Mambo, Open Source Phenomenon?

The speed at which Open Source products can suddenly establish themselves seems remarkable. I guess it isn't so remarkable when you analyze the situation; the web has accelerated the speed of 'word-of-mouth' recommendation and dramatically increased its scope. Open Source products are also helped by the fact that the initial outlay is zero.

Recently I had the task of selecting Content Management software with which to build the Hurwitz web site. Our web developers, ePura, having ascertained that we weren't anxious to buy a CMS, selected three Open Source alternatives to look at; Mambo, Drupal and EZ Publish. Having tried them all out via on-line demo capabilities, I quickly concluded that Mambo provided the best set of options for the web site. We are now going live with it.

It was no great shock to me when Mambo won the Best Open Source Solution at LinuxWorld, although I was a little surprised that it edged out Firefox. Both Mambo and Firefox are high quality products that any development team would be proud to have created. Just as I have little doubt that Firefox has carved itself a piece of the browser market that it will not lose (no matter what Microsoft does), I have no doubt that Mambo has achieved critical mass in a similar way. Mambo is here to stay.

Such products stand in stark contrast to a fairly large number of Open Source products, which will never gain traction any time soon, if ever.

There is a potential problem here for the industry. The words 'Open Source' don't actually signify anything other than that the source is open and provided, if desired. What's more, the vast majority of individuals using Open Source products simply do not care whether the source is open or not. Some care. Most don't, especially with products like Firefox and Thunderbird.

'Open Source' is not a brand. It does not guarantee quality or the lack of it; good support or otherwise. It doesn't even guarantee a GPL license, if you care about such things. The vast number of Open Source projects/products (around 100,000 and rising) is probably not going to produce even 1000 successful products. Nevertheless, Open Source projects seem to throw up at least a few remarkably good products every year that become successful. This year's crop includes Mambo.

Open Source Beer

Vores Øl (see the web site) is Open Source beer. What's Open Source about it? Well, the recipe and brewing process is being published for anyone to use. It has an open source kind of license, the Creative Commons license, which enables you to brew as much of it as you want without having to pay anyone for use of the recipe/process.

Apart from that, the beer is a little unusual as the recipe includes South American Guarana beans, which contain some caffeine. It is thus likely that the effects of drinking this beer may differ a little from other beers.

The Open Source beer initiative was created by a group of students from Copenhagen's IT University as a challenge to the impact of intellectual property in the general economy. Open Source beer will obviously not change the brewing industry in the way that Open Source software has changed the IT industry.

Nevertheless, the students are seeking to make a political/economic point in a simple way. For more information about Danes trying to change the world visit http://www.superflex.net/.

Air Travel On Demand?

Ed Iacobucci, an ex-IBMer, was the founder of Citrix (in 1989) and its chairman until 2000. After a false start, backing OS/2 and almost losing his shirt, Ed turned Citrix into the de facto leader in the thin client/managed PC market and Citrix grew accordingly. Then, in January 2002 Ed embarked on an entirely new venture, called DayJet – this time hoping to revolutionize the air travel market in the US.

It doesn't sound likely does it? – an IT entrepreneur driving innovation in the damaged if not desperate air travel market. However the business model makes perfect sense. The idea is to allow people to buy seats on small jets on an individual basis and then fly them point-to-point using the nearest convenient airports, which of course won't be the major hubs.

Small jets are cheap these days (in the 5 passenger seat class) and they will be for the foreseeable future. The price is falling. Five passengers might be the right number too, if you are looking to provide an On-Demand service that is flexible about destination points. However, to make it all work you will need a sophisticated real-time ticketing and scheduling capability and, naturally, that is what DayJet has.

Perhaps the most interesting thing about this venture is that it doesn't intend to be cheaper, it intends to be faster. What Ed is trying to deliver is less time spent traveling because you won't have to change planes or deal with the hassles of large airports. He expects to attract business travelers and he expects the seat prices to be reasonable. (Prices will vary – as they do for all other air flights).

So will it work? The business model has been well researched and it certainly looks like a viable idea. However, we won't be sure until the company has been operating for a while. The planes don't fly until 2006.