touch is a very bad sign for all of us that are getting used to free firmware updates. Say good bye to it. The iPhone 2.0 software upgrade is going to cost dollars. Like I could install it on my brick...
   

Help: I am on the TIM black list

Yesterday I was told I am on the TIM black list. If I go to TIM and try to buy a SIM card, they won't give it to me. Strange, I did not do anything bad to TIM. Why do they hate me? Maybe because my personal phone number in Italy is on Wind and I write on a blog?

Well, I found out the problem is that I am too good of a customer. I bought too many SIMs from them, since the Funambol engineering team uses my name as the CEO of the company in Italy, when buying SIMs. I reached the TIM SIM limit.

They won't give me more. I had enough. I must go to the competition.

It make sense, I would blacklist my best customers as well if I could ;-)

Time for a laptop change?

Now that my iPhone is a brick because the touch screen gave up on me, I should start saying that Apple hardware sucks and that nobody should buy anything from Apple. This is actually true, I have heard it from many sources (laptop crashing, iPod unusable after few months and so on), including Dave and Matt (who is an hard-core Apple fan). However, since I am still in Europe, I am dumbly hopeful that next week I will be back in the Palo Alto store and the smiling dude will give me a new iPhone. I am probably dreaming, but I will report about it later...

My laptop is suffering of Windows aging. It is a well-know phenomenon: you leave Windows to run for a few months and it slows down inevitably, day after day. The time for boot becomes longer. The time after you login becomes infinite. Usually, when I reach this state I re-install Windows from scratch. I keep a backup on a separate PC, with all my data and applications. In a couple of hours, I have a rejuvenated laptop.

This time I am tempted (again) by what Steve Jobs will announce next week. I always thought I could not use a Mac because it lacks the right button of the mouse (but I was told you can still make it, clicking one of the special keys) and the damn dongle for the VGA: if you do presentations all the time, you will lose the dongle one day between presentations and you will be dead (but I was told I could buy two dongles and store one in a secret compartment of my bag, just for emergencies).

What is compelling is that every laptop I bought recently for Funambol has been a Mac. Everyone got one. Parallels works really great and people are running Windows XP applications happily. Including Outlook, a tool I can't really live without (today, but I am sure it won't last).

Actually, because of Parallels and the Intel inside, the upgrade from Windows XP to Vista is more difficult than the upgrade from Windows XP to Apple Leopard... XP applications run smoothly in Leopard and you do not have to learn a new paradigm for applications. In part, this is because the upgrade from Office 2007 to Office XP is more difficult than the upgrade from Office 2007 to OpenOffice... I find all this quite bizarre but a great opportunity for the non-Microsoft camp. If they hurt themselves, we should not stop ;-)

However, I can't get an Apple laptop today. Their laptops are just too heavy. I am what computer magazines would call "a road warrior" and wifes "an idiot". I travel a bit too much to put a heavy laptop in my bag. I need it light. My HP Compaq nc4010 does it well as an ultraportable at 3.5 lbs.

Now, it appears Steve will announce an ultraportable laptop at MacWorld... With a flash disk. Thin and light. One that will break in six months... If the former happens and the smiling dude will give me back a new iPhone next week (maybe with 3G, Steve go for it), I might actually go for it as well.

Stay tuned.

Time to say goodbye to texting

What are the advantages of SMS, also known as texting, that drove it to worldwide unbelievable success?

1. It is easy and immediate, although it is asynchronous
2. It is dirty cheap, much less than a voice call
   

Now, nothing seems to be taking away #1. However, the limitations are clear. Try sending out a picture with an SMS... It is a technology of the past.

What kills me is that the mobile operators are taking away #2!! Today Verizon raised the price of a single text to 20 cents, following Sprint (mind you foolish Europeans, it is both for sending and receiving message ;-) Just a bit more than a year ago, the price was 10 cents, then they raised to 15 cents, now it is 20 cents. A 100% increase in a year...

Are they insane??

Maybe. They are simply pushing everybody to buy a bundle. If you are a bundle user, you are going to send a lot more text messages (who cares, they use zero bandwidth), which will be sent to a lot of people. Some of them (most?) will be receivers without a bundle: THEY will pay double (a bundle...). Evil.

But they might be pushing towards the wrong one. In a short time, people won't buy SMS bundles, they will buy a data plan and they will use mobile email instead. They are just accelerating the transition, pushing to make themselves a dumb pipe...

Time to say goodbye to texting, at least in the US.

Yahoo Go: because we all love SDKs

If you are a mobile developer, you are already a frustrated individual. You dream of a world with one mobile operating system and one SDK (wait, are you sure, take a look at what you have in front of you...), instead Yahoo at CES has just announced yet-another-mobile-SDK.

Damn, can't life in mobile be easier?

If you want to build a mobile app today, you can choose from:

• JavaME: great reach but you need to develop one app per phone, so that's about one billion slightly different apps... But just slightly.
  
• Symbian: not a bad idea, big reach, stable platform, maybe boring. I could even build a JavaME app and tweak it to become native.
• Windows Mobile: very small market share and not growing, but easy to build. Tough, who wants to build for a Microsoft operating system? Really uncool... If my boss forced me to do it, I will. But please boss do not force me to do it.
• iPhone: that would be cool, the thing attracts girls and its market share will boom fast (although the device is not really robust). Wait, I have to hack it and there are no APIs. Even cooler! It might get boring when they announce the SDK in February, though...
• Android: whooo!! supercool. Too bad there are no devices and it will take a few years for it to have a meaningful marketplace. Hey, but you can get money from Google with the Android Challenge...
• BREW: what? No, please. I do not want to develop in a box with high walls.
• PalmOS: is it still alive?
• Flash: nice, but it is ready for prime time? It could actually be the answer to JavaME portability in the long run. Wait and see.
  
• A dozen variations of Linux, lead by OpenMoko (because I like them), including Maemo and many others: go for it, man! We need people that love to dream in this world! Worst case scenario: you'll port it back to Android in a year. It is a mobile Linux variation, after all.
• Another ten or so I forgot, like Sony PSP and many more
  

When you think you are done with the list, boom! Yahoo comes up with a mobile platform over a mobile operating system. A sort of a middle layer that allows you to develop your applications on top of that. Not that far, as a concept, from JavaME or Flash. Certainly, more focused in scope.

The issue? Well, a mobile platform over an operating system might be a bit large in size and slow as hell. Hey, you can always hope in Moore's law.

The opportunity? Well, they already ported their platform over the other operating systems. If they make it really consistent (doable), you develop once and it will run everywhere. That's a developer dream.

The risk? Well, for your app to succeed, you need the underlying technology to succeed. If people do not download Yahoo Go on their phone because it is too large and too slow, you are toasted. Uuhhmmm.

Overall, I like Yahoo's move.

They needed to come up with something (anything ;-) to counter Google and Apple. They did it.

I am a fan of the mobile widget concept, as you might remember. In one of my first posts on this blog, I mentioned Yahoo going for WAP but my prediction was they would go back to mobile widgets one day. They did it.

Now they just have to make sure consumers love the platform and developers build the widgets. The problem is that the two are linked. One drives the other. And getting developers mind share in mobile is very very hard these days...

Good! Luck! To! Yahoo!

Death of an iPhone

Close to a year after being unveiled at Macworld and slightly six months after being bought the day it was put on sale, my iPhone died today. Or better, it became untouchable.

I can swipe all my fingers on it, but it does not feel the touch anymore. I cannot even do the "slide to unlock"... Worst, it rings, it beeps, it syncs, but I touch it and she (?) refuses to wake up or giggle a little. I reboot it and nothing changes. It is a sad day in iPhoneland.

Let's hope Apple will have an answer why one day my beautiful touchscreen left me. Unfortunately, I am in Europe and I will need to let the battery go for another ten days...

Mobile Open Source Monday

As soon as Mike found out I was in Europe, he organized a Mobile Monday Silicon Valley around Open Source... Jokes apart, this looks like a great event and we will have Hal speaking about Mobile Open Source and Funambol. Funny enough, it is held at Microsoft :-)

* What: January 2008 Mobile Monday (Open Source)
* When: January 7th, 2008 7:00pm
* Where: Microsoft SV Campus, 1065 La Avenida St. Building 1, Mountain View, CA
* Who: Anyone interested in mobility
* Cost: Nothing!

Do not miss it.

Funambol Community Showcase #1: SyncEvolution

The first days of the year, most people commit to doing something. I am not a smoker, so I can't stop doing that. Therefore, I am focusing on something else: showcasing the great projects in our community. There are so many and so diverse, that they risk to get lost. I have decided to pick some for a few weeks (or months) and have the developer(s) talk about it.

The showcase consists of Funambol developers and community members writing about Funambol mobile open source projects, components, apps, services and content. Showcase entries will be published periodically in my blog, to generate awareness of interesting projects in the community and to provide recognition for outstanding achievements by our dedicated developers and community members.

The debut entry in the showcase is SyncEvolution, written by long time Funambol community member Patrick Ohly. As his showcase entry mentions, Patrick has made multiple significant contributions to the Funambol code base. He is a star and I want sincerely to thank him for all of his efforts. I think you will find this entry to be quite interesting. If you would like to learn more about SyncEvolution, check out the links in the entry or contact Patrick for more information.

I plan to publish several more Showcase entries over the coming weeks, covering all aspects of Funambol such as the Java ME client, the Outlook plug-in, the Windows Mobile plug-in, the Device Management framework and much more. If you are interested in generating awareness for your Funambol project, just drop me a note. Thank you and enjoy the first showcase.

SyncEvolution

By Patrick Ohly
patrick.ohly@gmx.de

Overview

SyncEvolution synchronizes personal information management (PIM) data like contacts, calenders, tasks and memos via the SyncML synchronization standard. The version of SyncEvolution compiled for GNOME's Evolution supports all of these data items. The version compiled for Nokia 770/800/810 Internet Tablets, Mac OS X and the iPhone supports synchronizing the system address book. The command line tool 'syncevolution' (that is compiled separately for each of these platforms) performs the synchronization.

Background

In 2006, I became interested in SyncML because I had to replace my mobile phone. I wanted to choose a phone that I could synchronize with my address book, which was in the Evolution email client on Linux. As an open standard, SyncML looked promising and
Funambol already had open sourced a lot of SyncML-related code.

The sync4jevolution project had already been registered atSourceForge, but was empty and unused. So I started from scratch under the name "SyncEvolution", with the initial goal of writing a command line client primarily for contacts, because that was what I personally needed.

Adding more features and helping others to use SyncEvolution was another goal from the start, so in 2006, I also added support for calendar, memo and task sync.

Since the initial releases for Evolution on Linux, I also ported SyncEvolution to the Nokia Internet Tablets. This used the same libraries as Evolution, but with a different underlying technology, requiring quite a few workarounds.

In 2007, SyncEvolution finally left its Evolution roots behind with a port to the iPhone. SyncEvolution is the technology behind Funambol's iPhone plug-in. Since then, "SyncEvolution - the Evolution SyncML client" is dead, long live "SyncEvolution - The Missing Link".

Collateral Damage/Results

The work on SyncEvolution has brought results beyond the tool itself. When I started, the Funambol C++ client library only worked on Windows and Windows-based Smartphones. I ported it to Linux and POSIX-based systems, which provided the basis for several
other projects.

There was also no unit testing or test cases that could be used by developers of SyncML clients. Based on the CPPUnit framework, I implemented automated testing. SyncEvolution has been tested with this system from the initial release. Later, this system was decoupled from SyncEvolution and moved into the Funambol CVS so that now all clients based on the Funambol C++ library can use it.

Using SyncEvolution

SyncEvolution is provided in binary form for different platforms and of course also as source code. After installing a suitable version, the first step is creating the required text configuration files, usually by copying the provided examples and updating a few private fields. After that, the 'syncevolution' command line tool needs to be invoked to perform a synchronization. All of this is documented in detail on the home page.

Future Plans

The 0.7 release is done, with all features originally planned for it completed.

iPhone users are desperately waiting for calendar and memo support. There are no plans to work on that from my side because synchronizing the address book required quite a lot of work and guessing although it was at least similar to the Mac OS X address book.

When Apple releases the native iPhone SDK it might be a lot easier and therefore it makes sense to wait for that.

Further Information

The main home page of SyncEvolution is http://www.estamos.de/projects/SyncML/. It has sections on installation, getting started and compatibility with platforms and different SyncML servers.

My blog is the place to watch for announcements and news around SyncEvolution.

A video

A few months back, I was interviewed by Nicola Mattina in Rome. Although it looks like I am sleeping between questions (the jet-lag, I just landed from California ;-) it might be a shortcut to understand the Funambol and mobile open source story.

Funambol and Android

There is a question that people keep asking me: how do you position Funambol and Android? I always try to give my best answer ("Android is a mobile phone operating system, Funambol is a mobile application server, both are open source, and they are a killer combination for mobile which will change the world"), but probably Hal thought it was not good enough ;-) Therefore, he wrote a position paper about it, entitled "How Google Android Stimulates the Mass Market for Mobile Email and how Funambol Mobile Open Source Monetizes It".

From the press release:

The paper discusses how Android will spur adoption of mobile email by large numbers of people and how Android and Funambol can transform the market.

The report also poses and answers major questions for the mobile industry such as:
-- How will mass market mobile email be enabled by Android and Funambol?
-- What do the new market dynamics mean to prices and control within the industry?
-- How do mobile service providers make money in this new environment?
-- Who are the new telecom winners and losers?

The position paper covers the following topics:
-- Mass market mobile email trends and user requirements
-- The mobile email value chain and the end game for mobile email
-- What is Google Android
-- and what is it not?
-- What are Google's aspirations for mobile and for mobile email in particular?
-- How can mobile operators and service providers benefit from S.O.S.
-- standards, open source and synchronization

To download the position paper, visit http://www.funambol.com/solutions/library.php. It is definitely worth a read over the holidays.

2007 - the year of data plans

I am starting to see the end of 2007 and it is time for some looking back. In my opinion, 2007 has been the most amazing year in mobile history. Bodes well for 2008 ;-)

I landed in Europe a few days back and, as every year, I started looking around for a data plan. I own a prepaid Italian SIM card (from Wind), the same I owned for years. Every single Christmas for the last five years, I looked around for a data plan that could make sense for me. I have an unlimited data plan in the US (with Verizon) and I am addicted to data, push email and the like (and chocolate, but you can find good one from Switzerland here...).

Last year, I scrambled for a full month. I looked at every carrier, finding 3 as the most data-friendly one. Wind had nothing. I tried to buy a 3 data card. I had to go to a store five times. I ended up empty handed. Using my GPRS "embedded" data plan with moderation, only in emergencies (and paying good euros for every sync).

This year, everything has changed. I went on the Wind site, they had three data plans for my prepaid phone... A 8 euros/month for 500MB. A 20 euros/month for 2.5GB. A 30 euros/month for 5GB. I went for the 8 euros, clicked on a link and boom, 8 euros disappeared on my SIM and I have a data plan. If I do not do anything, next month they will take another 8 euros automatically. Or I can opt out with an SMS message.

This is fantastic. 150MB will easily suffice, even on my iPhone. Everyone can afford it (looking at how much we paid for dinner last night...). And it was so easy.

Since I am a curious person, I tried to look at TIM. Same thing. The Maxxi data plans is 20 euros for 500MB. You can add it to a prepaid card.

Looking at the US, the same applies. Prices dropped with the iPhone to $20/month or below, on every carrier (Verizon excluded, where do they live, on the moon?).

2007 has been the year of the data plans. Data plans are a requirement for the mobile 2.0 to take off. We are ready. 2008 is going to be the year of mobile applications. I have been waiting for years for this moment. It was about time :-)

The open source police coming to mobile

It was just a matter of time. Today the Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) filed a copyright lawsuit against Verizon, alleging they infringed on the GPL and should have distributed the source code.

In their words:

The Software Freedom Law Center (SFLC) today announced that it has filed a copyright infringement lawsuit against Verizon Communications, Inc. on behalf of its clients, two principal developers of BusyBox, alleging violation of the GNU General Public License (GPL). BusyBox is a lightweight set of standard Unix utilities commonly used in embedded systems and is open source software licensed under GPL version 2.

Verizon is the provider of a fiber-optic Internet and television service called FiOS. Verizon distributes Actiontec MI424WR wireless routers to FiOS customers. This router contains BusyBox, and under the terms of the GPL, Verizon is obligated to provide the source code of BusyBox to recipients of the device. According to the lawsuit, Verizon continues to distribute BusyBox illegally without source code, despite having been contacted by SFLC.

This is the fourth GPL enforcement lawsuit filed by SFLC on behalf of the BusyBox developers. The first one, against Monsoon Multimedia, was settled out of court in October, with Monsoon agreeing to remedy its prior violation, ensure future compliance, and financially compensate the plaintiffs. Mark has written a nice post about the Monsoon case and the lessons for FOSS management. I am sure all the other lawsuits will be a slam dunk, as the first one. Verizon will have to pay.

I have been waiting for this to happen for a while. Eben Moglen and the SFLC are simply enforcing a license (or a lack of it, if you are out of compliance with the GPL...) that many have simply used to their advantage - without any respect for the hard work of the developers. Remember, GPL is not free, you have to give back the code. Or you can get sued.

BTW, for those panicking out there, there is another option provided by commercial open source companies built on the dual licensing concept. Pay and license the code. Get indemnification, support and a throat to choke (that would be me, when it comes to Funambol ;-)

Quid pro quo: you have to give back something. You do not want to give back the code? Give us cash instead. We'll put it back to build an even better open source product.

Long life to the open source police. If you are a Funambol user and you are violating our GPL/HPL/AGPL license (we know you are out there...), it might happen to you sooner or later. Maybe sooner. We are here to help you ;-)

The mobile 2.0 revolution starts in Germany

1&1, the largest web hoster in the world, went live with a mobile email solution last week in Germany. They are using Funambol, integrated with OpenXchange. Open source on all levels...

Why is it the start of a revolution?

Because this not a carrier, though they are offering mobile email directly to their users. An ISP offering mobile messaging... The start of a big shift in this market, where you will get your email pushed to your phone directly from the company that "owns" your email. In 99.99% of the cases, that is not your mobile carrier...

1&1 is doing this in a very smart way, since they are going "around" the mobile operator but they are also adding an option to be the mobile operator. Technically, I guess they are proposing themselves also as an MVNO.

So you can get mobile email on your device if:

1. You own a phone and a data plan. No additional charge.
2. You want also a special data plan. They have one for 9.99 euro a month (unlimited data, that's nothing!!!!). You could also get a voice plan, if you desire.
   
3. You want also a phone. They have a Windows Mobile device for 49.99 euro (heck, that's nothing as well...)

If you speak German, the image below explains option 2 and 3. Or you can also look at their website. They are starting with Windows Mobile. Go get it :-)

I feel this is really huge. An ISP offering mobile email directly (and for free ;-) Plus doubling as an MVNO, to push adoption. The world is changing...

BTW, if you are not German, 1&1 has announced they will be launching in UK, France and USA in the first half of 2008. The revolution is coming to a country close to you ;-)

Mind the bridge (if you are Italian)

There is another initiative coming from Google these days. This one includes Italians. Actually, it is only meant for Italians (Google-Italy 1-1).

My friend Marco Marinucci has founded a non-profit, called Mind the Bridge. The goal is to stimulate Italian entrepreneurs to become global, maybe moving to the US, getting money in Silicon Valley and keeping R&D in Italy (sounds familiar...). The first step is a business plan competition.

In his own words:

ABOUT US
The initiative is led by its founder, Marco Marinucci who acts as its executive director, defining the main directions of the organization. Marco (a Google executive in his day job) got inspired when involved in a business plan competition and mentoring project in Africa. Blown away by the radical impact such initiative played, he decided to replicate the model with the hope to have a similar impact in Italy, his own country. The executive director is supported by an Organizing Committee, whose role is to steer the direction of the initiative, defining the organizational details.

The organizing committee includes representatives from the relevant organizations endorsing the project.

The organizing committee defines the selection committee members and helps in the set up of the Silicon Valley road show for the finalists.

INSPIRING PRINCIPLES
Mind the Bridge is a purely nonprofit initiative.

All the participating parties and collaborators share the same inspiring principles and participate on a purely volunteer basis. The initiative is meant as a call for action:
1. to spur more innovative ideas from Italian talents
2. to create the conditions we wished we could have enjoyed when in similar situations (with a good idea but lack of development options)
3. to share business contacts for the common good

We value open collaboration and transparency as crucial for the success of the initiative

Marco tried to involve me during a wonderful lunch at Google (tapas... man I would put 20 kilos on in two weeks, working at Google ;-) and I used all my skills to dodge the bullet. The initiative is absolutely great, but it requires a lot of time. I do not have it, unfortunately (yes, I have to write on this blog instead...).

BUSINESS PLAN COMPETITION
* a unique opportunity to promote and develop Italian best new business ideas
* each selected project will be mentored by a successful serial entrepreneur
* The selected projects will Tour the Silicon Valley to showcase their idea to the investment community (venture capitalists, angel investors and corporations)

I am going to be in the selection committee (I could not say no to that...), so if you submit your business plan I might review it.

The deadline is DECEMBER 21, so move quickly. This is a fantastic opportunity to get your business idea reviewed by someone that has done it already. Worst case scenario: you get some feedback that will help you to better shape your idea. Best case scenario: you will get a mentor that will help you (believe me, mentors are what you need right now, and the list of people of First Generation Network that volunteered for the mentor post is phenomenal) and you will have the unique opportunity to present your idea in front of the right people in Silicon Valley. The weather is nice here, you know... Worth a trip. Even if your idea is not fully baked, send an exec summary. Do not miss this one, it could be the opportunity of a lifetime.

I admit it: I just want to see 100 little Funambols ;-)

What is missing in the Android SDK

While recovering from the turkey, I spent some more time browsing the Google Android SDK. I focused more on what I felt was missing, rather than what is there (because it is more challenging and it helps fighting the tryptophan :-)

First thing I noticed is that it lacks a nice GUI. A year ago, I would have said wow. Now, I am expecting an iPhonesque experience, which is not in the SDK. However, since TAT is in the open alliance, I am sure there is something coming that Google did not want to share. Rightly so, I might add: it is just a preview of an SDK, you need developer to code, who cares about users at this point? You care about users when you ship a phone. I would bet the UI will look different on the first real phones. And it will be good for marketing.

Second thing I noticed is that it lacks support for JavaME. Yes, device manufacturers can get it from Esmertec (another member of the OHA), but - if you are a developer - there is no guarantee it will be there. And you can't test it today. The message is clear and it is everywhere: Google is trying to build the mobile operating system of the future. It is a new platform, it has a new paradigm (look at the concept of Activity, Intent and so on...). It is a bold move. Forget about JavaME, you have to build native. Port your app soon (and we will give you 10M if you do it ;-) Do not miss the train.

Last thing, and more significant, is the lack of an Advertising API. I do not believe Google did Android "to get more people to access their services with a browser". The browser is not the killer app on a mobile phone. Making the experience better than the current Safari on the iPhone is going to be nearly impossible. And browsing on the iPhone sucks. It is barely usable for emergencies. I probably do not spend more than 5% of the time I use an iPhone to browse. The rest are applications, starting with email. Or weather. Or stocks. Or music. Or video.

I do not believe Google is investing millions in Android with the hope you will click on an ad, while browsing (and getting to the ad might require panning and zooming...). Google is building the mobile platform for the future, that allows a developer to deliver applications integrated in the Google Ad System. As Google Adsense has made content possible (web developers need to grab a few lines of Javascript and they start making money), the Advertising API will allow mobile developers to build their applications and put in a few lines of Java code, to integrate them with the Google Ad System.

Ads will be also linked to GPS, so the context will be "where you are", not just "who you are". Since Google also knows "what you like" because of the searches, it will deliver the most interesting ads depending on your location. Developers will build the conduit to allow Google to make gazillions also on mobile, while they make some dollars and the users get all kind of applications for free...

Again, no need to put that API in the first version of the SDK, but I am sure it is coming. It makes a lot of (common and business) sense. Expect the Advertising API to ship quite soon.

BTW, I am running out of champagne. I opened another bottle today, after the announcement from Verizon that the Wall Garden is coming down next year. Open is finally hot. I have been waiting for it for a long time, it does not seem possible this is really happening so fast.

AGPL and the future of open source

Fifteen months ago, I decided it was time for someone to take charge and close the ASP loophole of GPL. A plague that I thought would eventually kill open source.

In a nutshell, GPL v2 forces copyleft (giving back your code when using GPL code) only for distribution of the software as a floppy (or a CD, you get the picture). Distribution of software as a service was not covered (rightly so, the license was created in 1991...). However, since the world is quickly moving towards Sofware as a Services (SaaS), keeping the ASP loophole meant killing copyleft and - with that - the main reason for open source success ("forcing" people to contribute back).

Back then, I created HPL, the Honest Public License. To keep people that host SaaS honest with the open source principle (going "around" a license, because it did not specify something that happened some years later, does not sounds honest to me ;-)

I added:

My hope is that HPL one day will disappear because GPL v3 will supersede it. I plan to work hard to make it happen in the upcoming months.

Well, HPL disappears today.

After months of hard work, AGPL v3 has been finalized by the Free Software Foundation. It is basically HPL, but upgraded to GPL v3 and even compatible with the Apache license. I could not have asked for a better result. Every thing I wanted is in the license. Fighting feels great when you win ;-)

Funambol is obviously the first commercial open source company to embrace AGPL v3. I am happy to announce that our upcoming GA release of Funambol 6.5 will be based on AGPL v3.

I believe AGPL will save open source. When the majority of software will run as a service, we'll look back at this moment and realize how important it was to have a license supporting this shift in computing. Without AGPL, open source would die for lack of copyleft.

If you are running an open source project and you believe it could be run as a service (think five years from now, not just today), please take a look at AGLP. Don't stop at GPL v3. If you chose GPL, it means you wanted people to contribute back to your project. If you let some people make changes to your code and not contribute them back, just because they distribute your code as a service, why did you choose GPL in the first place??

A few months back - after a couple of beers - I bet with Mark Radcliffe that in five years AGPL will outshine GPL. I have a feeling I will lose this one, because of lack of marketing power on my side, but - hey - I like to fight :-)

Just think about it, do not stop at GPL because others have done it. Your product might be distributed as a service one day (think Google Apps for a second). Choosing GPL over AGPL would be a terrible mistake that might dry up contribution to your open source project one day. A mistake that might eventually kill your project.

Don't be dumb, give it an A.

Vodafone screaming OPEN

If you are like me and you have been pushing open in mobile, you might feel we are now living a dream. Since the iPhone came out, a sequence of events are all pointing to the same direction. It all started five months ago, but the world looks so different today.

The latest news comes from Germany. Vodafone is trying to force T-Mobile to release an unlocked iPhone, so that it can work on the Vodafone network as well.

Quoting NewsFactor:

A German court has ordered T-Mobile to change its marketing campaign for Apple's iPhone and has issued a restraining order prohibiting the company from selling the Mac-maker's handset. [..]

Vodafone's German unit is behind the action. The company petitioned the court to block sales of the iPhone in Germany until its complaints about an exclusive agreement between Apple and T-Mobile are addressed.

The court order does not demand T-Mobile stop selling the iPhones altogether, but does, at least temporarily, prohibit the company from selling them with a two-year contract. The court has mandated that the product be allowed to function on other carriers' networks.

You can read this news as you like. It is clearly a plot by Vodafone to screw iPhone sales for T-Mobile during Christmas. However, the end result is that Vodafone is kicking and screaming to force unlocked phones in the market. Which is huge.

Vodafone is screaming OPEN... Welcome to the club.

The Funambol Italian Challenge to Android

I have been following the debate around the ban of Italians by Google, preventing anyone in the BelPaese to participate in the Google Android Developer Challenge. It is ten millions of (devalued) dollars and the Italian economy could definitely benefit from it... Too bad no Italians can participate.

What is happening in the Italians circles?

First reaction was "Why?".

Second reaction was "Ahhh, that's why! Damn our government!".

Third reaction was "Well, how do we go around that?".

It is amusing because going around the rules is a way of life, if you are Italian. We even have a say ("fatta la legge, trovato l'inganno"), which basically means "as soon as a new law comes out, we find a way around it"...

Stefano Quintarelli in his blog has proposed to select five proposals from Italians, then create a US corporation to submit the proposals to Google. If anyone wins, it will get the money and a US company, ready to go.

This is pure Italian genius at work. Creativity is in the DNA. Italians have always had to struggle to find ways "around" things... That's why they are great software developers. It is all in the DNA.

Let me contribute to Stefano's idea, because it is great but it might be a bit hard to execute. I have a proposal which is simpler, since I have already all the right legal elements in place. Let's call it "The Funambol Italian Challenge to the Android Developer Challenge, based on an original idea by Stefano Quintarelli" (long and complicated names are also part of the Italian DNA).

If you are Italian, have an idea for an Android application which you plan to put in open source, send it to me. I already have a US company... As long as it is decent, I will submit it as Funambol Inc. If your app wins, I will return 100% of the money to you. And, who knows, you might also get a job at Funambol in Silicon Valley or in Pavia...

Just use your creativity, it is in your DNA.

Funambol 6.5 is out

Originally codenamed Elba (our PM is going with the islands of Italy...) and now Funambol 6.5 beta, our newest release is out. The enhancements are numerous (starting with allowing many more people to get email pushed on their devices). I would recommend you take a look at the announcement and (better) at the open source code.

For the lazy ones out there, here is the laundry list:

Multimedia content sync. Funambol has been enhanced to synchronize large objects. The Funambol v6.5 server and the Windows Mobile and Outlook plug-ins can now sync contact photos. This syncing of multimedia content will be expanded for more multimedia content and Funambol clients over time.

Improved Carrier Edition scalability. Carrier Edition is the commercial version of Funambol software for mobile operators, service providers and portals. Funambol v6.5 has a redesigned high availability framework for all Funambol server components. It improves load balancing and automatic load redistribution and it eliminates any single point of failure. Funambol v6.5 also includes management tools for monitoring the system's health and load.

Broader device compatibility to support the latest mobile phones. Funambol's global open source community helps test and improve Funambol on mobile phones around the globe, enabling Funambol to support more handsets than any other provider of mobile email. v6.5 broadens Funambol's device compatibility by providing synclets to support over 800 new models of phones. The Funambol Java ME mobile email client has been certified to run on 150 additional Motorola, Nokia and Sony Ericsson phones. This updated device support is contained in the latest Funambol phone pack that is part of the commercial Funambol Carrier Edition.

Portal enhancements. Funambol v6.5 includes numerous ease-of-use improvements to the Funambol portal, which is part of Funambol Carrier Edition. These include streamlined user signup and activation, and an enhanced user profile page. These will be incorporated into the free myFUNAMBOL portal when it is upgraded in the coming weeks.

Enhanced Funambol clients. The Funambol Windows Mobile plug-in, in addition to push optimizations and photo sync, sports a refined user interface. The Funambol Java ME mobile email client adds address book search, more shortcut keys, "call sender" while viewing a message and the ability to control the sound and vibration for incoming messages.

In a nutshell, it is a heck of a minor release :-)