on 10 December 2009 
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In March, with much hope, Farelogix, the travel tech company and distributor, began an open source experiment and freely made available to anyone the source code for its travel management point-of-sale tool, Hawkeye.
The idea of Project Hawkeye was to take a hammer to parochialism in the travel industry, with developers downloading the code, building apps and sharing the results so the industry would benefit and embrace a culture of innovation.
Of course, Farelogix would position itself as a neutral arbiter and thereby reap some benefits and goodwill, too.
But, as TripIt co-founder and President Gregg Brockway described it at a Farelogix event in Miami Dec. 9, the usual travel industry “trench warfare” reared its ugly head instead, and Hawkeye didn’t meet expectations.
Brockway contrasted Hawkeye’s results with more collaborative ways of doing things in Silicon Valley, although I’m sure there are plenty of daggers in use there, too.
Farelogix President and CEO Jim Davidson says to date there have been around 700 downloads of the Hawkeye code, but few recipients “have come back for much.” Farelogix’s competitors — including all of the GDSs — took the code and ran.
“We know some are using it,” Davidson says.
The failure of Hawkeye means travel distribution, to some extent, remains mired in complexity with a panolopy of disparate and antiquated solutions at the point of sale.
What mistakes did Farelogix made with Project Hawkeye?
Davidson doesn’t use the word “naivete,” but concedes that Farelogix underestimated the “community spirit” in the travel technology industry.
Whereas Mozilla successfully enticed developers to write code for its browser, travel distribution apparently remains too much of a cutthroat arena to tolerate such cooperation for the greater good.
Davidson says, Hawkeye remains available for downloading, and the code gets updated periodically.
He adds that it could take two or three years before Hawkeye takes off.
And, I’m thinking that it’s equally likely that we’ll have a fantastic, worldwide climate-change agreement in two or three years, or perhaps hate-talk radio will have transitioned by then into a love fest.
[Disclosure: This reporting was gathered on a press trip, with lodging and air paid by Farelogix.]
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[Disclosure: This reporting was gathered on a press trip, with lodging and air paid by Farelogix.]
Ouch! Biting the hand that feeds.
Dan: Yes, thanks. That’s what it is all about. As a journalist, you strive to be transparent, honest and to call ‘em like you see ‘em.
While it’s entirely true that the travel industry is quite competitive, laying the blame for the lack of interest in Hawkeye on the industry is not entirely fair.
Successful open source initiatives – Joomla, Firefox, Drupal, MediaWiki, PHPbb – tend to offer solutions in information management and presentation, generally not in specific business processes like point-of-sale.
And my developer friends tell me Hawkeye required a specific development environment and set of tools, limiting its reach to those who had experience with (and who paid a fair amount of money for licenses for) those tools.
Our own initiative at OpenTravel keeps us well above the process fray, as we provide connectivity for inventory control, not a back-office application. And because we create XML schema that can be utilized in any technical environment and managed with a variety of tools, just about any company that isn’t tied to EDIFACT can implement our schema.
Don’t get me wrong – providing open standards solutions to an industry as competitive (and as ridden with legacy technology) as travel is no walk in the park. Even with offering just XML connectivity solutions I get pushback (after all, every company thinks their own API is best), but the thousands of companies that have participated in our work groups and project teams, not to mention the thousands of companies that have actually implemented our schema, tell me that the industry can work together on open source projects, provided the scope of the initiative is realistic.
It may very well be that Jim Davidson is ahead of his time and in three years, Hawkeye will be all over the map, especially if the suppliers actively embrace more open ways of doing business.
The more specific the app, the smaller the potential user and developer base.
The Knight Foundation, which has an annual contest to fund open source news startups, has had varying levels of success, and may be a good place to solicit suggestions on how to spur adoption.
The key is patience. A former associate of mine, Marc Ewing, evangelized open source Linux for eight years before he found success as the founding CTO of Red Hat.
Valyn: I understand now that indeed there is a development tool required to play around with Hawkeye. I guess the cost would be prohibitive for some, although perhaps many organizations already have the tool.
I think your point about how successful open source initiatives usually do not revolve around specific business processes likely gets at the heart of the issue. I was hinting at that when I referenced Mozilla. So, perhaps I was a bit guilty of excessive travel-industry bashing. Perhaps Gregg Brockway erred in that regard also. I would love to hear what other people think about this point.
Brian: It’s interesting what you say about the key with open source initiatives being patience. Do you think Davidson could be correct that it might take 2-3 years for Hawkeye? Or is Valyn’s point more relevant: that travel industry competitors likely won’t collaborate on a key differentiator — a desktop application?
Note on the on Ouch! comment. Seems like this industry sees reporting the the truth and being transparent as a bad thing. If I had not wanted the truth to be out there about the lack of an Hawkeye Open Source community developing I would have not talked with Dennis or I would have “made-up” a different “angle”. Seems like this indusrty needs a bit more of the Ouch! being reported so we all stay relevant.
One thing about Davidson (don’t you just hate it when people talk in the third person), is that patience is not one of his strong points.
And yes, Hawkeye developers do need a few common development tools. As stated on our website:
Required Development Tools
Hawkeye requires the following developer tools that are not included in the download:
Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5
If you don’t already have it, this can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=333325FD-AE52-4E35-B531-508D977D32A6&displaylang=en
Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX
If you don’t already have it, this can be obtained from http://www.telerik.com. You will need to either purchase a developer license or download a trial version. Hawkeye uses version 2008.3.1105.35
Microsoft Visual Studio 2008
Required for de-bugging. If you don’t already have it, this can be purchased from http://www.microsoft.com or a number of other sites.
BTW – Telerik is used to make the display of content more productive through the use of matrix, pull-downs, etc. Otherwise it could end up looking like a GDS green screen.
Hey Jim: You be a straight-shooter and I admire that. Keep it up. All the officials who hide behind corporate-speak could learn something from you. IMHO.
Good discussion. I do question whether an open source community exists in the travel space. Most likely traction will come from non-US locations as fragmentation of inventory at the point of sale is more severe outside the US. Every travel agency needs a multi-source POS. Using the Hawkeye platform as the basis for an internally developed POS solution is a more likely outcome rather than an community generated solution. This is unfortunate as community sharing could help build a more robust application.
Norm: Thanks. Why do you think there is a lack of an open source community in the travel industry in particular? Why can’t this industry get its act together when others can? What is wrong with us? [Why am I asking so many questions:)]
i think norm, valyn and brian are bringing up valid points that the project could work on should they be interested to grow it:
- market (this is already a part of it, but even though i’m aware of flx, i wasn’t aware of hawkeye, probably give it a catchier, more travel-related name in the process…)
- distribute (link directly to the sf.net download for potential users)
- simplify (successful os developments do not have such an expansive requirement list, most of them simply need an operating system and at most other open source files, from what i can see this could be ported as well)
- engage (communicate with potential users, not let people’s posts to the sf.net board unanswered)
personally, i don’t know many open source products for travel tech. although you can use open source to work with your data and inventory, the distribution so far always costs (very high implementation certification and connection fees which make it very difficult for entrants from developing countries, even for less-funded ventures, to start out) too much.
Dennis,
To clarify, my remarks in Miami were intended as a compliment to Farelogix for taking an open, collaborative approach with SPRK. By bringing the Industry Best partners together around the product, they are providing a better solution than if they tried to do everything on their own. As far as Hawkeye goes, I don’t recall ever mentioning it and honestly have little visibility into how successful it has been or will be.
Regarding the travel industry, I believe I said an open, collaborative approach to solving problems isn’t the norm. While there are exceptions like Open Travel Alliance, I have found “trench warfare” and “mutually assured destruction” to be more common strategies in my 10+ years in the industry.
Let’s face it, travel is a huge, hyper-competitive market with large segments trying to undermine or eliminate other large segments and vice versa. I don’t think these comments constitute “industry bashing”. This dynamic is actually what keeps the industry interesting and why so many of us are addicted to pursuing it’s many opportunities.
Gregg Brockway, President, TripIt
Gregg: I apologize for misinterpreting your remarks. You were referring to Farelogix’s collaborative approach to the SPRK desktop, and I thought you were referring to Farelogix’s open source, collaborative approach to Project Hawkeye, which is the desktop that is at the foundation of SPRK. When I was speaking to Jim Davidson of Farelogix after the event about why Project Hawkeye has not gained much traction, he referred to your comments about the lack of cooperation in the travel industry.
I think your comments — “travel is a huge, hyper-competitive market with large segments trying to undermine or eliminate other large segments and vice versa” gets at the heart of the issue about what happened to Hawkeye. Competitors are loathe to cooperate on a point of sale tool even if collaboration would move the industry forward.
These are the exact concerns
These are the exact concerns the GPL was designed to allay. Farelogix should consider relicensing with a share-alike license that requires there competitors to contribute back.
The problem here isn’t with the industry, or with the open source model. It is with Farelogix’s poor choice of license for the environment and their goals.