Matthew Szulik’s OSBC keynote

Matthew Szulik is in the middle of his keynote. Here are a few of the more salient points:

• The cost of starting an open source company has gone “sub-zero.”

• Open source has opened up the creation of software geographically. It’s no longer the US that holds all the cards. Disparate regions can participate in the open source explosion.

• Open source is no longer about the lowest price. It’s about delivering value. “Best possible software at the lowest possible cost.”

Matthew suggested that the real threat to the legacy software world is precisely this last point. As open source has the audacity to move beyond a cost value proposition to a value value proposition, this becomes a real threat to proprietary software companies.

Open source completely changes the dynamics of how you compete – on service and value, not software and lock-in. [Matt’s note: Startups need to realize that they can drive this value proposition harder by going with a pure open source model. Hybrid models dilute the disruptive stance a startup can take.] It’s easy to write ones and zeroes, Matthew suggested, but extremely hard to build a service-oriented company culture that makes a CIO ecstatic to use one’s software. Lock-in software models have created all sorts of bad behaviors in vendors, and Red Hat spends a lot of its time and resources undoing the damage that the legacy software market has done to its prospective employees.

Matthew emphasized the open source opportunity to unlock data that is tied up in legacy applications. SOA is important, he suggested, but there’s trillions of dollars of value tied up in yesterday’s technology.

He also emphasized the need for standards. 50% of the world’s software revenues are tied up in just four vendors. Standards aren’t in their interest, but they are in the customer’s interest. When the proprietary software world says “interoperability,” he suggests that the open source world respond with “standards.” The GPL ensures interoperability through open APIs and open standards. This is the right way to ensure interoperability, not committees.

“We have a great respect as an [open source] industry for intellectual property. But the debate is flawed.” Patents, declared Matthew, have inhibited far more innovation than they have enabled. Patents haven’t contributed to fast-paced innovation for customers.

To compete in Mexico, India, China, Brazil, etc., the old 20th Century software model won’t fly. Open source is the lingua franca there. 65% of the world has never logged onto the Internet. This is just the beginning. People want to share knowledge. Open source is that way or, rather, one prominent way.