Brands need not fear software engineers. Give them the open source tools they need to put your company into mobile hands.

Type "forecasts for mobile internet usage" into Google, and the link to every respected research site will take you to an almost perpendicularly increasing graph. The first item that I found, during a final proof-read of these words, runs as follows:

"A proliferation of suitable handsets and increased end user interest will lead to 38 percent of mobile phone users in Western Europe utilising mobile Internet services by 2013 according to a new five year forecast by Forrester Research. In its report, 'European Mobile Forecast: 2008 To 2013,' the research firm predicts that 125 million Europeans will access the web regularly from their mobile phone -- triple the number that do so today. One of the key drivers will be the proliferation of 3.5G-enabled devices, which will overtake the number of GSM-only and GPRS phones by 2010. Forrester expects that by 2013 no less than a quarter of consumers will own a 3.5G-enabled phone."

And, if you look at some of the specific opportunities being tracked, the forecasts for mobile advertising are sometimes almost reminiscent of the hyperbole of the dotcom boom years:

• ABI Research: $19 billion by 2011 (global)
• Gartner: $14.6 billion in 2011 (global)
• Informa: $11.35 billion by 2011 (global)
• eMarketer: $5 billion by 2011 (global)

But the key point is that these forecasts have been upbeat for a number of years. Although we've obviously seen significant development in the mobile internet, it has become evident for all to see that those forecasts are taking much longer than expected to come to fruition.

Over time, you might come to the conclusion that fragmentation may be the very thing that is inhibiting the ability to meet market expectations for growth and proliferation of mobile content and services. In addition, the possible use cases for the software are far wider than we could hope to support with an internal engineering team. These reasons make a compelling case for the release of the code to the community.

Why open source
Having made the decision for open source in general, choosing the license can be reasonably straightforward.

A company's commitment to the community should entail that they can be confident that there is no compulsion on them to purchase the software at any time. The download gives them access to the code for an unlimited time, and allows any that so wish to use the software to deploy, say, mobile sites for example. A possible option for upgrade to a professional edition entitles them to support bug fixes and additional features, but this is not -- and never becomes -- an obligation.

The company should believe that the strong copy provided by the general public license (GPL) confirms the company's intention that programmers who contribute to it can rest assured that their work will benefit the entire community and remain free, rather than being exploited. There are some who prefer other license models, and there are elements of the GPL3 that are challenging, but the company should continue to offer other options to its customers and partners. Having committed to the GPL in general, the company is well advised to offer its software under the latest version of the license, version 3.

Challenges up to this point
The process of actually getting the software extracted and into a state where it could be made available can take some effort. That period itself can be helpful and allow the company to make available a free binary download and open up a dialogue with some of the first users. As you would probably expect, this will give insight into some other things that you should change -- the documentation, for example, which might have only ever been used in an environment that involved access to a company's personnel or partners. The process can certainly involve some additional effort from your engineering, support and product management teams in particular.

Following on from that, flattening the learning curve for developers new to the technology will continue to be a key challenge. There are over a million lines of code in the product and getting to a stage where developers can get started without too much help takes some thought and practice.

Once the announcement is made, you will hopefully have a pretty consistent stream of feedback, which will be supportive almost without exception; after all, this was a logical thing to do. Over the next few months, you should be encouraging developers to start contributing to extend the capabilities you provide, adding new capabilities that they identify, and makeing available some new and compelling mobile content. It is that content that will enable the mobile web to start to fulfill its potential and at least some of the predictions made about it. I've said it before: The opportunity is now in everyone's hands.

Predictions for the future of OS and mobile
In this environment, it's not possible for content providers to just put a mobile web application "out there" and see the immediate uptake that they'd expect on the wider internet. Instead, they need access to the right enabling technology to reach the mass market -- development tools and runtime software that can automatically overcome fragmentation issues, without passing the burden of device knowledge to the developer. The tools must also be able to scale to support applications as they become increasingly successful across multiple markets in the longer term.

To date, the proprietary license models surrounding such software have meant that this all-important access has been limited or even non-existent for many smaller developers and content providers. And, without ubiquitous access, the growth of the mobile internet industry as a whole has been held back.

In the traditional internet environment, access has been provided through open source software models. So why couldn't the same principle be applied to mobile? Open source software has the ability to provide an underlying platform for the management and delivery of mobile content and applications, and offer a common and scalable basis upon which individual content owners can develop differentiated and compelling products.

Mark Watson is CEO of Volantis Systems.