For years, companies have looked to open source to salvage dying products, and each time these efforts have failed. Often dismally.

After all, if a product can’t make the grade as a proprietary product, it will almost certainly fare worse as an open-source product. Great open-source projects are founded on great code and robust community, two things largely lacking from failed proprietary products.

With respect to Symbian, its problems go far beyond its source code, but a lack of source code is the foundation for several of them. A year after announcing that its code would be available under an open-source license, the Symbian Foundation hadn’t actually released the code. Small wonder, then, that Symbian also couldn’t match the app store momentum of Apple, Google, or even its one-time sugar daddy, Nokia. No code, no developers.

No developers, no relevance, as its dying market share demonstrates:

Symbian: It used to be a contender

An open-source strategy generally favors challengers in a market, not incumbents. This is the genius of Google’s Android assault on Apple’s uber-closed iOS, and it is equally the reason that a swath of open-source upstarts — from Alfresco to BonitaSoft to Cloudera – has mounted successful challenges to the incumbents in their respective markets.

Open source, then, is a great way to spark or accelerate momentum. It’s a terrible way to reverse a product’s decline. If anything, it does the opposite by calling attention to the lack of interest in a project — freely visible through SourceForge or JIRA tickets or forum activity — and thereby compounding the indifference to the product.

Was open-source Symbian dead the moment it was announced? Perhaps. It certainly needed to demonstrate significant developer interest in the platform immediately upon announcing the code would be open-sourced, and then continuously thereafter. It did neither.  As a result, one by one Symbian’s key handset licensees like Samsung have dropped it for Android or other open-source alternatives. And it started way too late: by the time Symbian announced its code would be open-sourced, developer survey data already showed Android and OpenMoko interest running rampant. In the past two years, developer interest for Symbian has all but evaporated.

While interest remains relatively strong for Nokia’s Qt developer tools, it can’t compensate for fading interest in the overall Symbian platform.

Had Symbian gone open source when still strong with developers, and had the Foundation done a better job of engaging developers, it might have had a chance to survive as more than a dusty Wikipedia reference.

Open source isn’t a one-time announcement, coupled with a code drop. It’s exceptionally hard, ongoing work that requires equal parts evangelism, programming, and customer success stories to keep developers believing that their work matters. It’s especially difficult, as Drupal founder Dries Buytaert intimates, when a commercial entity gets involved, because it can frighten away community.

These principles aren’t exclusive to open source, of course. Consider Skype, for example. Skype appears to be pulling a Microsoft: turning inward, seeking to build out its own ecosystem rather than fostering a robust, third-party developer ecosystem. Microsoft is famous for its developer outreach on the enterprise side, but is equally famous for a failed go-it-alone approach in consumer technologies. Its dying brand, as CNN reports, reflects this failed strategy.

Both companies need to engage and encourage a third-party developer ecosystem. Open source is a critical way to accomplish this.

But neither they nor anyone else can hope to use open source as a purely palliative remedy for what ails them. Open source can be used to inspire and complement successful products. It can accelerate momentum. What it can’t do is resurrect dying technology products.

Disclosure: I work for Canonical, a Linux vendor. I am also a former Alfresco employee.

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Minutes after the U.S. stock markets started winding down for the weekend, a few technology giants made some announcements that amount to nothing more than tying up loose ends.

* Avaya got the go-ahead from Canada to buy Nortel’s PBX business for $900 million in cash.
* Microsoft & Yahoo finalized their search agreement that was first announced back in July. It’s a good way for the two companies to put yesterday’s Bing debacle behind them!

Photo courtesy of Microsoft.

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Earlier today, he was arrested for what is allegedly an insider trading scam involving quite a few people. The charges against him include four counts of conspiracy; he’s also being charged for eight counts of securities fraud. Talk about an ignominious fall for a man who is said to be worth a billion dollars and is ranked No. 559 on Forbes’ World’s Billionaires list.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

Others charged criminally in the case include Rajiv Goel, director in strategic investments at Intel Corp.’s investment arm; Anil Kumar, a director at global management-consulting firm McKinsey & Co.; Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland of New Castle Partners LLC, the one-time equity hedge fund group at Bear Stearns Asset Management Inc.; and Robert Moffat, a senior vice president at International Business Machines Corp.

The allegations put Mr. Rajaratnam at the center of several insider trades in which he allegedly caused Galleon funds to act on inside information or passed along tips to others.

In one instance, prosecutors allege that Mr. Rajaratnam, between January 2006 and July 2007, received nonpublic information about Polycom Inc., Hilton Hotels Corp. and Google Inc. and caused Galleon Technology Funds to make improper trades on that information. As a result, the Galleon fund earned more than $12.7 million, prosecutors said.

When I read this news this morning on Bloomberg, my whole life flashed in front of my eyes. Rajaratnam’s rise to the top was a familiar story to anyone who was in the technology business. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, he rose to fame because of his coverage of the semiconductor industry, which at the time was on a massive upswing.

Whether it was his relationships with chip companies or something else, he became a dominant analyst for Needham and eventually brought them so much business that he became president of the firm in 1991. Remember, this was the go-go 1990s, an era when everything was OK, and he rose with the boom.

He started his own hedge fund, the Galleon Group, in 1997 and left Needham in 2001. Over the next few years, he reported spectacular returns and was the envy of the industry. Many of the analysts (such as Goldman Sachs’ Microsoft analyst Rick Sherlund) I met over my long career went to work for him. The spectacular results brought in more money. From Galleon Group web site via MarketFolly:

…..”manages a series of funds that specialize in the technology and healthcare industries. Currently The Galleon Group manages five different long/short equity funds: Technology, Healthcare, New Media (Internet), Communications and Life Sciences. Galleon’s philosophy and approach differs from that of other hedge funds in the fundamental belief that it is possible to deliver superior returns to our investors without employing leverage. Combine strong fundamental investment analysis with superior trading capability Galleon places a strong emphasis on both fundamental investment analysis and trading. This enables us to identify companies with superior long-term growth prospects while maintaining the flexibility to profit from short-term market fluctuations.”

How do I say it politely? That is all poppycock. For all that analysis was apparently nothing but smoke and mirrors, and instead seems like a case of insider information-based trading. As Bloomberg reports:

Prosecutors said they’ve been investigating the case since at least November 2007, when a person they don’t name in the complaint began meeting with agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The person, who has pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities, had used inside information to trade securities and tipped Rajaratnam since 2006, prosecutors say in one of two complaints filed in Manhattan federal court.

The person, who had sought a job at Galleon in 2005, helped prosecutors by “making consensual recordings of four telephone conversations” with Rajaratnam, the complaint says.

Given how big this fund was, I’m sure the reverberations are going to be felt in Silicon Valley, where Rajaratnam had deep relationships. I’ve been on the phone trying to find out more from my sources and will update the report as I gather more information.

Meanwhile, it reminds me of the age-old maxim: When something is too good to be true…..

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As a responsible Mac user, I usually feel immune from most Internet threats…except for one. Using my Mac exactly as Apple intends it to be used sometimes renders my Internet connection virtually unusable for up to a month, and costs money to fix.

Could this happen to you? It depends on whether your Internet provider has a bandwidth “metering” policy (or “cap”). These caps are one of the most controversial topics for Internet users in 2009, and can put a significant crimp in your Internet use. Recently, Congressman Eric Massa (D-NY), who represents the Rochester area, introduced the “Broadband Internet Fairness Act” (H.R. 2902) (PDF). Massa got involved soon after Time Warner Cable unsuccessfully used Rochester as a test market for metering. Under this bill, the FTC would have veto power over such caps and thus allow them only under certain agreed-upon scenarios.

In my hometown of Lawrence, Kansas, the standard level of cable Internet service has a limit of 3GB of bandwidth per month. Overage is charged $2 per GB. Downloading a single movie from the iTunes store will blow through an entire monthly limit, and even the cable company’s most expensive “premium” service only allows 50GB of bandwidth. In 2009, that’s not really much bandwidth at all.

Once you’ve hit your limit, you have to severely restrict usage until the next month, or face a large bill. Your Apple TV remains stale without its new content, your iMac stops downloading podcasts, and your iPod weeps because it’s sick of the same old music you had last month.

Apple is the leader in multimedia content creation; new Mac users are always pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to buy from the iTunes store, or create their own content. A common question we get in our local user group is “I’m not sure what I did wrong, but all of a sudden I have a substantial overage bill from my cable company.” Of course, the user did nothing wrong, other than subscribe to a few podcasts, and perhaps download a new Apple software update and buy some shows with iTunes! The Mac is also blessed with great online backup services like MobileMe, yet when our user group did a presentation on backup strategy, I had to warn novice users to be careful lest their backups end up costing them an arm and a leg in bandwidth overage fees!

While on the surface this appears to be an isolated issue with a few providers, it is not. Bandwidth metering is a growing threat to cable Internet users in many cities. The American Cable Association (ACA) has come out in support of bandwidth caps, and the former chair of the ACA, Patrick Knorr, who implemented bandwidth caps in Lawrence, stated in multiple interviews that flat-rate Internet pricing is an “unsustainable” business model.

Unfortunately, using the Internet normally with bandwidth metering is also unsustainable. When Mac owners are worried about downloading movies, doing backups or performing system updates, that hurts the Apple brand. Apple is continually innovating new ways to make the Mac OS the best Internet operating system, creating a whole ecosystem with iTunes, MobileMe and iLife. All of these great products rely on the ubiquity of the Internet. When Internet providers start making normal Internet use an expensive proposition, Mac users lose.

Apple should lead the way and come out against bandwidth caps. Given that many of the offerings on the iTunes store actually compete with cable TV, Apple should be vigilant that cable companies do not use bandwidth metering as a way to stifle alternative ways of viewing content. Additionally, Apple should add a bandwidth meter to the Airport routers; that way the bandwidth use of entire households can be tracked. If bandwidth caps are inevitable, Apple can arm the consumer with data to monitor their usage and dispute discrepancies with their ISP.

Apple could be an ally for consumers (even the “PC guy” in the commercials would be helped!), while at the same time standing up for its own brand and vision of consumer Internet use. If you disagree with the idea of bandwidth metering, make sure your voice is heard by giving customer feedback to your own Internet provider and writing your member of Congress. I had better end this article now…bytes and bits equal dollars and cents for me, unfortunately!

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“This is the way the market is going,” said Larry Fisher, research director for NextGen. “Increasingly when people are forced to make a choice on which building materials to use, they are going toward the more environmentally responsible approach.”

The study assessed the worldwide outlook for the use of greener building products, which the report defined as those having less of an environmental impact than standard building materials. Fisher said the drivers behind the trend were many: shifting attitudes among builders and consumers, government mandates, and the higher prices that green buildings often fetch on the market. The study didn’t look at the prices for green materials relative to their conventional competitors. But Fisher said he believes the cost savings — from recycling waste materials or using less energy-intensive manufacturing processes — in making greener products will often offset higher costs elsewhere in their production.

Cement is a good example. Chemical reactions during its creation emit large amounts of CO2, and energy is needed to heat and dry its constituent products.  Many cement manufacturers still rely on coal-fired kilns, and for every ton of cement made, about a ton of CO2 is released. Fisher said that’s led an increasing number of manufacturers to embrace the practices recommended by the Cement Sustainability Initiative, which, among other things, outlines ways for cement makers to reduce their carbon footprints. But Fisher said established cement makers currently aren’t focused on developing new products to replace conventional cement. Instead, they are searching for ways to reduce the energy intensity of their manufacturing processes and adopting cleaner sources of energy.

A handful of startups, however, are working on significantly different products and processes for replacing conventional cement. One is Los Gatos, Calif.-based Calera, which is developing a way to create some of the main ingredients of cement from CO2, effectively sequestering it into their products. The Khosla Ventures-backed company estimates its cement will retail for about $100 per ton versus about $110 per ton for conventional cement. Another is the relatively stealthy Newark, Calif.-based CalStar Cement, which is backed by Foundation Capital and is developing a process for using industrial by-products to make a cement replacement.

As governments increasingly place limits and prices on carbon emissions, the old guard may stop just tinkering with its manufacturing processes and start looking more seriously at innovative ways to produce cement. Cement manufacturers reportedly have already invested millions of dollars in green programs, like the Cement Sustainability Initiative.

The NextGen report found that commercial office buildings, new residential buildings and home improvements will likely present the biggest opportunities in green building products. Fisher expects green materials to take an especially strong hold in commercial and residential rebuilds and retrofits.

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Long story short: you can always try this method and revert back if you find it too limiting while mobile. Simply log in to Gmail on the web and click the Settings link. From there, click the Labels link and remove the “Show in IMAP” check-boxes for any labels that you don’t hit up all that often on the go. Be sure not to uncheck the standard or default labels for key items like Inbox, Sent Mail, and Trash.

In my example above, you can see that I’m no longer synchronizing the CES 2009 or CTIA labels: those shows are in the past and although I want to keep the mail that’s in them, I don’t need to access it while out and about any longer. Again, this is common sense, but probably not something folks think about: why “clog the sync” with data you really don’t need when mobile?

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While there’s no shortage of accounting programs available, with varying levels of complexity and pricing, it can be difficult for a small shop to find the right solution. Focusing on ease of use and integration with other web apps, Outright is a great choice for web workers.

In reality, the accounting needs of the average solo web worker are usually pretty modest. Record the money in (income) versus your money out (expenses) and be prepared to pay your taxes when they’re due.

At its core, Outright is a basic web service designed to allow you to easily track your expenses and income. Using a familiar check register interface, you enter in transaction details and get quick and simple access to the general health of your business.

As a member of the Small Business Web initiative I wrote about recently, Outright integrates well with FreshBooks, the invoicing app, and Shoeboxed, the receipt organizer (both also SBW members).

In fact, it is when used in conjunction with these other apps that Outright really stands out. While it has all the right things to make data entry easy, like auto-complete and keyboard shortcuts, nothing could be easier than having your existing invoice and expense data imported automatically. When connected to your Freshbooks or Shoeboxed accounts, all transactions are updated nightly and even maintain a link connection so you can get to the original source quickly.

There are some challenges with this integration, though. For example, Outright exclusively uses the categories from  Schedule C but since Shoeboxed doesn’t have that limitation, there are instances when it is necessary to manually re-assign a category to synced records.

I think the folks at Outright don’t stress enough the tax preparation angle when describing the usefulness of their service. With email reminders when quarterly payments are due, estimated payment amounts and a really handy Schedule C printout, using Outright just for the tax preparation functionality alone might make great sense.

If you’re already using Freshbooks or Shoeboxed, then getting an Outright account is almost a no-brainer. But even if you’re not using these apps, then Outright is still a very good choice for basic expense and income tracking.

oDesk integration was also recently added, and I imagine support for other apps is coming soon, so it might be a good idea to check in occasionally and see if they are supporting your app of choice.

Outright is free during the beta period and works wherever you have a browser and Internet connection.

How do you manage your books?

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As Stacey has pointed out over at GigaOM, there’s a lot of potential for synergy between IBM and Sun’s cloud computing offerings, and the combined company would likely offer a robust enough array to help enterprise customers migrate to the cloud. That could be good news for Sun’s Eco Responsibility initiative, launched in December 2005. At the outset, the campaign was part of an effort to bolster sales of Sun’s new energy-efficient chips and server products with a “green” message, but Sun also made an effort to tie the campaign into its overall approach to computing. Because cloud computing and green IT have become so closely linked in many minds, an acquisition of Sun by IBM likely wouldn’t put a damper on Sun’s Eco Responsibility initiatives (though I’d be surprised to see IBM keep the “Eco Responsibility” branding).

By acquiring Sun, IBM would also gain control of Java, Sun’s biggest brand success, if not its largest commercial one. (Sun may have swapped its SUNW stock ticker for JAVA in 2007, but in 2008, the company earned just $200 million from Java on total revenues of $13.8 billion.) AMR Research suggests that Java, not Sun’s server and storage products, could be the biggest boon for IBM — including for IBM’s recently launched “Smarter Planet” campaign, which aims to use information technology for improving the efficiency and sustainability of diverse industries, from food and oil to water and electricity. Because Java, a pervasive and powerful development platform, is already an important part of many of IBM’s software and services offerings, bringing it in-house could give IBM a serious advantage over other enterprise software vendors — including those (like SAP) seeking to make their own sustainability management software plays.

Earlier this year, I spoke at length with Drew Clark, director of strategy for the IBM Venture Capital Group, about IBM’s Smarter Planet initiative. He stressed the growing importance of the mobile handset; according to Clark, mobile access to the data generated from smart systems will play a key role in improving the effectiveness of such initiatives, particularly in the consumer space. In order to bring smarter tools to consumers — whether they be smart home energy management systems, smarter irrigation systems, or smart parking and traffic tools — Clark said making information accessible and actionable on a mobile device will be necessary. “The new IT platform has evolved from the desktop to the mobile handset,” he said.

For Clark, the mobile platform that can run such systems has to be three things: easy to use, easy to develop for (preferably with a developer community behind it), and “as open as you can be,” he said. “That’s the magic formula.”  By acquiring Java, Sun would add just such a platform to its portfolio of tools. (Sun’s Java ME is supported on Symbian, Windows Mobile and BlackBerry handsets — as well as unofficially on Android.)

However, that’s just my take. Unsurprisingly, neither Sun nor IBM would comment on the potential impact of such a deal on their green initiatives.

This article also appeared on BusinessWeek.com.

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It’s a safe bet that those two troubled companies — trading below $2 a share — will get the boot, potentially along with Bank of America, which is trading below $4. All are plagued by concerns that bankruptcies or government takeovers would wipe out shareholders. Talk of a reshuffling of the Dow has been heating up of late.

Does Google belong in the Dow? I think it does for a few reasons. According to Dow Jones’ explanation of the indexes composition, “a stock typically is added only if it has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth, is of interest to a large number of investors and accurately represents the sector(s) covered by the average.”

Sure, the stock closed below $300 a share Monday. But Google (and tech stocks as a whole) have been holding up relatively well during the selloff. The infotech sector of the S&P 500 has fallen 38.4 percent in the last tumultuous six months, compared to the 44.7 percent drop in the S&P 500 itself. Google, meanwhile, is down 30.5 percent.

Second, there aren’t a lot of better alternatives around. The Wall Street Journal editors who oversee the index usually try to replace an exiting stock with one from the same industry. Picking the wrong company can be embarrassing. In April 2004, they chose AIG, then pulled it last September.

Wells Fargo has been mentioned as a candidate, but it was yanked Friday from a Dow index focusing on high-dividend stocks. Visa and Goldman Sachs are possibilities, but may too closely mirror existing components American Express and JP Morgan. Apple is a good candidate, but its 45-percent drop in 6 months and questions about leadership may work against it for now.

Finally, Google and Cisco are strong large-cap stocks that point to where economic growth may lie in the future. The changes in the Dow over recent decades track a long-term, sometimes painful transition of the U.S. economy from manufacturing to services. Only 19 of the Dow’s 30 stocks are primarily concerned with making things you can touch. So losing General Motors and adding in Cisco — which makes the network fabric on which so many new services are appearing — makes sense.

But the economy is seeing another major transformation, a wrenching and sudden one. Economic growth is moving from what I’d call artificial value — iffy financial products that create vast wealth but have little connection to our lives — to real value — applications and services that are changing how we work, how we think and how we stay in touch with others. That model of value has a ways to go, and right now Google represents it best.

In 1896, at the previous turn of the century, Charles Dow upgraded what was largely a railroad-stock index into one more broadly representative of the U.S. economy, tossing out the likes of Union Pacific and adding in U.S. Rubber (now Michelin) and General Electric (the sole remaining founding member). In doing so, he positioned the Dow Jones Industrial to become the most closely watched stock index in the world.

Now, 112 years later, the index’ overseers have a similar chance to make the index better reflect a new century. Adding in Google and Cisco would be a good start.

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Noca, a 2-year-old startup based Mountain View, Calif., started by former Visa executives, hopes to do this by offering a brand new online payment platform that essentially attacks the “processing fees” associated with credit card payments. Taking on the entire credit card establishment and other payment platforms such as PayPal is an incredibly brave move for a tiny startup.

Pankaj Gupta, CEO of Noca, says online merchants typically pay processing fees between 2 and 3 percent of revenue. “With total profit margins typically 3-4 percent this 2-3 percent becomes a huge problem (almost 50 percent of profit is going away in processing),” he says.

Noca avoids credit card processing fees by letting consumers use their bank account information to send money directly to merchants via “secure checks.” It’s not the only site to offer this approach — PayPal and other sites also allow customers to use their bank account information. Noca’s secure encryption technology seems to be its main pitch to potential customers. Even if that helps differentiate it from other e-check payments, I’m not sure that’s going to be enough.

I can see the appeal of using Noca for low-cost purchases like music, but I’m not sure consumers will be able to overcome the habit of buy-now-pay-later mentality that is encouraged by credit card companies.  In this down economy, many will be looking to stretch their dollars by using credit cards.

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