I almost forgot, since this hasn’t been mentioned anywhere in all the discussions, I thought I’d mention it here…

The last proprietary software we purchased *was* put into open source. The original Report Designer: http://www.pentaho.com/news/releases/20060501_report_designer.php In this case it made perfect sense to put it into the open since it filled a major hole in the suite and would really benefit from the open source development model to add missing features.

“However, not open sourcing ClearView code does make it difficult for someone outside Pentaho to “tinker around” and make contributions to that specific component.”
- This is a very true statement and it also puts a lot of pressure on us internally to test. QA is tremendous value we get from the non developer community. The trade off between engineering cost and the perceived business value is very hard to quantify and I assure you it is hotly debated internally every time it comes up.

I agree that it raises the bar and I believe that competition is good. The community is currently working on it’s own alternative to JPivot – The PAT project: http://code.google.com/p/pentahoanalysistool/ I am sure that they would greatly benefit from your expertise and tinkering.

Doug

Thanks for your 2 cents.

I think ultimately this decision from Pentaho compels us all to question what does it mean for a company to be “open source”. To that end, some observations about your feedback:

• I had no knowledge of any legal restrictions on your part to open source ClearView code. I simply assumed that if you own something, you do have a choice to open source it — and I thought that the decision not to open source it and include it in the enterprise edition was more driven by business/revenue rather than legal restriction. Still, you bring up a valid point that I hadn’t considered
• As far as does Pentaho qualify to call itself “open source”, etc. I don’t think it really matters in the market either way. As you pointed out, it’s probably a more fun little distraction for open source practitioners to talk about. Your customers want value, feature, and good support – and whether or not the code is open source is probably not their #1 concern when they evaluate your software.

However, not open sourcing ClearView code does make it difficult for someone outside Pentaho to “tinker around” and make contributions to that specific component. Now, that may not matter to you because you already have adequate resources to support/improve that component, but it does close the door to applying an open source development model to ClearView code (unless they become an OEM partner). Ultimately, ClearView component raises the bar for what the community edition and other open source alternatives like OpenI — which is a good thing.

And above all, I still commend you all for making a brilliant acquisition, and wish Pentaho continued success.

cheers,

Sandeep

Thanks for the kind words. I know you just raised the questions and are not making any accusations but I’d like to add my 2 cents:

“this new UI replacement will NOT be available in the open source version”
- One consideration that you fail to address is whether Pentaho can legally open source the code it acquired. I think that would be an important part of the discussion.

“… does Pentaho platform even qualify as an open source platform anymore since a major component is only available in the closed source enterprise edition?”
- The functionality of this “major component” does exist, as you point out, and has existed in the Community Edition, via JPivot. We think ClearView has a better presentation and is easier to use, but it is functionally similar to JPivot. There are even some techie things that JPivot does that ClearView doesn’t. I fail to see how we could qualify as an open source platform last month and somehow become less open source because we provided an alternative interface to existing functionality. That seems silly to me.

“…is it wrong for Pentaho to call itself a “commercial open source” company?”
- I’ll reiterate what I said on Nick Goodman’s blog: What do we do at Pentaho? We write business intelligence software that is open source and we write a lot of it. We also write proprietary software and have bought proprietary software to extend our open source software and we sell it. Selling a proprietary product does not negate what we do in open source.

I’m sure that even Linus Torvalds has some software that he hasn’t uploaded as open source. In fact, it is very likely that he has even written code for an employer or customer since his first upload of Linux that was not open source. I hardly think that that would strip him of his open source developer status. Some may disagree but, I think we have earned the right to say that we are an “open source business intelligence company” regardless of whether we also write and sell proprietary software.

Finally, the term “Open Core” *is* more technically descriptive of our product strategy and is not a name we disagree with. In fact it is the criteria we use when making the decision to have a proprietary feature, a decision that we do not take lightly. I don’t think using it over “commercial open source” adds much value or differentiation for people interested in buying a BI solution. Maybe in the future when it is as well known and commonly used as “commercial open source” – that opinion will change. At this point, I think it’s just a fun little distraction for us (the people close to open source) to talk about.

Doug Moran
Pentaho Community Guy