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.
Domain hosting pain
A friend of mine registered a domain with a large on-line provider. Then she asked for help from her friends for advice on hosting her website. She’s not a technical web expert, so this is perfectly reasonable.
I responded with what I did and that fact that I work for a hosted services company and we were a nominet registrar like the large online provider. She didn’t know that the work I did involved that.
I also gave her some advice regarding the fact that the large provider would probably provide web-hosting as part of the deal or for a bit extra per month. Of course I did also tell my friend that we could host the web site and email, although it would be easier for us to administer the hosting and any backend changes (like moving a server or changing to a shiny new one) if we were the registrar for the domain and could look after the DNS records directly. Otherwise there there would always be an additional delay in any domain changes. Either way it was up to her.
My friend decided that she would prefer my company hosting it as at least she can trust me. Meanwhile she had a rather frustrating afternoon trying to get the password to access her current hosted providers cpanel as they had not sent the password yet. She is also trying to get them to change the tag to us. The provider should do this for free, but not everyone does. A domain owner can change the tag through nominet itself (if the domain is a uk top level domain). However this can cost 11.50 per domain. This I suspect is because an ordinary domain owner is not a member of nominet so there is a charge.
The help desk for this company also charged 50p for phoning their support. Their online pages were also running rather slowly (during office hours). Needless to say my friend is less than impressed with their service so far. My friend still doesn’t have her control panel password.
What annoys me is that if I thought to actually let people know what I do and socialise more both online and offline, I could find out what my friends need and either help them directly or point them at the appropriate resources.
So for a start I’m posting an article that I wrote for a local magazine. It’s a basic article and not very technical.
At somepoint I will also put the link here to my personal blog. I’ve been under a rock for a bit too long, and it’s caused some pain points for others who did not necessarily have to go through the frustration.
Social Innovation Camp Scotland
I’m reviewing my notes from helping out at Social Innovation Camp. Mainly routing Brett where he needed to go and registering web-domains for the projects that needed them.
It was interesting looking at the projects that came out of the ideas submitted to the camp. Already the projects are gaining momentum after the final presentation. There was one winner, although a few of the other projects are already looking at ways of keeping going.
Other people have blogged about the projects already.
I took some notes of what I thought about each project and I’ll put them down just now.
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Fixthebuses
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Angelfish
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Wee Day out
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Flocklocal
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Citipedia
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MyPolice (Winner of Social Innovation Camp Scotland 2009)
Website link : hitch ‘n bitch
Also called hitch ‘n bitch. It’s a mechanism for getting realtime information for where the buses are. You text a number with with the format of
fixthebuses@gmail.com <route no> <current location>
It will return how long it will take for the next bus to be there and will also give you the time for the next bus on your route to be there.
You can also do this with the web interface. What the web interface also does is allow you to complain about how long the bus is taking or what you think about the bus service. So it can be a feedback service as well.
However as the fixthebus team pointed out, this is not a technical problem, the data is out there. The problem is that the data is locked up within the transport providers own systems. They are unwilling to open up that realtime data as they see that data as valuable commercially. The team got the live data by scraping the data. It was not based on timetable data. Admittedly you could use the timetable data and compare it to the actual realtime data.
This service could be valuable to the bus companies and the local council to pinpoint problem routes. Not just interms of how late the bus is, it could take passenger comments about how unsafe they feel at certain times of night. It could look at how traffic at certain times of day affects the bus routes and become a planner to advise passengers of alternative routes.
Brett and I have watched this team put all this together in such a short while. The texting service was live for the presentation. It only covered the Edinburgh area at that point, although I feel that it could expand nationwide.
What’s more you can help! Yes you can, how can you help? Campaign for the Freedom of live bus information. Not just the timetables say where they should be, but where the buses are at any given point in time.
Is a community microlending project. There are other successful microlenders out there so they did have some good precidents. They seemed to concentrate more on the design, business plan and marketing then they did on the technical part. So while I liked the concept of encouraging local people to lend small amounts to local businesses to enable them to improve the local community, I’m not sure that it technically followed the remit of social innovation camp.
One part of the presentation I found interesting was to get people that were savvy with computing and social networks to be place in each participating community would be connectors and would guide people who were not familiar with the technology on how to use it. I was reminded of Brett’s Internet Tours that he told me about back in the mid nineties.
Twitter link: weedayout
Now the idea of listing accessible toilets did touch me as my mother is disabled. When I was visiting South Africa it was interesting noting what attractions we could and could not wheel her wheelchair to.
If you have to care for a severely disabled person then you will have to plan any days out around what toilet facilities there are.
Wee day out is designed to map accessible toilets throughout Scotland. However this is no mere listing on googlemaps. What this will also do is enable feedback to those toilet owners and to other disabled users. So if your toilet is locked and the key to open that toilet is up a flight of stairs in the security guard’s office, it’s not very accessible is it! This tool will enable disabled users and their carers to feedback pictures and comments about sites with accessible toilets. This will also mean that other sites that aren’t listed on existing accessible maps but do have accessible facilities can be listed.
Accessible attractions can also be listed as nearby to the toilets, after all you would not go on a day out just to go to the loo!
Twitterlink : flocklocal
Flocklocal is the idea of utilising flashmobbing to do good. It’s purpose is to utilise impulse volunteering. The domain is flocklocal.net.
The only data that is stored on the site is your email address and your avatar. No other data will be collected. The team wish to encourage impulse participation by publicity with career fairs, facebook, twitter etc.
So when you logon to flocklocal you can register yourself as a volunteer or register a local project or event that needs people. The flocklocal team demonstrated that concept by setting up a flock for a local garden project.
Twitterlink: citipedia
Utilising google maps and a unique interface to allow people within communities to target unused spaces within cities and towns. You can enter in where the area is and then select various components to plan a park. Each park component like a see-saw or a pond has a cost associated with it.
Utilising this tool you can start to create a plan for the public space along with costings and use it as part of a campaign to get the derelict space used for every one rather than creating yet another soul-less estate of lego houses.
Twitterlink : mypolice
- MyPolice is designed to be a feedback service about the police. It came out of a very personal incident to the team leader as a friend’s flat had been broken into and she did not feel satisfied with the way that the police liased with her about it. The police do not always respond well to complaints, although by the same token the public can also use this mechanism to provide compliments about a police station or officer.One person had felt powerless to complain to the Police after a protester was jailed for 7 days without charge for doing nothing more than peaceful protest.
The public will be able to leave details of their experience with the police and the stories will be mapped to the given location of the stories. People can leave a name or be annoymous. Others can comment on the stories.
There will also be a local page where people can read existing stories about the local policeforce. There will be moderation on the stories and these will be sent on to the police. They have planned for ethical guidelines for the moderators.
MyPolice wish to get the word out to victim support, CIB etc. They feel that the site must be independant of the Police, but they wish to work closely with Police Organisations.
The Police are of course concerned that some people may plant false stories or negative feedback.
As the Judges deliberated, I was chatting to one of the team members for mypolice. She was already thinking of alternative options incase they did not win. She felt that they would need a cooling off period and then would try to raise funding. One thing she and I both wondered was how long the losing projects keep going. I remembered that useful visitors seemed to be moving along. Certainly compared to the last winning project the good gym.
Here’s the video that thepeoplespeak produced about this camp.
While I’m glad that MyPolice won, I was really rooting for fixthebuses. This is because before I learned to drive I took alot of public transport from Aberdeen to Edinburgh and used it for getting about in Aberdeen. So anything that can aid the use of public transport and is a simple text service I love the idea of.
I did enjoy the weekend and would be interesting in helping out at another camp in the future.
SICAMP will be happening in Central Eastern Europe and also in Austrailia.
SICAMP Twitterlink: sicamp
Social Innovation Camp Website: http://www.sicamp.org/
@Social Innovation Camp
I’m presently sitting in the Saltire Centre at Glasgow Caledonian University. This weekend it’s hosting Social Innovation Camp Scotland. This is the first Social Innovation camp hosted outside of Social Innovation Camp’s Headquarters.
But what is Social Innovation Camp? It is a project designed to link up various professionals such as designers, entrepreneurs and computing experts with people who have ideas to fit a specific social need. The idea is to help the outside community, and should utilise social networks and mobile technology. In the words of their Social Innovation Camp? It is a project designed to link up various professionals such as designers, entrepreneurs and computing experts with people who have ideas to fit a specific social need. The idea is to help the outside community, and should utilise social networks and mobile technology. In the words of their twitter bio:
“Bit of an experiment in using social tech for social change”
The camp picks six ideas that have been submitted by the public. You can see this particular camp’s six ideas here. The teams are made up by what people are interested in. People can move between the teams over the weekend. They then have 48 hours to get their idea up and running with some marketing and some sort of online application.
Here is the winning presentation from the last camp. The Good Gym.
The Friday night was a getting to know you affair with the Saturday being the start of the proper work. They will have until 14:00 hours on Sunday to discuss the strategy for their
I’m involved as Gladserv has offered a years hosting as a prize to the winner. We are also providing additional services for this camp.
So far we have:
- Made sure that developers can tunnel out of the restricted point to get to their developer areas
- Registered two domains fixthebuses.com and citipedia.co.uk
- Set up 3 virtual machines for 3 of the teams
It’s only just past mid-day now.
