The French Pigeons Are Revolting -- And That's Good

One of the reasons the copyright lobby has been able to get so far with Net-hostile legislation like SOPA/PIPA and treaties like ACTA and TPP is that the companies affected adversely -- both big Internet players and smaller startups -- have failed to make their voice heard effectively. That's finally starting to change, as Google ramps up its lobbying efforts, and Net entrepreneurs start to get organised. 

On Techdirt.

How Do You Make a Pentaho?

Where do open source companies come from? That's not a trivial question, for free software startups can arise in all sorts of ways. You might create a company around someone else's software (as Red Hat, say, did); build one on software you've written yourself (like Jboss); pay people to write something from scratch (Alfresco); hire the creator of a program and use their software (Jaspersoft); or put together pre-existing projects to create something new.

On Open Enterprise blog.

Open Source Consolidation: Less is More?

The open source startup scene is certainly very vibrant, but it's also clearly still relatively immature. Company histories are short, and turnovers are still quite low compared to traditional players. Another reflection of that immaturity is the fact that there are simply too many players in each sector. That means that consolidation is inevitable, creating fewer but bigger players with more clout in the marketplace, and broader product offerings. Just recently, we have started to see that happening....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Are You Using R?

It seems appropriate on Ada Lovelace Day to note the move of one of the best-known female champions of open source from Intel to the startup REvolution Computing....

On Open Enterprise blog.

Giving Yahoo the Heave-Ho

One of the key open source people at Yahoo is Jeremy Zawodny.

Was Jeremy Zawodny:

It's been quite a ride, and I'm really going to miss Yahoo. I'll miss the parking debates and all the "random" stuff we're so fond of ranting about. Watching from the outside is going to be a very different experience. But the opportunity to work in a much smaller company recently presented itself and it was simply too interesting to pass up. I'll say more about that in the coming weeks.

On Being Open

Interesting thoughts from Cory Ondrejka on the virtues of telling people what you're doing when you start a new company, rather than trying to keep everything secret:

It may seem slightly counterintuitive, but once you noodle on it a bit, being open is a tremendously positive and competitive move. It forces your ideas to survive far broader scrutiny, makes it easier to hire, and lets your early employees do what they want to be doing anyway: brag about their cool, new company.

He also makes another crucial point:

It’s similar to considering how to talk about competitors. Sure, having enemies can be motivational and useful when you are getting started, but you and your competitors are collaboratively shaping the landscape for your new companies. Spending time publicly bashing them makes you look like an ass and hurts your ability to work together down the road. It is rare for any sector to be winner-take-all – even eBay has competitors – and multiple, high-quality products in a space can help ensure the overall business grows far quicker than any one company could on its own.

Such "bashing" is much rarer in the open source world, since everyone is effectively working together - the code is open, after all. Your competitor is also your collaborator, since ideas - and even code - can generally flow freely between you.

Less Dosh for OSS...And So?

On Open Enterprise blog.

Perens Goes Peripatetic

Bruce Perens has achieved the remarkable feat of being one of the leading figures in the open source world without ever becoming a fixture anywhere for very long. Apparently, he's off again:

I have left Sourcelabs, and am planning another start-up. Stanley is in 2nd grade now, which leaves me with time to be a CEO again.

It will be interesting to see where he lands.

Mashup 2.0: Inheriting the Mesh

I've written before about how mashups need meshes. Typically that mesh will be geographical, but another obvious one is time. Time is interesting because it's often linked to people's lives - or rather several interlinked lives. That's the insight behind this new startup, AllofMe:

Founder Addy Feuerstein has described AllofMe in the following way:

“The idea is that if I or someone else has a picture that includes my son, alone or with friends, I or anyone else will be able to tag the people in the picture and transform these digital assets into part of my sons. When he grows up and takes control over his own timeline, he will have a timeline of tagged material from his childhood…We will also transform the timeline created by each person into a video movie, through a widget on an internet site [and] enable comparison of your timeline with that of your acquaintances, or chronological data files. For instance, you will be able to compare your own timeline with historical events of Time, and see where you were when some important world event occurred.”

I'm not sure about the company, but I think the idea is important, because it hints at a further key property of Mashup 2.0, where it becomes possible to use pre-existing meshes in richer ways.

Web 2.0 is Dead, Long Live Openness

An interesting post from Tom Foremski, who, even if he doesn't always grok the underlying dynamics of open source and its offshoots, is certainly plugged into the right people in Silicon Valley, and is very sharp about spotting trends there:

Whenever I meet with VCs I've noticed that there is a growing distaste for Web 2.0 startups. The "Web 2.0" term, in connection with a startup, and as a collection of concepts, is very tired in this community.

I think this is good news. Although I've used "Web 2.0" as a shorthand for a group of sites/services/technologies, what is much more important are the driving forces behind them. And those, quite simply, are openness, sharing and the Net-based, distributed methodology pioneered by open source. The more we concentrate on those core currents underneath, and the less on the trendy froth on top, the better.