We all know the common marketing technique of the branded, mostly worthless gifts we get from all sorts of vendors. Hey, look! Here's a coffee mug that costs ten cents to make, but this one has my logo on it! Do you love me yet? If I already love the brand, I'll probably like the tchotchke. For example, there's that awesome Linux Journal shirt I got at the 2004 Linux World featuring political choices of donkey, elephant and penquin. Come to think of that, I had to extend my subscription to get that shirt. Splunk's shirts are good too, and free (as in beer). Otherwise, we know this stuff is just junk. I like that old NaviSite notebook I got for listening to a sales pitch, and maybe it kept their brand in mind, but I didn't make the mistake of thinking of it as anything terribly valuable.

So, you might imagine what a turn-off it was to come across Open-source software: It's the free coffee cup of today over at CNET. Hey, SUN's a client of Clear Ink's. I have friends who work there. I think some of the stuff they are doing, such as Darkstar, is really great. And I really thought the MySQL acquisition was a great deal. But I cringed to read that CFO Mike Lehman compared MySQL to a free coffee mug. Yikes!

MySQL is a database I've lived with for about 11 years now. Along with PHP, it revolutionized programming for me. I wrote a book about it several years ago. I do not appreciate the notion that MySQL is just a cheap giveaway. The strategy to support open source software in order to sell hardware makes sense. Slipping up with a message like this does not demonstrate great marketing sense. I'm often told "you're not the target audience" when I express negative feelings about advertising, but in this case I a good representative of their demographic. Talking about a great product like MySQL in that way will not encourage IT managers to switch to MySQL.

Drupal 6.0 was released today. It has many new, appealing features. We use Drupal frequently for our own sites (such as Clear Night Sky itself) and work for our clients, such as Range Fuels. Obviously, many other big brands use Drupal, too.

This is one example of open source software firing on all cylinders. For certain uses, Drupal is the only serious choice.

I don't know if it's buzz around the SUN/MySQL deal, but I stumbled upon Ingres again recently. Computer Associates spun off the Ingres business a couple years ago with an investment from Garnett & Helfrich Capital. They did $50m in revenue last year. MySQL only did $20m, so it's worth keeping an eye on Ingres. Of course, MySQL has many more users, probably because MySQL is much easier to get on whatever platform you're on. I'd expect MySQL to be available any given Web host. I wouldn't be surprised to find PostgreSQL being offered, but I'd be puzzled to see Ingres offered. That is, until I read up on them recently.

Ingres has a familiar business model: give away the source code and charge for support. Of course, there's the "community" edition and the "Commercial" edition of the product. That's the same thing we see from Zimbra, SugarCRM and KnowledgeTree. Ultimately there's some sort of connector to Windows included in the commercial version, but that doesn't appear to be the case with Ingres. They call out on their datasheet that there's nothing different between the free version and the supported version. You just get support.

I appreciate that. It kind of bugs me to know there's some extra feature I might find useful if only I shelled out $5K. The Ingres folks seem to be oriented on open source first and secondly figuring out how to make the money work. And like I said, the money part is certainly working for them. They even plan to IPO later this year.

Ingres is using the tried-and-true marketing technique of coining a new term that really doesn't have much extra meaning, but it does help us all get the message across in the elevator. Their term is "Business Open Source". It's meant to be open source software that's compatible with enterprise business. They spell this out in a white paper called Ingres Business Open Source — Rising to the open source challenge. It starts from ground zero, which is good. Anyone who already knows what open source is, doesn't need to be convinced it's better than closed source software.

I like that they cover in two pages the biggest advantages of open source. These are terms that any IT manager can understand and they are free of the kind of posturing you might read on Slashdot. The theme here is that open source projects faced the dual challenges of not having a company standing behind them and they didn't have a long track record. It's a bit of hyperbole, and it's certainly not true that Ingres Corporation revolutionized anything by introducing the term Business Open Source. These guys spun off of CA in 2005.

This kind of bragging and fudging of the facts turns me off, but it can't trump the usefulness of the product. Form ought to function. I can't deny that this kind of text is the comfort an IT manager at a more conservative firm likes to have. The real appeal is the plain facts: lower cost of acquisition, transparency, shared risk, proven technology, available support and only the features you need.

From iQ212, check out Szeder's holiday poem that includes the following quatrain.

“We are open!” declared carriers “come use our pipe!”
People were too busy making free calls on Skype.
So cheer up! It’s Christmas! And while the carriers slumbered
Open access for all means their days are numbered.

Nice.