Technology

information & communication technology

Open Source & Business

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I’m preparing a workshop for later this month and one of the topics will be the rise of open source and the business models around it. Here are some interesting sites and comments that I’ve come across lately:

Matt Asay: “The benefits of SaaS [software as a service] also point to its greatest flaw: it’s the ultimate lock-in scenario when it comes to your data, even though it “liberates” the user from software. In fact, it’s this very liberation that creates the problem. If you don’t have the software, you really don’t have the data, no matter the vendor’s data policy. My data qua data is only as useful as the software used to open it up and read it.”

The Economic Times: “Clearly, the IPR-based [intellectual property rights] model for innovation is just not working. Strong IP protection is encouraging protectionism and is harming the way science is done. Many more patents are taken out to stop others from working than to protect one’s own research. It is premised on very high costs of development, that are sought to be recovered through high monopoly pricing of products.”

Dave Snowden: “… I think the position deeply confuses the concept of open source with that of not having to pay for things. It also fails to understand that all business models make money somewhere, the issue is where and (to my mind the most important thing) the degree of transparency of said business model. ”

Guillaume Lebleu: “The idea is to not view open source as an all or nothing strategy, but rather as a marketing technique to segment your market and maximize revenue, except that in the open source case, the revenue is mostly intangible.” [follow link for charts]

I’ll be summarizing my workshop and posting here by the end of the month.

Mailserver Down

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If you’ve sent any e-mail messages to the @jarche.com address this past week, i may have missed it, as we’re having some technical issues with the mailserver. My posted e-mail still works though – hjarche AT gmail DOT com.

Update: All is working now :-)

Boring is good

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I thought that enterprise top-down software was a thing of the past and that small pieces loosely joined was the new model, but I’ve been in learning hell with a community of practice platform that uses the walled garden metaphor to the extreme.

Christopher Sessums refers to Clay Shirky’s comment in Here Comes Everybody, that “Communication tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring” . Christopher adds:

In other words, it’s not the invention of the tool that holds value; it’s the tool’s ubiquitousness that contains the value which ultimately leads to profound social changes.

Similarly, the tools that support virtual communities probably won’t be very interesting until they become invisible, everyday components in our lives. For some, this is already the case and as such we are beginning to see new and powerful means to share, commune, and identify with one another.

Message to tool builders – you cannot be ubiquitous inside a walled garden.

I have spent a few days trying to figure out my client’s system. This will be a larger problem when a casual computer user has to make sense of all of the functions as well as the underlying model of the platform.  Having created several online communities and participated as a member and a moderator of many more, I can’t see how a community can grow if there is any difficulty in using the technology. The only case where a complicated system will work is when the option of not using it is unacceptable. The litmus test for any community software should be, “is it easier than e-mail?”, because that is what most users will compare it to.

Business Cards 2.0

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I’m starting to run out of business cards and I’ve been using the same design since I started this business in 2003. The original design was intentionally conservative and I have no urge to change it. However, I decided to try a parallel path and test out Moo minicards. These are very small business cards (very “2.0-ish”) which can be printed on demand. I ordered 100 cards and a small case and used one of the available designer themes. You can also import Flickr photos and best of all, each card can have a different design.

I’m already considering my next order and Andrea wants a bunch from her Flickr gallery to use as business cards and price tags for her art work. I can also see these cards as quite useful for events like conferences. The shipping is very fast, even to Atlantic Canada :-)

Open Source for the “R” Word

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RWW features a story about DimDim, which is an open source web-conferencing platform. I’ve used it and it compares well with the various proprietary systems around. RWW talks about DimDim’s three business propositions:

  1. Big company – cut your Webex/GoToMeeting bills by 50% or more
  2. Established online venture that needs online meetings to close sales with end users – no hassle revenue share
  3. Start-up with enough techies, but no cash – use the open source base with normal GPL rules (and thus grow the platform for DimDim and everybody else)

I’ve discussed open source business models a lot on this site, and dug up these 3 basic OS business models from Matt Asay (2004):

  1. Product Proprietary or Commodity Model
  2. Commodity (Brand & Servicing) Model, e.g. Red Hat: make money from your services
  3. Transitional (Pragmatic) Model. The transitional model is focused on solving problems (e.g. MySQL and JBoss) and is open source in the sense that code is open, but may be closed in terms of controlling the development process and the developers.

DimDim’s model would be #2, making money from services, including software as a service, but still remaining open to engage a wider user/developer community to fuel growth. When times are tough (can you say recession?) then cutting costs takes on a higher priority and it will be interesting to see if there is a forthcoming spike in OS adoption.

I’m preparing a talk that I will be giving next month to NRC-IRAP industry technology advisors and one of the themes will be open source business models. I’ll be updating my research and would appreciate any other unique or interesting business models around the use of open source software or OS content. Wikipedia would be an example of the latter, but I’m looking for lesser-known examples. Of course I’ll summarize and publish my findings here.

Costs of open source and proprietary LCMS/LMS

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David Bahn at Metropolitan State University of Minnesota asked me last week if I had any information about implementation and maintenance costs of open source versus proprietary learning systems. I referred him to Edutools and Brandon-Hall for comparative information as well as an older study done in French for the Québec government.

David then send me these other information sites that he had come across in his research:

Blaisdell, M. (2004). Course Management Systems >> It’s the Support, Stupid! Campus Technology, 12/28/2004. Retrieved from http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/38766/ on 3/23/2008.

Cheal, C., Cummings, R., Fernandez, K., & Penney, M. (2006). Choices and Changes: How Four Public Universities Are Coping with the LMS Market Consolidation. Presentation (and podcast) from panel discussion at the EDUCAUSE 2006 conference.  Retrieved from on3/23/2008.

Cheal, C.  (2006). LMS Comparison from ELIS at Oakland University. Retreived from http://www2.oakland.edu/elis/policies.cfm on 3/23/3008.

Heid, S. (2006).  “Course Management Systems: A Tipping Point. Campus Technology, 12/28/2006.  Retrieved from http://www.campustechnology.com/articles/41719/ on 3/23/2008.

Marshall, M. & Mitchell, G. (2007). Benchmarking International E-learning Capability with the E-Learning Maturity Model. In Proceedings of EDUCAUSE in Australasia 2007, April 29 –  May 2, 2007, Melbourne, Australia.

Platforms versus Programs

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Jay Cross discusses an interview with John Hagel at FastForward and sees that a move from programs to platforms is necessary in a web-centric world:

The way out of the squeeze is to move from programs to platforms. He’s not talking about media. Rather, programs are push, content, and structured (as with software). Platforms are frameworks, networks, flexible, and loosely coupled. It won’t be an easy transition; many companies will die along the way. (The lifespan of an S+P company is already down to 15 years, an 80% drop from historical levels.)

Meanwhile, on the FastForward Blog, Rob Paterson shows how Wikipedia and YouTube have greatly surpassed both NPR and PBS in number of viewers. What is interesting is that both Wikipedia and YouTube are platforms, while NPR and PBS have been pushing programs.

I can see the same change happening in education. The successful institutions [if we use that term] in the near future will provide the best collaborative platforms. Those with only programs to offer will be sidelined.

… and then our structures shape us

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Clay Burell has guest blogger Bill Farren discussing the hidden curriculum of school architectural design. He asks what hidden messages are our schools themselves asking by their inherent design:

  • Did the building’s designers take into consideration its location?
  • Who decided how (if) it should be built?
  • Does the building make an attempt to connect students with their outside world?
  • What does the formal, intentional curriculum teach?
  • How is this formal, intentional curriculum taught?
  • How is the school run?
  • How is security portrayed?
  • What is sold or advertised on campus?

I was reminded of the critical nature of school design this week when I received an invitation to the School Building Expo in Chicago (April 1-3), which I passed on to the Department of Education, considering that they’re hiring a future school infrastructure analyst.

There was an article I read many years ago, but don’t see cited very often, about designing learning environments. It’s Rodney Fulton’s SPATIAL model (1991) [my emphasis added]:

While a body of knowledge does exist that documents the relationships between learning and physical environment, there are problems that need to be resolved before the present level of understanding can be systematically advanced. One problem is that common vocabulary does not exist. Thus, in the literature, concepts are often described with similar but not identical terminology. Conversely, the same terms are used for similar but not exactly the same concepts. But this confusion in vocabulary is only a symptom of the fundamental problem: the lack of a conceptual model that explores relationships of physical environment to learning rather than to behavior in general. Architectural models address built environments, emphasizing both interior and exterior features of building design that allow, encourage, prohibit, or inhibit various behaviors. Psychological models discuss environmental attributes that set conditions for or even control human behavior. Sociological models emphasize the importance of environment in terms of how it facilitates human interactions. By emphasizing individual appreciation of the environment, aesthetic models address the relationship of values to human behavior. Workplace training models, including human factors engineering, emphasize the fit between environment and person and seek out optimal conditions for performance.

Each of these perspectives can add to a global understanding of the learning environment; however, a model that addresses learners in learning environments is a needed first step in refining educational research. The model described here–satisfaction-participation-achievement-transcendent/immanent attributes-authority-layout (SPATIAL)–can serve as a fundamental basis for organizing research designed to identify relationships between and among components of the learning environment and attributes of the learner. Further, this model has potential for weaving together findings from architectural, psychological, sociological, aesthetic, and human factors engineering studies.

In A Schoolman’s Guide to Marshall McLuhan (1967), John Culkin said that, “We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us.”

old-school.jpg

Photo by Atelier Teee

Canadian eLearning Technology Holds its Own

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This past month I’ve been conducting a learning management system (LMS) evaluation for a client, in collaboration with Bryan Chapman. We used the Brandon-Hall LMS knowledge base to gather data and I was amazed at how comprehensive it is, with 78 systems listed [I do not receive any benefits for recommending this knowledge base]. I also remarked at how many Canadian LMS are listed – twenty! For a nation 1/10 the size of the US, we’re doing quite well with our technology development. I guess that’s obvious when the largest academic LMS in the US sues its Canadian competitor.

We’re doing OK, and it may be because of the generous support that government agencies, like the NRC, provide the information technology sector. I wasn’t asked by the government to say this, but I think it needs to be said in public.