Sunday, August 11, 2002

Ray Ozzie has a really great blog in the making.  One of his first stories is about his view of collaboration and the impetus behind Groove.  This is MUST reading if you want to see the evolution of a marketplace as well as a revolution in the way people work. 8:17:34 PM

The RealNetworks Leap of Faith: I was doing my usual Sunday night Google search on the term "collaboration" and came upon an interesting article, and a movement I have never really given much serious attention. Occasionally, I run into die-hard open source folks in customer meetings and industry events. I must admit that I am intrigued by the movement, but cannot rationalize a marketplace within any of the discrete segments of the movement. Witness RealNetworks' move as described in a ZDNET article entitled "How RealNetworks can become an open source player." Dan Farber, Editor in Chief of ZDNet writes, "it's not clear to me that the open source community is fully prepared to join forces with RealNetworks yet." Scary comment and therein lies my dilemma. A community does not equate to an actual marketplace that can sustain a company's electric bill much less a growing, profitable enterprise that meets the demands of Wall Street. If one can't meet the demands of Wall Street, one becomes irrelevant and lost in the marketplace, thereby halting innovation of the open source product. 7:19:12 PM