I gave a talk this week at the Mountain View JavaScript meetup hosted by Google at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California. Thanks to Michael Carter who hosts this event on a monthly basis. The event was also video recorded by Google and is being made available on Youtube, although I don’t yet have a URL for it. Below are my slides from the talk, available on Slideshare.

If you haven’t yet tried Appcelerator Titanium, I would encourage you to do that now. It’s a pretty awesome product and makes it much easier and faster to bring the world of desktop and mobile applications to Javascript / Web Developers. Titanium Mobile provides a web platform for building native iphone and android applications using web technologies.

Today, Titanium Mobile is still in private beta. However, if you’d like early access, please email me or get in touch with me through Twitter and I’ll be glad to activate you.

With the announcement of Google Chrome OS tonight, it’s a great time to be a web developer. (And as an aside, I’m sure Redmond isn’t partying too hard either).

Why does the Google Chrome OS matter?

It’s not really a surprise that Google made the announcement. It’s been widely speculated for a long time that Google was working on this project. Google has continued to express that Chrome and the Web would be the basis of how they believed applications and software services would be delivered. The Google OS is simply part of the stack that will help Google fulfill this mission.

Of course, Microsoft tried this a decade or so ago and was hit with a Department of Justice lawsuit. That had a lot of implications to the web as we know it today. For example, with the DOJ lawsuit I believe Microsoft made 2 crucial decisions that have shaped today’s web:

- It removed Sun’s hopes of making Java the de facto programming language of applications running in the browser

- It removed Microsoft’s heavy investment in Internet Explorer, essentially freezing time (from a technical standpoint) for almost a decade as IE6 became the de facto web browser we were all forced to live with (and support).

Regardless of whether the DOJ decision or Microsoft’s reaction to it, our web world was impacted in a big way.

Beware of Free

There’s been a lot of relevant discussion around Free – both the good and the bad – recently from some large web and technology luminaries: Chris Andersen and Malcolm Gladwell. A number other important people have chimed in – but I think Alex Iskold at the Read/Write web makes some of the most interesting and relevant points about Freemium.

In his post, Beware of Freemium, Alex talks about how Free can be used by elite and powerful organizations to stiffle competition, create (or further) monopolistic markets and introduce complex transactions.

Tom Robinson (of 280 North fame) tweeted the following quote:

“One scary possibility [is they] create something far less expensive than a PC which is powerful enough for Web browsing”

This quote came from Bill Gates (then Chairman of Microsoft) in May 26, 1995. This was part of the Government’s evidence against in the DOJ antitrust case against Microsoft.

Back then, Microsoft was attempting to use Free as a way to enter a new market or more likely, block an emerging, threatening market, the web. Free was the concept that Internet Explorer could be given away as part of Microsoft’s dominant operating system, Windows, to eliminate the inventor of the web browser, Netscape. Prior to this, Netscape dominated (and literally created) the browser marketplace. In the early days, Netscape even sold Navigator in stores like CompUSA. But most people at the time received a subsidized version of the product from their ISP as part of your signup package.

Microsoft would give away IE, which meant that users didn’t have to install it (or worse at the time, download it from slow Internet connections over dial up). Since it was pre-installed in the Windows OS, users would just click the cleverly named “Connect to the Internet” shortcut on the desktop, thereby securing their dominant position literally overnight.

Sun and Java

At the time, Java was becoming very popular and both Netscape and Microsoft were supporting the JRE in the browser. In fact, the popular JavaScript language was created by Netscape and named (poorly, in retrospect) because of it’s quickly rising popularity. Back then, I was recruited by CSX (in Jacksonville, Florida) to work on one of the largest and most prominent Java initiatives (literally, many multimillions) – this was JDK 1.02 timeframe for some of the Java old timers reading this. Applets were the thing and lots of us envisioned that we would build rich applications delivered through a web browser using Java.

The DOJ intervened.

The world changed after this intervention. Not overnight, but close to it. Not too longer afterwards, Microsoft stopped supported the newest version of the Java runtime inside the browser – essentially eliminating Java’s chances to own the “Java in the browser” space. My guess it was more of Microsoft giving everyone (mainly Sun, given their hand in the DOJ lawsuit) the finger.

At the same time, I believe Microsoft made a conscious decision – partly understandable given the DOJ lawsuit – to stop investing in IE.

But the damage was done. Either through evil means or through a government intervention gone bad. I’m not smart enough to know the full implications of what could have happened if they didn’t intervene. However, I can make some educated conclusions based on what has happened because of the intervention. The Web innovation – in terms of the browser itself – was stifled.

Stifled, but not forever.

AJAX was an accidental success in my opinion. Timing is always the most interesting dimension of the success equation – and probably the least understood. We always remember things in more succinct historical matters where things happened nice and neatly. AJAX is an example – in my opinion – of a number of things converging over a long period of time and it just happened, quickly.

We had been using similar techniques for AJAX for a long, long time. At CSX, we used a technique that was common for a long time where all the client-to-server remoting was done using a hidden Java applet (and a technology called LiveConnect). This provided the ability to have real socket communication between the browser and the server and passing data between the Java VM and the browser’s JavaScript using the LiveConnect bridge.

Later lots of developer’s used Flash as a similar technique.

But Microsoft was really the first to introduce the XHR concept into IE. And the first main property Microsoft used this technique for was Microsoft Exchange Web. The other browser’s followed.

Also, back then, talking to the server was generally slow. We optimized around page turns. For different reasons than we optimize them today. Back then, we optimized them because it was expensive to talk to the server. We were using 96K lines (or even better, 128K ISDN). We used JavaScript sparingly and tried to reduce images (both in size and count). That’s how we rolled back then.

AJAX came along at a time when DSL and fast Internet was virtually everywhere and by then, PCs (and Macs) had many years of Moore’s Law improvement. In fact, lots of us believed (and still do) that we weren’t hardly taking much advantage of the PC itself. We had been frozen in technology time, stuck in the browser while our laptops and desktops were introducing dual-core processors and multiple gigabytes of RAM.

Google and the OS

Google is interesting and a different kind of Microsoft. But, the more time reveals, the more like Microsoft I think Google is becoming. I’m not making a value judgment about Google – I think Google is different in many, many ways than Microsoft. In fact, my belief is that technology companies gravitate toward a position of dominance and an orientation toward specific strategies that create unfair advantage, naturally, with success of their platform. Naturally, because as power is achieved through success, more power can be achieved by leverage. This is natural and mostly fair. This is our free market system at it’s best (or some would say, it’s worse).

Google wants to own the full stack. It’s logical, especially in their world view. If they can own the operating system, and the applications, and the services on top of the operating system and applications – they can extract the maximum value from the stack. It’s not evil, per se. It’s business. And they have plenty of cash, and plenty of time. For now, most people still view Google as the underdog and Microsoft as the evil monopoly.

But it’s not much different than Microsoft in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Faced with how to gain marketshare and continue to secure their dominance, Microsoft was able to make Free a lethal weapon. It’s taken over a decade for a company like Google to come along and challenge Microsoft – and it’s about time.

However, it is dangerous to believe that Google’s the white knight that will rescue the world from Microsoft dominance. They will certainly continue to put it into a more aggressive and innovative position and help level the playing field. I welcome that.

Most likely the immediate victims of the Google OS will not be Microsoft. The Google OS will first almost certainly challenge Linux – more specifically Ubuntu. This is the same as what Android will do to Symbian. While certainly Android competes with iPhone, more likely Android will challenge the rest of the Mobile OS than the Apple iPhone.

Google will also potentially stifle smaller competitors and innovative startups, first. Not because they necessarily intend to, but because they can. And they will. While Google is by far one of the largest (if not the largest) consumers and producers of open source, they have a hard time cooperating with open source communities and they don’t buy open source. This is completely OK – completely fair. It’s open source.

But I give Google credit, nonetheless. They try hard with I believe good intentions. But, it does hurt. Not personally, but as a whole. Their shear size, influence and impact have a way of simply locking out competition by simply talking about their intentions.

And, like Microsoft, Google will use Free as a way to do it. And, Free will give them a (free) pass – maybe with different means that Microsoft, but ultimately justifying the same end.

And what becomes of Google Chrome and the Google Chrome OS as it relates to Web standards?

What I like and admire about Google is that they’ve continued to support two important initiatives:

- Open Source

- Open Standards

However, this is a different means to an end than Microsoft used over a decade ago. Microsoft used proprietary and free to create unfair advantage. I believe strongly Google will use free and open to create an unfair advantage. And they will do it with the world cheering them on.

Google does these two initiatives because it makes their job easier. And it’s good for business, especially as it relates to their world view and their long-term strategy.

Let me reiterate – I don’t hate Google and I’m not trying to call Google evil. I believe it’s in their corporate interest to maximize shareholder value by creating the best and most dominant position in the marketplace. Google Chrome OS is a means to an end. And it’s a smart one.

But, the end to Google is still similar to Microsoft – albeit with different means and possibly different end goals. But, it most likely will have similar effects.

And this is the dilemma: What will Google do (WWGD)?

I started off by saying it’s a great time to be a web developer. This is because web technologies are the mainstay of all of these emerging and competing trends. And, in the end, I hope web technologies will continue to win, regardless of which desktop, phone, netbook or ebook reader we’re using in the next decade. That’s why we created Titanium. It’s going to be interesting.

I gave a talk last night (December 2, 2008) at the SD Forum’s Java SIG in Palo Alto, CA.

The subtitle of the presentation was: “How the web has gone beyond the browser and we’re headed back to Client/Server”. I’m including the presentation slides below:

Today, at MySQL World 2008 in Santa Clara we’re excited about an announcement between XAware, Inc. and Appcelerator and the XAware Ecosystem.

XAware has been an exciting company to work with and they are really pushing leading in the SOA integration space and are creating a compelling SOA ecosystem of best of breed technology partners and platforms.

According to Marten Mickos, previous CEO of MYSQL and new Senior VP at Sun, said:

“It’s encouraging to see innovative organizations working together to expand the open source SOA ecosystem,” said Marten Mickos, senior vice president, Database Group, Sun Microsystems. “Companies such as XAware, Appcelerator and Active Endpoints provide open source solutions that address a range of business issues, and we urge conference attendees to check out their offerings.”

So what does this all mean?

This means that you can now use the Appcelerator rich Internet Application (RIA) platform together with XAware’s open source SOA solution to give your SOA infrastructure a face. You can now leverage all the existing enterprise data to build rich, powerful and dynamic web applications and seamlessly make them work together using standards, tools and skill sets you’ve already invested in in the enterprise.

And that day was yesterday. January 16, 2008.

Two big announcements happened in the world of software. Both were big and important and billion dollar deals. Both will have profound impact on software as we know it. Both will have a profound impact on organizations large and small.

But one means that open source business models are here to stay and are part of the development and community landscape of software as we know it. The other may signal that closed source models are going to continue to consolidate into the depths of a few larger companies that can reap maintenance revenues as long as their tight, proprietary reign allows them.

If you don’t know, Sun paid $1B to purchase MySQL and Oracle is paying $8.5B for BEA.

The former is more interesting – and it proves that community and installed landscape is important – if not the most important thing after great product – regardless of the distribution and licensing model.

I’m not bold enough to predict that closed source models are gone. Of course, not. That would be ludicrous. Not every business or product should be open source. And not every product should be completely free and open. There are plenty of business models where I would recommend you stay closed source, proprietary and try and get as many patents as you can.

But horizontal products which have large and wide and very diverse distributions, uses and adoption – almost can only succeed in a profound way if you pursue an open source model. Linux would not be what it is today if it wasn’t for open source. And the group at Mysql wouldn’t be worrying tonight about what Sun will do with them if they hadn’t pursued and open source model. In my opinion, products that have such horizontal impact can’t be easily developed in a closed-source model. Probably the only companies today that can successfully build large horizontal software plays which have global impact are the handful of giant technology companies – IBM, Apple, Oracle, Microsoft, etc. And even the big boys like Oracle, IBM and Apple are more and more turning quickly to open source.

Microsoft is the last major hold out but it’s only a matter of time before they’ll convert and become the biggest advocate of open source. In fact, I believe in less than 3-4 years we’ll see Microsoft starting to embrace open source in a big way. Not this shared source crap they mask as open source – we all know that’s b.s. In fact, my prediction is that if Microsoft one day woke up and decided to wholeheartedly embrace the OS model – they would become an incredibly powerful force again for developers. Microsoft still has millions of people under the trance and that’s not changing. But even those developers (save the most dedicated) are unpleased from what I see and hear.

Think about it a bit.

It will take some time to regain the trust and confidence. But, with a few major things and then some execution (and new leadership) — they could completely change the game. I mean completely change the game.

But, I digress. I could care less if Microsoft ever does that.

But why does the Mysql mean massive change?

First, Mysql represents a first generation OS business model. They are part of the proud few that started as a real open source product (not a business), created a business model years after the product was built, and successfully monetized the community and created value and a meaningful exit. Their exit represents an approximation of a little less than 20x revenue. That’s called premium. JBoss’ exit to RedHat was around 10x revenue and Marc’s kicking himself (and he shouldn’t). What the first generation OS businesses have done will be radically improved by 2nd generation companies like my own, Appcelerator. And watch out. Sometimes, the “early bird may get the worm but the 2nd mouse gets the cheese”.

Second, the Mysql acquisition signals desperation in large companies (again, Sun, et al) in how they can make the move to OS business models. IBM has actually done a really good job in blending OS and proprietary and layering services across them. HP has figured out that OS software on HP hardware represents more dollars in their pocket. Sun, a complete failure at figuring out how to open source Java, needs to make the transition to OS – and they need to do it fast and with a concerted, heart-felt effort.

Third, a billion dollars and a 20x premium means that this model is real and real money can be made – even when you give your product away. I know, I know… I’ve been telling people for well over 12 years (I first got heavily involved in OS back in 1996 as both a user and contributor) that OS models work. It’s hard for some people to understand it and I understand. But, the long tail is part of how OS works and if you don’t understand it – you might want to do a little research and get smart about it. It’s changing the world that we thought we understood.

2nd generation open source business models need to understand how to synthesize community, product, support and services. You can’t just do like some big companies continue to do and just make your source available and call it open source. Sure, technically, it’s open and it’s source code. But, that’s not open source and it’s certainly not a business model around OS. That’s called bait-n-switch and most people know that. If you’re proprietary, just be proprietary – stop trying to tease people with OS and small tidbits here-and-there. I call bullshit.

2nd generation open source business models have to understand that a principal corporate sponsor still needs outside community developers. It stills need to operate transparently. It still needs the community to survive, to thrive – hell, to make something that people want. I think that open source models work well because of this. In a closed source world, you hide everything and try and design software and requirements largely based on the best (or worst) attempts at guessing what your customer’s want and building in a vacuum. Open source models completely change that. You develop in the open — all the warts, all the bugs, all the issues. It’s open for the world to see. It’s a little scary for some — but it’s completely how you make software that actually solves other people’s problems.

2nd generation models can also understand how to better monetize their communities — in a valuable way. Some purists may not like the fact that someone is making money off their labor. Okay, maybe or maybe not that’s understandable. I believe it’s a free world — and even in the free software world, you gotta pay the bills. If you can monetize it, you can make it available to others. It’s the ultimate model where everyone wins. Sure, not everyone pays. That’s OK. Deliver something that has value – they’ll pay.

Open source is here to stay in a big way. Now the rest of the world can see that.

Tech Tags: mysql opensource appcelerator bea oracle adobe acquisitions