So VMware bought Zimbra: now what?

Many of you no doubt already know about VMware's snagging of Zimbra away from the clutches of Yahoo! If I'm a Zimbra employee or executive, I might be breathing a sigh or relief, or I might be disappointed. But one thing's for sure – I'm definitely wondering what's next. Stand back, for I, John Mark Walker, have dared to gaze in the crystal ball. Zowie!

The one great unknown has to do with developer communities and the open source projects that VMware currently stewards. How will VMware build an open source ecosystem and create a community environment necessary for future success?

Click the link below to read the article:

http://ostatic.com/blog/so-vmware-bought-zimbra-now-what (view on Google Sidewiki)

Parallel Feedback Loops: Integrating Your Community

I finally wrote something for the Hyperic blog:

The term innovation opportunity has been discussed by Matthew Aslett, who described it as "the potential to lower development costs for business users, while at the same time raising their potential to focus on innovative development." This falls in line with the view that an open model is more efficient, but how exactly is it more efficient, and how does one maximize that efficiency? Does Open Source development lead to the creation of a perfect market? I will attempt to describe how innovation opportunities come about, and how to take advantage of those opportunities. The key would seem to be enhancing the ability to deal with parallel feedback loops that arise as a matter of course from interactions with your user and developer community. Put another way, maximize the surface area of your community and be able to capitalize on these "touches".

Read the rest of Parallel Feedback Loops.

Stacey Schneider and Open Source as a 'Perfect Market'

As I await the impending cure for writers block (today? tomorrow? next week???) I thought I would shout out to my manager, Stacey, who wrote a great post entitled "Nobel Prize Implies Open Source is A Perfect Market" - an analysis of this paper by Eric Maskin, one of the recent recipients of the Nobel Prize for Economics for his work on Mechanism Design Theory. As someone who sincerely regrets never taking an econ class, this stuff is gold.

You should read her full post, but I'll note a couple of things. The quote she latches onto from the above-linked paper is this:

"...when discoveries are 'sequential' (so that each successive invention builds in an essential way on its predecessors) patent protection is not as useful for encouraging innovation as in a static setting. Indeed, society and even inventors themselves may be better off without such protection. Furthermore, an inventor’s prospective profit may actually be enhanced by competition and imitation."

The above applies specifically to patents, but the question is whether there's any application to open source software. Stacey's conclusion is that open source is software’s solution to creating the perfect efficient market, which is something to keep in mind the next time you hear anyone describe open source as "cancerous" or "communist" - not that anyone's ever done that or anything...

Read Stacey's post here