Technology Blog

Here’s an excellent quote from the OpenGeoData weblog, really worth reproducing:

‘’We think the natural tendency is for producers to worry too much about protecting their intellectual property. The important thing is to maximise the value of your intellectual property, not to protect it for the sake of protection. If you lose a little of your property when you sell it or rent it, that’s just a cost of doing business, along with depreciation, inventory losses, and obsolescence.’’ — Information Rules, Carl Shapiro and Hal Varian, page 97.

Words to live by!

Tags:carl shapiro drm hal varian intellectual property ip open culture open source property

This post was written by Justin, source: Maximise value, not protection (fwd)

A commenter at this post on Colm MacCarthaigh’s
weblog
writes:

I guess I still don’t understand how Open Source makes sense for the
developers, economically. I understand how it makes sense for adapters like
me, who take an app like Xoops or Gecko and customize it gently for a
contract. Saves me hundreds of hours of labour. The down side of this is that
the whole software industry is seeing a good deal of undercutting aimed at
sales to small and medium sized commercial institutions.

Similarly, in the follow-up to the O’Reilly “web 2.0″ trademark shitstorm,
there’s been quite a few comments along the lines of “it’s all hype anyway”.

I disagree with that assertion — and Joe Drumgoole has posted a great list of
key Web 2.0 vs Web 1.0
differentiators,
which nails down some key ideas about the new concepts, in a clear set of
one-liners.

Both open source software companies, and “web 2.0″ companies, are based on new
economic ideas about software and the internet. There’s still quite a lot of
confusion, fear and doubt about both, I think.

Open Source

As I said in my comment at Colm’s weblog — open source is a network effect. If
you think of the software market as a single buyer and seller, with the seller
producing software and selling to the buyer, it doesn’t make sense.

But that’s not the real picture of a software market. If you expand the
picture beyond that, to a more realistic picture of a larger community of all
sorts of people at all levels, with various levels interacting in a more
complex maze of conversation and transactions, open source creates new
opportunities.

Here’s one example, speaking from experience. As the developer of
SpamAssassin, open source made sense for me because I could never compete with
the big companies any other way.

If I had been considering it in terms of me (the seller) and a single customer
(the buyer), economically I could make a case of ‘proprietary SpamAssassin’
being a viable situation — but that’s not the real situation; in reality there
was me, the buyer, a few 800lb gorillas who could stomp all over any puny
little underfunded Irish company I could put together, and quite a few other
very smart people, who I could never afford to employ, who were happy to help
out on ‘open-source SpamAssassin’ for free.

Given this picture, I’m quite sure that I made the right choice by open
sourcing my code. Since then, I’ve basically had a career in SpamAssassin. In
other words my open source product allowed me to make income that I wouldn’t
have had, any other way.

It’s certainly not simple economics, is a risk, and is complicated, and many
people don’t believe it works — but it’s viable as an economic strategy for
developers, in my experience. (I’m not sure how to make it work for an entire
company, mind you, but for single developers it’s entirely viable.)

Web 2.0

Similarly — I feel some of the companies that have been tagged as “web 2.0″
are using the core ideas of open source code, and applying them in
other ways.

Consider Threadless, which encourages designers
to make their designs available, essentially for free — the designer doesn’t
get paid when their tee shirt is printed; they get entered into a contest to win prizes.

Or Upcoming.org, where event tracking is entirely
user-contributed; there’s no professional content writers scribbling reviews
and leader text, just random people doing the same. For fun, wtf!

Or Flickr, where users upload their photos for free to
create the social experience that is the site’s unique selling point.

In other words — these companies rely heavily on communities (or more
correctly certain actors within the community) to produce part of the system –
exactly as open source development relies on bottom-up community contribution
to help out a little in places.

The alternative is the traditional, “web 1.0″ style; it’s where you’re Bill Gates
in the late 90’s, running a commercial software company from the top down.

• You have the “crown jewels” — your source code — and the “users” don’t get
  to see it; they just “use”.
• Then they get to pay for upgrades to the next version.
• If you deal with users, it’s via your sales “channels” and your tech support
  call centre.
• User forums are certainly not to be encouraged, since it could be a PR
  nightmare if your users start getting together and talking about how buggy
  your products are.
• Developers (er, I mean “engineers”) similarly can’t go talking to customers
  on those forums, since they’ll get distracted and give away competitive
  advantage by accidentally leaking secrets.
• Anyway, the best PR is the stuff that your PR staff put out — if customers
  talk to engineers they’ll just get confused by the over-technical messages!

Yeah, so, good luck with that. I remember doing all that back in the ’90’s and
it really wasn’t much fun being so bloody paranoid all the time

URLs:

• Joe Drumgoole’s list
• Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless’ skinnyCorp on the subject

(PS: The web2.0 companies aren’t using all of the concepts of open-source, of course — not all those
web apps have their source code available for public reimplementation and
cloning. I wish they were, but as I said, I can’t see how that’s entirely
viable for every company. Not that it seems to stop the cloners,
anyway.

Tags:business coding community economics network effects open source software web2.0

This post was written by Justin, source: Web 2.0 and Open Source

Back from ApacheCon!

I’ve got to say, I found it really useful this year. Last year, I
was pretty new to the ASF, and found that my expectations of
ApacheCon didn’t quite match reality; it wasn’t a rip-roaring success
exactly, for me, as a result.

However, many details of how the ASF works — and how the conference
itself works and is organised — are much clearer after you’ve spent
some time lurking and absorbing practices in the meantime. (The
visibility one gets into the process as a member of the ASF makes
this a lot easier.)

Result: it was much more of a success for me this time around.
Plenty of networking, putting faces to the names, hanging out, and
discussing many aspects of our work.

The hackathon really worked out, too; while we didn’t produce a hell
of a lot of code per se, it made for a good ‘developer summit’ and I
think we established solid agreement on SpamAssassin’s short-term
directions and goals. (summary: rules, and faster).

On top of that, I got to meet up with Colm
MacCarthaigh and Cory
Doctorow for discussion of Digital Rights
Ireland. Looks like I’ll be
spending a bit of time on that next year

Finally: Solaris. On Monday night, I got to sit down with Daniel
Price, one of the kernel engineers behind
Solaris Zones, work
through a quick demo of a bug I was running into with chroot(2) and
zones on our rule-QA buildbot
server, and watch as he
visually traced it through the OpenSolaris kernel
source on
the web. From this — and from talking to Daniel — it’s pretty clear
that things have changed at Sun. Pretty much the entire Solaris
operating system is now a full-on open-source project; it’s not just
a marketing gimmick. The source is up there on the web, that’s the
source for the code they’re running now, and there’s no half-assed
‘freeze it, cut out the good bits, and throw it over the wall’
fake-open-source tricks.

The concept of getting this level of access to Solaris source code
and engineers, would have blown my mind when I was Iona’s sysadmin
back in the 1990s I’m very impressed.

apache apachecon apacheconus2005 asf conferences open source opensolaris solaris spamassassin sun virtualization zones

This post was written by Justin, source: My ApacheCon Roundup

Passing this on for readers in Ireland — this sounds like an interesting event. From the FSFE-IE mailing list:

On the morning of Friday November 18th, IFSO is organising an event hosted by MEP Proinsias De Rossa about preventing software patents in the EU. Topics covered will be:

• An analysis of the software patent directive;
• a discussion of Free Software and computer security;
• an introduction to IFSO/FSFE and their work;
• the future of legislative obstacles to the development and distribution of software.

The event will be held in the European Parliament Office in Ireland, and spaces are limited. Participants are therefore asked to register their intent to attend. See here for more details.

dublin free software fsfe ifso ireland labour open source patents swpats

This post was written by Justin, source: IFSO Seminar In Dublin

Plug: Producing Open Source Software, a new book by Karl Fogel (of the Subversion and CVS projects), readable online as HTML or in ground-up wood formats.

It’s got a whole load of solid-gold good advice on open-source development best
practices, and even includes a section on dealing with the dreaded Reply-To
munging issue.

Looks excellent — this is definitely one to read.

best practices books karl fogel open source projects

This post was written by Justin, source: Producing Open Source Software

This is terrible to write, since I’ve mocked friends who’ve moved to Mac as shiny-object-with-a-price-premium-loving poseurs, but I’m starting to consider it.

In the last two weeks I’ve moved to Open Office which is barely adequate, had spam-virii invasive enough in Thunderbird to trigger Norton alarms continually (but ineffectually), and, as the kicker, just now updated Norton which changed my firewall settings sufficiently to knock me off our home wifi.

Since I had to reclone to get back to native WinXP SP2 Bluetooth support, the trial clock on Norton was reset; they will inevitably ask for money to support the Windows tax, and I will refuse and go to Grisoft. So even this rant is about a temporary problem, but it still rankles.

Where, oh where, is my Linux desktop alternative? That dream of running a highly configurable system on commodity hardware?

The newly converted and devout preach alike of the benefits of the BSD infrastructure underlying OSX, but even with Apple’s announcement of a move to the Intel chipset, industry bets seem to be that Apple will keep the system closed. Where does that really get us?

That’s always what’s consoled me about staying on Windows - at least you have a wide range of kit on which to run your bloated, insecure OS. I can go super light with Japanese notebooks, or I could go beefy with a casemodded gaming machine. Just about every peripheral works. Yeah, it’s worse with Linux, but that’s where the world was headed before all the alpha hackers moved to Mac.

With Apple kit, choice is simulated with a coat of paint and dismissed as not being nearly as cool as thinking different (yet so monolithically). Think different, yes, oh yes - different from commodity pricing pressure of the rest of the industry (but not too different). Best a kind of vertical different that accepts the requirement of a matching set of Mac-dedicated components. I admire it as a marketer, but revile it as a consumer; they free as much as they control.

I’ll post this and reboot (as was requested by Norton), hoping that my wifi settings will be restored automagically. I hardly expect success if I have to play with the settings in their tool. Of course I could always disable it and go for the Windows Firewall.

This post was written by eleanor, source: Mac moves to Intel as the Windows tax grows heavier

This is terrible to write, since I’ve mocked friends who’ve moved to Mac as shiny-object-with-a-price-premium-loving poseurs, but I’m starting to consider it.

In the last two weeks I’ve moved to Open Office which is barely adequate, had spam-virii invasive enough in Thunderbird to trigger Norton alarms continually (but ineffectually), and, as the kicker, just now updated Norton which changed my firewall settings sufficiently to knock me off our home wifi.

Since I had to reclone to get back to native WinXP SP2 Bluetooth support, the trial clock on Norton was reset; they will inevitably ask for money to support the Windows tax, and I will refuse and go to Grisoft. So even this rant is about a temporary problem, but it still rankles.

Where, oh where, is my Linux desktop alternative? That dream of running a highly configurable system on commodity hardware?

The newly converted and devout preach alike of the benefits of the BSD infrastructure underlying OSX, but even with Apple’s announcement of a move to the Intel chipset, industry bets seem to be that Apple will keep the system closed. Where does that really get us?

That’s always what’s consoled me about staying on Windows - at least you have a wide range of kit on which to run your bloated, insecure OS. I can go super light with Japanese notebooks, or I could go beefy with a casemodded gaming machine. Just about every peripheral works. Yeah, it’s worse with Linux, but that’s where the world was headed before all the alpha hackers moved to Mac.

With Apple kit, choice is simulated with a coat of paint and dismissed as not being nearly as cool as thinking different (yet so monolithically). Think different, yes, oh yes - different from commodity pricing pressure of the rest of the industry (but not too different). Best a kind of vertical different that accepts the requirement of a matching set of Mac-dedicated components. I admire it as a marketer, but revile it as a consumer; they free as much as they control.

I’ll post this and reboot (as was requested by Norton), hoping that my wifi settings will be restored automagically. I hardly expect success if I have to play with the settings in their tool. Of course I could always disable it and go for the Windows Firewall.

I got a spiffy new Vaio back in March, which came with a trial edition for Microsoft Office 2003, which I eventually activated and used. I’ve used this sw for years, and probably use more of the power features than 95% the norm, but it’s a classic problem of an over-engineered product. And what is the cost barrier they need to overcome with me? The sub-$100 employee discount version. I’ve installed OpenOffice and we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll need the upgrade, and maybe not.

One thing’s for sure though: the dinosaur campaign is a sure-fire dissuader. I haven’t commented on it previously but it’s been going on for months, and is — bafflingly — still in progress (some choice Flash platitude filled marketing here).

Microsoft exec’s need to revisit The Innovator’s Dilemma to get their thinking back in line with the reality of their market position. If your product has been goldplated to the point where customers no longer see value in the cost and disruption involved in an upgrade, you sure as hell don’t mock them for being… For being what exactly? For being customers who find your past products useful enough to keep wanting to use them?

I am no one’s advertising maven but this is where you’re supposed to tell them why it’s in their absolute money-making interest to upgrade right now. You can’t berate people into product adoption, certainly not in the current climate of business IT investment. The mere fact that this campaign exists is admission that there is no value proposition for customers: they’re seeking to play on emotions of being “behind the times” to sell their upgrade. What’s in it for customers? Features that will probably be never used, and the satisfaction of having “evolved” (to far more memory intensive applications). What’s in it for Microsoft? More money upfront of course, but the more subtle benefit is that every copy will need to be validated (as was not the case previously). From the Microsoft website:

Product activation is a technology created to help protect consumers and software manufacturers by reducing software piracy; it helps verify that you have a genuine, high-quality, virus-free copy of Office XP that has not been used on more personal computers than is permitted by the software license.

And sure, I’m antipiracy, but that’s not a feature that’s valuable to me as a user. Microsoft’s policy of bundling OS with each new pc, yet not allowing license transferability (I think I bought about 4 Windows 2000, and so far 2 Windows XP licenses) doesn’t bode well for user experience during the inevitable sytem restores, reclones, and hardware upgrades.

And upgrading is such a hassle with Microsoft products! I’ve never sat in front of one single install — even reclones — where Outlook has ever behaved and looked exactly the same. It can be argued that’s due to the vicissitudes of Exchange and various service packs and whatever, but it’s just bogus. The amount of customization it takes to make Office usable out of the box is insane - from turning things off (clippy, all that clipboard eyecandy, the pseudo-useful menu hiding) to pointing at defaut directories to configuring my toolbars with additional buttons.

You know, it’s only during upgrades and reinstalls that I really ever feel like a loser for using Microsoft products. That I ever feel like I’m flailing with a large, sensory obstructing dinosaur head on.

Note: in cleaning out my drafts 12-Jun I realized that I both needed to post this item and to write up a real review of the current state of Open Office after having put it through its paces, so I’ve backdated this.

This post was written by eleanor, source: OpenOffice 1.1.4: motivation for switching and review

I got a spiffy new Vaio back in March, which came with a trial edition for Microsoft Office 2003, which I eventually activated and used. I’ve used this sw for years, and probably use more of the power features than 95% the norm, but it’s a classic problem of an over-engineered product. And what is the cost barrier they need to overcome with me? The sub-$100 employee discount version. I’ve installed OpenOffice and we’ll see how it goes. Maybe I’ll need the upgrade, and maybe not.

One thing’s for sure though: the dinosaur campaign is a sure-fire dissuader. I haven’t commented on it previously but it’s been going on for months, and is — bafflingly — still in progress (some choice Flash platitude filled marketing here).

Microsoft exec’s need to revisit The Innovator’s Dilemma to get their thinking back in line with the reality of their market position. If your product has been goldplated to the point where customers no longer see value in the cost and disruption involved in an upgrade, you sure as hell don’t mock them for being… For being what exactly? For being customers who find your past products useful enough to keep wanting to use them?

I am no one’s advertising maven but this is where you’re supposed to tell them why it’s in their absolute money-making interest to upgrade right now. You can’t berate people into product adoption, certainly not in the current climate of business IT investment. The mere fact that this campaign exists is admission that there is no value proposition for customers: they’re seeking to play on emotions of being “behind the times” to sell their upgrade. What’s in it for customers? Features that will probably be never used, and the satisfaction of having “evolved” (to far more memory intensive applications). What’s in it for Microsoft? More money upfront of course, but the more subtle benefit is that every copy will need to be validated (as was not the case previously). From the Microsoft website:

Product activation is a technology created to help protect consumers and software manufacturers by reducing software piracy; it helps verify that you have a genuine, high-quality, virus-free copy of Office XP that has not been used on more personal computers than is permitted by the software license.

And sure, I’m antipiracy, but that’s not a feature that’s valuable to me as a user. Microsoft’s policy of bundling OS with each new pc, yet not allowing license transferability (I think I bought about 4 Windows 2000, and so far 2 Windows XP licenses) doesn’t bode well for user experience during the inevitable sytem restores, reclones, and hardware upgrades.

And upgrading is such a hassle with Microsoft products! I’ve never sat in front of one single install — even reclones — where Outlook has ever behaved and looked exactly the same. It can be argued that’s due to the vicissitudes of Exchange and various service packs and whatever, but it’s just bogus. The amount of customization it takes to make Office usable out of the box is insane - from turning things off (clippy, all that clipboard eyecandy, the pseudo-useful menu hiding) to pointing at defaut directories to configuring my toolbars with additional buttons.

You know, it’s only during upgrades and reinstalls that I really ever feel like a loser for using Microsoft products. That I ever feel like I’m flailing with a large, sensory obstructing dinosaur head on.

Note: in cleaning out my drafts 12-Jun I realized that I both needed to post this item and to write up a real review of the current state of Open Office after having put it through its paces, so I’ve backdated this.