rebelutionary
Mike Cannon-Brookes on Java, J2EE, OSX, Open Source, Australia, Atlassian, Bug Tracking, JIRA and more...

Wednesday, 7 August 2002

Lots of responses to my mini-rant already - gotta love Trillian. David wrote Get used to it, III - "I agree that open source (and the term open source itself) came to prominence during the dot-com times. But I like to think on the open source as a way to license software and a way to share rather than a movement or a crusade to destroy capitalism in the software market. Sometimes I get the feeling that is what Dave thinks it is." Anthony (via IM) came up with some good thoughts too - "I think that the capital boom helped spur the growth of the Internet, and the growth of the Internet helped spur the growth of open source software because of the ability for developers to communicate and develop together. So, can you really say that it was the capital boom or was it the growth of the Internet?  Or both?" Points to ponder. 12:44:18 PM  comment []      I found Russell's NoteBook via my referrers. His blog is powered by MiniBlog - which I'm guessing he wrote himself (?). It's a fairly full features blog application written in a single JSP file. It's not going to win any architecture prizes (an 800 line, single file JSP?) but it's cool none-the-less. 12:35:03 PM  comment []      Get used to it. BTW, imho, "open source" is a vestige of dotcom mania. Sure, you can do anything with free money, but that's over, for good (fingers crossed) so let's get real, okay? Thanks ... There's lots of work to do. In Washington they're passing laws that any developer, whether or not he or she develops open source, should be working to stop.They love Apple, but why - Dave Winer Open source is not an exclusionary country club and it is not a vestige of the dot-com boom-bust, it is just a way to license software, and it has been around for ages.  Some folks use open source licensing as part of a business strategy, some use it because they want to improve the world of software, and some use it because they want to "give back" to the open source community. Get used to it, open source is not going away. I agree with both Dave and David here. Firstly, Open Source has been around for ages - that is true - but it only really came to prominence with the dot com boom. That is the main point. Don't believe me? I'm going to go out on a limb and say that the large, successful Open Source projects would not be anywhere near where they are today without the capital boom we saw in the late 90's. Linux? Sure it started in Linus' bedroom - but now the main lines of development are funded by Red Hat, IBM and others. In the past 5 years huge amounts of capital went into Linuxcare, VA Linux/Software, Caldera, Corel and others - a part of which got funnelled into Linux developers and development. Apache? IBM has funded a lot of the Apache development I believe. Samba? Again, the main developers were all snapped up by IPO hungry Linux dotcoms - which further funded the development. Net Beans? It started as commercial software, which was then released and is now bank rolled by Sun. Does this mean Open Source projects can't succeed without the dotcom boom? Of course not. It just shows that it is naive to think the current prominence Open Source enjoys is unrelated to the boom. And on the second point: open source developers are going to work with anyone and everyone, including commercial developers, to fight against the crappy legislation that is currently being purchased by the entertainment industry. Why would you doubt that? Seems to me, most open source developers are also commercial developers. Agreed - a lot of commercial developers develop Open Source stuff in their spare time, or as a part of their job. They are the same people, just wearing different hats! Why is Dave so vexed over open source? Did open source software eat his lunch, pee in his corn-flakes, step on his blue suede shoes, or what? Somebody please explain. BTW, I do not consider myself to be an open source zealot. I believe that both open source and commercial licensing have their places in this world. I develop, use, and advocate the use of closed source software. [Blogging Roller] I'll tell you why he's vexed - because Open Source is going to eat his lunch. Don't get me wrong, Open Source is fantastic, and so is Radio - but he sees the future. Dave feels he has invested a lot of money into the innovations in Radio, and now MT, Roller etc can benefit from that investment without any of the cost. It's the age old adage - Open Source doesn't create new software, it just copies and improves existing software. So how can Dave 'fight' Open Source? Keep investing in innovation. Borrow ideas from Open Source, just as Open Source borrows from him. Invest in the UI. Invest in simplicity. These are all things tha Open Source is bad at doing, and areas Radio is brilliant at. I still believe most people are like Dave, and not Open Source zealots. Very few people make their software choices based purely on whether a product is Open Source or not. They choose on quality of software. If Radio is a better product, I'll use it. It's that simple. Why is this an issue for me? Because JIRAs biggest competitor is Scarab - which is Open Source. Are we fighting the good fight? You bet. We 'lost' a very influential user to Scarab today, but we also 'gained' another one back. Parry, parry, duck, parry. Commercial software vs Open Source software is an age old battle, and the winner is the end user. If you're on the commercial side, how do you compete? IMHO you just have to be better and constantly innovate to stay ahead. Dave - keep innovating mate, I'm still a Radio user. 11:49:15 AM  comment []      Matt Mower: I know nothing about Game Theory really so I Googled and found this site which has some good basic information. [Curiouser and curiouser!] 10:47:12 AM  comment []      Push To Test. Posted on a jython ml I'm on was something about Push To Test, an open source web service testing framework written in java, with jython as the scripting language for the test-bots. Mike, is this the one you were testing, or another one? [Brett Morgan's Insanity Weblog] Actually - it wasn't, but it looks cool. I'll check it out more today. I was looking at maxQ and Latka before. 10:37:07 AM  comment []      Old news - Brett talking about Userland's anti-Open Source stance. Does this mean commercial software cannot compete against Open Source alternatives? I don't think so. It's just a dangerous game to play - for both sides. 10:17:06 AM  comment []      Oracle J2EE 1.3 Compliance, at last. Don't all rush out at once [The Register] As always El Reg has an amusing take on events. Only IBM and Sun have not yet shipped J2EE 1.3 compliant servers. However despite OC4J's new 1.3 compliance, JIRA does not yet run on it. Why? OC4J it would seem has a buggy Servlet 2.3 filter implementation. We're working on it with them. 10:13:34 AM  comment []      What to Do About Spam?. Cory Doctorow believes that technologies such as Vipul's Razor will succeed in eliminating spam, a view that Bruce Sterling challenged in his recent talk at the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. [O'Reilly Network Articles] Fascinating read - it always amazes me what people can churn out in a mailing list post. Very well written. 9:46:28 AM  comment []      Is this new age piracy? Hijacked on PayPal. [via Mac Net Journal] 9:19:30 AM  comment []      Atomic File Transactions in Java: Nifty - might be useful one day: "Databases provide atomicity for data stored within them, but filesystems are not atomic with respect to their files. This two part article series explains how to achieve atomicity for standard filesystem actions. ... It's not hard to find programs that could benefit from atomic filesystem operations. Installers are a prime example: they do a lot of filesystem manipulation, and if there is an error or they crash, one would like the filesystem back the way it was." 12:39:48 AM  comment []