Today's reading...

Today's reading comes from Miyamoto Musashi's A Book of Five Rings, The Fire Book.

Musashi wrote this book on sword strategy in the last few weeks of his life in 1644, but the book is widely read  for business strategy, and it really is a brilliant essay on strategic action. Note: Please use these techniques on the business competition, not as part of an internecine struggle.

"To Hold Down a Pillow" means not allowing the enemy's head to rise.

In contests of strategy it is bad to be led about by the enemy. You must always be able to lead the enemy about. Obviously the enemy will also be thinking of doing this, but he cannot forestall you if ytoui do not allow him to come out. In strategy, you must stop the enemy as he attempts to cut; you must push down his trust, and throw off his hold when he tries to grapple. This is the meaning of "to hold down a pillow". When you have grasped this principle, whatever the enemy tries to bring about in the fight, you will see in advance and suppress it. The spirit is to check his attack at the syllable "at...", when he jumps check his jump at the syllable "ju...", and check is cut at "cu...".

The important thing in strategy is to suppress the enemy's useful actions but allow his useless actions. However doing this alone is defensive. First, you must act according to the Way, suppress the enemy's techniques, foiling his plans, and thence command him directly. When ytou can do this you will be a master of strategy. You must train well and research "holding down a pillow".

JavaOne dispatch #2

I'm attending the Services section of Business day with Thorsten Laux, Brenda Herlihy, and Bill Curchi.

Thorsten Laux is up first and talks about the Java platform, and how we can leverage the Java platform into a services distribution vehicle. He talks about the Google Toolbar. It's a search toolbar that gets put into Explorer and is installed as part of the Java Runtime Environment. 

We've had success with it. Then he shows the work that we've done with the improvements in the Java Download experience. They look good. However, he's using the old startup animation. Oh well. Then he talks about the Application marketplace. He gives an address to talk about this with distribution-services@sun.com. There's a unique distribution channel, and we want to take advantage of these channels, and share that with our customers.

Brenda Herlihy is next. She's in Developer Services. She loves talking to customers about how to build the best application in the shortest amount of time. Here's her basic model.

Train

Assist

Maintain

Build

Peace of Mind

This offering is really about step by step help to develop and deploy Java applications. It's pretty short, but I get it. Sun really wants to work with folks on this. 

Bill Curchi--who I just met--is up next, in this three part scenario, and he's pretty calm about all this.

He's promoting a kind of partnership with these business customers. He starts off with a recap about the state of Java today. Java is available and widely used. It's available everywhere, and is managed by Sun. Sun is ensuring a quality user experience vis-a-vis a regular, but widely spaced cadence of updates. Sun actually does a pretty good job of this. Most everyone is pretty happy about this. On the business side, though, there are some different requirements. Specifically, they want more control. (Doesn't everybody?) They want to guage and control change. In the past, and in fact, right now, lots of fixes go into every Java release. Businesses want to use to reduce cost.

They want the fixes faster, and they only want the ones that they need. They also want a more predictable schedule. They want more time to roll out updates. They want synchronized fixes across release families.

 From now, we'll go to a model that addresses the need for faster updates. The refractory period for cooking a release will be reduced. That way they happen faster, every few weeks, for example. This allows general updates to be less frequent. Support periods for updates, more complex migration strategies, extending past the usual GM date, to allow businesses to get more of what they want.

It's all about having more choice, better planning, and better schedules. Sounds like a good idea, Bill. I'm sold.

In the future, Sun will communicate better about this stuff. They'll also configure the software better for production environments. Bill extends the hand of partnership around this, and he really means it people. ISVs are an important part of this. If you want to know more about this, send email to Production-Java@sun.com.

Dispatch #1 JavaONE

Business Day track #1

The Business of Open Source

Simon Phipps is on the stage talking about the change from the hub and  spoke model  to the peer to peer model.  We are beginning to  experience the mesh.  People are defined by their  time zones, or when you are awake.  Marketing ceases to be the polishing and firing of messages to targeted audiences, but instead in community. He talks about the virtuous cycle of code use and code contribution. Open Source is not about abstract behavior. Instead it is about creating richness. This is feeling rich in whatever way is meaningful for you. It's different for Sun than for Sao Paulo, Brazil. The enriched code gets sent back to the code commons as a part of this virtuous cycle. If you keep the code to yourself, then the effects are negative.

This virtuous cycle is very important because it's cost saving.

1.0 Software was indivisible from hardware. Hardware came with software.

2.0 Software was decoupled from Hardware and sold unbundled. This model cannot hold up in the face of the free software movement.

3.0 Software is paid for at the point of value.  In this model, the glossy box model is no longer needed, because its contents are not seen as valuable. We can now purchase what we need when we need it. The value is not that you get software free, but instead, that you get to select and pay for only what you want.

Patrick Finch is brought to the stage, and he talks a little about the Value Flows in Open Source. He expands the simple diagrams that Simon was talking about. It's a little complicated, but fairly self evident. There is a difference here between businesses that see IT as a competitive weapon, vs. IT as a cost center. Most of Sun's customers are the former. Users will only pay for things that have value add. He's written a white paper about this, and it will be available soon.

Sun, the original open source company! We really need to here your feedback on this material.

Sun has, for years, been interested in monetizing this, as well as facilitating our partners and customers to do this.

Then he talks about the Java/Linux opportunities. Now the Java source code availability is making Linux part of the Java family. Now Customers have a choice about whether to license the Java software from us, or to join the development community and directly affect the code. But you have responsibility to pay your developers, respect the open-source license, and to deal with the community.

The license is GPL v2, along with a classpath exception. That excepts some of the applications that live on top of the Java code.

He looks a bit at the history of open sourcing Java. Then a guest comes up to talk about the mobile and embedded community. PhoneME. All of Sun's Mobile development is now being done out in Open Source. There are already 60 projects since November.

The application development communtiy is being nurtured here, along with other tools communities around open source communities. He talks a bit about who benefits from the open source model. They include Handset OEMs, application developers as well as Operators Tools/component vendors.

Ken Drachnik talks about Project GlassFish. Now licensees take about 1/3 the time to develop implementations. Anyone can join the community. Lots of people can now contribute. Ericsson has contributed communications APIs to Java EE. This allows communication bits to be built on top of GlassFish. Lots of different customers have contributed to and built on the work of this community.

Finally, OpenJDK.java.net Rich Sands runs us through the JavaSE version of this. Our community is about 3 hours and 10 minutes old. All of the JDK is now available. A few bits of encumbered code still exist. Please help us remove it. You can open it in NetBeans, and compile it there. We are working on governance and a constitution. OpenJDK is based on JDK 7, not JDK 6. It's significant that this is the ongoing live tree.

Simon continues. This is the perfect time for free and open source Java. The potential is huge in many areas, especially in Linux. Last year, 97% of the software written in China is open source.

What's all this Vague talk?

Lot's of people think that when brand experts start talking about things like mission, vision purpose, that they are just too vague. These concepts are big, but they certainly aren't vague. And they are meaningful.

Here's How this model works:

Mission Vision and Purpose (or Cause) are concepts at increasingly universal levels, not—as some think—increasingly abstract. And, they can apply to an individual life as well as a company.

First, goals are about personal actions or impact (Here are specific actions I plan to take.) Most people are knowledgable about and comfortable with goal-making. We've all got to have something that we plan to do and have some way to measure it. We're going to sell this many units. I'm going to Jog every day. I want to call everyone on the vendor list with this questionaire. These are goals.

Second, mission is about interpersonal impact with others. (Here is how I want to interact with you.) The important thing here is that this is not about things the company wants to do but how it wants to interact with customers, vendors, suppliers, every other entity it comes in contact with. In this model, the brand promise is at the level of mission because it's how we promise to interact with our customers, but the mission involves everyone, not just customers.

Vision is about Social impact (Here is how I want to change the world.) A company or an individual can have a vision of the world that is before us, and how that world can be changed by you. It includes your intended affect on the world.

Purpose seems the simplest, but it's actually the most universal (Here is what I was created to do.) I don't actually like the word "Cause" because causes can be picked up and put down, but it's more comfortable for some people. The conundrum here is that personally, this is the question that we all ask of ourselves in some version or other, even if we last asked it when we were five years old. And yet it is the question that often remains unconsidered as we get older. And it's actually more difficult for individuals than it is for companies. Every company was created for something. The answer "just to make money" is just an immediate and a surface answer, and I guarantee there's a deeper purpose to why a company was created, or it's found along the way. And sometimes it's known but deliberately hidden. Imagine that deep inside you want to unlock the secrets of the universe, and you start a biotech company. You might be shy about that.
 
But my point here is that if you know the answers to these bigger (but not vaguer) questions, then there is a greater depth of meaning to what you do. It's easier to attract the talent you want, the vendors you want, the customers you want, because there will be that depth of meaning. Why does it work like this? Because companies are created by and made up of people, and there's no reason to assume that all observances about people ceases to apply simply because they are organized into a company.