GPLv3 Q&A doesn’t seem like the hot topic we expected it to be. Andy Dreisch presented at SugarCON on the ramifications of GPLv3 on Sugar. I think from the tone of his post he left his presentation under-whelmed by the response (or lack thereof).

For those of you who could not attend Andy’s session, but want to be part of the GPLv3 discussion - The 451 Group is hosting a webinar on Feb 20th, complete with Q&A. I recommend that you attend if you want to understand the future of GPL and the Open Source.

Technorati Tags: open source, GPLv3

Matt Asay posted that The US Government Bets Big on Open Source. I love what Matt Asay writes and I think he’s poignant. He furthers “the cause” and we’re, as Open Source advocates, fortunate to have him.

So it is rare when I disagree with him - I hardly think of implementing Open Source as “Betting Big”. I frankly feel that all software implementations are a crap-shot if you don’t do due diligence, have an effective roll out plan, and train all the users. But it’s a real big gamble when it’s proprietary software. Who knows what’s in that black box?

One area of improvement I see for our government is in customer service. The Federal Government would really benefit from a Customer Relationship Management System… hmmm, if I only knew of an Open Source CRM system that really scales…. hmmmm….

On a more serious note, I spoke recently with a member of a state government (which will remain nameless) who heard this message loud and clear. They knew their weakness and that the constituents they served deserved better. I’m glad they made a choice to go Sugar. It’s not the first (or second, etc) state to use Sugar either. Which means to me that there’s a lot of opportunity at the local, state, and federal levels.

If you’re a developer in the public-sector, I encourage you to speak up about your use of Open Source and your use of SugarCRM in your organization. I know there are a lot of VARs and System Integrators reading this blog - I encourage you to look for opportunities in the public sector. It’s only going to grow from here, get there now.

Technorati Tags: government, open source

After turning down MSFT, YHOO has to come up with something that justifies why they will be valued at $44+ billion of their own accord. Even though GOOG was happy to intervene after the MSFT bid and take over search for them - they’re not so eager now that there is a proxy fight brewing. However, it seems like Rupert Murdoch is throwing his hat into the ring. Murdoch supposedly wants to mash up Yahoo! with MySpace and get a slice of the bloated valuation (thanks to MSFT) the MyHoo! entity. Ching!

Doesn’t this seem mixed up to you? MSFT has Facebook, which is built on PHP, Yahoo! is a PHP shop, MySpace is running on Cold Fusion, News Corp. isn’t exactly the “tip of the spear”, and Google can’t be the player it wants to be because of regulation (remember the DoubleClick).

I think as developers we’re at risk of losing a major contributor to the Open Source world. YHOO’s contributions to the OSS ecosystem, for example YUI, is an important part of SugarCRM 5.0 release. Even from a debugging level, we have Yahoo! to thank for Firebug. Yahoo! will become the banner ad-engine of MySpace and innovation becomes an after-thought. Do you think that kind of innovation and openness will still pour out of Yahoo! if Rupert Murdoch is sitting on the board?

Wouldn’t it be much more interesting if, rather than News Corp injecting Yahoo! with MySpace, Google and Yahoo! mashed up services as separate entities? Google and Yahoo! should take a stake in each other in an equity deal. The partnership would allow the two to take advantage of each other’s ad-network and/or search technology - while innovation in both organizations would further developers and the OSS world. I’d be happy to see the toolkits and frameworks that would result from that partnership.

What is the point of Open Source if you don’t contribute?

I just read a post over at TechCrunch about Firefox 3 Beta 3. It wasn’t so much the post, but it was the comments that got me. For example:

Aaron Stannard
February 12th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I’m about to drop FF like a bad habit and start using IE again.

Webside Ventures
February 12th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I gave up on FF and switched back to IE7 a while ago. I still use FF when I need to use the plugins, such as Firebug.

Seriously though, this is so obnoxious to me. Firefox is a free browser that’s a project where people dedicate their time to making something freely available. If you don’t like something, get involved! If something doesn’t work the way you want it to, GET INVOLVED!

How many of you want to contribute to the SugarCRM code base? How many of you want to add new features? What are the barriers to entry for you? What would make it easier?

Did you hear the rumors that SFDC offered itself to Oracle? Maybe it makes sense for Oracle and SFDC, but does it make sense for developers, the community, and customers?

Tom Foremski says that the two businesses are easily integrated because they’re based on standards. Maybe SFDC actually uses HTML, but APEX is far from an industry standard. How does that help the developer community and ultimately the customers / end-users?

Of course I am an open source advocate and a devoted MySQL user, but Oracle is a stellar database that scales. As a developer and also as the Advanced Support Manager for Sugar, I often find myself working with enterprise organizations that are Oracle shops. So why get stuck with APEX when you can have REAL open standards and flexibility?

If you’re going to develop for Sugar and you’re going to use Oracle - I *HIGHLY* recommend Zend Core for Oracle. It makes installation and maintenance and fine-tuning SOOO easy. My favorite part is that it’s FREE!

I’ve also learned that once you’ve installed Zend Core for Oracle, it would behoove you to upgrade to the latest oci8_client that comes with PHP. PHP 5.2.x+ has the best oci8 client from my personal experience.

What do you think about Oracle and its future? What tips have you learned as a PHP developer and from working with Oracle?

Jonathan Schwartz begins with outlining the parallels between the history of electricity and the future of the internet. He notes that all of Sun’s clients and many other vendors are focusing on the Social Utility of the network. Utility is an interesting word. I recall from economics 101, that value = utility / price. Software is the Utility and Open Source drives the price. The result is an immeasurable and infinite value. Sugar delivers this value.

As Schwartz notes, open platforms create ecosystems and ultimately serve the customer greater than just the product itself. By lowering the barrier to entry, as in terms of price, it becomes instinctual for us to consume that technology. Schwartz goes on to describe the economies of scale and the social network value of the ecosystem. It makes me think of the old quote “the value of the whole is greater than the sum of it’s parts” because the market opportunity is expanding due to FOSS.

Manoj Jayadevan starts off his presentation on what 5.0 means to SugarCRM. Picture this: a Porsche with Tank Treads.. Ok, now you’re thinking like Manoj. He wanted 5.0 to be strong and fast.

5.1 is meant to hit the shelves in April/May time frame and the focus will be on delivering a SaaS ready product. The content of 5.1 looks like an upgraded reporting engine, better wireless and pda intergration, import improvements, an Excel Plug-in (COOL!), and enhancing module builder. For the enterprise it looks like that the new Reports Module and Database Slave support is going to be the big winner. Finally, big deal with the 5.1 SugarCRM release is that we’re dropping <5.1 PHP versions. That means a lot for OOP, as I’m sure many of you know.

Sugar 6.0 is slated for Nov/Dec of 2008 and is focused on Sales Territory Management, Timesheets, new Calender, complex teams/groups. The big ones for me are Full text search, dependent dropdowns, and calculated fields. Sounds like a javascript studio is on the way. For developers, we’re going to keep advancing the functionality of module builder and the web services (SOAP API). For you java gear heads, we’re adding a Java Layer that allows PHP to talk in Java (think lucine).

Sounds like an exciting time. What features from a developer perspective?

Ken Brill takes the stage and instantly highlights how 5.0 has made “mashups” soo easy for developers. However, just because you can doesn’t mean you should. Its a great point and it’s also Ken’s first point: Not all mashups are match made in heaven. Consider Dr. Pepper’s Cherry Chocolate Mashup - HA!

Plan your mash up (does it make sense?):

1. Plan your database - what fields you need
2. Is it a whole module in Module Builder or part of another module
3. How are you getting data from your source (api, screen scrape, etc)

Ken then goes into an elegant solution of sucking documents out of Google’s Documents and then saves it as a record. Wow this is great stuff. First, Google Docs is sweet anyhow, right? But, how great is it to have your document creation software integrate with your CRM and document management!?

The second demonstration was a simple example of how flexible the dashlets framework works. Ken mashed up Google Gadgets with dashlets. In less than 4 lines of code, he was able to have a Gmail inbox, a currency converter, and a clock.

Finally, he created a custom Menu.php file in ./custom/modules/Contacts/ and was able to create a custom menu that displayed a particular contacts local time based on Zip. He really brought home that if you create custom code, even though it’s upgrade safe, we have to remember is the old custom functionality still have a place in the new version of Sugar.

This really got me thinking about my next mashup. I want the currency to automatically update conversation rates daily. Has anyone done this? Does any one know of a web service that does currency conversions for free?

Don’t mind my absence recently, it’s been quite hectic at Sugar preparing for things like SugarCON - but now it’s here and I’m here. I am going to try do my best blogging while hanging out at different presentations. I have three presentations myself which are all apart of the Admin track. I will be going to my colleagues’ presentations first - “Mashing Up Sugar”, followed by “Product Roadmap”.

SugarCON opened up with Martin Schenider turning up his Gibson SG to an ear piercing level - enough to wake the dead or anybody else who wasn’t ready for SugarStyle. John Roberts was next to step on the stage and covered not only the history and origin of Sugar, but also the essence of the SugarCRM project and company. I was blown away when John had Martin queue up a Google Map of all the SugarCRM installations over time in each country. It’s amazing to see how the world has so quickly adopted SugarCRM.

I’m currently sitting in the Keynote from Daniel Lyons. Most of you probably know him as the Fake Steve Job. I can say without a doubt he’s already left me speechless. His irreverent rants on the future of technology are not only rib-busting hilarious, but also very thought provoking. His macroview of IT industry and it’s shift to OSS as building the infrastructure for the cloud validates that Sugar is a key player of changing how businesses do business.

Ok, it’s lunch time and I’m excited to get a bite to eat. I’ll chime back in shortly. If there’s anything in particular that you want to hear about from the developer track, post a comment and I’ll find out for you.

If you’re not here, you really should think about coming next year. It’s a great turnout and a great group of people. Ciao!

SugarCon is really shaping up to be a smash. Take a gander at the keynote addresses we have lined up. Our developer track has some heavy hitters as well. Too many to list here.

SugarCon takes place in San Jose on February the 6th through the 8th. Details here.