Apache Flex is now an officially blessed podling at Apache. (in case you missed it, here’s Roy Fielding talking about what it means to be an Apache project, part 1 and part 2)

From the email by Bertrand Delacretaz:

The vote passes with binding +1s from:

 Jean-Baptiste Onofré
Greg Stein
Mark Struberg
Greg Reddin
Ralph Goers
Felix Meschberger
Chris Mattmann
Olivier Lamy
Michael McCandless
Bertrand Delacretaz

 (hopefully I got all Incubator PMC members who voted)

 and a number of non-binding +1s, with no other votes.

This is great news for the future development of Flex.  With the energy and activity of a great Flex community, I expect to see amazing development and innovation in Flex as well as branches into areas that have never been consdered before.

Thanks, Apache, for offering such a great way to free projects and engage community.

Since the beginnings of the open source license release of Flex, he desire has been to work with the community to develop and improve Flex in delivering internet applications with deep and rich expression.  With somewhere in excess of 350000 active Flex developers, Apace Flex is well positioned to be a vibrant and merit-based open source project, driven by the desires and direction of the whole community. In short, future directions and deliveries will be driven by the community, rather than by Adobe.

The concept of moving significant open initiatives from Adobe to outside foundations is a direction that makes sense for both us and the community. Community support and development is a principal strength of open source development. And it is increasingly apparent, at least to us, that such presence is best led by the community, even for technologies initially developed within a corporation. Adobe is beginning to understand the advantages of such independent foundations, through not only releasing Flex, but also projects such as PhoneGap (now Apache Callback), or contributing to project like Apache Felix. While Adobe cannot speak for more than ourselves, we believe that market-significant and/or complex projects would do well to consider support and drive from foundations such as the Apache Software Foundation, to help create free and open environments of collaboration.

From their website, the OSGi Alliance, a non-profit corporation, is a worldwide consortium of technology innovators that advances a proven and mature process to create open specifications that enable the modular assembly of software built with Java technology. The OSGi Alliance provides specifications, reference implementations, test suites and certification to foster a valuable cross-industry ecosystem. Member companies collaborate and promote adoption of OSGi technology through business benefits, user experiences and forums. The alliance also promotes collaboration among important ecosystem players within and outside the OSGi Alliance in order to provide the market with innovative solutions based on open standards. For more information, visit http://www.osgi.org/About/HomePage.

Adobe is excited to help the OSGi Alliance further drive the creation, evolution and promotion of open standards and specifications. Adobe CQ5, for example, is built on the OSGi framework. Apache Felix, driven by Adobe’s Felix Meschberger and Carsten Ziegeler, is an open source project devoted to the implementation of the core framework specification as well as Compendium and other specifications.

Adobe intends to continue being actively involved in the evolution of existing specifications as well as potentially driving new specifications. At the same time, we continue our involvement in the Apache open source projects involving OSGi technology such as the Apache Felix, Aries and Sling, as well as numerous other Apache Foundation projects. Stay tuned for future developments!

If you’re attending EclipseCon in March 2012, don’t miss Felix’s session on the Apace Felix Web Console- Web Based OSGi Framework Administration.

So what is gamification.

Well, it’s a package of a lot of things you probably already know, but the semi-official definitions:

Web definitions

Gamification is the integration of game mechanics or game dynamics into a website, service, community, campaign, or application in order to drive participation and engagement. …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamification

(Gamify) To incorporate fun game-play elements into a website that attempt to drive participation in an activity by providing reward and motivation for doing so.
vview.co.za/definitions/

The art and science of using game mechanics in non-game businesses to increase efficiency, customer loyalty and engagement.
www.business2community.com/strategy/gamification-dictionary…

Think of this in terms of Status, Achievement, Power, Stuff.  Every one of these elements exist in open source, for its self selected community.

Back in the ’90′s, I often got asked by CxO types, “Who pays for Linux?”. The answer I coined in 95 is that Linux is funded by ego-dollars, the awarded status of contributing to Linux. We’ve had developer status for more than a decade, we recognize achievement for (usually) developers.

Note the elements bolded above (bolds are mine).

Open source is both viewed as very successful in terms of adoption, and also very limited in adoption in certain areas of interest. Think open source items like Apache, Eclipse, Webkit.  But then think of items like Linux desktop use, a topic I’ve been spending a lot of time trying to understand.

Gabe’s presentation says it better, but here’s a summary.

Open source does not make it easier for a non-technical user to embrace.

Open source goes out of its way to empower technical users/developers.

Open source adoption (editor: for desktops) could be massively accelerated if it became more “fun”.

Now, whether you agree or not, it is true that making use of applications can be challenging, even daunting. Too often I hear the mantra “I put someone on Linux”. I also hear the user mantra “I tried to use something and it started asking for things I’ve never heard of”. Maybe this is the intent, since it certainly leads to the potential commercialization of good and popular projects.

Some projects do a good job. Most don’t. Think about such spaces as GitHub, SourceForge, etc. Go do a search for personal finance and look at it as if you aren’t a coder/developer.

Anyway, I’d enjoy thoughts on the Gamification space and how you’d like to see open source engage with the vast majority.

Enter Tizen

Of interest is the programming interface model.

From the site:

The Tizen application programming interfaces are based on HTML5 and other web standards, and we anticipate that the vast majority of Tizen application development will be based on these emerging standards. These APIs will cover various platform capabilities, such as messaging, multimedia, camera, network, and social media. For those who use native code in their applications, the Tizen SDK will include a native development kit. We will open the entire Tizen software stack, from the core OS up through the core applications and polished user interfaces.

The real factor may be the fact that the entire software stack will be open. Of course, it is still to be determined what open will mean in this case (since it seems to vary wildly across the spectrum of technology).

So what do you think?  Are we still in a limited mobile platform market, defined by iOS and Android, or does Tizen make it?

On so many levels, this, if true, is not good news for anyone who likes their operating environments to be open, as in open development.

MeeGo is truly an open environment. Based on the Linux kernel, it managed to have significant activity in the discussion groups. But if it fails, it will be in a twofold cycle called lack of apps.

Apps require platforms to build on and to deliver on. 

Building is easy. While problematic, it is possible to build on a simulated device. (In the olden days we did this a lot with cross compiled software for “other” hardware. Intel and MeeGo certainly were supportive of the community.

But MeeGo (and Intel) never seem to have enough traction to drive significant devices into the market to create a demand for apps. The lack of devices in the hands of developers continually hampers the potential for serendipitous break thrus in either MeeGo itself or the potential  killer app. (I did have hopes for the Myriad Alien Dalvik application, which purports to run android apps on none android devices. But again, no MeeGo device, no way to test this)

The counter of this can be seen in the development of Linux itself. Linux was built for x386 systems. Such systems were common, relatively cheap (keep in mind we are discussing the earlier 1990′s here) and thus the ability to run Linux on your own hardware was assured. Granted you might have to tweak something, write your own driver, but that was the thrill of being on Linux. (And btw, thank Microsoft for enforcing a common hardware environment.)

Now imagine if Linux had been released for a SPARC platform, or MIPS, or PowerPC. It may have ended up successful, but probably not as fast.

So maybe that is the problem.  MeeGo just hasn’t had time to grow up.

UPDATE: Samsung rumors on MeeGO

Way back in the day, when arguments about “Free Software” were around “free as in speech” or “free as in beer”., a new phrase was coined to avoid the issues around free. And thus Open Source was born.

Ever since then we’ve been seeing more activities attached to open. Off the top of my head I can think of:

• Open Source
• Open Standards
• Open Specifications
• Open Core
• Open Ecosystem
• Open API
• Open Governance
• Open Data
• Open Code
• Open Development
• Free/Libre Open Source Software
• Open Community
• Open Roadmaps
• Open Surface (my new personal pet peeve. Why would we need this?)

Actually, while it went quiet for a while, it was never dead. In fact, the website pointed out that it would be back, once Adobe got caught up with the various bits needed for 64b support.

Adobe launched the 64b Labs preview in July.  An update went live in August.

And so far, the response from the Linux community has demonstrated their interest.

As of last week, Linux downloads were in second place, behind Windows. This is great for those of us within Adobe working to extend Linux support.  Without obvious indications that there is a market and demand, it is hard to agitate for continued support.

Perhaps the confusion is that Adobe AIR for Linux reached EOL a couple of months ago, thus causing all this angst.

Way back in 1999 I predicted a significant market for desktop Linux by 2005.  (I was targeting better than Mac OS type numbers, in the 10-15% range.)  It was clear back then that Linux had found a substantial adoption as a server OS, and it seemed only time before the desktop adoption rivaled at least “the other desktop”.

Obviously I was wrong.

This is the current market share for Linux from Netmarketshare, who provide great insight into global market share of web technologies. While its never quite safe to read into statistics, I believe there is a correlation between shares of browser usage and desktop operating systems.  It’s likely these days that desktop users are browsing the internet; it’s also likely that such activity is not reflective of server operating systems.

Now, let’s take a look at two other OS shares:

Obviously the trend line in both of these cases is climbing. Adobe has certainly noticed it, our customers and partners have noticed it, and I’d bet that if you write or sell software, you’ve noticed it. The market is shifting to a mobile client, increasingly focused on the delivery of rich experiences and applications that travel with us via phone or tablet.

So we, Adobe, also need to shift with the market.  We need to focus our resources on the rapidly expanding markets like Android. we need to focus our resources on efforts around emerging web technologies as they become open standards.  We are beginning to focus on delviering more open capabilities in technologies that will expand those markets, like jQuery (see jQuery blog and Adobe Edge newsletter) and CSS Regions (news on cnet and on Adobe Labs).

So, with Desktop Linux, we see a basically flat growth curve hovering around 1%. And since the release of AIR, we’ve seen only a 0.5% download share for desktop Linux.

For Android and IOS we see substantial growth in share, and see predictions that indicate that in the Mobile OS market, the Android share could be 46%, with iOS at 16% (IDC March 2011).

The official announcement can be found here: http://blogs.adobe.com/flashplayer/2011/06/adobe-air-and-linux-increasing-distribution-on-devices.html

So, with the 2.7 release of AIR, we made a decision to prioritize our resources towards a Linux porting kit for AIR, which our Open Screen Project partners can use to complete implementations of AIR for Linux-based platforms. As such, we will be focusing on supporting partner implementations and will no longer be releasing our own versions of Adobe AIR and the AIR SDK for desktop Linux.

But, to quote Jeffrey Hammond of Forrester, “There are already 100M Linux devices, it just so happens they’re running Android.”

This move will allow us to focus our platforms on the future of Linux clients – on mobile devices. Improving performance, expanding capabilities, cross-device compatibility, stability are things we think are necessary to drive the new Linux market.

And the new Linux client is where we and our customers and partners are focused.

Usually they focus on the self publication of such technology.

However, there is also the practice of moving technology to an outside organization. It seems that the list of such organization/foundations is constantly growing, and that each offers certain focus or advantages. Apache, Eclipse, Mozilla, Linux Foundation all immediately come to mind when I think of such foundations that provide active efforts and governance for multiple projects, either unrelated or semi-related.  I’m sure that you have your favorite as well; feel free to tell me about them in the comments.

But if there is a process for deciding the release the code in the first place, there should be a similar list that targets outside organization contributions. I spent some time thinking of the things I’d look for and came with the following ten. And I expect there are potentially dozens more that could dig ever deeper into this question.

Note these are in no particular order.

• Does the target organization have a solid record of delivering on new technologies, particularly new contributions?
• Does the organization offer a start up process for new projects?
• Do they have a consistent and acceptable set of governance policies and procedures?
• Is there clear indication that the organization itself is stable and well funded?
• Do we already have experience with the organization?
• Does the organization have expertise in projects that relates to our offering?
• Does the organization itself offer projects or technologies that compete with our offering?
• Is the organization itself open and consensus driven?  How does one (individual/company) join?
• Does the organization provide the capability for the project to live on should the donator stop active contributions?
• Does the organization require assignment of copyright or other intellectual property to the organization?

I like to hear your ideas around choosing what foundations make sense for projects. Leave me a comment with your question to add to the list.

davemc