---
title: Open Source As A Personal Trainer
date: 2005-03-04T02:47:18Z
modified: 2005-03-04T02:47:18Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/open-source-as-a-personal-trainer/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 154
categories:
  - Uncategorized
timestamp: 2005-03-04T02:47:18Z
tags:
  - Uncategorized
---

I like to think of open source as a personal trainer for the proprietary. That is, open source equivalents of proprietary technologies force the commercial ISV to innovate, to get its lazy ass out of bed and go for a run, and get fitter. Otherwise it will just sit around the house eating your cookies and getting fat. Think of [Internet Explorer](http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/02/22/378470.aspx). Until Firefox came along.

Firefox is IE’s personal trainer.

Sun Solaris has recently burst forward; just take a look at [DTrace](http://blogs.sun.com/roller/page/bmc/20050228#dtrace_tips_tricks_and_gotchas). Of course Sun also has to compete with AIX, HP-UX, and zOS. But it wasn’t pressure from IBM and HP’s Unix flavours that forced Sun to really get its act together and [readdress the community](http://www.opensolaris.org/) and be more open. No-it was Linux.

[Eclipse](http://eclipse.org/) is there with its fist on the floor under MS Visual Studio.NET’s chin. “Come on we want proper form in those press ups”. Actually VS.NET was already pretty fit, but Eclipse is going to give it a solid workout. Rational will benefit from Eclipse’s workout too. Check out Genuitec’s [packaged Eclipse bundle](http://www.myeclipseide.com/ContentExpress-display-ceid-7.html) for $29.95. Eclipse is an open source trainer for Microsoft’s Integrated Innovation story, but also for any Java IDE.

MySQL is pretty damn busy; it has DB2 and Oracle on the treadmill, and it got [Ingres](http://opensource.ca.com/projects/ingres) to do some serious cardio work too.

JBoss doesn’t let WebLogic or WebSphere sit around munching Krispy Kremes.

The list goes on and on- what are your personal favorites?

These personal trainers don’t need to be as functional as their commercial software “clients” (which is not to say they aren’t). They just need to be good enough to give the ISV a push to get fit, improve the product, lower the entry price and be more open to customer negotiations and needs.

To that end, and the reason i finally got this idea down, is that my favourite employee of the Hartford, James McGovern, says he hears rumours [Gartner and Burton are both joining my open source analysis party](http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/eai/leadership/archives/003304.asp). Let the games begin. We don’t need to be able to offer every service Gartner can, but with the right intellectual property models and measurement methods we can all work to make the company fitter and more responsive to customers. After all Gartner isn’t really the competion, its an environment in which we compete.

Mr McGovern is very kind.

> Started to think about their \[RedMonk’s\] value proposition and realize they are on the leading edge of what could become either the destruction of traditional analyst firms or the start of analyst firms truly serving their customers (both corporations and vendors) and the epoch of something we have always been asking for but never have seen in the past..

I guess RedMonk is a personal trainer too. Open Source Analysis should help enterprises and vendors to have a better, more informed dialogue, with greater transparency, and more effective advice given. Otherwise we might be in for a [coronary](http://www.redmonk.com/jgovernor/archives/000404.html).