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	TABLE OF CONTENTS Home Decision Time No Community, No Project Leaders: Humble Dictators Innovation: Me-Too Is Ho-Hum Timing: Luck Matters

Innovation: Me-Too Is Ho-Hum
Many open source projects seek only to duplicate features and commoditize an existing form of software. Some don't see open source projects as innovative, arguing that they tend to only mimic, or at best refine, commercial ideas. The best open source projects, however, capture innovations--sometimes subtle, occasionally elegant, but always important--that are right for their times.

JBoss built aspect-oriented programming into the application server. The thinking behind the move: Something that's used over and over in an application, such as identity management or security, should be an aspect of the program and not have to be repeated with variations in different parts. So JBoss came up with a tagging method that became so successful that the Java Community Process followed its lead and built it into Java. Now it's all the rage to avoid Java's complexities and substitute simpler technologies.

When it first came out, MySQL was a lightweight database, lacking many of the features of Oracle or IBM's DB2. But it did one thing superbly: function as an ultrafast, read-only database that could serve HTML pages in high-traffic situations. MySQL was adopted by startups for that purpose, then caught on with larger Web businesses such as Travelocity. It has since filled in many of its database technology gaps--but it still serves pages fast.

Linux is a version of Unix, yes, but its innovation was to tailor Unix to commodity hardware without losing the operating system's strengths. None of the big Unix vendors seized on that concept. Sun's initial Solaris for x86 was a crippled system that didn't catch on, leaving an opening for Linus Torvalds. The power of Linux lies in its ability to fully exploit cheap hardware instead of being dumbed down.

Apache could take easy-to-write PHP plug-in extensions and use them to connect to different resources, and it was designed to scale up to meet traffic demands. In short, it was an innovation that was just right for the times. It now runs 60% of the active sites on the Web, according to Netcraft's Internet-monitoring site, compared with 31% for the runner-up, Microsoft's Internet Information Server.

Firefox has gained market share by improving the browsing experience while Internet Explorer stagnated. Compare that with, say, OpenOffice, which has been around for years with no significant traction against Microsoft Office. If a piece of open source software doesn't do something exceptionally well, if it's merely a cheap imitation of what you can buy, don't bet on it as the next big hit.

Open Source Up-And-Comers Mule Lightweight, transaction-intensive enterprise service bus that's won adherents on Wall Street. 500,000 downloads since 2003, most after the 2005 release of version 1.0. Subversion This version-control software has about 1 million users hammering on it--including Google, for hosting open source projects at Google.Code. Hyperic A simpler approach to systems management, it builds search into systems management. Strong community of users, and JBoss, MuleSource, and MySQL have purchased licenses to include Hyperic in their own products. Spring Framework Disrupted traditional J2EE development, letting developers work in a simpler scripting language and integrating results back into a Java app. 1.3 million downloads in 2-1/2 years.

Previous Page | 1 | 2 Decision Time | 3 No Community, No Project | 4 Leaders: Humble Dictators | 5 Innovation: Me-Too Is Ho-Hum | 6 Timing: Luck Matters Next Page

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