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The reason we are confident that the comparative decline in the use of the GNU GPL family of licenses and the increasing significance of complementary vendors in relation to funding for open source software-related vendors will continue is due to the analysis of our database of more than 400 open source software-related vendors, past and present.

We previously used the database to analyze the engagement of vendors with open source projects for our Control and Community report, plotting the strategies used by the vendors against the year in which they first began to engage with open source projects to get an approximate view of open source-related strategy changes over time.

For example, we found that the engagement of vendors with projects that used strong copyleft licenses peaked in 2006, while the engagement of vendors with projects using non-copyleft licenses had been rising steadily since 2002.

Analysis of our updated database shows that the the number of new vendors engaging with open source projects in each year has risen steadily in recent years, from 26 in 2008 to 44 in 2011. However, as noted last week, we have also seen a shift towards ‘complementary vendors’ – those that are dependent on open source software to build their products and services, even though those products and services may not themselves be open source.

2010 was the first year in which we saw more complementary vendors engage with open source projects than open source specialist, and that trend accelerated in 2011.

As previously explained, complementary vendors were responsible for over 30% of open source software-related funding raised in 2011, and we should expect that proportion to remain high given that over 57% of the vendors engaging with open source in 2011 were complementary vendors.

We have also seen that complementary vendors are more likely to engage with projects with non-copyleft licenses (38% of complementary vendors have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses, compared to 24% that have engaged with projects with strong copyleft licenses).

If we look at all 400+ vendors in our database in terms of open source software license preference, the trend towards new vendors engaging with non-copyleft licenses is clear.

There has been a strong shift from vendors towards non-copyleft licenses in recent years, accelerated in 2011 by the likes of Apache Hadoop and OpenStack in particular. This does not mean that the number of projects using strong copyleft licensing has decreased (although as we previously saw the proportion of projects using the GPL family of licenses has declined).

It is indicative, we believe, of the shift away from specialist open source vendors using vendor-led projects and strong copyleft licenses towards multi-vendor collaborative projects and proprietary implementations of open source code, however.

This trend should not really surprise anyone. For some time we have seen open source becoming part of the fabric of modern software development and licensing strategies, rather than a competitive differentiator. Back in 2009 we predicted the increased importance of business strategies that relied on vendor-led development communities, rather than projects dominated by a single vendor.

We called this “open source 4.0″ and later suggested that it might be considered the golden age of open source, based on our belief that vendors had learned that they stand to gain more from collaborating on open source projects and differentiating at another stage in the software stack than they do from attempting to control open source projects.

Updating the results of our analysis to the end of 2011 and 400+ vendors indicates that, from the perspective of the commercial adoption of open source business strategies at least, we were not far off.

Some might not consider the proliferation of multi-vendor open source communities and proprietary distributions of open source software as the peak of achievement for open source. Each is of course entitled to come to their own conclusions about the implications.

Our perspective, as always, is that open source methodologies present a potentially disruptive, and also valuable, asset that complements the way both vendors and enterprise IT organizations conduct their businesses.

Our analysis indicates, however, that open source methodologies are increasingly being employed by ‘complementary vendors’ with a leaning towards more permissive licensing.

One of the favourite blog topics on CAOS Theory blog over the years has been our quarterly and annual updates on venture capital funding for open source-related businesses, based on our database of over 600 funding deals since January 1997 involving nearly 250 companies, and over $4.8bn.

There are still a few days left for funding deals to be announced in 2011 but it is already clear that 2011 will be a record year. $672.8m has been invested in open source-related vendors in 2011, according to our preliminary figures, an increase of over 48% on 2010, and the highest total amount invested in any year, beating the previous best of $623.6m, raised in 2006.

Following the largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors ever in Q3, Q4 was the second largest single quarter for funding for open source-related vendors ever, as $230.4m was invested in companies including Cloudera, Hortonworks, and Rapid7.

As with Q3, however, the list of vendors presents us with something of an existential dilemma, as we see an increasing amount of activity by what we have referred to as ‘complementary vendors’ – those that are dependent on open source software to build their products and services, even though those products and services may not themselves be open source – as opposed to open source specialists.

The list of complementary vendors has grown rapidly in 2011, particularly around projects such as OpenStack and Apache Hadoop. If we examine the figures in more detail we find that over 30% of the funding raised in 2011 was raised by complementary vendors, compared to just 4% in 2006.

In fact, as the chart below indicates, VC funding for specialist open source vendors in 2011 was actually less than that in 2006 and 2008, and only marginally up on 2010, when again just 4% of funding went to complementary vendors.

The low amount of funding for complementary vendors in 2010 shows that the significance of complementary vendors is not growing at a constant rate, although for reasons that will become clear when we publish a follow-up post on the latest trends regarding the engagement of vendors with open source projects, we do expect that the proportion of funding related to complementary vendors is more likely to increase in the future, rather than decline.

This has implications for the ongoing trends related to open source software licensing, as covered yesterday. Examining our database of over 400 open source-related vendors – funded and unfunded, complementary and specialist – indicates that specialist vendors are much more likely to engage with projects using strong copyleft licenses than complementary vendors.

Specifically, our data indicates that 55% of open source specialists have engaged with projects that use strong copyleft licenses, while just 20% have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses. In comparison, 38% of complementary vendors have engaged with projects with non-copyleft licenses, compared to 24% that have engaged with projects with strong copyleft licenses.

Will will take a more detailed look at the trends related to the engagement of vendors with open source projects in the concluding part of this series of posts.

Topics for this podcast:

*Continuent extends MySQL replication to Oracle Database
*CFEngine updates server automation software
*Devops moving mainstream
*Neo Technology integrates with Spring
*451 CAOS report from Hadoop World

iTunes or direct download (26:56, 4.6MB)

Topics for this podcast:

*Opscode Chef extends to Windows for more enterprise devops
*Black Duck continues growth, gains new funding
*Cloudant expands NoSQL database focus, customers
*New open source Web server and vendor Nginx arrives
*The downside of Microsoft’s Android dollars

iTunes or direct download (27:35, 4.7MB)

Topics for this podcast:

*Cloud M&A potential around OpenStack
*Oracle’s commercial extensions for MySQL
*Puppet Labs rolls out Enterprise 2.0, hosts PuppetConf
*Basho bolsters Riak distributed data store in NoSQL race
*Our latest special CAOS report, ‘The Changing Linux Landscape’

iTunes or direct download (25:59, 4.4MB)

Oracle last week quietelyannounced the addition of new extended capabilities in MySQL Enterprise Edition, confirming the adoption of the open core licensing strategy, as we reported last November.

The news was both welcomed and derided. Rather than re-hashing previous arguments about open core licensing, what interests me more about the move is how it illustrates the different strategies adopted by Sun and Oracle for driving revenue from MySQL, and how a single project can be used to describe most of the major strategies from generating revenue from open source software.

Like most open source-related software vendors, MySQL started out life offering support, training and consulting around the open source database. The company also saw success in offering a closed source variant of the database for embedding in closed source systems, and it was this dual licensing strategy that drove much of the company’s early revenue. That began to change with the arrival of MySQL Enterprise (initially ‘MySQL Network’ – a subscription offering that delivered monitoring and (later) backup capabilities to paying customers only. While some people see this as an example of the open core licensing strategy, as we have previously explained, it is not. While open core is an extension of the dual licensing strategy with additional extensions, MySQL AB’s MySQL Enterprise, as the graphic above illustrates, actually paired the extensions with the open source MySQL Community – a subtle difference from the MySQL Enterprise licensing strategy adopted by Oracle (more of which later).

MySQL flirted with the open core licensing model in early 2008 with plans to introduce new features into Enterprise Edition that would not be available under an open source license. Those plans were ultimately reversed at the behest of new owner Sun Microsystems. To understand why Sun did this one must consider the company’s wider strategy for open source at the time. While a software freedom philosophy played a part, Jonathan Schwartz’s map of open source downloads, each representing ‘a potential customer that cost Sun nothing to acquire’, explains how Sun was less interested in driving direct revenue from MySQL (and other open source software) as it was in helping open source users to become customers for Sun’s commodity hardware and other products and services.

Sun never got the chance to prove whether this model would have worked (I’m being polite), but in any case contrast Sun’s approach with Oracle’s strategy for open source. While the majority of Oracle’s revenue clearly comes from other products, it is not looking to drive revenue for those products via open source downloads. Witness Larry Ellison’s recent proclamation that he doesn’t care if Oracle x86 server business (typically used to run MySQL) goes to zero. Instead (for better or worse) the company is focused on driving revenue directly from each individual product, whether that is a high margin server, or closed or open source software. That has resulted in an increased investment in embedded opportunities for MySQL, as well as traditional software license agreements. While customers might choose to use MySQL Community and purchase additional support subscriptions, as of November 2010 Oracle prefers that Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition customers enter into a commercial license agreement with the company. That was a strategy that was in place in advance of last week’s addition of high availability, scalability and security features, but one that clearly looks set to continue.

Whether this is a good or a bad thing depends on your perspective. Monty Widenius does a good job of outlining the down sides to an open core licensing strategy, while Giuseppe Maxia focuses on the positives. Certainly Oracle will have to be mindful to balance the control and community aspects, but as we have previously covered (451 Group clients) there are a number of new capabilities in development for the core MySQL database itself.

InternetNews.com yesterday published an article based on an interview with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst asking the question “Is Red Hat Interested in the Database Market?”

In truth there was no real need to ask the question, as Whitehurst’s comments made it pretty clear that Red Hat is interested in the database market, and specifically the NoSQL database market.

“When I say I don’t want to be a database company, I’m saying that I don’t want to be a SQL database company,” Whitehurst said.

In case the implications of that statement were not entirely clear, he later added:

“But we would be very interested in a NoSQL type database or Hadoop type thing,” Whitehurst said. “Those are interesting as they represent net new.”

The article adds that Whitehurst would not specifically state whether Red Hat will or will not actually acquire anyone, as is to be expected, but the comments are the clearest indication yet that Red Hat sees value in a potential NoSQL acquisition.

This is something that we have seen for some time, pointing out in May 2010 that “We have consistently noted that the database remains a missing layer in Red Hat’s software stack… and would see advantages in adding an open source NoSQL database to its portfolio to target MySQL users.”

We are by no means the only people to have highlighted the database-shaped hole in Red Hat’s portfolio, but while Red hat has previously shied away from speculation linking it with a relational database vendor (seemingly in order to avoid disrupting its relationship with Oracle) as Jim points out, NoSQL and Hadoop are far more attractive given their growth is based on new projects, rather than the much tougher proposition of competing for incumbent database projects.

So what emerging open source projects might be of interest to Red Hat? Its OpenShift PaaS launched with support for 10gen’s MongoDB and later added support for Couchbase’s Membase, which makes them obvious contenders. We suspect that avoiding overlap and delivering compatibility with Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Data Grid technology would be a key part of the decision-making process.

As for Hadoop – Cloudera is the obvious choice but we imagine that any move would be likely to start a bidding war from which Red Hat might not emerge victorious. Hortonworks has only just emerged from Yahoo, of course, but might be an option for a more services-led approach.

Then there is DataStax, which could give Red Hat the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone with its Brisk Hadoop distribution and Apache Cassandra-related software and services.

InternetNews.com yesterday published an article based on an interview with Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst asking the question “Is Red Hat Interested in the Database Market?”

In truth there was no real need to ask the question, as Whitehurst’s comments made it pretty clear that Red Hat is interested in the database market, and specifically the NoSQL database market.

“When I say I don’t want to be a database company, I’m saying that I don’t want to be a SQL database company,” Whitehurst said.

In case the implications of that statement were not entirely clear, he later added:

“But we would be very interested in a NoSQL type database or Hadoop type thing,” Whitehurst said. “Those are interesting as they represent net new.”

The article adds that Whitehurst would not specifically state whether Red Hat will or will not actually acquire anyone, as is to be expected, but the comments are the clearest indication yet that Red Hat sees value in a potential NoSQL acquisition.

This is something that we have seen for some time, pointing out in May 2010 that “We have consistently noted that the database remains a missing layer in Red Hat’s software stack… and would see advantages in adding an open source NoSQL database to its portfolio to target MySQL users.”

We are by no means the only people to have highlighted the database-shaped hole in Red Hat’s portfolio, but while Red hat has previously shied away from speculation linking it with a relational database vendor (seemingly in order to avoid disrupting its relationship with Oracle) as Jim points out, NoSQL and Hadoop are far more attractive given their growth is based on new projects, rather than the much tougher proposition of competing for incumbent database projects.

So what emerging open source projects might be of interest to Red Hat? Its OpenShift PaaS launched with support for 10gen’s MongoDB and later added support for Couchbase’s Membase, which makes them obvious contenders. We suspect that avoiding overlap and delivering compatibility with Red Hat’s JBoss Enterprise Data Grid technology would be a key part of the decision-making process.

As for Hadoop – Cloudera is the obvious choice but we imagine that any move would be likely to start a bidding war from which Red Hat might not emerge victorious. Hortonworks has only just emerged from Yahoo, of course, but might be an option for a more services-led approach.

Then there is DataStax, which could give Red Hat the opportunity to kill two birds with one stone with its Brisk Hadoop distribution and Apache Cassandra-related software and services.

Opscode appoints a new CEO. SugarCRM gains a new CFO. And more.

# Opscode named Mitch Hill as CEO, with Jesse Robbins becoming Chief Community Officer.

# SugarCRM claimed billings up 58% in Q2 and appointed a new CFO.

# Tasktop released Tasktop Dev 2.1 and announced Tasktop Sync 1.0.

# Pentaho delivered improved support for Hadoop and various NoSQL database projects.

# The openSUSE community approved its strategy document.

# Dustin Kirkland described the Ubuntu Orchestra Project.

Or, how we evaluate a company’s open source-related business strategy.

Godwin’s law states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches”.

An online discussion about open source-related business strategies is no exception. However, long before the Nazi comparison it is inevitable that someone will ask “is MySQL open core?”.

I updated our 2009 post “what is open core, and what isn’t” recently, and received some criticism of my statement that the MySQL strategy was not open core.

Since we have recently published a report including the results of our analysis of the open source-related business strategies of 300 vendors and subsidiaries it seems appropriate that we use this opportunity to explain how we evaluate a company’s open source-related business strategy, and specifically how our analysis led us to conclude at the time of our analysis (August/September) that the open core licensing strategy did not apply to MySQL.

Given the recent changes to MySQL pricing and licensing we have also revisited our analysis, see below.

Looking at MySQL Enterprise it is easy to see why so many people conclude that the product licensing strategy being applied to MySQL is open core, since MySQL Enterprise contains extensions for which source code is not available that are not available with MySQL Community.

However, it is important to remember that products are not open core – and companies are not open core – but that open core is a product licensing strategy applied by companies to products. Therefore the question “is MySQL open core?” is inappropriate. A more appropriate question would be, “is the product licensing being used with MySQL open core?”

It is also worth noting that a product licensing strategy is just one of five elements that we at The 451 Group use to evaluate an open source-related business strategy.

The five elements we consider are: the software license for the open source software; the development model for the open source software; copyright ownership for the open source software code; the product licensing strategy; and the revenue generator. Specifically, with regards to MySQL, our evaluation went as follows:

Software license/development model/copyright ownership:
This was a relatively straightforward process for the MySQL business. The MySQL Database software is available under the GNU GPLv2, a strong copyleft license, and although the code is available at Launchpad, clearly the software continues to be developed in the cathedral model by a core group of developers, mostly employees of a vendor: Oracle. The same vendor also owns the copyright.

Product licensing strategy:
This is where things started to get a little bit difficult. Historically MySQL AB used the dual licensing strategy, making a version of MySQL Server available under a closed source license (aka selling exceptions) for enterprises. That strategy remains in use today to enable the use of MySQL embedded in closed source software. However, the version of MySQL Server in MySQL Enterprise was not closed source, and was the same GNU GPL version as MySQL Community. This provides a good example of why it is important to assess the licensing strategy, rather than the product: the open core licensing strategy uses dual licensing and adds closed source extensions to create a closed source version that is a superset of open source software (or from another perspective, an open source version that is a subset of closed source software). Since this description did not apply to MySQL Enterprise, which saw the open source MySQL Server delivered along with closed source extensions, we concluded that Oracle did not use an open core licensing strategy with regards to MySQL.

Revenue generator
The description of MySQL Enterprise, used above (open source software with additionally capabilities delivered via subscription) is exactly what we consider a value-added subscription revenue generator. There are often many ways in which a vendor generates revenue from open source software. MySQL is just such a case: Oracle generates revenue from closed source licenses embedded in closed source software, but the largest generator is the MySQL Enterprise value-added subscription.

Conclusion:
The MySQL strategy includes a strong copyleft software license, vendor-developed software using the cathedral model, and vendor-owned copyright. That much was easy. It was also easy to identify the dominant revenue generator, which was value-added subscription. That left the product licensing strategy, for which the choices were single open source (in MySQL Enterprise) and dual licensing (for embedded usage). To select single open source would be inaccurate since we could not ignore the fact that the MySQL business uses a dual licensing strategy.

MySQL Reconsidered:
In the light of the recent licensing and pricing changes for MySQL we took the opportunity to talk to Oracle about the licensing of MySQL. What we discovered was that whereas the MySQL Database previously accompanied by the MySQL Enterprise subscription was licensed using the GNU GPL, Oracle now prefers that Standard Edition and Enterprise Edition customers enter into a commercial license agreement with the company (although they will apparently be able to negotiate subscription usage with MySQL Community). This is a licensing agreement that does not impact the functionality or code of the MySQL Database itself, although clearly there continues to be additional functionality delivered with the MySQL Standard and Enterprise subscriptions, such as MySQL Enterprise Monitor and MySQL Enterprise Backup.

This changes our perspective of the MySQL-related strategy on two levels, Firstly, with regard to the revenue generator, we can now conclude that going forward the biggest revenue generator for Oracle from MySQL will be closed source licenses. While this closed source software will still be delivered via a subscription agreement, our support subscription and value-added subscription categories are reserved for products that use an open source license. It also changes our perspective on the product licensing strategy. Specifically in that our description of open core used above, (dual licensing + closed source extensions to create a closed source version that is a superset of open source software) does now apply to MySQL Standard and MySQL Enterprise.