Slashdot Mirror
Is Branding the Future of Open Source?
Khalid writes "People are still looking for good open source business models. Here is a very interesting one I found in the JBoss site. You can become a certified JBoss Group Authorized Consultant in exchange of $5000. Which comprise training and tests, in return, you can use the JBoss brand, which is quite recognized now. While this may not apply to all open source projects, I think this is a best of both worlds deal. The source is open for everybody (JBoss is LGPL). JBoss get a very solid network of consultants which make the JBoss brand even more solid (human networks never die). Users can get support and service and the people at JBoss Group can get some money to pay the bill and keep improving JBoss to make it an even better product, a very virtuous cycle." $5000 is a lot of money, though, and that cost is per-year, not a lifetime membership.
Pay me $500 a year, and I'll vouch for ya! Sure, I'm a nobody now... but wait till everyone pays me $500... I'll have a great website, and ads during the superbowl... how can you lose?
Paypal account to follow....
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
OK, I can understand using certification as a business model and to help develop a stable of knowledgable consultants for projects. But having a per year fee on top of the certification seems like you're paying for them to help market you. So why not call it what it is?
Personally I think having to pay on top of the certification starts to be a bit much. If I pay the 5K and don't get any work out of it, what have they really done for me?
human networks never die
This should read: "Java programmers never die. They just don't C as well."
That don't impress me much, as one of my favorite non-teen female singers tends to say. I can fork over $5000,- and follow a bit of training. However does that make me a good consultant for JBoss or anything else? I don't think so. Quality as a consultant in this field depends on more than just certificates and you simply can not do your job well based on just a JBoss certificate. You must know the implications of the underlying OS, hardware, network system etc. before you can make any sort of informed decision at all about anything to do with IT, including JBoss. Certification/branding, which are synonyms in my book, can only work properly if the training procedure is audited and the trainees get proper examinations where it is possible to fail. I've seen all too many courses where you just go there, sit in a classroom at a screen for two days, fill in a bogus test and receive your certificate no matter how horribly you did on your test.. You paid for it, so you're getting your cert. Practices like these make me very wary of 'branded' developers or consultants. Luckily I'm not in any position to hire personnel, I'd hate that.. but I know I would put them through a pretty strenuous pre setup hands-on test instead of an interview.
Learn from the mistakes of others. There isn't enough time to make them all yourself.
Most software companies have a whole collection of partnerships and certification programs. Some of them are godd and some not so good.
At first glance the JBoss one looks good, you're not just handing over the 5k and getting a logo sheet to add to your business cards. You are buying training and certification as well. My first reaction to this idea is a good one, it is a revenue stream for the JBoss guys and helps them build a developer community of good people. Not really just a brand.
The only thing I hope Jboss does is keep the bar for admitance to the program resonably high. There is no point in having a certification if your average 7 year old can pass the exams after a week of study. *cough*MCSE*cough*
$5k is a lot of money for a single person, but it's fairly reasonable for just about any company. Don't forget, some companies pay $80k for a single Oracle license. The requisite Oracle DBA is about 80k a year extra on top of that.
This might mean open source projects shouldn't be given ripoff names like Mozilla, ScummVM, Gaim, Licq, etc. Rebuilding functionality of closed source applications is fine, but you might just be a bit more creative and give it a REAL name.
Be wary of any facts that confirm your opinion.
Earn $$$ and be your own boss! Thousands of people have made the switch and are now living in financial independence!
Send $50 for informational materials TODAY!
(slide decimal point to right as respectability of target business increases)
...so what's this button do?
Ofcourse there are cases in which you cannot build a good business based on open source, for good reasons. But that's a completely different topic.
How do you convince people to buy carbonated sugar water, manufactured at 1.5 cents a can, for sixty cents? Marketing! By the same token, Red Hat has become synonimous with Linux in the non-Linux world. People are willing to pay $80 for software that they can download for the cost of bandwidth, or get from CheapBytes for ten bucks. IT professionals are willing to pay big bucks for Red Hat certifications.
Finding God in a Dog
I can use MySQL because its getting to be a recognized name, and because I can always fall back to the sleepycat license for projects that require the dark side of the force.
Most of your turf wars (Debian v RedHat v Suse, MySQL v PostGres, etc) are all about branding. There are very few functional differences that any corporate user would notice.
My US0.02
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Sounds like you might be bitter that you would get passed up for a JBoss implementation over someone who has the JBoss certification.
This isn't a bad thing, mind you.
With opensource (and closed source too), companies need some sort of assurance. A certification from a particular project could be the assurance they need.
Anyone can say they know JBoss but with the certification you know they at least know enough to pass the certification.
Think about how many people you know who claim they have a skill on thier cv/resume when the truth is that someone at the previous company used it and they MIGHT have seen it on the desktop when they walked by.
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I guess I got my MCSE before the price went through the roof (Call it 1997). But then again, I did not take the classes, but just the tests. Nowhere near $15,000 though. What bugs me though, is that I've not used the damn thing since I left the company that paid me to get it...
BWP
Looking around the website a bit you will see that they throw multiples of 5000 USD around a lot. For example a support contract costs 5000 USD, which gets you twenty hours at 250 USD of support. WOW! THAT IS REALLY EXPENSIVE!
My wife works at a big Investment bank where daily Front Arena consultants (expensive cost) about 1000 USD a day. And they thought that was expensive.
Well just get a JBoss consultant. Ok I think they are professional and have their act together. But the costs are still in dot.com days... Times HAVE changed...
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
I can see it now -- I spend a bunch of time and money learning the ins and outs of audio encoding, compression and all that good stuff... Then I get my branding: Certified LAME Engineer
the costs of Java Certificationfrom Sun %10,000
What the fsck are you talking about? I've got Sun's Java (Programmer) Certification - guess the cost...
Test (must take) - $150 CANADIAN DOLLARS
1 Class (optional) - $2500 CDN
So there. If you already know the basics, you could just take the test for a mere $150. Better yet - it's for LIFE, not just a year (you get certified for 'The Java 2 Platform').
You can accomplish anything you set your mind to. The impossible just takes a little longer.
Branding doesn't even work on companies that make money, advertise and have an image. But certification might work, with certain provisos.
Consider: the biggest asset to Open Source is that anybody can fix a bug. The biggest liability is that nobody is under any influence to fix it...especially if it's something minor affecting only one customer.
If OSS certification means you know enough about the codebase to be able to go in, find the problem, repair it, and get props for the company by uploading the fix, it'll be more than worth it. Consultants could charge more because there would be a valid benchmark to their resume's assertion that they "know the code inside and out." Companies would have the peace of mind much needed in OSS. And everybody keeps their freedom.
An OSS Certification program -- with $5000 for a skill audit by core developers -- could be a very valuable thing. The JBoss brand, however, is kind of worthless. Just ask all those people who stare at the cute little Postgres Elephant logo on my server and then ask for MySQL anyway. Gay dolphin...
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Hey, it's not as bad as "Jython". At least they didn't come up with a snarky coffee-based reference.
Even if your "company" is just one individual who knows a lot about JBoss, $5k/year is cheap. If your full-time job is being a JBoss developer/consultant, you will be charging clients per hour out the wazoo like all consultants, and raking in enough to make this amount trivial.
I think these JBoss guys have really hit the nail on the head when it comes to making an open source business model work financially. Personally, I dislike java as anything but a client-side language for a thin GUI, so JBoss is not my cup of tea - but the model is impressive and I'm proud of them.
11*43+456^2
Sounds like Amway.
What's this Submit thingy do?
It's Amway, in the software world.
What's this Submit thingy do?
So little research, so much posting, it's a shame.
This is one of the best things to hit Open Source in a long time. First of all JBoss is an excellent project. These guys are making the proprietary J2EE world nervous. Why am I going to pay for Weblogic, WebSphere or iPlanet when JBoss does the same job?
Secondly, the JBoss development team is dedicated to Open Source Java solutions. Just read the mailing lists, check out Marc Fleury's response to McNealy's criticisms of Open Source J2EE at JBoss.org or check out the interview at theserverside.com.
Marc heads the JBoss Group, the purpose is to allow Open Source developers to do what they love for themselves and make a decent living. They have been doing training at standard corporate rates (~3000USD for a week of training) and consulting for companies that have decided to use JBoss in house. They also sell documentation (a la FSF, but not under and Open Document license). They created the JBoss Group to allow more people to get involved making money doing what they love, Open Source J2EE development.
Due to the success of JBoss, there are a lot of requests coming in from around the world for JBoss support, development and consulting. This is professional work at professional prices. 5000USD is nothing in the professional world. This is more akin to Microsoft Certified Solution Provider programs for independent consultants. The JBoss Group funnels contract work (support, development, training, etc) to it's members while handling the incoming requests (sales qualification, billing, etc). I don't know what kind of payoff this has for the members in terms of revenue, since that information is not publicly available.
I've looked into this program and am excited about it. I've personally been working on a JBoss development contract since the end of January this year, porting a J2EE app from a proprietary J2EE app server to JBoss. I have no affiliation with the JBoss Group, or the project, other than being on the mailing list and hanging out a lot in #jboss on irc.openprojects.net.
Quite frankly I don't know what else to say to the snide comments other than STFU, and get a clue. Especially timothy's snide 'become-a-certified-massage-therapist dept.' tag or the clueless comment at the end. Open Source Java projecs are a shining example of what Open Source can provide. Just look at ArgoUML, XDoclet, UML2EJB, Struts, Ant, Maven, Log4j, Xerces, Xalan, Middlegen and a ton of others. You'll see how this is providing developers with the tools they need to develop enterprise class applications quickly with good design and solid frameworks.
I haven't seen Open Source tools sneaking into more corporate networks and development houses since Samba became popular. Everybody is integrating Open Source java tools, and those vendors that don't are being shunned by the Java development community at large. Check the forums on non-Open Source dev sites or vendor sites for proof.
The JBoss Team and Marc Fleury should be held in the same regard as the Apache Group, Larry Wall and most of the other famous names from the larger projects. I'm saying this out of respect from my experiences professionaly and personally with this project. Of course it seems that Slashdot and many in the Open Source world treat the Open Source Java community as some red-headed step-child. Well, we're putting up, so get your facts straight and take a look. You might like what you see.
Sorry for the spelling errors... I'm in a hurry.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
human networks never die
They can become partitioned by node failures, however.
I've never used JBoss, but it's good to have basic services like a web server as 100% open source, if only so they don't go away. Sun is notorious for abandonware. I have two different Sun Java development environments which I bought as boxed products and then were abandoned by Sun. And Sun-written Java libraries are notorious for getting to about 80% done and then being abandoned. (Java3D comes to mind.) I'd be very nervous about basing a major project on software for which Sun was the only source.
How do you convince people to buy carbonated sugar water, manufactured at 1.5 cents a can, for sixty cents?
Sure but that sixty cents is an investment in my self-worth! You see, all I have to do is put the money in the vending machine like my favorite sports hero told me to and I can sleep easily at night knowing that even though I'm a big fatass who isn't coordinated enough to waddle from the computer to the refrigerator without tripping on my D&D figure collection, I share something in common with my hero!
GMD
watch this
I wouldn't want to try doing this, firstly because branding is inhumane, and secondly, 'cos Tux'd probably give you a slap with a wet fish.. :-P
I think you are missing the point... At this time it's primarly for consultants selling their time. I am sure that eventually it will be a required resume item for J2EE jobs. But for now if you are trying to selling J2EE consulting work, that certification is important.
Like JavaBeans?
Moon Macrosystems. Sun's biggest competitor.
I have been reading all sorts of comments from people complaining about the $5000 / year.
J2EE consultants can charge about $150 - $400 / hour. If you could get 5% more per hour by having your JBoss certification, then the 5k is not much.
Let's do some math:
(Normal J2EE Consultant)
20 hours / week
x $200 / hour
x 50 weeks
-------------
$200,000 / year (Wouldn't that be nice)
(JBoss Certifified Consultant)
20 hours / week
x $210 / hour
x 50 weeks
--------------
$210,000 / year (That would be even nicer)
So there... You just made (net) an extra $5000 for getting your JBoss certification. Realistically, I think that JBoss certified consultants could get more than an extra 5% but I was trying to be conservative.
So have fun, and if you want to make more money then go get your JBoss certification. Simple as that.
OK. $5000 is reasonable.
...and you're back where you started. You'll never become a good software engineer solely trough certificates.
Nevertheless, IMHO, certification of software developers is a bad thing. Certified people are easier to trade since they get a shrink-wrapped quality tag. This is benificiary to non-techie managers, but not to us code monkeys. Certificates become outdated in no time. Does anyone still care about a Certified Y2K Compliancy Engineer?
Learn a trick - get certified - get ditched
Just my opinion, sorry to be somewhat off-topic.
--
In theory there is no difference between practice and theory. But in practice there is -- Jan L.A. van Snepscheut
If you don't like the current program, don't buy it. It's your choice.
-- Juha