OStatic

Open Source, Mobile Devices and the Economy Work in Sync to Push Funambol's Developer Community

In my inbox yesterday, along with the notes from my mom, forwards from relatives and friends who never really write, and a wide variety of great deals on fake watches, I discovered a press release from Funambol. That in and of itself isn't unusual, but what the open source mobile sync and push solution company was reporting is remarkable on several levels.

Many open source software companies are seeing increases in revenue, stronger migration rates and a general upswing in business thanks to the rather anemic economy. You don't need to write about open source to see this -- it's readily apparent to anyone skimming tech-related headlines. Funambol's announcement certainly mentioned the economy, and gave some truly impressive figures surrounding the project's growth -- but they weren't in relation to undeniably important financial gains. The jaw-dropping growth is happening somewhere that's even more critical in the long-term: the community.

We've written about Funambol's mobile push and sync services before, as well as some of Funambol's community projects. One of Funambol's greatest selling points (aside from its open source roots) is that it's one of the simplest, straightforward ways to sync and get devices and software that don't traditionally want to communicate to work together. Through it, I can get my Blackberry Curve to sync with Thunderbird on my Linux boxes. This is a fairly simple way to get a mobile device that's very much tied to one platform or software application to talk to the applications you need it to sync with. As Stefano Maffulli, Funambol's community manager puts it, "Funambol is the Switzerland of mobile sync and push email..."

This, evidently, is an idea that appeals to the world beyond OStatic. Funambol is reporting that in the last three months the community has experienced record growth. Funambol says that open source community testing has increased a mind-boggling 2,000%, and downloads have gone up 34%. Active server deployments saw a 42% increase. Growth and interest like that is a funny thing, it tends to spur more growth and interest, and Funambol's ever increasing interoperability with MS Exchange, Google Apps, Thunderbird and Android only makes its potential more appealing to a greater number of developers -- and end users.

Funambol suspects its striking out into mobile social networking is also feeding developer interest. One of the most popular mobile applications to emerge from the developer community lately is the AvatarGrabber. It was developed as part of the Code Sniper Program, which is a sort of "wishlist" of new Funambol features that developers can create, and receive a cash bounty upon completion. AvatarGrabber is essentially a little detail -- when a person updates a profile photo on a social networking site, the new photo syncs with contacts' mobile address books. Those little details add up, though, and make for a better experience. This is what open source, and an open source community, does best.

Maybe community growth doesn't buy server banks and new hardware outright, but Funambol is finding the returns bring the project -- and the company behind it -- a different, and very tangible, value.

• open source
• community
• Funambol
• developer
• mobile phone
• email
• sync
• smart phone
• push

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