In the former case its patents and proprietary file formats, in the latter case its misuse of the law. Where is the integrity in either case? So, lets use software written by developers who show each other respect and integrity, by developers who wouldnt lock down our choice and our data by legialation or non-openness. It isnt commercial vs. open source, but rather, closed against open. The Intellectual Property (and Thought) police against the common man. Lets not lose perspective! [TIG's Corner]

» Hmmm... I'm not sure that a law that specifies that governments have to use open source software is "misuse of the law".  You may find it not to your liking, you may not agree with it, but I don't see how it's a misuse.  Also I think it's very hard to legislate respect.

I do agree that the real argument should be about open vs. closed (read proprietary). 

Just been watching comedian Will Durst on TV.  Very funny guy.

My favourite line?  On ol Shrub

"He's like a stripper with hairy legs.  He's got some smooth moves, but, even from the bar you can tell that something is horribly wrong."

There was a lot more and I'd definitely like to see him live.

Something Unexpected: Scott's Radio

As the author of the O'Reilly Essential Blogging chapters on Radio, I clearly have a commercial interest in Radio.  You'd think that I'd want people to just buy the Essential Blogging book and NOT give content about Radio for free.  You'd think that but you'd be wrong.  I really want to see Radio do well along with great people like Jake and Lawrence.  And more documentation is pretty much always a frothy good thing for products. So... Inspiration struck me yesterday when I was digging through the 240 gigabytes of digital bile that I call a hard drive(s): O'Reilly cut a lot of my text on the Essential Blogging book.  (these are all labeled as "Missing")  Why not aggregate that content along with my previous writings on Radio and release it as a free book under the GNU Free Documentation License?  This content still gets tons of hits from Google so it's clearly useful.  A quick demand (ok gentle request) to my partner, Gretchen, for "A really cool cover" and within about an hour, she IM'd me the graphic at left.  And I've been in hard core content massage since 3:37 am on this oh so soggy Boston day.  I won't tell you that this content is perfect -- there are clearly some broken links and other editing style things that need to get done.  But there is a lot of content and it's useful.  It'll get improved more over time but following the Open Source mantra of "Release Early and Release Often", I give you: Scott's Radio ==> Read Stories <==

[The FuzzyBlog!]

» Thanks Scott for publishing this.

I spoke of four klogging roles last week: catalyst, coach, armorer, practice leader. Matt Mower advocates the the role of "Intranet Editor:"

Much as the users of a Wiki should occasionally re-factor pages that are becoming "busy" I think that a good intranet editor should be grooming the klogs in their organization and drawing together useful strangs to form part (or all) of the static intranet.

Roland Tanglao builds on this:

I think a natural progression for knowledge is:

1. blog breaking news
2. harvest it periodically (say weekly) into an FAQ and/or other knowledge base type of documents
3. Put the link into a a directory that supports transclusion like Manila style directories.

K-Log => (FAQ or other knowlegebase article) => directory.  

K-Logs need to be periodically (at least once a month) harvested for content that should go into an FAQ or other knowledgebase document and links that that should go into a directory. This is the job of a K-Log editor :-)! I have been trying to do this with VanEats but after a klog gets to a certain size, it really needs to have some time set aside for it.

Practice Leader is probably the closest to a dedicated multi-author editor. Summarizing work in a field, showing the aggregate progress and useful threads. Structuring knowledge into FAQs or other KM systems may be a natural progression, especially as klogging tools and KM tools build bridges.

Entropy, bad.

Fighting entropy, expensive, slow. 

Self-review is a powerful tool for learning. Going over my own posts for the past week, month, and quarter has shown patterns I missed, ideas I was skirting but never wrote outright. It reinforced brief social connections, blogs to which I linked to and people with whom I briefly corresponded. It takes concentrated time and effort. It helps me to print out all the pages on my blog for that period; something about shuffling through paper.

Folks are trying hard to automate this work. Summarizers. Cluster analysis. Text to Structure converters. Taxonomy systems.

But the expert author of the original content is often the best judge of relevance.

[a klog apart]

» I think one of the things about klogs is that are no better than any other KM system when it comes to entropy.  In fact they are likely to be a hell of a lot worse -- it's just the entropy matters less.  Any information system that isn't properly maintained has the potential to quickly deteriorate into chaos.

The fact is that most people don't want to have to find just the right place to put something.  Most people aren't going to review what they have done.   You can force this behaviour, you can encourage it.  But is it really necessary that everyone has to become a librarian in order to function in a knowledge environment?

My alternative is that we recognize and promote the value of good editing (and, hence, good editors).  Have an editor/practice leader to head each area whose responsibility it is to aggregate good knowledge.  Then reward them when they do it well.   Example:  Look at the number of search engine queries for specific keywords.  Tie those keywords to projects/areas.  If the number of searches trends downwards something is working.  Okay, too simplistic? Then suggest something better!

An area I have been thinking about is how I would integrate the idea of uploading files to a KM system when klogging.  One approach would be to provide some kind of clever dialogue to allow the user to specify where they want the file to end up.  That sounds like hard work for me & for the user.

Alternative strategy:  Allow the user to put a file in an enclosure.  Radio will upstream it to the KM server as part of the RSS feed.  The KM server will toss the file into an upload bucket in an area based upon the metadata of the post (ala liveTopics).  It's then up to the practice leader for that area to decide where the document actually belongs and move it there (or indeed if it belongs at all).

Is this less efficient?  Maybe so.  Is it more effective?  I think so.

Agree? Disagree?  Ideas?

Personal Knowledge Publishing = Blogging. (SOURCE:Curiouser and curiouser)-I like it!You know, I don't like the term klogging very much. It has meaning to us "in the know" but I think it's rather an opaque term. I would prefer a term like Personal Knowledge Publishing which actually says a little bit about what it means, and, harkens back to the DTP revolution. I think PKP will hail the same revolution for Knowledge Management by emphasizing that it is people that matter. Process should follow people. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

» I think Roland got it right with his title

Personal Knowledge Publishing = Blogging

and to put it in an organizational context

?? Knowledge Publishing = Klogging

I'm still working on the ??

 

Here's an idea I've been thinking about for the use of liveTopics.

At the moment as author's we categorize our posts for our readers.  If using default Radio by explicitly putting them into categories (or, by default, not doing so).  With liveTopics I can add some granularity to that.  But basically it doesn't have too much impact on my reader.  It also doesn't give the reader much choice.

What I'd like to do is offer the reader is the chance to create their own categories and here's how I think it would work:

We add a "customise this site" button that pop's up a list of all the topics available on the site.

The reader can then group topics they are interested in together to create "virtual channels."  These along with the default selection are bundled up into a cookie that is stored in the readers browser (with their permission).

The next time the reader visits the page they only get posts that match the selected "virtual channel." along with a drop-down to change channel and the customise button.

Anybody else think this is an interesting idea?

Ron Lusk posted recently about a program called Six Degree's which they call "Time-freeing technology."   It's a pretty simple idea.  An application that links together all the emails, files and people in your outlook database.  Example: you click on an email in Outlook and in the Six Degree's window you can see all the related emails, the people involved in those emails and any files exchanged in those emails.

It certainly fits into my category of information tools for personal effectiveness so I was interested to and downloaded it.  The tutorial presentation was very slick, but I hit a snag when it came to try and index the contents of my Outlook folders.

"An unexpected exception has been caught in initTroll"

not what you want to see, but better, I suppose, than not catching it.  The advice was to restart, but that hasn't solved it.

I'm in two minds about whether to give it another chance.  At the back of my mind I am not convinced this is a technology that will be effective due to it's dependence upon file attachments.  I am not a believer in using email to handle projects, nor in sending/expecting attached files.  There are better technologies out there.

So Six Degree's seems a bit like a band-aid when what we need is a vaccine.

However lot's of people do manage projects via email, and are attachment junkies.  This technology could very well work for them and it might be a good transitional technology.  A way of organizing a projects assets in order to migrate it to something more sensible.

Maybe I'll give it another go tomorrow.

Bob Lewis nails it again.  On the current round of accounting scandals and the regulation backlash to come...

• As we sit in the rubble of Enron, ImClone, WorldCom, Tyco, AOL, and other, as-yet-undiscovered or unpublicized corporate implosions, it's worthwhile to wonder which is the egg: the lack of accountability resulting from more than two decades of business deregulation, or the corrupt perspective of the corporate elite who acquired the resulting additional power.
• Lord Acton notwithstanding, I think the corruption came first.
• Without regulation, those businesses that resort to any tactic to win have the advantage over those that restrict their behavior to conventional codes of ethics.
• Consequently, ethical CEOs should welcome government regulation, not fight it.
• The goal of an ethical CEO would be efficient regulation, not deregulation.
• For more than two decades we've been subjected to unrelenting propaganda from the BIG/GAS (Business Is Great/Government and Academics are Stupid) contingent decrying any and all regulation as a fundamentally bad idea.
• Regulation, we've been assured, prevents American businesses from being competitive in world markets, harms productivity, and hampers profitability.
• The business community no longer has the credibility to be part of the process.
• Their goal will be minimizing any chance of new abuses, unfettered by considerations of how hard or easy it will be to comply.
• Every new regulation will result in reporting requirements, every reporting requirement will require new information technology, and nobody is going to care how hard it is to build.

Okay I've just read the first document that is really convincing.  It's by the guys behind Zope and discusses in detail their reasons for going open source.  This is the first concrete business-plan backed reasoning I've come across and it makes for compelling reading.  Just need to go check that Zope are still in business!

Here are the important points:

• Going open source will increase our user base by a factor of 100 within three months. Wider brand and stronger identity leads to more consulting and increased valuation on our company.

• Open source gives rock solid, battle-tested, bulletproof software on more platforms and with more capabilities than closed source, thus increasing the value of our consulting.

• Fostering a community creates an army of messengers, which is pretty effective marketing.

• This is not the last innovation we'll make.

• In the status quo, the value of packaging the software as a product would approach zero, as we had zero market penetration. What is the value of a killer product with few users? The cost to enter the established web application server market was going to be prohibitive.

• The investment grows us into a larger, more profitable company, one that can make a credible push to create a platform via open source. Since our consulting is only on the platform, a strong platform is imperative.

• Open source makes the value of our ideas more apparent, thus the perceived value of the company is apparent.

• Our architecture is "safer" for consulting customers. With thousands of people using it, the software is far less marginal. The customer is able to fix things themselves or reasonably find someone to do it for them. Finally, the software will "exist forever".

• Dramatically increasing the base of users and sites using it gives us a tremendous boost in "legitimacy".

• The exit plan isn't about the golden eggs (the intellectual property) laid last year. It is about the golden goose and tomorrow's golden eggs. The shelf life of eggs these days is shrinking dramatically, and the value of an egg that no one knows about is tiny. Give the eggs away as a testament to the value of the goose and a prediction of eggs to come.

• The community can work with us to dramatically increase the pace of innovation and responsiveness to new technical trends, such as XML and WebDAV.

• Ride the coattails of the nascent Open Source community and its established channels such as RedHat. OSS has a certain buzz that is greater than its real customer-closing value, but this buzz is getting hot. Moving aggressively towards Open Source can make us a category killer for the web application server market segment.

• We believe like hell in what we're doing. Others believe in us as well. We should follow our instincts.

Some of these issues are obviously more important to a company having taken investment with it's eye on a future IPO but I think they are all good, important points.  Those that seem most applicable (and inherently good) to me I've marked in red.   They seem very persuasive.

One implication is that the direction of my company will be entirely towards VAR services & consulting.  I shall be abandoning the idea of making money from software licenses (for my own software).

Something to think about...

Personal Business Knowledge Publishing

(just trying it on for size)

UK to ban driving and talking. The scourge of the mobile phone [The Register]

» I was actually under the impression that it was already illegal to use a hand-held mobile phone whilst on the move.  I know i've always felt guilty the few times I've done it.  I'm pretty good about using the hands-free but have forgotten it a couple of times.   I'd be in favour of this kind of legislation.

What is it about Radio's new aggregator and the IA/ feed?

I seem to get all their articles over and over, no matter how many times I delete them.  I've even got three copies of the whole set in the aggregator at the moment.

This sucks!

O'Reilly questions free-SW regs. Politics, yuck [The Register]

» Legislate to mandate open standards for e-government, not open source.  Sounds reasonable to me.

 

Okay I'm reading stuff about how to make a living "selling" open source software (free software as GNU would have it).  It seems that the model held up by most people is Red Hat who sell Linux.  A brief look at their web page indicates that professional services is a big part of their business.

Does anyone have a view on this model?  How about "selling" a much smaller, less commoditized product, in the KM marketplace?  I'm not sure...

Maybe I should just GPL liveTopics and avoid the subject of money altogether.

Is there a way to make a living from software without licensing it when the source is freely available?

I've been thinking about licensing and how it applies to my business, to my plans for making my living.

I've used free software and appreciated it.  I've bought commerical software and been happy to do so.  I am happy to buy reasonably priced software - when I have the money.  I don't expect, or even want, all software to be free.  Now, for the first time, I am releasing software in the context of my own business, making a living.  It colours things.

My plans for liveTopics means that it will, increasingly, be relevant in an organizational context.  I anticipate a point where I could have commercial and non-commercial customers.  I want to license liveTopics appropriately but my head is getting very sore trying to work that out.

I need help.

Oh and Mike, don't forget that meeting...