Squiz and Funnelback: Supported Open Source
July 28, 2011
Update: Gentle readers, let me be clear. You have to pay for Funnelback. Please, take a look at www.squiz.co.uk. You will see the following message scrolling on the Web page. “Support open source Web experience management.” I am not sure what that phrase means, but it does put open source front and center. If you didn’t see that on the Squiz Web site. Check again. The message was there at 7 25 Eastern time on July 28, 2011. Going forward? Who knows. My point is that some companies are playing the open source “card” but are not open source software publishers. Take Funnelback, which was rooted in a university project at one time. Funnelback is a commercial product, yet the “halo” effect of the “supported open source” phrase could make a person think of Funnelback as just like Lucene. As I did, I saw the phrase on the Squiz Web site and wondered, “What’s the open source angle?” I think that some folks may see this banner and perceive a commercial product as open source. That’s the way life is in the rough and tumble world of search and content processing marketing. My advice. Ask your vendor this question: “What’s this product cost to license?”– Stephen E Arnold, ArnoldIT.com
Since the inception of the free software movement in the early 1980s, open source software has revolutionized the way consumers obtain information, allowing them to save as much as $60 billion a year, according to a report by Standish Group. “Supported open source” is a business opportunity for many organizations. Squiz, the Web experience management company, is offering a range of products that have the buzz of open source with a commercial slant.
On July 25, 2011, “University Case Studies from Squiz and Funnelback Search” announced the continued evolution of open sourced software in citing Squiz and Funnelback Search’s success in transforming City University’s puny intranet and course catalog. Among other things, the duo incorporated a new search engine (Funnelback Search), servers, CMS (Squiz Matrix), network, content, design, and business processes. That’s a wholesale implementation of “new”. A Squiz news release revealed:
City University’s redesign project targeted their two main corporate sites (www.city.ac.uk and www.cass.ac.uk) as well as the university’s intranet – a huge undertaking which took a total of 15 months. The university has a highly skilled web team with a wealth of technical and development talents, so they did most of the work in-house allowing them to take complete ownership of the project.
With expertise in certain open source methods at a premium, Squiz and its search product are positioning for growth. For more information see Dan Jackson’s presentation on the City University case study. The Squiz business model is quite interesting and contrasts sharply with that of Lucid Imagination which is not offering a full spectrum of software and support like Squiz. Which horse will win the revenue race? I am monitoring this business model competition for Beyond Search.
Jasmine Ashton, July 28, 2011
Sponsored by Pandia.com, publishers of The New Landscape of Enterprise Search
Comments
4 Responses to “Squiz and Funnelback: Supported Open Source”
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You’ve (again) made the mistake of saying that Funnelback Search is open source software – it isn’t and never has been. Squiz Matrix, the companies’ CMS, *is* open source but Funnelback isn’t. Thus comparing it with Lucene/Solr, Xapian or Sphinx, which are all truly open source, is comparing chalk with cheese.
I’m sorry to bring this up again but….
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2011/05/13/skype-and-funnelback-what-is-the-microsoft-deal-impact/ – Matt Taylor told you Funnelback isn’t open source
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2011/04/17/pacificnetwork-and-funnelback-update/ – I told you it wasn’t open source
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2010/04/14/funnelback-books-london-school-of-economics/ – someone else did the same.
http://arnoldit.com/wordpress/2010/11/04/funnelback-version-10/ – I told you it wasn’t open source.
I’m the MD of Squiz and if possible I’d like to try and clear up some unintended confusion.
Squiz have long been an open source company. Our development team (Squiz Labs) release everything they write as open source (GPL) so everything branded Squiz is open source.
The exception to the story is Funnelback. As observed in your article, Funnelback was not developed by Squiz however we did acquire the company a while ago. Their software was not open source when we bought it.
At this point, Squiz have not made any part of Funnelback open source but nor are we trying to mislead anyone into thinking we have. That’s the reason we have kept Funnelback trading under it’s own name http://www.funnelback.com/. We do not want to confuse the Squiz open source message or mislead people.
Before you ask “what is Squiz Search?”, It is a free to use extension of the Squiz Suite that includes Funnelback’s core engine (which is not open source) for searching content from the Suite only. We describe what it does and how it relates to the Suite and Funnelback on the site http://search.squizsuite.net/features/funnelback.
I apologise if our messaging has not made this clear. We will review things internally and see if we can think of a better way of communicating our story.
JP
John Paul Syriatowicz,
Well, my post certainly caused the email and tempers to flare. I am working on an article about open source software for Online Magazine and I will certainly reference the “confusion”, unintentional as it may be. My view is that if a headline says “open source”, it is pretty easy for one of my writers to conclude there is some open sourciness in the product. Thanks for taking the time to comment.
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2011
Charlie Hull,
I just don’t learn do I. The Squiz Web site seems to be flashing a big “open source” headline and my writer drew from that “open source” was part of the action. Plus, there is the free VMWard version of the Squiz suite. Darned confusing to a goose. Maybe someone should alert Squiz that I am puzzled, my writers are puzzled, and I would wager some prospects are puzzled as well. I don’t want to think how confusing the Lucene OmniFind solution is. Maybe open source is more of a marketing kimono for some companies and the confusion is part of a larger plan to land a customer.
Stephen E Arnold, July 30, 2011