On The Margins

Friday October 27, 2006

[ Code ] Innovation Communities and Open Source Software

For a brief but a very useful history of open source software, see chapter 7 ("Innovation Communities") of Eric von Hippel's Democratizing Innovation (also available online) under Creative Commons ("Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.0") license. Von Hippel underlines the user-based innovation communities and presents open source communities as a prime example.

2006-10-27 18:12:21.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Monday September 04, 2006

[ Code ] Brevity

Having been raised on spinach, many may end up hating it.

Having been raised on FORTRAN and C, I find solace in brevity, constructs that do away with loops and object orientation. C can be very brief but I see nothing of object orientation in it. FORTRAN of my time had neither characteristics. C++ added the object orientation but only Smalltalk and then Java made it easy enough to use.

Recently, one of my office neighbor's asked me what I thought was distinguishing about Ruby. Without hesitation, I was surprised at my own quick response, given that I'm still learning about the language: "brevity." Of course, Ruby is not for everyone. One can enjoy it more with a combined understanding of object-oriented, functional, script and high-level programming, and an appreciation of how a compiler might have been written for it. A desire for brevity and a positive mental attitude towards it will also help.

What I like is when the code speaks for itself, and that can be done in almost all programming languages.

2006-09-04 20:58:31.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Friday August 25, 2006

[ Code ] Just for the Record

Just for the record, it seems that satellite news programming can be banned much more effectively in the U.S. than in any other place in the world. (I had written about this particular case earlier.)

2006-08-25 23:15:06.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Saturday August 19, 2006

[ Code ] Another Law Blogger

While those who follow copyright issues and other legal topics surrounding new technologies are sure to run to Lawrence Lessig's blog and find a ton of relevant material to consume, another professorial law blog that might be worth following for those interested in patent issues might be that of Beth Noveck, professor of law at New York Law School.

Recently on her blog, she has been proposing wiki based commnity reviews of patent applications.

While this is an ineresting idea, it is not clear to me whether it will reduce the work of the patent office.  An immediate question: Will there be even more information to digest, leading to an information overload and to mis-information? 

It is highly likely professor Noveck has addressed this and similar questions in her writings under the topic of "patent and innovation."

Here is another question, can professor Noveck patent the idea of community patent review on wikis?

If not, who was the one who first proposed it or something like it? What evidence do we have? And what about the question of durability of paper compared to digital information, raised by others, like John Seely Brown and David Duguid in The Social Life of Information, not to mention myself, earlier here, on some other aspects of the paper "trail"?

And now that we're talking about patents and shameless plugs, here's one for me, which I just found when I typed my name and "patent" into Google. Search for my name in this Nr. 6052 edition of Patents and Design Journal from the U.K. It is good to know more about patent GB2391091.

Endnotes:
Lessig points to this style sheet for turning blog entries into letters to the Congress.

2006-08-19 22:38:35.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Friday August 18, 2006

[ Code ] Test, Test and Test Again

I wrote about the upcoming test marathon for Apache Derby 10.2 here.

Good products always involve great testing efforts.

This goes back to the early years of the industry.

General Motors board, in the first couple of decades of the 20th centry, implemented a plan for its famous GM Testing Grounds because the copper-cooled engine produced less than satisfactory results and because the importance of quality control in gaining market share was very, very visible to GM leaders.

In software industry, tests have been a main-stay. Notice the ratio of testers to developers at Microsoft as outlined by Michael Cusumano in his books.

Quality and testing, while sometimes taken for child's play by some developers, involves a very high art that imposes discipline, good, repeatable results and acceptability constraints.

2006-08-18 12:52:44.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Friday August 11, 2006

[ Code ] The Whole Point of the Dictionary

2006-08-11 16:36:44.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Wednesday August 09, 2006

[ Code ] Open Source Licenses

Here's a listing of various open source licenses.
(Thanks go to a Sun colleague who pointed me to this resource.)

Networks, Code

2006-08-09 07:50:00.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Thursday August 03, 2006

[ Code ] A Nice Little Introduction to Programming

Chris Pine's Learning to Program is a gentle start and a well-written guide on elementary concepts in programming.

Chris has picked Ruby for this book. In fact, he says he wrote the book because of Ruby.

2006-08-03 15:06:27.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday July 25, 2006

[ Code ] Open Source Mantras

This week, sun.com is hosting open source mantras by Simon Phipps. The article is a great read and touches on all the essentials.

Simon will also be sharing his ideas at OSCON, Portland Oregon, Thursday, July 27.

For similar topics, you can also try to read Sun's white paper on open source licensing, my earlier note on the economics of open source and on the evolutionary advantage of open source.

2006-07-25 15:31:18.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Sunday July 16, 2006

[ Code ] Equal, But Not Equal Before The Law

This vacation time has been very important to me because I have had the good fortune to visit my brother who lives in Turkey. This is the brother with whom I had been unable to visit since the summer of 2001, when my whole family last spent a month in Kalkan, Turkey, where he lives with his Turkish wife and daughter and owns and operates an art shop.

Now that I've started, let me tell you a bit more.

I've resided in the U.S. since 1979, and my two brothers have settled in two other countries---one has settled in Germany since 1986. He is an architect and designer. The other has settled in Turkey since 1984 (or was it 1983?). He is a city planner, painter and store owner. Both of them left for these countries prior to their university education. Both have masters degrees in their fields of study. Both have been recognized by their peers as accomplished and creative. Both have abided by the laws, formed families and supported them. Both are my brothers. We share the same parents and grand parents. We were born in the same city, went to same high school and lived in the same homes.

However, they have not been treated equally before the law--or at least the U.S. law, if such a law exists--when it comes to their rights to visit me, and my rights to have them visit me in my place of residence.

This is a very simple, and one can argue, one of the most basic human rights, i.e. the right to have family members visit you where you live. (On one extreme, most prisoners in the U.S. have such visitation rights by law.) Anything less would be considered inhuman.

Yes, the case is simple and definitive.

My brother who lives in Germany can travel to the U.S. as he wishes and has done so in the past to visit me and my family.

My other brother, who lives in Turkey, has never been able to visit me in the U.S. If my memory serves me right, he has requested to be granted a visa on three occasions (all going back to seven years earlier or before), and on every one of these occasions his requests have been denied. We no longer trouble ourselves with these requests. We know the automatic answer already--denial--so, why bother brother?

Where is the justice in these denials, and why should my brother and I have no right to visit each other in my place of residence, and why should I have to write a weblog entry about this, and why should I have to bother to go to a state senator or a congressional representative in order to make an attempt to assert and bring this self-evident human right to stand against all odds and, most probably, as a special case?

(In closing, it may be worth noting that Ms. Dianne Feinstein, our esteemed senator from California, has been behind harsher measures designed to deny visas to people from Iran and several other Muslim countries. Her proposals have continued to baffle and puzzle me if not other people of similar heritage.)

2006-07-16 15:27:46.0 -- Comments [2] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Sunday January 29, 2006

[ Code ] The Mind of the Maker

Frederick P. Brooks, Jr., in his essay The Mythical Man-Month, refers to Dorothy Sayers' The Mind of the Maker. Sayers divides creative activity into three stages: the idea, the implementation, the interaction.

The idea stage occurs outside of time and space. It represents an ideal of what is to be made. The implementation stage occurs in the confines of time and space and has to come to grips with the limitations of the medium used to realize an implementation. The interaction stage begins when that which is made arrives at the hands of its users.

Brooks notes that the medium of implementation for programming has proved relatively tractable compared to that for other creative work. This tractability, along with the positive, theoretical aspect of the idea stage, Brooks takes to be the sources of over-optimistic estimates in programming projects.

Brooks' other important insight has to do with the simple fact that not all "men" are equal and that not all tasks can be partitioned into perfectly parallel pieces whose accomplishment requires no communication among those who work in parallel. In fact, addition of resources to a project often pushes its delivery date farther back.

2006-01-29 18:01:16.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday January 24, 2006

[ Code ] Gonzales vs. Google

FindLaw has posted U.S. Department of Justice motion against Google. (You might want to check FindLaw's Law and Internet pages.)

Among other things, Gonzales is asking Google to turn over "a multi-stage random sample of one million URL's," and "the text of each search string entered onto Google’s search engine over a one-week period (absent any information identifying the person who entered such query)."

The Internet, is the greatest distribution, copy and search machine in the world.

2006-01-24 08:56:34.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Monday December 19, 2005

[ Code ] Open Source Jahrbuch

If you know German and want to read an European perspective on Open Source, you might consider turning to the Open Source Jahrbuch 2005. (This link comes courtesy of Craig Russell, a.k.a. the father of JDO, who also just recently led an Apache project of the same name out of incubation.)

The Jahrbuch, in its 498 page length (available for free in parts as well as in whole), touches on everything related to open source: case studies, technologies, economics, political and social aspects, open content and open innovation.

The chapter on economics, contains a paper on the use of open source as economic signal and a paper on standardization and open source.

2005-12-19 17:42:03.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Sunday October 09, 2005

[ Code ] Good Time To Support Creative Commons

If there was a good time to support Creative Commons, it might be now.

Does this mean that even with all the wide use of Creative Commons licensing by the public, on the web and on many weblogs, actual financial support is required to grant non-profit status to Creative Commons dot Org?

2005-10-09 10:37:33.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday October 04, 2005

[ Code ] Ownership of Ideas

James Kanter of International Herald Tribune reviews the importance of patents to modern business. ("A new battlefield: Ownership of ideas," IHT, October 3, 2005)

The real problem is how to fashion a system that promotes innovation, not mere accumulation. If savvy entrepreneurs can manipulate the system by locking down valuable ideas, true pioneers will find it too tough to win rewards for their inventions.

"Our standards-setting process risks being corrupted by having people filing for, and getting, any patents they want. That poses a real danger to the effectiveness of innovation," said Josh Lerner of Harvard Business School.

Dietmar Harhoff, a professor at Ludwig-Maximilian University in Munich and an expert in innovation research, said, "I think it has made some independent inventors less aggressive for fear of lawsuits."

Along these lines, it may be worth taking a look at Sun Microsystems' philosophy of sharing, and professor Lessig's Free Culture.

In the same issue of IHT, Brian Knowlton writes about how "U.S. plays it tough on copyright rules." My own personal view on all of this is that aggressive copyright protection and unduely long copyright extensions actually lead to an implicit form of censorship which can have severe consequences for cultural and technological innovation in the U.S. and other countries which adopt similar rules. Note that I'm not saying copyrights are bad or that there should be no ownership rights on intellectual property. I'm just concerned about the removal of all limits put on such rights.

[Kevin] Outterson suggested that neither governments nor corporations may be able to answer the key question dispassionately: "What is the limit to intellectual property rights?"

"No one in industry wants to ask, 'Where's the proper balance?"' he said. And yet economists acknowledge that "there must be a point at which intellectual property rights have gone too far."

2005-10-04 00:01:04.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday September 06, 2005

[ Code ] John Paul Stevens

Reading about the Supreme Court changes to come, the death of Chief Justice William Rehnquist and the nomination of John Roberts to server as the next chief, I ran into a biography of John Paul Stevens, where a few brief but revealing paragraphs explore his style of interpreting the law. I found his analysis in the Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) showed a good appreciation of the place of law in society. There he distinguishes among books, theater and the radio as modes of expression, to which, he argues, the First Amendment may or may not be applied to various extents, in balance against other rights.

I quote three paragraphs from this source:

An openness to experience and to the interplay of facts and values is evident throughout Stevens' opinions. A good example is his opinion for the majority in Federal Communications Commission v. Pacifica Foundation (1978), upholding an administrative decision to accept a father's complaint against a radio station for broadcasting a monologue entitled "Filthy Words," inadvertently tuned in while he was driving with his son. Rather than deal with freedom of speech as an abstraction, as some of his colleagues did, Stevens explored a series of facts in the case, each of which illuminates important personal or societal interests.

It was a radio broadcast, intruding upon "the privacy of the home, where the individual's right to be left alone plainly outweighs the First Amendment rights of an intruder," not a book or a theater production. "Outside the home, the balance between the offensive speaker and the unwilling audience may sometimes tip in favor of the speaker, requiring the offended listener to turn away." A radio broadcast, however, is also available to children, in whose well-being the government has a legitimate interest and over whom parents have a claim of authority. It was heard by a young child, and young children are more apt to be adversely affected than older children. The monologue was broadcast in the afternoon, when the very young are more likely to listen, rather than at night. Its plain language also affected its accessibility. For contrast, Stevens quoted a passage from the Canterbury Tales at least as lewd as anything in the monologue but relatively obscure and less likely to turn up uninvited in anyone's house. That it was spoken rather than written made it available even to children too young to read. This broadcast, he said, "could well have enlarged a child's vocabulary in a minute."

Further, the explicit language was spoken during regular programming, not in a telecast of an Elizabethan comedy, for example, to which a different kind of audience would be tuned. To support his view of the monologue as speech of relatively little importance, Stevens appended it in full to his opinion, (where it now sits, in law libraries across the country, safely inaccessible to all but callous adults). Last, he deliberately did not decide that this broadcast would justify a criminal prosecution (in which other basic rights would be invoked). Fact-gathering is Stevens's way of discovering how a case will affect people and their constitutional rights and responsibilities. It is an exercise in which, as he says, "one's initial impression of a novel issue is frequently different from his final evaluation," and balancing is his way of deciding which values shall prevail. In this case, had it been high comedy, for example, or a willing adult audience, Stevens's balance might have tipped the other way, protecting the performance and rejecting the complaint.

Supreme Court, Law.

2005-09-06 04:22:33.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Monday August 01, 2005

[ Code ] Great Programmers

The criteria that identify a great programmer vary—some times speed being the objective, other times clarity, reuse or extensibility.

One of my own most important criterion has to do with succinctness.

A programmer is great (in a given programming language) if s/he can write the shortest program (in that language) that is at least as effective as all other programs in achieving a certain task. S/he writes the program in such a way that little commentary is necessary. A programmer is great if a look at the program says what it does.

Doing with little commentary is actually possible in higher-level languages such as Java. Some length might be given up to make the program more "clear" but that juggle is what can destroy good programs if taken too far to any extreme.

Good, tight programs are self-explanatory because they do not have spurious material.

O.K. Just as I was writing this, a friend wrote back and said: "For me, a truly great progammer is the one who everyone but (her/his)self thinks they are one"—beauty in the eye of the beholder.

2005-08-01 16:16:51.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Thursday July 28, 2005

[ Code ] Should Software Engineers Move On?

Is it a good idea for a software engineer to move on from their existing project to new ones?

With classical, mechanical workers, it is often the case that one becomes totally proficient when one uses an equipment on a repeated basis. One can become an expert car mechanic, for example, and still find interesting things to do but one cannot become an expert unless one has made great strides in proper use of the tools and equipment.

The reliance on and the importance of tools does not diminish in software engineering. What makes software engineering different is the exertion of mental energy at a very detailed level. There is certain amount of learning (beyond the use of tools) that is required when any piece of code is touched but only continuous learning makes software engineering fun for a large number of people. This continuous learning has to be in multiple dimensions, and without moving along some of these dimensions, one cannot learn. Different engineers have different tastes regarding which dimension is most important for them. Some take pride in their mastry of tools. Others like to be architects and designers. Some like writing volumes of code. Others like to write few but more complex pieces. It has been very rare when a person has gathered all of these qualities at a level that is superior to all others. Hence, the great need for collaboration among software engineers.

So, what about the question we started with?

Well, there are different types of moves, and it all depends. (Isn't that an easy way to dodge the question?) One thing is clear. Unless you choose some dimension to move on, there's very little learning that can happen.

2005-07-28 15:17:20.0 -- ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Wednesday March 30, 2005

[ Code ] Grokster Case Unfolds

You may want to read this Washington Post report of the Court's deliberations on the Grokster case or the little WSJ primer on the same case as it unfolds before the Supreme Court. (Unfortunately, The Wall Street Journal requires paid registration. However, the Washington Post reports can be obtained with a free registration.)

Some useful links to court documents:

Main documents

District court ruling
Appeals court ruling
Complaint from movie studios
Complaint from record lables
Response from Grokster and Streamcast

Briefs supporting the studios

Americans for Tax Reform
MLB, NBA, NFL
Christian Coalition, others
Napster, Movielink, CinemaNow
State attorneys general
Justice Department
Recording artists: Eagles, Sheryl Crow, others

Briefs supporting Grokster and Streamcast

Consumer Electronics Association
ACLU
American Conservative Union
Sixty professors of intellectual property law
Sharman Networks (Kazaa)
Computing Industry Association
Recording artists: Chuck D, Heart, others

The case will determine the extent of support that the law is willing to give to a whole class of innovations in communications technologies that may revolutionize the way networks are used on a social level.

Copyrights, Law, Internet, Kazaa, P2P, File Sharing, Supreme Court.

2005-03-30 18:04:05.0 -- Comments [1] ; Permalink ; Trackback.

Tuesday March 22, 2005

[ Code ] Technology and Copyrights

Another example of the conflict between what technology has enabled and what current copyright laws demand, the Kazaa case, unfolds before the courts. (The Washington Post report of it requires a simple registration: "Closing Arguments Begin in Kazaa Trial".)

At issue is not whether current copy right laws make sense. At issue is whether Sharman Networks (makers of Kazaa) and its directors should be declared liable for "copyright breach and loss of earnings in the civil case".

Copyright, Kazaa, Law, Free Culture.

2005-03-22 22:14:31.0 -- Comments [0] ; Permalink ; Trackback.