The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Thursday, August 15, 2002

Perhaps the Funniest thing I've Seen in a While: Tales of the Plush Cthulhu (you'll either think it's outstanding or you just won't get it and think I'm strange). 10:03:14 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Open Source: A Perspective from Russia I just got one of those over the transom, totally unexpected emails from a reader in Russia based on one of my essays on Open Sources.  With his permission, I am blogging the response so it's available to a wider audience.  My reponses are delimited by [SJ]. His company is Stuffed Guys, www.stuffedguys.com, and they produce software like this (it's his own words): Our product is called Stuffed Tracker, it allows to track Return on Investment stats for any site that uses online advertising and that has some sort of ordering process (it might sell products, or just have a registration system). Tracker url is http://www.stuffedguys.com/tracker.html. It is quite simple but it is $39.95 and just "plain works!" (c) by you, i think :).   One of out clients uses it on his e-commmerce site for half a year now and he is quite happy. We also plan to release a powerful poll system with advanced feature like automatic polls, comments with post and pre moderation, etc. But right now it is not ready yet. Sergey's email: Greetings, Scott. I think, there is one more view on the open source vs. commercial software issue. I own (with a partner) a small company (Stuffed Guys) that is located in Moscow, Russia. We are doing all web development related stuff, ncluding *nix system administration. Traditionally :) we are working with foreign customers, as there is not much work on our local market for a small company. And there is a big problem for us. It is very hard to receive payment for our work, because for example PayPal doesn't work with Russia and there is no way we can use it. So we are forced to use offline means of receiving money - Western Union. And there are lots of lots of disadvantages, starting from huge percents that WU takes away from every payment (around 20% for a $100 payment and down to 5% for $1000+ payments) and also it takes too much time to get up and go to the local WU office and get this 100$-200$-whatever, if you know what i mean :). It will be much easier if all this micro-payments would accumulate on one account where we could collect the money when we feel the need to. [SJ]  Ok there are two different issues here -- one is how you get paid and the other is whether or not Open Source is viable.  More below. So, naturally, we decided to do commercial web software (forums, polls, etc) and sell it through one of registration services that would take payments for the software for us (we use ShareIt http://www.shareit.com). And this is a real solution for our problem. We receive payment for the products on our account in ShareIt and we take the money out of their system whenever we want. And now to the point of this email. We just can't use Open Source model, where software is free and we earn money on services. Because of the payment issue. If we were a big company here - it won't be a problem at all, but we are a small company, with no office and mostly doing small tasks and getting paid small (relatively) sums of money for them. We just can't build a serious business in this conditions. [SJ]  I see your point -- shareit gives you a payment infrastructure that you trust and makes it possible for you to do business and make $$$.  I don't think that this really changes my arguments regarding Open Source at all though -- you are talking about a very specific situation here.  I'd make your statement "We just can't use Open Source model" and make it "For us, for now, Open Source doesn't work due to lack of a payment infrastructure".  Have you looked at programming brokerage services like www.guru.com and www.elance.com ?  I don't know if they offer this or not but they might.  So we are selling our own software (we are aiming at a cheap niche of $20 - $60), we might make a completely free product, but only to attract attention to other software that we sell/going to sell. [SJ]  That's great!  I never said that all commercial software was going to go away (although some may have read that into it).  You also fall into a commercial niche of utility software with that pricing and that's always going to exist.  It's a small enough amount of money to be throw away if it doesn't work. This is also our main job, and we can't afford to do it without money, and there is no sense in doing it. [SJ] Amen!  We all have to eat, pay the rent, buy cat litter, etc.  And we all do it lots of different ways.  Congrats on making a living in today's wild and wooly high tech world. Sergey "the Eych" Smirnov One of the Stuffed Guys http://www.stuffedguys.com   8:00:45 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

The SEC CEO's List is Online! As I mentioned sometime recently (no idea where that URL is), the SEC is requiring all companies over (approximately) 1 billion $ in size to have their CEO personally guarantee their financials.  Here's the list of ones that did: http://www.sec.gov/rules/extra/ceocfo.htm Interestingly, not only did Apple guarantee them, they did it 6 days early.  Nice Job!  Even more Interesting -- EMC didn't (at least as of this morning).  Things that make you go "hmmmm". 7:44:30 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Moving to the GNU Free Documentation License for My PHP Writing I think it was last Friday when Nosuch convinced me to expand the scope of my writings on PHP from an isolated set of essays here and there into a comprehensive work on building a large scale PHP application.  Since I'm building an Open Source project, FuzzyOffice, it actually makes a lot of sense.  And using a blog as a documentation mechanism for an Open Source work just plain appeals to me.  So this brings up the question of license.  Sure my code is going to be GPL'd but what about the documentation?  I could take the approach of making the documentation dry and boring and then saving the entertaining writing for a commercially published work.  No.  I'm not doing that. I'm the author of two (well 1 full book and partial author of 1 is more accurate) commercially published computer books published in the past 6 years and I have to say that I am suffering with rage about the process.  I don't want to bother people with a brutal rant.  I will comment that during the writing of my most recent computer book, I was so frustrated that I took the time to find a professional literary agent and consult with him.  After discussing the situation with him, he made a very interesting comment that has been zinging around my brain ever since: If you can write ANY other type of book besides a computer book then you should do so.  His point was very simple -- computer books are easy to get published but the compensation basically sucks, the publisher has all the control and it's pretty much a rigged game.  And, on this, I'd have to agree with him.  I'd also add that publishers are pretty much incompetent in general. So, if I have rage against the system then, based on yesterday's essay, I should Open Source the documentation.  And that's what I'm going to do.  I'm taking a lead here from Mark Pilgrim's use of the GNU Free Documentation License that provides a legal framework for freely releasing written works.  Thanks Mark! NOTE: I'm not naive.  I totally admit that my releasing this work means nothing in the greater scheme of things.  It won't affect the market for PHP books at all.  What it does do is a) make me happy b) put one more quality (hopefully) work out there c) make it easier for people in developing countries to learn tools like php (I'm a big believer in the third world) and d) take a stand.  Like Mark I think that's important.  It's all too rare these days when people take a stand.  Still I look at things like the most excellent Rute guide to Linux and I have to wonder....  The Rute guide is a comprehensive guide to Unix.  Check it out.  And it's free.  Think about it -- do you really need to buy that Unix book? I hope to have more later today and the release of the 1st few chapters.  I've very, very pleased.  We even made a cover graphic! NOTE: If you are knowledgeable about Radio then you've probably been reading ahead already. 5:16:17 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This