High Tech Life and Times in Hampton Roads

There aren’t many serious, high growth, venture-backed technology companies here in Hampton Roads, VA.

We’re a military town. Heck, a military region! Hampton Roads is actually a group of seven cities: Norfolk, VA Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Hampton, Newport News, and Suffolk, encompassing the entire southeast Virginia region of the Chesapeake Bay. Hampton Roads is home to Norfolk Naval Base, the largest naval installation in the world, Langley Air Force Base, NASA Langley, several army bases, and the Oceana Naval Air Station. We are the largest metropolitan area without a professional baseball team, a fun but otherwise useless factoid. There are a lot of (1.7 million) people here, but the federal government is by far the largest employer. We are home only to Norfolk Southern Railroad, Stihl Chainsaws, and Ferguson Enterprises.

In many ways Norfolk, where Centric CRM was born and lives, feels much more like a small town than a part of the 33rd largest MSA in the nation. Our airport is small. Traffic is light, the cost of living is low, and services are good. We’re a cultural lot; we have great restaurants, theater, symphony, rock concerts, museums, and one of the finest beaches in the world. We even have an opera house. But we’re also a continent away from Silicon Valley, the center of the technology universe. Frankly, I like it the way it is, and wouldn’t want to live in the big city. But there are downsides.

As CTO at Centric CRM, I’m asked from time to time how I will successfully scale the technology team since we haven’t located the company in a major technology center: NoCal, DC, NYC, Boston, the Research Triangle. I’ve always fairly glibly responded, “There’s plenty of talent in Hampton Roads”. There are highly trained men and women leaving the armed forces; there are contractors and consulting organizations catering to the DoD, and lots of small tech companies hovering around the periphery of NASA and the military. We have four universities and many more small colleges. There must be ample software engineering talent. In prior lives, as CTO and EVP of Engineering at a couple of other companies, I was able to attract plenty of systems and networking talent right here in Norfolk. I’ve always believed my own story.

But this is my first software company.

Ominously, my friends at other local tech companies bemoan the perceived lack of a strong talent pool, above all a Java developer talent pool. Since Centric CRM is a Java company, these sentiments are particularly worrisome. Would we really be able to attract the kind of talent we’d need to take Centric CRM to the next level (or two!)?

Centric CRM had cruised along with about ten employees for many years before we negotiated our first venture investment with Intel Capital, and we finally find ourselves needing to expand substantially and rapidly. We needed smart, highly motivated, senior software engineers with team lead experience to fuel our growth. We needed mid-managers to help us control it all and build the processes we’d need to keep Centric CRM at the forefront of the open source enterprise application space. So we advertised at the local Universities, we opened accounts at Dice and Monster, and started advertising.

Unfortunately the results were not encouraging. Timing was bad for the universities – it was June, and most graduating students had already found employment. Dice and Monster were returning lots of resumes, but mostly they were located in other cities and had no interest in relocating, or were not fully qualified for the positions we had open. We went on like this for weeks, and I was considering moving to San Jose, defeated and shamed.

But then something interesting happened: we started getting calls and resumes. Resumes from local talent that we had presumed existed, but had never seen. After a bit of work we hired the engineers we needed, and we’re still getting resumes. I wouldn’t call it a flood, but it’s pretty clear that the local talent pool will sustain at least one high-growth Java software company. Also interesting is the fact that bright young engineers are also willing to leave their contract jobs making big bucks in Northern Virginia to join an exciting young entrepreneurial company here in Hampton Roads.

The situation is looking good for us here in Norfolk, and I hope that means it’s looking good for Norfolk, too.

Ethics of Using "Open Source"

As background, I'm the CEO of Centric CRM, one of the vendors of open source software that has been at the fulcrum of a heated discussion centered around which vendors can rightly use the term "open source" when describing their products. While I normally stay out of such verbal jousts, I decided I ought to share our view point if only given the tone of some of the recent postings. Specifically, to address the sentiment of some that vendors using the term “open source”, whose offerings differ from the strict OSI definition, are either disingenuous at best, dishonest at worst.

Let me begin by saying we are supporters in many respects, though not all, of the OSI and we spend considerable time and effort in groups like the Open Solutions Alliance (OSA) actively supporting concepts almost inherent in the notion of “open” technologies. And with respect to the OSI specifically, as Matt Asay recently shared in his blog we are about to release a sizable piece of code named Team Elements under the OSL, an OSI-endorsed license authored by Larry Rosen, whom I believe was the original counsel for the OSI. The reason for our use, in this case, of an OSI license couldn't be simpler. The OSL is a good license for our customers and, we believe, a smart business decision for ourselves. That's it. Neither religion nor dogma is driving us in this regard – though admittedly we do feel a sense of satisfaction that in this case the license and our business model align with the OSI definition. However, if the only reason we chose the OSL was to comply with the OSI we'd be standing on shaky ground, especially with our shareholders. And because one is my wife and another Intel Capital – one of which is volatile, though I'll not say which – business considerations must trump dogma.

For identical reasoning to the above, we will continue releasing our CRM product under our own, open source license. This one, the CPL (Centric Public License) is not one endorsed by the OSI. And at least in the near term (as also pointed out in Matt's blog) we will continue to license it so. Rightly or wrongly, we evaluate licenses by their ability to help us support our customers, and by extension, our other stakeholders. While the latter might sound somewhat self serving (it is) it's also important to our Job 1 – satisfied customers; they demand we remain commercially viable. Ending up on the scrap heap like a host of proprietary CRM vendors is not in their best interest. They've been clear in this regard.

Without going into too much detail – though some detail is important – the major difference between our CRM license, the CPL, and any one of many good ones endorsed by the OSI is that the CPL limits EXTERNAL redistribution. That's pretty much it. So while our source code is available and is for free, while we allow it to be modified and the modifications licensed however the authors dictate (think BSD), and while it can be freely distributed internally by user organizations, we run afoul of the OSI because we do not allow, without our consent, external redistribution. (To be clear, we want companies to redistribute CRM and many are doing so, but they're doing so as commercial partners.) That's pretty much the extent of the differences. Is this a burden to our partners? No. In fact, it's viewed as a good thing in that it protects the time and effort they invest in us. Is the restriction on external redistribution an issue to end customers? No. They're in the business of using software internally, not in the business of redistributing it externally to others. Is it an issue to the OSI? Yes. Therein lies the rub, especially given we claim the right to call Centric CRM open source. With that as background, let's talk for a second on the ethics of us (or the OSI for that matter) using the term “open source”.

We have no problem with the OSI not approving our license as OSI-approved. That's their prerogative. They've come up with a definition they think is valuable and we respect that right. What we find offensive is the notion, based on some supposed higher ethical framework, that vendors using the term open source without an OSI-approved license are somehow being dishonest, duplicitous, or otherwise stealing the good work of the OSI. This is nonsense, both legally and historically.

First, legally. This is easy. The legality of use of the term “open source” is not in doubt. It is not trademarked and, IMHO, never will be for the purposes we are discussing. It's too common now and was back in the late 90's when the so-called common law use of the term was supposedly established.

Which is an obvious lead in to the second point. And that's the concept of prior use – I'm no lawyer here, so if I'm using it somewhat wrong, be somewhat charitable. Anyway, many people, myself and my associates included, at times used the term open source well before such luminaries as O'Reilly, Perens and Raymond hitched their commercial and non-commercial band wagons to the phrase in the late 90's. While it may be a true statement that they put the most effort behind “coining” it, it's not accurate to say they were the first to use it. (I believe the current legal standing bears this out.) The two words were commonly used independently, and though certainly less so, in conjunction way back when. I became active in the early to mid-90's with the Internet – and several of my partners 10 or 15 years before this while in the military – and all sorts of terms were used to explain what is now almost generically called open source. We variously called it shareware, at other times free software, or as likely open code, open source, and many variants on such themes. Why? They were generally descriptive and reflected the attributes of the types of software we were talking about. They also, admittedly, lacked rigor.

The world continued to evolve and in the late 90's along comes the Open Source Summits and the evolution of the OSI. Perhaps naively I remember thinking at the time, what a good thing. Finally, common terminology is evolving and a group of smart people is getting behind it. “Open source” seemed to be a good phrase for us all to get behind. I also remember thinking, wow, what naivete if these folks really believe they were the first to mouth the phrase as they seemed to be saying. They most certainly weren't. At the time, it wasn't important enough for me (or probably any body else) to get into an argument over who first used the phrase so long as it didn't affect us in the negative and promoted a good cause in the positive – the continued evolution of open software.

Which leads me to my final point; I was glad then, and I'm very glad now, that no legal marks were given on the term “open source”. A faction of this movement of which we're all a part seems to have turned reactionary, versus visionary and revolutionary. The world of open software, not surprisingly, has continued to evolve. I'm hoping those in our community who early on put effort behind it recognize that institutions must also continue to evolve. Likely even including the OSI. The single greatest document, in my opinion, of self government is the US Constitution. It shouldn't be forgotten that almost immediately AFTER it was ratified came the Bill of Rights. And well after them several of its most fundamental improvements were amended. This isn't to suggest the OSI hasn't evolved – the proliferation of licenses are a testament to that. But they seem more like statutes. Perhaps what we need is something more akin to the 13'th and 19'th Amendments. Improvements, if you will, that fundamentally enfranchised those the Founders effectively forgot, but which society collectively and eventually determined worthy of being considered.

What Makes an Open Source Company

Over the last few days there has been some controversy about what open source is, which started with a post from Dana Blankenhorn at ZDNet, and a reply from Michael Tiemann, the president of the OSI.

As the open source community breaks into two groups for a face-off about this (see DIGG, and SlashDot), I would like to offer our point of view.

At Centric CRM, we are dedicated to delivering value to our end customers. Our products are developed to satisfy their business needs and to provide them with the innovation, freedom and control they need for the software their business depends on.

We truly believe in our product, team and product strategy. We have never misled or mis-communicated the license that our software is based on. Our current CRM license is not OSI-approved, nor have we ever claimed it is. But it is open source. Our software is developed and supported by an online community open to all; ships with full source code and grants customers the freedom to modify their software or any part of it for internal use; and is available for unlimited use, free of charge, by anyone who visits our website.

As Dana said in his opening post on this debate, CRM is beyond mission-critical: Customer relationship management is what companies do. It is essential that companies can protect their innovation so it can continue to be a source of competitive advantage. That is why our current license gives companies control over their own investments and allows them to protect their innovations.

We are active participants in the open source community, we build and deliver software that encapsulates open source and ensure that our business model is embraced by the end user community. As our success shows, with our software used by Fortune 500 companies, our approach to open source and business is successful. Centric CRM is a founding member of the Open Solutions Alliance and a member of the Red Hat Exchange (RHX). We remain committed to open source software.

That said, I am delighted to confirm that we've been exploring our licensing for some time. (See Matt Asay's recent C|Net post for some speculation on this topic.)

Later this week our next major product, Centric Team Elements, will be released under the Open Software License (OSL 3.0), an OSI-approved license.

In addition, we are putting out a Centric CRM SDK under the LGPL that will allow third parties to freely redistribute and build derivative works based on our public API.

We are also making our Microsoft Outlook plug-in available under the GPL so that third-parties can extend our plug-in capabilities to their products.

In the spirit of open source, I would welcome the chance to meet with interested parties, fellow vendors such as Sugar CRM and Michael Tiemann, President of the OSI, to discuss this issue. I also hope that this discussion truly becomes that: a discussion, rather than a religious war, a discussion with nuanced arguments (see, for example, Alex Fletcher's latest post) that can engage and accomodate multiple parties with multiple viewpoints.

In the meantime, anyone who would like to join the conversation within the Centric CRM community is welcome to do so in our discussion forums.