Friday, April 29, 2005

Bob's Rant #1

Mr. Bush, No Infomercials on Thursday Nights, Please!
I follow 3 TV programs: Survivor, The Apprentice, and CSI: Criminial Intent. The first 2 air on Thursday night. I sure wish Mr. Bush, could do his infomercials about his political agenda to which he is garnering little support on some other night beside Thursday. Perhaps, he should find a better, different way to sell his agenda. Or, perhaps he needs a better agenda and a more inclusive style, but I digress. The bottom-line is, leave my Thursday nights alone.

Friday, April 22, 2005

What is the long-term impact of Open Source?

I added a new comment on April 22, 2005.

As a technologist who makes his living writing, planning, managing source code and its artifacts, I continually ponder the long term impact of the seemingly on-going intrusion (not meant to be a pejorative term) of open source. Open Source brings lots of innovation and is represented by some 82,000 projects on Sourceforge alone. In my professional capacity, we are embracing and participating in more and more open source projects. In fact, I chair our "Open Source Steering Committee". The purpose and objective of this committee is to make sure that we don't inadvertently expose our proprietary and copyright protected intellectual property (IP) from becoming obligingly covered by an open source license and thereby free. We intend to ensure we participate to meet a reciprocal responsibility too. Particularly, for those open source projects we choose to use, we fully intend to encourage our teams to contribute back to the projects. Again, taking care not to blend our copyright protected content from being placed into these open source projects. So, this amounts to reviewing each target open source project for its strategic value to our overall solutions and services to ensure:

  • The license does not create any concerns for use with a commercial package
  • The project fits nicely with our architectural and business goals
  • We can use and contribute to the project without inappropriately blending proprietary and open source

This week, I introduced a topic and a speaker at conference on the subject of open source. The conference was attended by customers using our software. Most of them are probably using open source internally in various ways. I basically led with the corporate and somewhat conservative lines. My part included references to the pervasiveness of open source in terms of its breadth of function, reliability, adoption, etc. But, I didn't go too deep or make it sound like the greatest thing since sliced bread. The next speaker actually leads an open source project. He went deeper and to some folks may have sounded as if the whole world could be managed on open source software (he didn't go quite that far really).

Nonetheless, the conversations this presentation kicked off amongst the managers and executives (that was the audience) was thought provoking and interesting to me. For example, one person mentioned the "tragedy of the commons". If open source is designed, built, and managed by programmers working for free as driven by their passion, what stops the entire process from imploding? If it is not the demands of the market that drives creativity, then how does the artisan make a living? I am sure I don't have all of the answers for these questions. Does anyone? This assumes, of course, that open source levies a large threat to commercial software enterprises. Or, that commercial enterprises can not both embrace a profitable and market driven business model while maintaining professional technologists that participate in open source projects as part of their job. What is the relative make up of the "typical" open source project in terms of the number of contributors that are contributing for free versus those contributing as part of their paid job?

As I peruse the multitudes of companies and individuals participating, using, and influencing open source software development, it seems to me that companies are experimenting with a variety of business models. From projects that began as traditional shrinkwrap software that open sourced the software and built their business plan around services, to large traditional players (like IBM and others) that clearly spend investment dollars and time on open source projects. I assume these traditional players are hoping to drive others sales (hardware, services, etc.) by increasing the attractiveness of particular and targeted open source packages. But, where is it going? What is the implication for large, conservative software vendors and IT departments in large corporations? Should they help maintain and increase the momentum behind software development processes that at times seems to imply that all software should be free (at other times this seems to be more of an objective not an implication)? So, I am going to be reading the following in my spare time to try to formulate an opinion of my own:

Is it ethical for a software vendor that earns its living by selling software to take advantage of open source to enhance the value its customers get while using the open source package alongside the commercially produce package? The lesser general public license and the BSD license would certainly lead one to think this is the case.

I wonder where this is all going for my industry (systems for financial services-insurance). If open source continues to provide viable elements for growing sectors of software stacks, does this begin to threaten the very nature of the labor force that builds and maintains software for a living? Or, does the mechanisms for how money is made from writing code simply change, and if so, how? Don't most programmers earn their pay today by meeting requirements defined, planned, and managed by non-programmers? I met a prolific participant in the open source community that said that one of the exciting parts of participating in open source as a programmer is to create a more technically pure and quality result then one can create at their paid job? At work, one must write code not only in response to requirements and quality standards, but on a specified time schedule. So, what happens when the "right" solution will take too long? Hum...create the best you can in the time you have....

More ramblings to come... (I will add them as Comments to this post - others may comment too)

Tuesday, April 12, 2005

Blog? What to blog?

A friend suggested I get involved in the blogsphere. I have been a lurker of sorts. Mostly viewing blogs when I got hits based on searches. But, I am forced now to ask myself, "why blog".

Why Blog?

  • Like many times in my life, I am going to just start [to blog] and see what emerges. I fear that this may be yet one more opportunity for me to sharpen my narcissistic tendencies. I hope not. It may provide me an opportunity to keep a log of my life that I will appreciate and reminisce about as I age. Perhaps, others will view these posts and find comparisons and contrasts to their own lives. Who knows where that could lead?
  • My father-in-law and others I respect keep paper logs and find that doing so adds value to their life. Of course, these logs are private and not shared. So, one of my first questions about blogging is: How much should I reveal about myself? I expect that I will wax and wan overtime. Thus, I will post stuff only to later edit and delete it.
  • I have a strong interest in technology, especially software engineering. Maybe, this blog will be an opportunity for others to join me in my constant voyage of discovery in this realm.