The FuzzyStuff: Open Source

Microsoft Sharing Source in India

Fri, 13 Dec 2002 14:21:19 GMT

Microsoft Sharing Source in India

From V.K. comes this:

MS to share Windows code with India
PRAGATI VERMA

TIMES NEWS NETWORK [ FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2002 02:31:31 AM ]

Microsoft is virtually doing the unthinkable in India — it is planning to share the Windows source code. Not with one and all, as Linux does, but with a specific government body which, in turn, will share it with others for the purposes of e-governance and education.

Microsoft has already made a proposal to the ministry of information technology for sharing the Windows source code with one government body. The nature of the body has not been spelt out; it will presumably be worked out after discussions between the company and the government officials. Interestingly, the offer comes at a time when state governments are showing interest in rival Linux operating system as the latter's source code is free and downloadable from the internet. [_Go_]

Interesting ... Now the Indian government will have an incentive to NOT support Open Source which is quite bad. Sigh.

BlogBack: Followup on Miscellaneous Random posts

Thu, 05 Sep 2002 23:43:53 GMT

BlogBack: Followup on Miscellaneous Random posts

Just a follow up to different recent posts....

About this Blog
- I mentioned rearchitecting this blog (god I hate that as a verb) earlier and here's what it looks like. I'll make these sub blogs which don't exist yet
  - hightechmarketing101
  - inbox buddy
  - lessgeekyscott (for at least my mom and perhaps people who want my writing that is understandable to non geeky folks)
  - evectors
  - blogging
  - opensource
  - php & fuzzyoffice
  - searchcritic
  - webcritic
- Frequency on the sub blogs will obviously be less but this Radio blog will remain my "SuperBlog" and contain everything. Comments? This will all happen around next weekend when i have the time. A preview of 1 of the blogs is a http://www.hightechmarketing101.com/ with a small taste of the content and some problems with the CSS / broken links.
- All stories will remain here but be pointed to from the other sites
- Radio makes this all intricate to setup but not hard at all.
PHP Stuff
- I've been coding too much PHP to write some more but work is ongoing on FuzzyOffice and other things. Checking some of the domain names I've registered recently might be interesting for folks.
- www.oscommerce.com seems like an awesome open source replacement for the pain that is Miva Merchant. I'm still getting it running for a new test site but someone I respect greatly has it up and running already (from like Friday). And you have to love a product so good that it runs a cool online lingerie store.
- www.phpbb.com is outstanding !!!
Marketing 101
- John responded to my responses to his article. Got that ?
Rich Editing in Mozilla or "I Don't Wanna IE No More"
- Andy from www.surfmind.com is taking a swing at this. If you are interested in it, swing by www.surfmind.com and let him know or IM / email me and I'll hook you up.
- Xopus is another approach to it.
- Adam seems interested enough to at least respond to my email about it. A big name pushing for this would help a lot.
- Mozilla 1.1 is much better -- it runs well on my machine at least. And Andy is a huge advocate for Mozilla as always (side note -- it's astonishing how just one enthusiast can change your mind on an Open Source project; project leads take note)
Buffy Stuff
- I saw somewhere online that Faith is coming back for 5 end of season episodes
- At last 2 post 30 year old Buffy fans have admitted privately to me that they watch the show. It's ok people -- Joss is an outstanding writer and the humor is wonderful.
- I was wrong about Dawn breathing fire being new -- that's last season -- Thanks Deb !
- Can you believe that there is an honest to god Buffy paper magazine?
Copyright and RIAA
- WebRadio seems to be dying: http://news.com.com/2100-1023-956730.html
- Napster is more dead than ever (big shocker there)
Web Development
- www.rackspace.com remains outstanding ! (had to plug a great company)
Windows
- Yet another Windows crash last night. Would you believe I found over 1.3 gigabytes of temp files on just 1 drive.
- I loathe and despise Microsoft more than ever for their shoddy engineering practices
- I got the CDs for Redhat 7.3 recently so my desktop Linux workstation will be updated and going back into daily use in a week or two
- Another bad security flaw in Windows: http://news.com.com/2100-1001-956729.html
Other Short Items
- Eszter is looking for help with cool PC gadgets -- got suggestions?

Recommended: Douglas O'Flaherty

Thu, 05 Sep 2002 13:12:38 GMT

Recommended: Douglas O'Flaherty

Doug is someone I've met a few times and have a really, really good feeling about. His skills are good and he knows what he's doing. He's also newly laid off due. If you are looking for someone with startup experience and good overall skills both technical, marketing and product management, see:

http://oflaherty.homeip.net/douglas/resumes/

He's also got a pretty strong Open Source background and I suspect would be open to contract gigs if you needed (although I honestly have no idea on this one; that's a suspicion only).

My Apologies to Mozilla on PC Readers

Mon, 26 Aug 2002 12:04:02 GMT

My Apologies to Mozilla on PC Readers

I just discovered that the sidebar of this blog doesn't display correctly using Mozilla. I'll have to fix that. Sorry.

My Comments on Lessig Versus Winer

Fri, 23 Aug 2002 00:02:11 GMT

My Comments on Lessig Versus Winer

This comments on Dave Winer's very perceptive comments in today's www.scripting.com. Cross Reference.

I too am as much of a legal neophyte as Dave Winer. Still I feel that I have something to contribute to the debate. Like Dave I am a happy capitalist and I think that you should have a right to sell software if you want to. It doesn't mean that people can or will purchase it over a free alternative but Lessig also doesn't have the right to take this freedom away from me. Even though software may be unsellable after 10 years, it still doesn't mean that Lessig should take my legal property away from me.

As Dave said, Lessig seems to be going after the Big COs with this. And I think he is. What he is also after though is the wrongful copyright extensions granted by Congress that extend the rights of Disney and the like essentially indefinitely. There are two fundamentally different types of content involved -- why should the same laws be applied to each? Let's see these copyright extensions repealed to the founding fathers original intent (don't have the # off the top of my head but it was much lower) OR set to the same time period as a patent. Why are these different after all? They both serve to protect intellectual property.

Direct Comments on Dave's Points:
>>Second, it comes at a pretty bad time in the software business, which has been reeling from the idea that what we produce should all be free.

The software industry is, imho, reeling from:

The continued dominance of Microsoft and its rapacious penetration into new markets. There just aren't all that many places for new developers to go. It's no wonder that giving away code seems like such a good idea to many. Let's face -- we're programmers, programmers want to see their code in use and they'll give it away if that's the only way to see it in use. And that's OK. They have that right.

The movement towards so much software being bundled on computers has created a reality where many, if not most, consumers just don't have to buy software at all. This creates a culture against ISVs in general. If people aren't used to buying software, it's much harder for them to do so. And this isn't just Microsoft. There is now so much software bundled with modern Macintoshes that the Macintosh software market, which is generally stronger for an ISV than the Windows market (again IMHO), will begin to crumble.

The rise in software prices relative to hardware prices. Every year hardware gets cheaper and software gets more expensive. While we may understand this, it makes no sense to the average consumer who basically figures "I'll use what came with my machine and pirate, download, or use free alternatives. i.e. it's the syndrome of How can a copy of office be worth 50% of my Macintosh iBook?"

>>Perhaps Lessig and his friends are well intentioned, I don't know what the thought process is, and I don't care.
Not wanting to know what Lessig's thought process isn't helpful to the debate. We may disagree with him but Dr. Lessig is a smart, intelligent man. Shouldn't we at least try and understand people we are being critical of?

Think of the penguins :-(

Tue, 20 Aug 2002 22:37:30 GMT

From Russell. Too Damn Funny. And also too damn true.
I mean can't you see Bill out there with a baseball bad viscously clubbing baby penguins.

Open Source: A Perspective from Russia

Thu, 15 Aug 2002 13:00:45 GMT

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

Another Reason People Create Open Source Applications: Rage

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 11:27:50 GMT

Another Reason People Create Open Source Applications: Rage

Note: Been programming since 3 am; may be incoherent and rambling -- but how many of my blog entries quote poems?

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
-- Dylan Thomas

I've think mentioned this before, but at the risk of being pedantic, I wanted to make this point again. I was stuck in traffic yesterday and thinking a lot about Open Source and why people do it. For some it's:

a desire for recognition
scratching their own niche
boredom in a job
need
intellectual curiousity
altruism

I think another whole motivation is very simple: Rage. I mean let's be honest -- if you are a developer and you hit a bug or a crash in something, how often do you think "Damn It! I could do this better" (even when you honestly can't). It goes through all our heads. Every time I'm in Outlook and the search engine (which strongly sucks little green toads) fails to find something that I know is in the folder, I get mad. And every time it happens again, I get even madder. And then, sometimes, the dam breaks. And look at that! It's an open source project for X where X = the current subject of the rage. Here's what tipped me over into the Linux world: Microsoft Site Server. This product, which is actually conceptually fairly nice, had, at least in 1999, the annoying habit of eating it's own data files. You'd set up an index run and it would work for a while and then just die. And you'd have to rebuild it. After enough times, I finally said "Enough!" (actually my words were more like this "Damn MS **$&*($#@@_)@#" -- use your imagination). That took me into Linux as a user and now other frustrations have brought me to the "Screw it all. Time to launch my own project".

Now if you think about this from an industry wide, economic perspective, here are some interesting questions:

What would Microsoft's revenues have been last year if Linux/FreeBSD didn't exist and every 1U box in a data center was running NT / 2000 / IIS?
What would Sun's revenues have been last year if Linux/FreeBSD didn't exist and every 1U box in a data center was running Solaris?
How many more programmers / support engineers / sales engineers / field staff would have been employed if Linux / FreeBSD didn't exist?

Looking at it this way, you can see how Microsoft argues that Linux is bad for the overall economy (one of their very spurious arguments from a few months back). Of course you also have to realize that the Internet as it is today simply wouldn't exist without Linux / FreeBSD. Why? Simple -- we couldn't afford all the license fees needed. And server OS pricing would be higher without Linux / FreeBSD to put downward price pressure on them. And I think everyone would argue that, despite the dot commage, the Internet has been hugely good for the overall economy.

So if you accept the premise that Linux has cut into OS revenues then the corollary is that Open Source will (and has) cut into commercial software revenues. And, while we could argue that this is bad for the economy, just as we all say about the MP3 issues: Business Models Change. It's just that simple. For all too many years now, the high tech industry, software and hardware, has been terribly arrogant and basically getting away with poor quality. If much of the open source movement is tied to rage, as is my premise, then they really have no one to blame but themselves.

Amazing what a little rage and a lot of smart people can do, huh?

Do not go gentle into that commercial world,
Poor quality and bugs should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage and create something anew;
Make it free; give it away.
-- Poorly Done Mock Dylan Thomas

(if there's a good poet out there, email me your version of Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night cast as a pro or con Open Source poem and I'll publish it here and link to you)

Need a Graphical Windows SCP Client? WinSCP Works

Wed, 14 Aug 2002 00:31:21 GMT

Need a Graphical Windows SCP Client? WinSCP Works

SCP, for those not familiar with it and still using FTP, is a secure copy company (Secure CP hence the SCP) that lets you move files to and from *nix boxes easily. Given that FTP sends passwords in the clear, I've pretty much banned FTP for any real work I do. And, even though I've actually taught my (mostly) non *nix partner how to use command line SCP, given the detailed mess of directories on a Windows 2K or later system for your personal data, asking her to use a command line SCP tool made me feel like I was clubbing a baby seal. Sure she could survive it but it just wasn't nice.

A quick Google and Poof! Like magic I had found WinSCP, an Open Source, freely downloadable GUI SCP client. There was a $79.95 commercial SCP client but when there's a free version, you have to ask "why...". A quick download and it just plain worked. I used it today to move a bunch of files up and down from our sites and it worked great for us. One tip -- if you are using the keyboard to select files to upload then SPACEBAR does the selection. Oh and contrary to some opinions, this is Open Source with a good user interface. It's a standard Windows app. Pictures below. Recommended.

Home Page: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/

Download: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/download.php

FAQ: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/faq.php

Screenshots: http://winscp.vse.cz/eng/screenshots.php

Quick Screenshot Summary:

Is the interface perfect? Clearly not. No interface is perfect. The FTP client I pay $39.95 per year for annoys the ever loving snot out of me at times. One of the ways I look at interfaces and Open Source is to apply Sturgeon's Law:

90% of everything is crud

So I look at it as sure there are cruddy Open Source interfaces and, perhaps, 90% of them are crud. But that 10% is damn good. The same statement can be made about the interfaces in commercial software; 90% are crud and that 10% is damn good. Perhaps commercial software should uniformly have great interfaces but we all know that's not the case, let's NOT kid ourselves here. If commercial software had uniformly good interfaces, would there be such discontent with our high tech products. Bear in mind that to the user, if the software doesn't crash and doesn't lose data, the interface is all they perceive. They don't know about elegant back ends or internal code.

Thanks Russ! Now for My Take on Rebol

Tue, 13 Aug 2002 10:09:49 GMT

Thanks Russ! Now for My Take on Rebol

It's amazing how relationships develop in BlogSpace. On ?Sunday? I got a nice comment from Russ in Spain (not Russ in Washington who writes about Radio). I responded and mailed it to him (tip: I recommend this if you want to build "community" around your blog; it works) as well as posting it. He fired back. I shot him some private thoughts on Groove, having been recently forced into using the rather large beast that is Groove. He then posted his Groove thoughts. Of which I pretty much agree although I am harsher (some of which is platform bias since the time of day when I need groove, I'm no longer working on Windows). He then draws an analogy with a new thing called Rebol. He argues that Rebol won't succeed because of privacy. My take is different and one that I emailed to Joe Friend a few months ago (I apologize if I already posted this, I intended to but never did).

[Approx Date: June 17]

Hi Joe,

Here's a couple of thoughts based on the obligatory 3 minutes of site surfing.

a) Sounds interesting

b) Proprietary but not wanting to admit it.

c) Requires client side software:

http://www.rebol.com/express-form.html

This is a huge disadvantage for you I would think. I don't know that much about indonesia but I would think that getting sw updates distributed would be a nightmare. And, I have rarely seen a client side vendor that doesn't regularly update. They all claim they don't but they always do and even the best of the self updating schemes require a full update from time to time. If it's of any size at all (and I think it has to be) that would be a nightmare.

d) Requires their own server. "To obtain an evaluation copy of our REBOL IOS Express client and a user account on our Express server, fill out the form below. Please provide enough information to help us understand your interest."

My guess is that developing stuff on their server from your location would be hard / time wasteful.

e) It's not open source. I know I sound like a broken record on this one but, more and more, I see the entire software biz dramatically changing within the next 2 - 5 years. And what I see is people moving to much more Open Source -- even for primary applications (office is the real exception). It's unclear to me that you can launch a new software product as a small company effectively -- and this is where the innovation happens. People can understand paying Microsoft, Bea, IBM or Sun for software but it's hard to make a big $$$ committment to a small company. Sure we can argue about Radio being an exception but Radio has huge momentum from the years of effort Dave put into Frontier and UserLand isn't a new company.

For almost every single category today you can find an open source equivalent that is as good as the proprietary solution if not better. And, while the support model for OS stuff is *different*, that doesn't mean it's bad at all. It's bizarre but it just plain works. Try hanging out on the php-general mailing list sometime and you'll be surprised at how quickly problems are resolved. Additionally I just plain find the quality in Open Source to be so much higher on certain projects that it is just bizarre by our standards. These people just plain care about their work. Drupal is an outstanding indication of this. I don't know all the team but Kjartan, one of the leads and my primary contact, is just plain unbelievable about this. I've honestly never seen anything like it -- and I used to think that I did a good job back when I had my company. I can (and am) learn from him.

My gut read of people in high tech, and I really don't think I am wrong about this, is that people are just plain damn sick to death of crappy software quality. We all feel that "well I paid for this, it should just plain work". I find it so unacceptable to pay for products when the Open Source version works better. Sure the UI may be lacking but when it works that's all that really matters (as long as it is basically usable). Look at my essay yesterday about Driving Customers Away. Within 2 hours, Hanan, one of my readers, popped up with a free alternative. And, realize too that "bugs", are highly user perception right now. I felt that JASC the company was bug ridden based on how they handled support@company.com. To some extent we are all looking for reasons not to purchase stuff when there are problems. I just don't have the tolerance for crap that I used to. None of us do. None of us do. If you're going to charge me then you damn well ought to be perfect. That may be a crappy ass attitude but it's increasingly common. We tolerate things from our legacy vendors (MS, Adobe, Lotus) that we just won't from new companies.

Disclaimer: Highly vertical markets are an exception as they always are.

Disclaimer: Enhancements / addons to proprietary products are an exception as are low priced utility software.

f) If you need communications protocols then I'd look at the Jabber stuff. It's actually pretty damn good. I'm gearing up to do some work in python and php on this if you need real feedback, wait 2 - 4 weeks.

g) I found this interesting: http://www.rebol.com/email-problem.html

Whenever I see people wanting to replace email, my alert meter goes up 50%. I'll be the last one to say that email is perfect -- but the core store and forward messaging concept is so damn strong that I find it hard to imagine something replacing it well -- without ending up just as email is. And, then, all we did is make a silly, proprietary vendor richer without solving the problems. I am a huge email fan because, even when the servers go down, etc, the mail just keeps flowing. We all make a big deal out of "it's in the email, didn't you get it? Oh, I'll resend it" -- but this is the new equivalent of "The dog ate my homework". It's just not all that true.

Bias disclaimer: I have a new product coming out in this space that adds into Outlook and makes email, well, suck less. Pre-release details available soon. This doesn't mean that I am wrong about this, it just gives you perspective. I have a commercial interest here so that may affect your perception. Be that as it may.

h) The company is just plain foolish, imho. IOS is a registered Cisco trademark and they are setting themselves up for a lawsuit.

i) You can't establish platform technology at present unless you are giant or it's free. This is going to fall into some kind of small nichey space unless they change direction and, based on my read of the management team, they won't. You either understand this or you don't. I find it very interesting that no one on the senior team ever built an Internet protocol / RFC. That's bad.

Summary

The product looks interesting. I see the issues of a client side piece being the most problematic. I also can't see making a strategic committment to any kind of "platform" technology without it being fully open source.

Gah! This ended up as an essay. I should go boolean more often. That's ok. I'll merge it into an blog soon enough. A lot of my stuff originates from this so I never mind writing emails.

Scott

phpMyAdmin 2.3.0 is Available! Thank You Keith Devens

Mon, 12 Aug 2002 15:31:09 GMT

phpMyAdmin 2.3.0 is Available! Thank You Keith Devens

Somehow or another I wandered over to Keith Devens' weblog and I see that phpMyAdmin 2.3.0 is available. Keith did a great job summarizing the changes in this highly usable Open Source application:

http://www.keithdevens.com/weblog/?id2630

I also learned a bunch of things from his blog. Nicely done. Recommended. Thanks Keith.

A $3,000,000 in Revenue Open Source Company (for 2001)

Fri, 09 Aug 2002 21:34:08 GMT

A $3,000,000 in Revenue Open Source Company (for 2001)

Holy Bat Crap! Who Knew?

...

The company counted about $3 million in revenue in 2001 and expects to increase that to $9 million this year, Pike said. Next year, it is aiming to reach $20 million.

To meet these goals, ActiveState will hire new staff to expand its work force to 60 or 64 by the end of this year and to 120 by next year.

http://news.com.com/2100-1001-949122.html

Now ActiveState does have a proprietary side to it with Komodo, etc, but still this company is a real part of the Open Source community and even contributes back. And, in case you missed my earlier article, Komodo, their new IDE based on the Mozilla Gecko rendering engine, looked fantastic when I got a demo at OSCON.

Way to Go Guys!!!!

Heh. Turning Someone onto the Command Line Is Just Plain Fun!

Fri, 09 Aug 2002 02:36:29 GMT

Heh. Turning Someone onto Linux Is Just Plain Fun!

I had two funny experiences recently about turning someone onto Linux. No I won't preach (much) about the one true way. Linux is just a tool, like any other. Still, when you are working with someone who never, ever experienced command line computing, it can be very, very eye opening for them. Now Gretchen is only a couple of years younger than I am but her computing experience apparently really hit in the Post DOS world so she's literally never seen this stuff before. Here's the situation and two scenarios.

Experience the First
- I'm working with my consulting partner, Gretchen, who's a designer, DreamWeaver / PhotoShopper, MA and MBA (don't hold that against her; she actually learned a lot in school and she didn't go to an ivy league school which is a frothy goodness in my mind; ivy league MBAs were partially / mostly responsible for the dot com flamout) .
- We're at her home office and on a deadline.
- We've got a ton of individual HTML pages to correct and update. Little stuff. Annoying stuff.
- I take over the PC
- I ssh into our rackspace server; no need to FTP down or up. We're going to do it live.
- I do the vi dance
- I make probably 200+ discrete edits on different html pages in less than 1/2 hour
- The combination of / i :w / vi commands and such is fairly awesome (if I do pat myself on the back)
- Gretchen is guiding me thru the edits (she handled the client interaction on this one), I turn around and look at her and I detect a bit of a glazed eye from the speed at which I was going. Jaw dropping at times and such.

Experience the Second
- 2 Weeks Hence
- I don't take over the PC
- I begin to teach Gretchen the ssh / vi tango (or is it a foxtrot / waltz?)
- Light quickly begins to dawn (she's damn sharp)
- When I teach her about right click paste, she likes it. Just 1 button to paste = Cool.
- Point out syntax highlighting and :u for undo.
- Point out the mock dialog box system like :e . (which gives you all files in the current directory to choose which ones to edit)
- Appreciation shines in her eyes
- 3 days later she's still remembering the basics on her own when she dances the dance again.
- Makes me beam with pride.

I'm not trying to preach here. It's just that command line computing is so fundamentally different from GUI computing as to seem at times like a whole different world. And, when you first encounter a whole different world, it's always interesting. I have the same type of experience whenever I struggle with the arcane, confusing monster known as Photoshop (I call it "the beast that ate all my RAM"). Will Gretchen ever go full *nix? Of course not. For what she does, GUIs work nicely. But having the option when you need to do stuff quickly is pretty cool. What she's learning, however, is that there is a whole different computing ecosystem out there. And, while it's cryptic and arcane as all get out, it's also ripping fast when compared to GUI stuff. It's also not all that hard -- at least at the basics.

VI. It's like crack.
A little taste and then you're jonesing for more.

For Geeks Mainly: Thanks Eric! Thank You Very Much for Analyzing the Software Development Issues Precisely and Well

Sat, 03 Aug 2002 09:37:04 GMT

For Geeks Mainly: Thanks Eric! Thank You Very Much for Analyzing the Software Development Issues Precisely and Well

Wow. Talk about the luck of the browse, I just happened on Eric Raymond's blog only to find this:

http://armedndangerous.blogspot.com/2002_07_28_armedndangerous_archive.html#79585067

which he wrote as a response to this:

http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/07/OpenSourcepart1.shtml

Eric's piece nicely addresses the issues with closed source development. Here are two excerpts:

My assertion is that software development has reached a scale at which (a) even large corporations can often no longer afford to field enough developers to be effective at today's project scales, and (b) traditional methods of software quality assurance (ranging from formal methods to internal walkthroughs) are no longer effective. The only development organizations that seem to thrive on today's complexity regime are open-source teams.

Note that I am not claiming that open source is a silver bullet for the software-complexity problem. There are no silver bullets, no permanent solutions. What I am claiming is that at the leading edge of large-scale software, closed-source development doesn't work any more. The future belongs to open source plus whatever other practices and technologies we learn to use with it to develop at ever-higher scales of complexity.

This is very similar to the points I made (although Eric does a better job of making them; thank you!). I'd also recommend that you read the piece of U.S.S. Clueless because he does a damn good job as well.

Note: Eric Raymond, a long time member of the Open Source and Unix community is NOT a zealot as noted here.

Open Source is NOT Slavery

Fri, 02 Aug 2002 19:03:14 GMT

Open Source is NOT Slavery

There are times when someone makes a comment that you find so wrong, so inaccurate that you don't even know where to begin. For me, this week, this was the comment (from www.scripting.com):

OSCON, last week, has done its job and stirred the embers of the Great Open Source Debate of the 1990s. I found myself writing in an email yesterday: "Very little really usable software has come from people who are willing to work for $0. (I chose my words carefully, infrastructure is another matter entirely.) Further, it's weird to say, as Richard Stallman does, that by coercing programmers to work for $0 that that's freedom. To me it seems obvious that that's slavery." (bolding done by Scott)

NOTE: I'm not going to address the issue of usable software that Dave mentions. Certainly there are some highly usable Open Source products but usability is an issue for our community.

As someone who spend 1987 to 1999 happily selling commercial, proprietary software and who now characterizes himself as an Open Source advocate, all I can say is You're Wrong at least in my humble opinion. Let's take a look at the issues:

Starting with the term "Coercion" which you say Richard Stallman does. According to www.dictionary.com, coerce means:
1. To force to act or think in a certain way by use of pressure, threats, or intimidation; compel.
2. To dominate, restrain, or control forcibly: coerced the strikers into compliance. See Synonyms at force.
3. To bring about by force or threat: efforts to coerce agreement.
Well. I don't see anyone with a gun to an open source programmer's head. I don't see anyone forcing me to do anything. And, while I may not always agree with Stallman, he doesn't do this. What Stallman has done is written a EULA (end user license agreement) called the GPL that say that if you release your software this way then there are certain restrictions. This is no different from Radio or Frontier having a EULA. And if you can can do it, so can he. You get paid in cash, he gets paid differently -- by seeing people use his belief system.
The GPL is only one form of Open Source EULA. Others require more (affero) and significantly less (BSD / Perl Artistic License). When ever a programmer creates a piece of software that he or she chooses to make available via open source, they make a choice as to what license model is used. Try signing up a project at Source Forge which not only requires you to pick a license but also explains them to you --- but doesn't force you to use the GPL.
I choose to write Open Source software. Period the end. It's a choice and I am doing it for many different reasons. Among those reasons are:
- Personal. I get a high degree of satisfaction from knowing that something I created is in use on many desktops (or I will when my next thing is released). How is this any different from www.diveintomark.org creating a fantastic book on Python and giving it away. Is he a slave?
- Business. Open Source products can reach a level of scale in a matter of months that commercial products NEVER realize. The examples abound -- Jabber, Apache, QMail, Gimp, etc. And, wherever users congregate en masse, there is an opportunity to make money. That's NOT slavery at all. Sure we may not be selling software; maybe it's support or hosting or consulting but we are making money. If you doubt that then look at Jesse and Douglas O'Flaherty of www.bestpractical.com which are realizing revenues sufficient to support a growing team from an outstandingly good Open Source application -- the RT trouble ticketing application.
- Practical. I'm a technical guy --- and I'm unbelievably practical. I've had engineering teams reporting to me as large as 45 people. We've used real tools, real methodologies and had good people. And, you know what? When an Open Source project is well run (Apache, Linux, Drupal, Perl, PHP), the engineering is simply better done than it is in commercial products. Using Open Source as your development methodology (actually a part of it) helps you build higher quality products -- and significantly more quickly. That's practical.
- It's the Best Thing for the Customer. I'm a firm believer that in the long run, the only businesses that survive are those that are fanatically customer focused -- and do the right thing for the customer. Open Source is significantly better for the customer in these two ways:
  - Your Data Isn't In a Data Jail. I use a computer 16 to 20 hours per day (no, I don't sleep much or do much besides work lately; different story). My data is important to me. I don't want it locked up by a vendor in a proprietary format. With an Open Source product, even if you can't technically handle the data migration task, you can find someone who can. My first company spent 9 years writing filters for word processing formats. If MS Word was open source then this would have been dramatically easier. Instead Microsoft owns my data. As does Radio. I find that unacceptable and more and more customers find that unacceptable.
  - Quality Matters. Right now computers and data are more important than ever before. If Open Source produces better quality then Open Source is what's best for the customer. And while I will be the first person to admit that some open source is of dubious quality, so are commercial products. Bear in mind that now my computer is my telephone, my book, my note pad and my music. Poor quality is utterly unacceptable. This brings us to the next point.
- The Commercial Software Industry's Definition of Quality Sucks. I'm tired of poor quality software (want to know why I didn't blog yesterday -- crashes in Radio). The main reason that the software industry produces buggy products is very simple -- we do it because we can get away with it. For years this business has just grown at a 25%+ rate. Growth hides customer discontent very, very well. Well in the Open Source world there's a statement "Enough eyes make all bugs shallow" (not an exact quote). This is very, very true. And, by releasing products that I create as Open Source, I am doing my little, teeny, tiny bit towards making software quality better. And every other good project out there does the same.
- Business Models Change. To draw an analogy from the MP3 world, there's a huge issue right now with lots and lots of techies saying "The music industry needs to change. They can't sell us $.50 worth of manufacturing for $18 anymore." And I am definitely one of them saying this. But, guess what? This type of change is going hit to the software industry somewhere in the next 5 years. Customers will start to tell vendors something like "Your quality is unacceptable; we're not buying / upgrading" or "I'm going with the Open Source equivalent". (And if you doubt this, you should have see Jeremy Zawodny's presentation at OSCON where he disclosed that Yahoo has replaced Oracle with MySQL for certain applications). I've tested this hypothesis on more than 25 people, all in the tech industry, all veterans of the business and they all agree. There is a big chunk of the commercial software business that will disappear in the next 5 years. And, since the need for software won't go away, it will inevitably be replaced by Open Source. Dave, I suspect that what you want is a return to the glory days of the software business -- when customers paid for technology. I'm sorry but those days are either gone or disappearing fast.

So, at the heart of it Dave, no one is coercing me at all. I'm NOT a slave and I don't appreciate being called one. I'm doing it for a lot of different reasons -- and I'm making money at it (my partner and I just became profitable as of last week, largely because Open Source gave us the ability to bid complex projects much more cheaply so we got the work and didn't have to spend hugely on tools). We'll also make money when we release our Open Source products. It may not be the kind of huge profit margins traditionally found in high technology but the times, they are a' changing (to quote Bob Dylan). And the Open Source wave is only starting to crest.

References:

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Guy K. Haas for reviewing this and making helpful suggestions
Thanks to Kjartan and others for fine tuning the arguments found here

If You Want to Complain About the HP Unix Debacle Then ...

Thu, 01 Aug 2002 02:45:38 GMT

If You Want to Complain About the HP Unix Debacle Then ...

Here's the "Email Carly" CEO vanity web form to submit your comment. I submitted my blog entry. It'll be interesting to see what happens.

http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/execteam/email/fiorina/index.htm

And, while I'm not sure, I think the email address for Kent Ferson is kent.ferson@compaq.com since that's the one variant that doesn't get bounced back right away (he originally worked for Compaq before this HP crap). Drop him a line if you think this is just plain silly. And if anyone out there has a definitive email address for him then I'll be thrilled to publish it...

The New HP: In My Humble Opinion, Dumb as a Sack of Dead Toads

Thu, 01 Aug 2002 02:34:08 GMT

The New HP: In My Humble Opinion, As Dumb as a Sack of Dead Toads. That's New.

WASHINGTON--Hewlett Packard has found a new club to use to pound researchers who unearth flaws in the company's software: the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Invoking both the controversial 1998 DMCA and computer crime laws, HP has threatened to sue a team of researchers who publicized a vulnerability in the company's Tru64 Unix operating system.

In a letter sent on Monday, an HP vice president warned SnoSoft, a loosely organized research collective, that its members "could be fined up to $500,000 and imprisoned for up to five years" for its role in publishing information on a bug that lets an intruder take over a Tru64 Unix system.

HP's dramatic warning appears to be the first time the DMCA has been invoked to stifle research related to computer security. Until now, it's been used by copyright holders to pursue people who distribute computer programs that unlock copyrighted content such as DVDs or encrypted e-books.

http://news.com.com/2100-1023-947325.html

This is just plain stupid beyond belief. It also makes me sad to see HP claiming Compaq's previous role as one of the first commercial Linux companes. What would John Maddog Hall (the original Compaq Linux enthusiast) think?

Carly, Carly, Carly... Would you please drop kick the rather clue free individual known as "Kent Ferson", a vice president in HP's Unix systems unit. And as a general rule of thumb, if your engineers simply wrote bug free code, these things wouldn't happen. If you could ensure this then I'm sure that groups like SnoSoft will have no problems with your products.

Thanks Dave for pointing this one out.

Cool: A Drupal Module for The Amazon API Is In the Works

Sun, 21 Jul 2002 16:42:28 GMT

Cool: A Drupal Module for The Amazon API Is In the Works

Example: http://apache.dataloss.nl/~breyten/module.php?mod=amazon

How to Make a Geek Feel Good

Sun, 21 Jul 2002 11:06:09 GMT

How to Make a Geek Feel Good

Here's something that makes a geek feel really, really good:

Spend a weekend slaving over a hot keyboard writing code that's been in your head since at least 1999.
Get it mildly, barely working.
Show it to two people you respect and have both say to you, almost immediately, "I Want It".
Know that since it's GPL'd (or will be once it's not version 0.0001.a.Sunday.Morning.AfterBreakfast) it will get some level of wide distribution.

I feel good.

Comment: Sorry for all the really short entries over the past 2 days but I'm in hard core code grind (the scenario above is a) real and b) just happened to me) and can't break free to write anything longer right now but I have some good stuff planned for the plane flight to OSCON.

Very Cool Article: Email Interface Design 101

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 22:00:09 GMT

Very Cool Article: Email Interface Design 101

Talk about serendipity. As I go to the www.evolt.org site to unsubscribe from their mailing lists (I'm dumping all mailing lists for a while), I find this article:

http://www.evolt.org/article/Email_Interface_Design_101/4090/32613/index.html

And, what have I been coding all day? A natural language parser for treating emails sent to a common address like todo@ yourdomain.com as task list items -- but inferring properties like Priority, Status, Project, Categories, Who to Assign them to, etc. Serendipity in action. It's all database driven a pretty cool piece of code that knows that "Paolo" = www.evectors.com = IdeaTools and that tasks from Paolo have a higher priority than tasks from other sources, etc. More details as it gets more features and such.

Enlightenment: Talk About a Beautiful GUI

Sat, 20 Jul 2002 21:53:46 GMT

Enlightenment: Talk About a Beautiful GUI

Wow. I just ran across the development screen shots for the next release of the Enlightment *nix window manager. Talk about beautiful. I'm in awe:

Thank You Adam or My Mandrake Is Much, Much Happier Now

Wed, 03 Jul 2002 09:35:18 GMT

Thank You Adam or My Mandrake Is Much, Much Happier Now

I wanted to publicly say "Thanks" to Adam -- he helped me get the C compiler back on my Mandrake box. And even though I'm not much of a C programmer, you really do need it on any *nix system since you have to somewhat regularly use it to install software. Even better and more impressive, Adam helped me get through "RPM Hell". More on that later. Thanks Man!

Mandrake 8.2: 85% Icky Poo (that's Bad), IMHO

Sun, 30 Jun 2002 22:27:57 GMT

Mandrake 8.2: 85% Icky Poo (that's Bad), IMHO

NOTE: There is no way that this doesn't come off as negative. I so didn't want that. I've always heard good things about Mandrake and shelled out $39.95 in the hopes that it would really work. Sigh. Hopefully someone at Mandrake will see this and use it constructively. Making these things public sometimes helps.

People I really respect have always told me good things about Mandrake. So in my current quest for an operating system that will support my ThinkPad since Windows 2K does not (see here), I picked up a copy of Mandrake 8.2. Rarely, if ever, has a Unix variant been so disappointing. I've now installed it 4 times and I can feel a 5th time coming on later today. My specific issues:

==> Read Story <==

Laptops, Linux, Restore CD's and Why I'll Never, Ever Buy a ThinkPad Again

Thu, 27 Jun 2002 13:45:52 GMT

Laptops, Linux, Restore CD's and Why I'll Never, Ever Buy a ThinkPad Again

Disclaimer: I don't want this to seem as whining. It's just an interesting commentary on the state of our PC's now (IMHO).

I tell you -- 22 + years of using PC based hardware and I've NEVER had an experience like the past month -- machines down, hard drives crashing, OS failures, etc. If it's bad and it involves computers I've probably had it in the last month. As I said to someone via IM last night:

==> Read Story <==

Interesting Performance Stats on GenToo Linux

Wed, 19 Jun 2002 00:13:40 GMT

Interesting Performance Stats on GenToo Linux

My buddy Demitrious just ran a real world benchmark test on GenToo Linux. Stats. Bottom Line? What RedHat does in 5 seconds, GenToo does in 0 seconds (i.e. too fast to measure accurately). That's impressive. www.gentoo.org. Demitrious likes it a lot and that makes me think it's good since he's hard to please (and a better hard core *nix guy than I am).