Weak industry momentum is prompting China to re-think its open source software business strategy. This is a good time for China and others to look beyond product models based on traditional proprietary thinking, and see the wider doors of opportunity that open source software services can open.

China’s People’s Daily has recently expressed disappointment about the apparent lack of growth in the Chinese domestic Linux industry. The Chinese government has spent millions on starting and supporting companies like Red Flag Linux with the objective of building a self-sustaining software industry in China.

The People’s Daily now wonders if the investment has been worth it. Despite generous support, Red Flag and other Chinese Linux vendors have been unable to displace the apparent monopoly of Western competitors like Red Hat, Novell, IBM, and others.

The fear is that if Red Flag Linux cannot achieve the same degree of success that Red Hat Inc. has, then there must be something terribly wrong. And, if Chinese developers do not enjoy acceptance into the Linux kernel development cadre, then the Chinese ability to develop an industry based on Linux will inevitably falter.

Wrong solutions

Several remedies have been suggested. For example:

China could build an open source product, mirroring its success with generic hardware, that transparently runs industry standard commercial software, such as Microsoft applications, in addition to open source applications. Or, China could try harder to break into the Linux kernel developer monopoly of Red Hat, IBM, and others by contributing its own technologies and code.

Unfortunately, China today feels it does not have the depth of software engineering skills to accomplish such feats.

More fundamentally, however, China’s worries reflect the continuing digital divide that plagues the open source software world. It is a legitimate concern for all developing nations that, if they do not participate in technology development on an equal footing, they will be left behind. Unequal participants will find it hard to develop a sustainable industry around their own resources and will not share in the profits that are possible in the industry. Instead, they will remain forever customers and resellers of multi-national monopolies.

“China’s worries reflect the continuing digital divide that plagues the open source software world.”

Undue pessimism

This is an unduly pessimistic view.

While building one’s own products may be necessary to succeed with proprietary software, this strategy is not needed with open source software. Unlike the proprietary product industry, the open source economy is not built by “owning” the technologies upon which it is based. While there can be economic advantages in creating and managing relevant open source projects, a more important advantage is derived by building a service industry around an open source technology or set of technologies. For example, Apache is an important part of IBM’s Websphere product family. But IBM did not create Apache. Nor does IBM control it or own it. Instead, IBM supports Apache through an independent foundation and builds a collateral product and services business around it.

Once a services business is built up around a particular open source technology, it might be possible to change the game by becoming the maintainer of the associated open source code. In special cases, the open source technology might even be purchased, as illustrated by Red Hat’s recent acquisition of JBoss. Other strategies might include hiring the developers, setting up and funding a foundation, or buying a company whose current role is project manager.

Whether building on the authority derived from providing services and support of particular open source technologies, or purchasing the technology outright, or just contributing significantly to it, there are many ways that one’s influence and control can be promoted within the open source industry.

The right remedy

For China and other developing countries, the low-hanging fruit is to build up a credible services industry and then use this as the basis for contributing to and influencing the open source movement at large. The services industry is where the real money is anyway!

It is backwards for developing countries to imagine wresting control of existing open-source technology from the developed economies. Instead, developing countries can aim to solve real problems in the local economy and then convert the acquired expertise into projects of both local and global scale. This expertise can also be used to contribute to and influence the advancement of open source projects themselves. New technologies might even be created in this process. Interestingly, playing directly on the global stage without using the local economy as a stepping stone may be feasible, especially for developing countries already strong in BPO and international software services.

The trick for China and others to level the playing field and to reap the profits from open source software starts first with services. It is short sighted only to see today’s failures based on perceived monopolies of the Western developed economies. By learning to play the open source services game, the rules for success change, as indeed the Linux game itself is transformed.

Ever since the first Web application was written, developers have attempted to create dynamic user interfaces that offer an interactive experience, much like desktop applications. Traditional Web applications feel clumsy and unresponsive because every update to the interface involves a full round-trip to the server and back. In this article, we will see how AJAX, a recent Web development technique, tackles this problem.

AJAX, an acronym for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, takes advantage of your browser’s built-in abilities to handle standards-based presentation, dynamic display and interaction, data interchange and manipulation, and asynchronous data retrieval. With AJAX, your Web application’s interface is freed up from lock-step communication with the server. AJAX applications do not need to refresh the entire page to update information on it. Instead, only relevant parts of the page are updated, giving users immediate feedback on their actions. This allows users to continually see what they are working on and react to any changes, errors or updates.

Why AJAX is popular

Several factors have lead to an upsurge in AJAX’s popularity. First, many high profile companies like Google have created impressive applications using this technology — think Gmail, Google Maps and Google Calendar. These applications have proved that AJAX can be used for real-world solutions in the enterprise, not just inside labs. Second, because AJAX applications are built on current Web standards, Web developers already familiar with these standards can build AJAX applications with relative ease. Finally, many easy-to-use, well-documented building blocks (i.e., toolkits, libraries) are available on the Web. Developers can save time by integrating these with their applications, instead of writing code from scratch.

Diving into AJAX

Before you start developing new AJAX applications or migrating existing Web applications, a well-rounded understanding of AJAX technology and current toolkits is essential. Resources on the Web, dedicated to AJAX, are popping up every day. Apart from your standard Google search for the term ‘ajax’, two websites, Ajaxian and AJAX Matters really stand out. Both sites provide a wealth of articles, code samples and documentation, written by industry experts and developers. Deciding to integrate one of the many available AJAX toolkits can help you make the best of your AJAX development experience. The questions to consider before making your decision are:

• What are the toolkit’s strengths (i.e., fancy UI effects, ease of customization)?
• Is it easy to learn?
• Is it well documented?
• How does it perform?
• Is the code maintainable and easy to debug?
• Does it only integrate with specific technologies?
• What do current users have to say about it?
• What kind of license does it use (i.e., GPL, BSD)?

Looking ahead

AJAX changes the way we think about Web applications. For developers, AJAX encourages modularity — functionality handled by a hefty chunk of code can be split across several lightweight components that are easier to test and maintain. For users, AJAX promises to fuse the interactivity of desktop applications with the utility of the Web. The future looks bright for AJAX, given that large companies like Google, Yahoo!, IBM and Sun are committing significant developer resources to it.

For the corporate world, Web 2.0 is the next step in the progression from the discovery a decade ago of the usefulness of having a corporate intranet to the demand today for a richer and more dynamic knowledge sharing utility. Corporate uptake of Web 2.0 demonstrates the latest trend in using web tools and information for organizational and commercial interests.

“Mash together open source, web services, and enterprise information and voilà! instant applications to help companies innovate.”

Market characterization

Top geeks have always desired tools to help them innovate quickly and cost-effectively. Corporations want the same. Now corporations are using web services, open source technologies and internal and external information sources to create instant applications that energize business ideas and increase team productivity.

Just “mashup” a little open source, some collaboration software, web services, and enterprise information and voilà! instant applications to help companies innovate and grow their businesses. Maps, news feeds, stock market information, banking data, weather updates, earthquake activity information, combined with open source technologies provide powerful building blocks to mix with the organization’s data and create applications customized for any business, corporation or government.

Middleware vendors are already lining up to build these applications with service-oriented architecture (SOA) technologies such as AJAX, RSS, Java, and business process management tools. Web portal and search companies are supplying the compelling data and open interfaces (APIs).

Examples

Web companies, middleware vendors and service providers have all picked up the market potential of Web 2.0.

Web portal and search innovators like Google and Yahoo have been the early leaders in defining Web 2.0. AJAX with its desktop look and feel together with rich information APIs have set the standard for a new generation of corporate web applications. For example, Google Maps Enterprise API allows companies to geographically view customer locations, track shipments, and manage facilities for CRM, workforce management, logistics, marketing and more.

Middleware vendors like JBoss are developing software agents to tie together a wide range of applications. Their goal is to enable plug-and-play information within a framework that consolidates dynamic tools for business process management.

IBM, the ultimate enterprise software and services provider, recently announced a new product called “Enterprise Mashup” based on Web 2.0 open source technologies that’s blended with enterprise content. Such products create innovative channels using wikis and web services to empower information production and management by the enterprise.

On the bleeding edge

Just like the “Semantic Web” before it, Web 2.0 is the latest buzzword for what’s happening next on the Web. Web 2.0 started out as a conference marketing term but now implies anything that seems to be bleeding edge on the Internet. New uses for the Web and innovative technologies all have a role to play. So do democratization of information access and new techniques to facilitate ease-of-use.

While the next generation of web applications are being enjoyed by the über-geek, they are also being put hard to work in the enterprise. Disney uses wikis to enhance creative collaboration. Other companies use Web 2.0 tools to avoid e-mail spam and reduce costs of underutilized intranet facilities. To help victims of Hurricane Katrina, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce quickly developed a job portal that lets people search across multiple job boards for the postings they are interested in and then pinpoints work locations on a Google Map.

Web 2.0 is not just for geeks anymore. In the final analysis, the next generation Web is all about enabling people as well as their organizations and companies to work together, innovate faster, and tame today’s information explosion.