Monday January 31, 2005

Open Source and Winston Churchill Sitting in Stanford Memorial Chapel last week for a memorial service, I was reminded of a famous Winston Churchill quote. Strangely enough, it was exactly 40 years from the date of Churchill's own passing.  The quote stayed with me all day, and all week, and for those of you who haven't thought of the connection between open source and Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill, well, here it is:

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Sir Winston Churchill
British politician (1874 - 1965)

Of course, I didn't remember the exact quote when I returned to work later that day (and I wasn't in a position to write it down at the chapel), so I turned to the trusty google search engine, which took me to both the Quotations page (which recently had its 10 year anniversary) and to the WikiQuote page where I quickly found what I hope is the exact quote.  I didn't have such good luck finding the context for the quote, but I'm pretty sure he was not talking about open source at the time.  Still, it is a good fit for the philosophy behind open source and the benefits of giving to a community...

(2005-01-31 00:47:30.0) Permalink Comments [1]

Saturday January 29, 2005

Tufte would be proud
A few weeks ago, Danese, Andy and I flew up to Oregon for a meeting.  Contrary to usual habit, we flew out of the Oakland airport, which one of my friends used to call "his favorite toy airport."  If you ever flew through Oakland in those days, you'd understand - it used to be so small!

I was so impressed with the new screens in the Oakland terminal that listed arriving and departing flights that I begged Danese to take a picture.  Here it is.  Alternating colors on the rows, recognizable logos that your eye is drawn to, use of color for cancelled flights... Edward Tufte might even be impressed, especially in comparison to the black and white monitors of years past, with line after line of flight information that looked the same to weary, travelling eyes.  I found the old flight lists particularly frustrating when trying to make a connection with just minutes to spare - ugh!

For those of you unfamilar with Tufte, I recommend you check out Tufte's class on "Presenting Data and Information". If you live near Atlanta, Knoxville, Nashville, Boston or Arlington, Virginia, then you're in luck - Tufte will be teaching in those cities this spring. He is a charismatic teacher, and his beautiful books are included in the price of the class.  I'm so enamored with this class that I encouraged 8 people on my team to attend the Palo Alto class last December.  And even with all the hype I generated beforehand, they all came back with good things to say. 

One more comment about the trip - the Portland airport now has free wifi in 70% of its terminal.  Beautiful.  Although it did contribute to some antisocial behavior over dinner as Andy, Danese and I tried to catch up quickly on everything we'd missed that day...


(2005-01-29 16:22:00.0) Permalink

Wednesday January 26, 2005

Huge Thank You to OpenSolaris! It has been a fun ride, preparing for yesterday's CDDL announcement and launch of the OpenSolaris website.  And while it's true that there's more to come later in Q2 and that this was just a first step - it was an important first step and represents way more work than is visible to the casual observer.   I'm privileged to work with such an amazing team, on such cool technology,  with a buzzing community. 

I hope to see all sorts of unpredicted (and predictable) consequences - startups we might never have imagined, academic research that changes the field, tips in the market, computer gaming technology that I hope my children never play with, new business models that thrive, better and better and better driver support, more compelling developer tools, governments that get the benefits of the Solaris technology along with the value of open source, and in the end, most importantly - more compelling choices for our Sun customers, new and old.

I have miles to go before I sleep, but first I must send a HUGE thank you for yesterday, and some shiny gold stars, to:

       IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE
Karyn, for tonic, and herding cats with a resilience that would astound
Danese, a teacher, for her articulate sense of community and voice
Bonnie, for windex editing and persistence
Alan, for perl tools extraordinaire
Jim, for your tireless work with the community and true-blue blog
Derek, for your calmness in the face of  yet another (and another!) change
Andy, for your brilliant judgement and keeping two feet on the ground
Mike_S, for editing extraordinaire
Keith, for a refreshing and new perspective
Linda, for working the details
Lonee, for a million hidden things of great value
MikeK, for patience and buildable source
Bart, for a decade of positive support and early doom testing
Adam, Eric and the rest of the gang who went to oscon to converse
Teresa, for whistling in organization, structure and can-do spirit
Bryan, for DTrace, and for your spirited ... thoughts on licensing
Dan, for your price-less and insightful late-night suggestions.
DavidC, for wisdom shared in a box with 4 wheels
JBeck, for sending mail and for driving to contribute
Kamal, for diligence and details and patience and focus
Sara, for brilliant writing and an energetic bunny full of ideas
Allen, for foley editing for the website
JoanneW, for the fastest site turnaround since the ok corrale
to the Volume Manager and Resource Mgmt families - my extended work family - for your patience with us
Ann, for working the numbers
Folks from across Sun on the council, including the special university folk...
And to all of you who have helped with the housecleaning - you know who you are

          SUPPORTING CAST
Tim and Stephen, for divine inspiration and coaching
AndyR, SteveU, GaryD, JonW, GerryW for the salad days
JohnnyL, for your vision and for pulling my leg
John, for late night emails and the source != conversation mantra
Evan, for all the early consultation (and long-ago powder)
Glenn, for all your support
Will, for your super secret magic powers
MikeH, for the long talks and rocky mountains
Matt and team, for your experience and expertise
James, for moral support
Hal, for inspiration and moneyball tip
Ingrid, for your dedication and ideas
Jonathan, for your unbottleable focus
Tom, for the insanely new perspective

          EXPERTS
Eileen, for all your advice, and your cell phone number, and always being just a phone call away
Julie, for your analytical, patient, and detailed partnership with Bonnie
Chris, for your articulate ability to debate and discuss
Arien, for your dogged attention to details
Tiki, for the lessons on names and late night responsiveness
Virginia, for review - after review - after review - after review
Karla, for sound editing
Damien, for your time and commitment

          LICENSE CREW
The CDDL team that I had the privilege to lead: Andy, Arien, Chris, Danese, Eileen, Mark, Vicki
The OSI Board members with their willingness to review and help
The OSI license-discuss community, especially John Cowan, Rod Dixon and Chuck Swiger
Simon, for your open and cuddly input
The Groklaw volunteers who chimed in with ideas and questions - especially PJ and marbux
Mitchell, for the beautiful MPL which claimed a spot in the spectrum between BSD and GPL
Early salad advisors on our requirements - Bill, Kathy, Ron, Rob...

          COMMUNITY MIXERS
Everyone on the 16th floor sauna at OSCON for your ideas and passion
Countless open source experts who patiently met with us, lunched with us, guided us...
chromatic, Dale, Tim and all the great folks at O'Reilly, for the etching zoo
All the customers and community members at our bofs, for your enthuasiasm and participation
The folks at OSDL, for the long, long walk to lunch
Bloggers, who aim to bring authentic voice to the world, especially the Sun bloggers, and Tim
The Pilot Community members, whose names I won't list for privacy reasons, but whose enthusiasm is heartwarming
Claeton and GG and M, for, well, everything that matters

Undoubtedly I've left someone off the very long credits list.  I'm happy to correct any omissions!  Thanks.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2005-01-26 23:49:56.0) Permalink