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.
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.
The Public are Getting Open Source Aware
Occasionally when I’m out and about I get very pleasantly surprised that some people know about what sort of culture Gladserv operates in. It gives me validation and confirms that I’m in this culture for the right reasons.
I was at a close friends birthday party last Saturday and was chatting to a very enthusiastic lady.
As I said a bit about Gladserv being a hosted business solutions company and what that entailed she became quite excited. She knew what Open Source was all about. She loved the idea of the data being fully accessible and being able to get other people to make changes to the programs that access that data.
She works in the Oil Industry and analyses marine exploration data. They have to get programmers in on occasion to get extra bits of data that isn’t being analysed in a meaningful way. She felt that the software she worked with 10 years ago was better for her to work with than what she works for now.
This isn’t just a case of the interface being different. It’s a case of what data is being given out, how the software analyses it. How that data is being used.
Of course with any software development that’s the trouble really. Software companies operating under the strategy of improvement can gradually focus on changing an application so much that it’s really not usable for the customer that it’s aimed at in the first place. Businesses end up changing their processes to use the software.
The customers own data is locked up and held to ransom. Partly because of licencing, partly because of the bother of moving that data away from that particular piece of software.
That does a disservice to both the software company (who will not get and in some cases care to hear feedback from the customer) and to the customer. Holding a customer’s data to ransom may be legal but it certainly isn’t ethical. It’s tantamount to blackmail. Customers get trapped in a never-ending cycle of upgrades and data conversion as software developers change what format the data should be saved in.
But I ask any software developer, regardless of whether you follow the Proprietary or Open Source models, to listen to a word of warning. Your clients are waking up to this. Your customers are not just thinking about the “free” part of Free Software in terms of cost of a license. They are starting to consider the freedom of being able to do what they like with their data.
I welcome this.
Success in the Doric Open
The Doric Open is an Open Fencing competition. It’s website was created using Joomla , and is hosted for us by Gladserv. I’m the Secretary of the Open so the site’s my fault. However all of the committee can input content into this site.
I’d like to thank Brett Sheffield for his continuing support of the Doric Open. I love Open Source. It’s helped to create a really good site.
I include below the press release for this years competition from Euan Michie, chairman of the Doric Open Committee.
Messaging Forum in Edinburgh
Two and a half years ago I stood in a newly opened office hosting a get together of people in Scotland who used and sold Open Source products. We all had to introduce ourselves with a little bit of what we did. I introduced myself as somewhat of a newbie who would be in a position to decide whether I would use Open Source in my business or not.
I am there now.
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Changing Focus in my work.
I have recently changed jobs and industry.
In my former job I was supporting a windows environment in the Oil and Gas industry. The company was fairly closed minded to Open Source Technology. However that did not mean that we ignored Open source entirely.
I have found that being general support in any company means that you will inevitably end up supporting user’s own machines, or they will ask you for advice. Sometimes they even ask you for a buckshee (pirated) copy of Office or windows. I do not condone pirating of software. So I would give them copies of open office, which my boss supported as we didn’t have the office licences for home use. If you want to find free alternatives to paid software, look at my blogroll.
Some useful Resources for Ubuntu beginners
Those of you who decide to take the plunge to try Ubuntu might be wondering where to start to get advice and to get the most out of your system. To this end I thought that I would give you a few links to some on-line resources and some books that I’m reading and using as any issues come up.
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Why I started using Linux
I don’t think I’ve ever stated why I started using Linux in a post. I thought that I’d started using it 6 months ago but I’ve been using it for about a year. I’d already started to go down the route of Open Source Software around about 2 years ago when I started to use firefox. I’d gone there after using Opera for a while. Yes there were teething problems, but the tabbed browsing along with the staggering amount of plug ins convinced me to stay. Even though Internet Explorer 7 has tabbed browsing, I think that the tabs are a bit to big and clunky. Plus in Microsoft’s aim for a simple GUI, it seems to be twice as hard to find options or the other useful menus that it has. It also doesn’t like Outlook Webmail in terms of the security. Not a good thing for my company’s external access to email.
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Ubuntu Linux and Coffeestayne
I’ve recently rebuilt Coffeestayne’s PC again. This is partly because of a hardware fault and partly because his Windows XP installation has always been a bit ropey. One factor that did not help was that every time my little brother borrowed Coffeestayne’s pc to go on the internet, he would use windows messenger. This meant that despite all of Norton and my attempts to block the dangers, the PC would be infected with spyware, malware and viruses. Even the firewall (admittedly a software one) couldn’t stop them. Thankfully Coffeestayne is on dial up but still.
So I have cried enough after a very difficult recovery of Coffeestayne’s data from a very corrupted hard drive. We put in an 80GB hard drive that Coffeestayne purchased and I have installed Ubuntu. I’ll post about ubuntu later for anyone that is curious.
