The October edition of the Harvard Business Journal has a contributed article by Intuit co-founder Scott Cooke on how to build your business using communities. I thought it interesting that he used many of the standard “crowd-sourcing” examples like Skype and Wikipedia but no open source software examples. Given Intuit’s proprietary nature I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Some tips from Scott that I like:

• Protect experiments from your company’s natural control instincts.
• Let enthusiasts and young employees provide ideas and leadership
• Let users “vote,” early and often.

He makes some other suggestions that I am not sure I agree with in every case but they apparently worked for Intuit. Definately a worthwhile read if you are a community builder.

Technorati Tags: crowd sourcing, Harvard Business Review, Intuit, Scott Cook

Over the last few years there has been a lot of fanfare around open source companies and their liquidation events. Most of the news has been around Sun’s billion dollar acquisition of MySQL or the Citrix acquisition of Xen and even Yahoo’s acquisition of Zimbra. In contrast there was little attention paid to the SourceFire. Actually if you ask most open source users about SourceFire they would probably answer “SourceWho?” If you ask open source users if they have heard of ClamAV or Snort they probably would be able to tell you that they are the leading open source software for virus protection and intrusion detection respectively. Recently, SourceFire has been in the news a bit lately as Barracuda Networks has made a bid for their open source competitor.

Founded in 2001 SourceFire (NASDAQ: FIRE) went public in May 2007. The IPO gave Sourcefire a market capitalization of $347 million. In October 2005 the Justice Department blocked the sale of SourceFire to Israeli owned Checkpoint Software for $225 million. Now Barracuda Networks is making an offer for SourceFire for $188 million. Sourcefire’s revenue for the first quarter of 2008 was 13.6 million and they lost 29 cents per share. Despite this negative trend I still think SourceFire can turn around their backslide by leveraging some under-utilized assets.

Here’s what stuck me as I started poking around, theoretically a Google search will return the most relevant results for a search. For example when I search for intrusion detection the first two results are Wikipedia entries (both which mention Snort) and number three is the Snort.org home page. SourceFire doesn’t show up in the first 50 search results for intrusion detection.

What this tells me is that the Snort brand is considerably stronger than the SourceFire brand. In fact as the page says Snort is the de facto standard for intrusion detection/prevention.

I am a strong believer that if you make open source software you lead with your software and follow with your services. What I mean is that you invest in your open source software community, build loyal users, make the software successful then you capitalize in a way that benefits both your users and your company. I don’t see evidence that Sourcefire has done that to greatest degree.

Most open source companies benefit by sharing the goodwill they created with their software by sharing their names (i.e. MySQL, Red Hat in the pre-Fedora days, Zimbra, SugarCRM). I also have seen some companies fail to capitalize on their brand (Remember when Novell renamed SUSE to Novell Linux Desktop, a big flop). I am surprised that SourceFire does so little to capitalize on their strong security brand. For example, why not name the company Snort Networks.

I also like to check out user forums in open source projects as a sign of health of a project. I was surprised that I wasn’t even allowed to read the forums without registering in detail. Even after I registered I was unable to login and received a must have cookies enabled message (My browser was set to accept cookies but that’s not the point.) The barrier to participation was rather high especially for an open source project. On top of that having your content indexed by Google is a huge help in search results. I was shocked that an open source project was so closed to participation.

Another asset is new to the SourceForge Sourcefire family ClamAV. In my opinion the acquisition of ClamAV should have helped them build their brand. ClamAV has been downloaded over 13 million times according to SourceForge.net and distributed various other ways for many years. The ClamAV mailing lists show a fairly good volume of email and show the signs of a vital open source community. The thing that was puzzling to me is that ClamAV website is almost devoid of mentions of the SourceFire sponsorship. I don’t think they need to wallpaper the site with the SourceFire logo but surely they should get even some minimum benefit from being a sponsor.

Now why do I focus on the marketing aspect of open source? After taking a look at the SourceFire 2007 Annual report I see some interesting things. According to their financials for last year they had revenue of 42.7 million dollars and sales and marketing costs of 25.8 million. That is 60% of revenue spent adding new customers. In contrast their cost of R&D is 34% of revenue. So controlling costs or at least helping leverage what they are spending should have the biggest impact on their profitability.

As I look at the Barracuda Networks offer, it seems like their play is to take a competitor off the market and convert SourceFire customers to their products. And given what others had been willing to pay for SourceFire in the past they probably would be doing so at a bargain price. I believe that SourceFire needs to take a gutcheck and realize that they have been successful because they simply executed a good software strategy typical of a proprietary software company. They made a good product, they offered a good value, and they had good results. However, there is a lot of competition in enterprise software and I think they have never fully leveraged their open source brand. When times get tough you need to tighten your belt and squeeze out every bit of efficiency. Open source offers a lot of efficiency in distribution, marketing, product management powered by a huge community. Figuring out how to better leverage that community is their best opportunity to reverse their fortunes.

[Disclosure: Michele Perry SourceFire's Chief Marketing Officer is an advisor to my company, Zenoss, though she may not appreciate my commentary on their marketing plan ]

[Barracuda Photo Courtesy of Festeban CC non-commercial license http://www.flickr.com/photos/festeban/9777900/]

Technorati Tags: ClamAV, Commerical, Community Leverage, MySQL, Open Source, Snort, SoureFire, Sun, Zimbra

Tonight at 7:00 p.m. there’s a Triangle Tweetup at the Capstrat in Raleigh (near the RBC Center) to discuss Twitter and to network with other Twitter users.

Here’s the venue:

Capstrat, Inc.
1201 Edwards Mill Road, First Floor 102
Raleigh, NC 27607

http://www.capstrat.com

More information can be found on the wiki.

If you want to get together at the event hit me on Twitter @mrhinkle.

Technorati Tags: Meetup, Raleigh, Triangle, Twitter

Today I am attending Blog Carolinas a social media conference being held in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park (that’s halfway between Raleigh and Durham). I am particularly interesting on hearing Andy Beal’s session on Online Reputation Management. Andy recently launched Trackur, an online reputation monitoring service (which I am interested in using for Zenoss).

Here’s what I expect to get out of today’s conference (paraphrased from their website)

• How Social Media is impacting Marketing and Communications Strategies
• How Community can serve as a model to improving organizational productivity
• Network with experts in the fields of On Line Reputation, Search Engine Optimization, Web 2.0 Technology and On Line Community Building

Not sure what the program will be like but just the fact I get this kind of content five minutes from my house seems very cool to me.

Technorati Tags: Andy Beal, BlogCarolinas, online communities, RTP, Social Media, trackur

I met Black Duck CEO, Doug Levin back in October 2003 at the Enterprise Linux Forum in Washington D.C. I instantly liked him. He was just starting Black Duck Software and as a ex-Microsoftie talking about IP assurance I wasn’t convinced about the bright future of his business. However, I enjoyed meeting Doug and wished him the best of luck and went on my way.

It wasn’t long before Doug’s venture received funding and support from Red Hat who also invested in the business, a telling sign. Black Duck has grown to be a leading global provider of products and services for accelerating software development through the managed use of open source and third-party code.

I realized that I was drinking the open source Kool-Aid while many others were very cautious about what they downloaded, used and deployed in their companies. Given a growing number of regulatory issues it has become more necessary today then ever to have some assurance that your downloaded code is licensed and used properly.

Companies like Black Duck have alwasy seemed like an anomaly to me. These companies provide tools and services to an industry that thrive on community. Black Duck always struck me as a tool for lawyers. That’s why I was impressed to see that Black Duck had acquired Koders, a search engine for open source software and other downloadable code.

This is one of the most interesting open source mergers of the year. First Koders is a huge repository of open source code, (766,893,913 lines according to their home page). Second, Koders has a very active community with over 30,000 visitors every day and forums posts that are fairly well read. Unlike other tools from Palamida (who has a good GPLv3 resource and legal knowledge) or HP’s Fossology (which a free code search tool) Black Duck now has a nice trifecta, a community, a large directory of code, and a commercial offering to supplement the needs of those users.

I suspect most of the Koders.com are programmers who download code and incorporate it in to larger works. At some point Many will have to provide some back-up that the code is licensed and compatible with these collective works. I suspect having Black Duck associated with this code will have an advantage to its users.

Also I think Black Duck will reap a benefit I call, Costanza Marketing. In the Seinfield episode The Chicken Roaster, George was trying to date a woman who didn’t want anything to do with him. He started to employ a technique called the leave behind. A tactic where he left items at her apartment that required him to return. Upon his departure he started singing a jingle of sorts: co-stanz-a to the same tune as the Mennen antiperspirant commercial. After a few brand impressions the woman started to think about George and started to sing the jingle and eventually invited him on a date. [The episode had a disastrous end but the tactic was definitely effective]

With the addition of Koders, Black Duck now offers a comprehensive array of capabilities for incorporating open source software into application development.

Code search: With Koders, Black Duck gains a powerful code search engine that can search for specific code functions or solutions in repositories across the Internet.

Fragment/File search: Black Duck protexIP� automates the review of code and finds unapproved code fragments, files or entire components that were integrated into a code base without adhering to a company�s open source review policies. This capability can be used to uncover licensing violations, security issues, unsupported open source and outdated code.

Component search: Black Duck Code Center enables development teams to search a KnowledgeBase containing hundreds of thousands of open source components. Developers can internally publish a catalog of approved open source components to facilitate reuse within their own organizations.

I never expected OSS IP tools to become as necessary as it has. However since it has become an important part of commercial open source products and services it’s good to see companies like Black Duck growing and providing unique services and even leveraging a community.

Other BlackDuck/Koders Coverage

• Savio Rodrigues | rand($thoughts); – Black Duck Acquires Koders
• Lora Bentley | IT Business Edge – Black Duck Adds Koders to Its Arsenal
• Daryl K. Taft | eWeek – Black Duck Buys Koders
• Dana Blankenhorn | ZDnet – Black Duck Buys Koders
• Bruce Byfield | Linux.com – Black Duck Acquires Koders

Technorati Tags: analyzers, assurance, Black Duck, Doug Levin, Koders, Open Source, tools

Gary Vaynerchuk has a very passionate video on giving to relationships and not just glossing over but making at least an 80% effort. 

Ironically I was just thinking about writing a post on the, Confessions of a Social Media Slacker. More on that later.

[via Scoble on Twitter] 

Technorati Tags: Gary, Online Community, Relationships, Veynerchuk

During the first session for BarCamp Austin III, I am sitting in a room listening to presentation by Denise Fernandez on the Cubeless project an internal knowledge sharing network inside of Sabre Holdings. Cubeless was spawned from the Sabre Travel Studios and incubator for the Sabre Holdings umbrella. The concept is very similar to intranet websites and internal wikis that have been around forever but with a twist…

Employees can post tips and tricks to help others do their job, the interesting application is that they add the idea of karma which is earned by certain by positive behavior (they note that they change the algorithms to keep people guess). The tool polices itself and can mark questionable content as "shady".  It was their experience that people were very motivated to try to  gain positive karma even without monetary compensation. All of this happens behind the firewall within a large company. It makes me wonder if this type of sharing only works in larger groups or is it useful in small intimate groups. 

I guess that begs the question, is when it comes to knowledge sharing and participation what motivates people to participate beyond a buck and conversely what gains in productivity justify companies’ to invest a buck in these types of tools. 

Technorati Tags: BarCamp Austin, community building, Cubeless, Sabre

This Saturday March 8th is BarCamp Austin III which will be held at GSD&M Idea Center.

The event kicks of Saturday morning with a kicking party to follow the sessions. Here are the details.

• BarCampAustinIII Google map posted on the venue page
• BarCampAustin3 on Upcoming
• Add BarCampAustin as a friend on Pownce
• Add BarCampAustin as a friend on Twitter

If you are attending look me up, I’ll be there all day. 

Technorati Tags: BarCamp Austin III

If you’re going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you’re going to be locked up.

Hunter S. Thompson

Drupal recently made a deal with the devils (venture capitalists) by virtue of the a $7 million investment in Acquia. Acquia owns the Drupal brand (or at least legally they do). Drupal lead (and Acquia co-founder) Dries Buytaert and the fine people at Acquia along with their backers are now at the crossroads faced by every vendor who sells free software… How do they supply a return on their investment without recommitting the sins of their proprietary software brethren or alienating the community that so far has driven their success.  

Despite being the owner of the Drupal brand and employing the project lead Dries Buytaert, Acquia has to figure out how to balance their commercial concerns as well as the care and feeding of the vibrant Drupal community.  Luckily on the announcement of their funding Dries is saying all the right things:

However, a good number of Acquia people will be working 100% on Drupal, alongside the rest of the community. This is an important investment,because Acquia succeeds only if Drupal succeeds, and we’re going to do our part. We’ll contribute code, QA testing and other important things like user experience design, marketing, documentation, etc.

Being an open source marketeer myself I read with interest Sandro Groganz’s thoughts on the dissection of Drupal marketing. He speaks about the Drupal marketing challenges:

• Growth of the Drupal community,  who until Joomla’s explosion came on the open source CMS scene was probably the biggest by community size.  Ironically Joomla! started by forking from a commercially supported open source project. y that Drupal has and have an opposite legacy (commercial sponsorship to purely free and open source). 
• Competing with the group of vendors already active in the Drupal marketplace. Many of whom have already been supporting the Drupal project while making a living as consultants.
• Co-existing with an already established Drupal marketing force.

With that being said there’s a critical balance to strike between the traditional product marketing and the evangelistic word-of-mouth marketing that has grown the Drupal brand. I hope in their ambition to become commercial they don’t become the soulless snake oil salesman that defined tech marketing in the past. 

Shoving Your way into a Crowded Market

I can’t imagine walking into a venture capitalist and saying, I want to enter a market that already has hundreds of competitive vendors without getting laughed out the door. That’s unless you have hundreds of thousands of community members and users. Acquia is in that enviable position. They have a huge active community. They have thousands of users of their software including many reputable and high profile companies. The things that so many traditional companies are craving these days. Their next critical step is to continue to move forward in parallel with their community.

So far Drupal has benefited from the most powerful software development, distribution, and marketing mechanisms today. That looks something like this:

1. Develop a good free product
2. Grow a community around that product
3. Achieve wide spread adoption and brand recognition
4. Find complimentary, not antagonistic, ways to monetize this success which is their next step

This formula is what has worked for Red Hat, MySQL, and all indications show that it’s working for companies like SugarCRM and Alfresco.  

Since I opened with words of wisdom of Hunter S. Thomspon maybe I should paraphrase one of his more famous sayings, from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a man in the depths of an ether binge.

In the technology start-up world the reality often goes:

There is nothing more helpless and irresponsible than a bunch of software developers in the wake of their funding.

I sincerely hope that Acquia will flourish (along with Drupal) and I wish them the best of luck just remember where you came from. 

Technorati Tags: Acquia, Alfresco, Drupal, Hunter S. Thompson, Joomla!, marketing, Open Source, SugarCRM

Scoble visited MySpace this week and reports on his trip. I am not a MySpace fan I use it just enough to understand how it works and occasionally to find old friends but I don’t rely on it like I do some other social networking sites. I was impressed by their philosophy though. 

… MySpace has a philosophy. One that says that users should be free to express themselves in prettymuch whatever way they want. If that means yellow text on a blinking purple background, so be it.

Who�s the keeper of that philosophy? Steve Pearman (seen here). He
demonstrated something that I wish more corporate types would
demonstrate (including me). He pointed out several times in our
interview that he doesn�t have any claim on knowing the right way to do
something. He said that even if he were pretty correct, say, that 95%
of MySpace�s users agreed with him, that�d mean that millions of people
would still disagree with his decision.

This embodies the new collaborative product development model. 

1. Develop something that’s both useful and free
2. Create a platform or forum to innovate on or within
3. Recognize contributions and promote that community to create a vested interest for the success of the parent technology/product/platform

Coming up with the next best thing is tough. Harnessing the collective intelligence of a large user base is the more likely path to innovation than having the arrogance to think you are smarter than everyone else. That’s why the buzz word of the day seems to be online community, I have had at least ten people in the last week ask me about building online communities. I think the real question should be,"How do you promote and enable innovation?" Good places to start are open source software and Wikipedia.

Technorati Tags: collaboration, Innovation, MySpace, online communities, Scoble