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Inspiration & Advice from a Programming Legend

I first learned of Jamie Zawinski ( jwz )in the mid 1990's, well before the hey days of the browser wars. I frequently used to read Jamie's Grundle on a regular basis and found his bookmarks file a great source of finding new and interesting websites of the day (a long, long before Google) but probably more than anything, I've always enjoyed reading his blog.

What I found so interesting about Jamie was that at the time, in addition to being part of the who-is-who in the Unix world, he was also one of the top developers at arguably one of the most important companies of the time. Reading about his experiences as a programmer working on software that was literally changing the world as the web took shape was quite exciting for a young programer like myself to see the world through his eyes. Jamie always had a strong sense of doing things, regardless of how difficult they might be, because they were the right thing to do - for the customer or end user.

Life goes on, Jamie had the good fortune making his fortune when Netscape went public and today keeps busy running his own club, the DNA Lounge. I still read his blog, and yesterday he had a great bit of advice stemming from a conversation with an open source developer that I think all developers should read. Here's a few interesting tid bits.

Nat was in town, and he stopped by to say hi and chat, and he said, "So we've got this big pile of code we're going to release, and we're going to build an open source groupware system! It's going to be awesome!"

And I said, "Jesus Mother of Fuck, what are you thinking! Do not strap the 'Groupware' albatross around your neck! That's what killed Netscape, are you insane?" He looked at me like I'd just kicked his puppy.

If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.

When words like "groupware" and "enterprise" start getting tossed around, you're doing the latter. You start adding features to satisfy line-items on some checklist that was constructed by interminable committee meetings among bureaucrats, and you're coding toward an externally-dictated product specification that maybe some company will want to buy a hundred "seats" of, but that nobody will ever love. With that kind of motivation, nobody will ever find it sexy. It won't make anyone happy.

... I was sure that anyone he talked to in a corporation would tell him, "free groupware, yes, awesome!", there was really no reason to even bother releasing something like that as open source, because there was going to be absolutely no buy-in from the "itch-scratching" crowd. With a product like that, there was going to be no teenager in his basement hacking on it just because it was cool, or because it doing so made his life easier. Maybe IBM would throw some bucks at a developer or two to help out with it, because it might be cheaper to pay someone to write software than to just buy it off the shelf. But with a groupware product, nobody would ever work on it unless they were getting paid to, because it's just fundamentally not interesting to individuals.

And then Nat went back to whichever flyover state Novell is in, and a few days later he said to me, "wow, you really bummed me out, because the dozen other people I had talked to before you were all like, `a free groupware system, that's an awesome idea!' Then you depressed me, and I came back here and told the other guys what you had said, and they were all, `Oh, fuck. He's right.'" -- Read more.

Jamie -- thanks for the continued wisdom, humor and general let's not tolerate business as usual mentality that you've provided me with for so many years now. I only wish I knew more people who had the courage to think and act as you do.

Napster goes retro with (unintentionally) free music

When Napster launched its new subscription Napster-To-Go service two weeks ago, they touted it as a low-cost way to access thousands of songs without having to buy them. For $14.95, customers can copy all the tracks they want from Napster's catalog to digital music players. There's even a 14-day free trial. Of course, when the subscription expires so does the music.

However, in a flashback to the heyday of the original Napster in the late 1990s, a rediscovery by a few users of an old Winamp trick has resulted in subscribers being able to download any number of tracks, which are then no longer tied to the subscriber's PC and digital music players. Using only a slightly-tweaked version of Winamp, it's possible to convert the DRMed WMA files used by the music service into much larger WAV files. Those can then either be burned to CDs, or converted to another lossy format (with the accompanying degradation of song quality). Sure, the song quality is going to be worse than the original, but it's free!

Upon being contacted for comment, a Napster spokesperson noted that the company has long been aware of the potential to bypass the subscription system, and claimed that the hack does not threaten their subscription model. Maybe, but if Napster sees a sudden surge in free 14-day trials that aren't converted into subscriptions...

In and of itself, the Winamp hack isn't terribly interesting, especially since the sound quality degrades. However, Napster is counting on free 14-day trials to Napster-To-Go as a way to sell people on the idea that rented music is a Good Thing so they can challenge Apple's lead in the online music scene.

One thing for sure — the RIAA will be monitoring this development closely. If there's one thing recent history tells us, it's that the RIAA is zealous about ensuring that music isn't free, no matter how lossy. That's what led to the demise of Napster v1.0 in the first place and lawsuits against other P2P networks.

TiVo Chairman Loves His Mac

Yesterday evening, while roaming the corridors of DEMO show I ran into Michael Ramsey, the chairman and till recently the chief executive of beleaguered TiVo. He was there to receive a top innovators award and have a fireside chat with Chris Shipley, the conference organizer. Ramsey gloriously defended his company, and said don[base ']t count us out yet.

Without out going into more details, I can say that he laid down some smack on Microsoft[base ']s grand TV plan of dominating the set-top box, PC, middle-ware and back-end business. But hey aren[base ']t they working on together - putting TiVo2Go on Microsoft portable media centers? Sure, he said, because he think Microsoft[base ']s DRM and other front end technologies are neat and help boost the growth of TiVo2Go.

But the best part of the conversation was when we started chatting about Apple. Ramsey said a few months ago he switched - sick and tired of the problems with Windows - he went and bought a PowerBook, and now he has added a G5 to his list of computers. Well, this resulted in his company IT department thinking different as well! Memo to Steve Jobs: How about sending all the CEOs of top 100 Silicon Valley companies a Powerbook - and changing their lives as well. Wonder what IT departments would say when the CEO is walking around with a PowerBook!

Women in Podcasting

I'm happy to see more women getting involved in Podcasting. The more knowledge, depth and intelligence that we have in the field overall, will only help to make podcasting stronger and more interesting for everyone involved.

From Contenious:

(UPDATE: This list was last updated Feb. 14, 2005. Items marked [base "]JUST ADDED[per thou] are the most recently added items. Adam Curry mentioned this list on the Feb. 6 Daily Source Code show. Also, don[base ']t miss the followup article. And here are my reasons why more women should start podcasting.)

Since I[base ']ve been talking about women in podcasting, I figured it would be a good idea to create a running list of podcasts which feature women as hosts or cohosts. Here are the ones I know about so far. Some of these I listen to regularly, others I[base ']ve only heard once or twice. But all are the product of women[base ']s efforts.

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