I'm pretty fed up with the latest attempts of Intalio to get a free misleading ride on the open source wave. I can deal with competition based on features, even if we should lose. I can stand open source competition. But i can't stand that the open source is abused in the way they do.

Their latest press release called 'Intalio Donates BPMN Modeler to Eclipse Foundation' was the drop that made me cool my frustration in this blog. Currently there is only the model... and a screenshot. I wonder how long it will take them before the TODO's are done and the community will see a usable 'BPMN modeler' as they refer to it in their communication. What currently is out there doesn't even come close. Of course, they are free to choose which parts they open source and which not. I acknowledge that. But if you want to be recognized as an open source company, you got to take a different attitude. E.g. other people can use all of jBPM's technology IN FULL. With jBPM, you can even extend it, redistribute and make your money without paying us a penny.

But before this press release, I was already fed up with their cheap insinuations of being open source. For one the title of their home page says: 'Leader in Open Source BPMS'. So I checked it out and tried to download their product. This is a snippet from the license i had to click through:

(c) Restrictions. Unless otherwise agreed in writing by the Parties, Developer shall not (and shall not allow any third party to):

• (i) copy the Intalio Software or any portion thereof,
• (ii) use the Intalio Software in live production or with live data except on allowed databases or application server,
• (iii) decompile, disassemble, or otherwise reverse engineer or attempt to reconstruct or discover any source code or underlying ideas or algorithms of the Intalio Software by any means whatsoever,
• (iv) remove any product identification, copyright or other notice,
• (v) provide, lease or lend the Intalio Software to any third party or use the Intalio Software for timesharing or service bureau purposes,
• (vi) modify or create a derivative work of any part of the Intalio Software,
• (vii) load or use any portion of the Intalio Software at any site or on any equipment other than that indicated above, or
• (viii) disclose any performance information or analysis to any third party (including, without limitation, benchmarks or evaluation test results) from any source relating to the Intalio Software.

IANAL, but my guess would be that neither OSI nor FSF would consider this an open source license :-) So I made a wise U-turn when I saw this license.

I hear their defense coming: "Oh, but we didn't say that our core product was open source, we said that critical components are based on open source and we contribute to open source."

There are many companies contributing to and using open products... and that is just great! And we welcome all Intalio's contributions to open source in that perspective. But if your product contains the above restrictions, and if you only open source minimal parts of your 'critical components', i don't think you are entitled to describe your company as 'The Open Source BPMS Company'. For more insinuations of linking the brand of open source to their brand name, see this google search.

So my advice to Intalio is 'Get honest'. Either commit to open source or stop the insinuations that you are open source.

Before you get the wrong impression, I'm absolutely not religious about open source licenses. This is a completely different matter. I'm just against a misleading marketing.

Different from Intalio, recently a whole tsunami of companies have committed to open source. In most cases this is because they've been put against the wall by open source competition. These companies get my respect, but they have a hard time monetizing their open source software. Let me tell you with my limited business skills: IT IS NOT EASY. Building a scalable business on top of open source software is not easy.

IMO, JBoss and Red Hat are still very much underestimated for their pioneering work in building businesses on open source. I repeat: IT IS NOT EASY. Building communities. Developing and finetuning a completely new business model. Working with just a few of the best developers out there. Getting the right partnerships in place. Leveraging the efforts of the community. Respect that other people want to make money too. Internal development culture. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of all things that need to be just right in order to build a business on open source. For me personally, putting the very top notch developers to work closely in a very small team is the most awsome part. I often refer to it as 'an explosion of creativity'.

My response to those that are still in the phase of "you're not open source because you're making money" is the following: My project (JBoss jBPM) is now alive and doing very well only because JBoss helped me in bulding a business around it. So everyone can now download, use and redistrubute my entire team's work for free. This would never have been possible without the JBoss open source business model.

Another response is that it's middleware... Who the hell would develop professional, scalable, usable, production-ready middleware in his spare time ? Right: no-one! What DOES happen is that peole have great ideas that they want to work out. That might spark an open source project. Working out your own ideas and the community feedback can keep these enthousiasts motivated for some time. But sooner or later, there is always the moment where it gets harder to combine a day time job with your open source hobby. That is where people that don't make a living out of it give up.

I was reluctant for quite a while to express my respect for they pioneering work that JBoss has done in the field of open source middleware. Mainly because I'm an insider or... "contaminated" as some have called it :-) It's a relief that I finally came around to publish my testimonial and frustrations around bad marketing. I feel a lot better now :-) And I hope that it can inspire more people will to realize that building business on open source is not easy and give due credit to the pioneers.