1. Open Source at Home:
Making Utah a center for open-source innovation
Matt Asay
General Manager, Americas
www.alfresco.com
2. Agenda
● Open source rising...but is Utah?
The market is exploding
●
● Open source is becoming more developer friendly
● Why now is the time
● What we need to do
Individuals, not Inc's
●
● Scratch your own itch
3. Unstoppable
“Open source software solutions
● “Open source produces better software.”
will directly compete with closed-
source products in all …markets.”
By 2008, 95% of Global 2000
●
organizations will have formal
open source acquisition and
management strategies
● Today, 81% have deployed or are
considering deploying open
source applications
● 72% plan to expand its use
Why?
●
65% say open source has
●
sparked innovation inside their
companies
● 67% … for lowered costs
● 81% … for better quality software
Sources: Gartner (2005), CIO Insight (2006), IDC (2006)
05/22/08
4. Beyond the cave
You have shown me a strange image,
and they are strange prisoners.
Like ourselves, I replied; and they see
only their own shadows, or the shadows
of one another, which the fire throws on
the opposite wall of the cave?
True, he said; how could they see
anything but the shadows if they were
never allowed to move their heads?...
And if they were able to converse with
one another, would they not suppose
that they were naming what was actually
before them?...
To them, I said, the truth would be
literally nothing but the shadows of the
images.
5. The world is discovering an
alternative
20th Century
● IP protection first, customers second (?)
● Achieve ubiquity through
Expensive sales and marketing
●
● Focus on sales, not product
● High conversion rate of limited prospects
● Customers first, product follows customer
needs
● Achieve ubiquity through
Exceptional software
●
● Focus on product to drive self-selected sales
● Low (but growing) conversion rate of hundreds
of thousands of leads
21st Century ● Superior service
5
9. The opportunity is ripe
● ~10 open source vendors will do
over $10M in sales in FY 2007
● “Free” as in price no longer the
driver – open source = value
● Geographical differences
US: Corporates | EMEA:
●
Governments | APAC: No one
● More free use in EMEA; more paid
use in the US
● Partner-driven in EMEA; more direct
in the US
11. Operating System
Community Members - Operating Systems
1.3%
3.8%
34.6%
Unix
Mac
Linux
Windows
60.3%
12. Operating System
Evaluation vs. Deployment
Evaluation Deployment
13. Breakdown of Linux
Variants
Breakdown of Linux Variants
14%
22%
Linux - Debian
16%
Linux - Fedora C ore
Linux - Other
Linux - RHEL
Linux - SUSE
Linux - Ubuntu
14%
13%
21%
18. Building the ecosystem
● The ecosystem starts with you
Open source doesn't start with Inc. -
●
it starts with your itch
● The ecosystem ends with Inc. - that's
how you know you've won
● Economic Development
Corporation of Utah focused on
wrong targets
Individuals, not Inc.
●
● Tax incentives are not enough
19. Who knew?
● That Sweden was such a hotbed of database expertise? (MySQL)
● That Atlanta would prove to be the home of the world's greatest
application server? (JBoss)
● That the leading community web content management project would
start (and end) in a Belgian student's bedroom? (Drupal)
● That the market leading open-source ESB would travel with one man
and his Maltese girlfriend around the world? (Mule)
● That the center of the VOIP revolution would be sweet home
Alabama? (Asterisk)
● That virtually no significant open source projects (commercial or
otherwise) would emerge from Silicon Valley?
22. Work happens online;
Home happens anywhere
● You don't need to move.
You just need to write
exceptional code
● Developers are
everywhere...including Utah
● Get the downloads, and VCs,
employers, or a self-
sustaining support/services
business will follow
● MySQL requirement:
employees live within an
hour of an international
airport
23. What should you contribute?
● Contribute what matters to you
Bryan Sparks -> Novell - > embedded operating system -> Caldera/Lineo
●
● Brad Nicholes -> Novell -> Apache to NetWare -> Apache committer
● Tristan Rhodes -> USU -> Ubuntu
● Tim Riker -> Lineo -> Needed an anti-depressant -> BZFlag
● Why Utah should thrive...
Multi-lingual (Yes, English is the lingua franca, but Utahns should have an edge in
●
accessing global developer talent + markets)
● Different interests (Genealogy, family)
● Highly educated populace
● Everyone goes home at 5:00 (to code, of course! :-)
24. Getting started
● Market timing
Well-understood market is easiest
●
● Prepare for participation
Documentation, modularity,
●
accessibility of language, etc.)
● Great initial code base
● Solve a real problem
Easier if you solve a big problem
●
● License to fit the need
