The folly of programming closed source after opening up WWW.
Over a year ago there had been some excitement in the August 2009 what with the Open Source Awards being announced and a certain software house offering “free software up to 100k”. The software isn’t really free though as you can be restricting yourself to their file formats and paying for it later.
On the 1st of September 2009 I went along to hear Robert Calliau talk about the internet at the Runrev conference.
The talk was entitled “Tale of two Revolutions”.
It was a very interesting talk that resonated with a high percentage of the audience. Robert summarized the pre-history of the web and how it got to the inital stage of hypercards, the World Wide Web etc.
However the most important part of the speech was about what Calliau did that was most important for the world wide web. He spoke to CERNs Lawyers and persuaded them to let the protocol and development be opened up. So that every one could develop tools to use it and access the data on it. When Robert told us this, a sudden rousing round of applause came up. Mr Calliau was gratified by that. I’m not entirely sure he understood why he got that round of applause though. There were a number of Open Source users and developers within the room. More than a few were ruby developers who had heard of the event from Techmeetup.
So later on when Robert Started talking about how programming language syntax can be a real bind and how good runtime was caused a bit of disquiet among some of the developers. RunRev is a natural language programming language. You can get free compilers for it, however the underlining engine is closed source. Runtime is a small edinburgh company with over 20 employees. Within any propriatory language there is always a danger that the company can get taken over and the language or product disappears after aquirement by another company..
At least with Open Source you can look at what’s under the code. You have a freedom of choice as to whether you develop a program using that code your or paying a developer to do it for you.
I’m concerned that we are going to repeat 30 years of history again. I’m all for making computing easier for the masses and helping start ups. But perhaps instead of using tools like runrev and offers of propriatary software for free for a long trial period we are locking in the next generation again to only having a few very expensive choices. I do not mean just in terms of expense in cash, but expense in time with trying to get old formats to talk to new formats. Especially if the standard that they are based on is locked up within Intellectual property. Free Software does not just mean free as in no cost. It means the freedom to do what you want with the information that you are using.
Look back to my post about the user who was very excited about Open Source. It was not the cost aspect. It was the possibility of being able to access her data in a meaningful way to her. Not what a programmer thought was meaningful.
The Dangers of Easy Electronic Communication
I have just created another twitter account so that I can post to LinkedIn using Twitter. There are a few reasons for this. But it’s mainly to enable me to update my network status for LinkedIn from Tweetdeck.
I like Tweetdeck. Admittedly Tweetdeck is not Open Source. I got introduced to it at Social Innovation Camp Scotland 2009. I run multiple Twitter accounts from it, some personal, some organizational. It’s an extremely powerful tool enabling you to follow mentions of a subject or users. Plus I can be logged in to multiple accounts at once. It’s running nicely on my upgraded Karmic Koala Kubuntu Laptop as it runs on Adobe Air so it’s not a tool dependent on the operating system, you just have to make sure that you can run Adobe applications on your chosen system.
The trouble is that so many social networks are actually trying to connect to each other now. Since I am trying to be more accessible to groups that I am professionally socializing with I want to connect up with them in anyway that I can. Although then there is the worry of posting the wrong thing, at the wrong time, to the wrong audience. Admittedly this could still happen on Tweetdeck, I’ve added in my Facebook and Myspace accounts as well. You trade off on a higher risk for more convenience.
I have a net-name that I have been using for years. For the non business socializing, it was used at first for all of my on-line interactions. It’s easy enough for someone to google that and know that it’s me. Which is not always a good thing. I’ve been using the onepict blog to post about Open Source and how it affects my and my dealings with other people. I’m very easy to find on-line now. I don’t however want to pollute my on-line CV (which LinkedIn effectively is) with my social tweets. Especially the ones from down the pub.
So I have created a new twitter account @onepict. My LinkedIn profile points at this website and I have a LinkedIn button on here. People will still know who I am and will connect my other on-line identity to me. In-terms of what people can find on the Internet, a mildly net-savvy person will find you. They will be able to join the dots. I don’t however have to put a great big light bulb flashing sign on my CV about my past net history though. They need to work a bit harder than that.
Once I have some more tweets that are appropriate I will change the Twitter feed from my @shandydann one. I’m planning a more personal website that’s for the non Open Source part of my life anyway so the @shandydann Twitterfeed will sit on my shandydann.com site anyway.
Sometimes I wonder if I’ve gone too far with the on-line mullarkey.
When Record Companies get it right
I had an extremely nice surprise last week. I had recently purchased David Bowie’ s Platinum Collection as I’m going through a bit of a Bowie phase at the moment. I’d also bought Reality as I like the track, Bring me the Disco King.
I’d done the usual process of converting CD tracks to MP3 so that I could listen to it on my MP3 Player and it didn’t work. The tracks got all mushed up so that New Killer Star mushed into under pressure. I got really annoyed when Fashion mushed into the Alabama Song. So I loaded the CD again to check it was readable getting fully ready to go into fury mode with Amazon if the CD was damaged.
Then I was pleasantly surprised. EMI/RCA had not only made the CD readable by a CD player, they had encoded copies of the tracks as FLAC, MP3 and Ogg and left them on the CD. Admittedly I had to copy the OGGs and convert them to MP3 as the MP3s didn’t seem to like being copied over and had static. The OGG tracks were fine though.
I have no idea who took that decision for them to be bothered encoding the different sound formats but I applaud you, whether it was David Bowie himself or a faceless record company executive. I like buying CD’s, I’m part of a dying generation who likes music but also likes having a physical memento. I like being able to display my record collection (at the moment they are in drawers until I get a new rack). I like the simplicity of my CD player and being able to just put the CD in and pressing play. I don’t care how simple an IPOD is. My CD player is plugged into a 5:1 sound system and the interface is incredibly simple. Far simpler than when I wish to play music on my computer or my mp3 player. I want the best of both worlds I want to just have the CD put in my car or my CD player and have it just work, but when I am out and about I want to have the portability of my MP3 player. I need music when I’m exercising at the gym or cycling from Dunfermline to Alloa.
I would like more CD’s like this please. EMI/RCA should have been shouting this from the rooftops. They should have put it on the sleeve notes in large letters! They should have told us and keep telling us that they had encoded this and all someone had to do was sync it to the player of their choice that played the format of their choice.
I love Albums and listening to the progression of the tracks as they are cut, I like getting the vision of the journey that musicians take you through. I’m lazy though at the moment, I don’t want to cut a special power mix that I go through on my excercise routine. I want to pick an album, sync it to my player and go.
The reason I like Open Source is the freedom of choice. EMI/RCA thank you again for doing that to Bowies Platinum collection, do it again for more of your copyrighted music!
I can now go on a long bike ride at the weekends with the Jean Genie encouraging me to go just that bit faster and further. HURRAH!
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Music CD mentioned and bought :
Open Source is freedom of Choice, not necessarily a cheaper option.
I was speaking to a Windows Support engineer on the phone last week who uses linux for some aspects of the enterprise needs. He asked me if I use Open Source Software because it is cheaper than the alternatives. I told him no, it’s for the freedom of choice.
I have the freedom to install, configure the software and to adapt it for my needs. I can also choose to make any modifications available to anyone else by contributing it back. Well I don’t as I’m not a coder, but I can feed back any problems that I have as a bug report, and can ask someone else to code it and get them to contribute their code back.
Admittedly Open Source can be cheaper if you think of the code itself not costing anything. However nothing is free, time and therefore money will have been spent creating and modifying that code. To have adequate technical support and installation businesses should be prepared to value the product and the support provided. With Open Source you have the freedom of choice. You can choose to look at the online documentation and the wealth of technical books out there to implement what you need, you can also choose to support the Open Source Product. Or you can choose to hire an experienced professional (or even pay for training in house) to implement and support the product for you. Saying a product is cheaper can be interpreted that the product is somehow lesser than the competition. I do not feel that this is always the case, superior products can develop from close contact between developers and their clients. This is the value add that Open Source can bring to the table.
At the end of the day, whether a product is Open Source or proprietary, any business needs to consider how critical the product is to their business processes and invest in the product accordingly. I’ve come across excellent installations of Windows Server/Exchange with full shared calendering and other communication enhancements, but I’ve also some across some very basic and flaky installations of exchange that just handle the email. It all depends on how it was installed and how good the documentation is. Yes, and experience is also needed in order to support it.
It’s about the experts you hire to install and maintain your business software and information. At the same time businesses also need to consider investing in training. There is always a risk that you may loose the person to another role, but if you don’t train your employees then you can restrict yourself to any new starts that tick the technical boxes rather than the people boxes. You can get loyal employees that come back or never leave but any business needs to be prepared to invest in them as people. Not just the training but in building a group dynamic.
Any investment into any new technology needs to be paid for in some way. People have to eat, if you want professional support and some one to take your problems away from you so that you can concentrate on your business then you have to at least pay a bit for that time. Larger support companies like for example a large hosting provider cannot afford to hire someone who knows everything about the client and cares enough to help them. It’s not in their business plan, if a business want’s technical expertise and hand holding then it has to be paid for. Most people will not need to contact them either, until somethings gone wrong, or a task needs to be carried out. Then be prepared to wait and be charged while you wait to be connected.
If you have an Open Source product that you use and you have the spare cash, consider a donation to that friendly developer who’s taking your bug report and improving your product. They will appreciate that effort.
Friendly Technical experts have to eat too you know.
Really need to check the site more.
Apoligies to people actually reading this blog.
It’s been a bit of a hectic month with checking google analytics for the doric open and looking at the stats for for shandydann.com last week and February so far I’ve had people from Brasilia to Castlenau le Lez stumble across this blog. I was checking the site as I was about to post another Ubuntu Post. The site was down. Luckily my host just happens to be across the room so after I whined for about a second he fixed it. Somehow the wordpress database password became unset. So he reset it.
I have a few other projects that I need to do this week as well including PAL. There’s a few other livejournal posts that I want to make that aren’t really relevant to this blog. There are a few other tasks to finish as well.
I’ve been meaning to update this for a while now. The post’s been in draft form for a while now although there has been a holiday in Madeira as well so I shall be updating the blog in the next few days.
