Tuesday February 15, 2005

I Cannot Pretend to Feel Impartial About Open Source
Stephen O'Grady's latest tecosystems writeup is a worthwhile read for those of you interested in open source.  Oh, and you just have to love the title -  "What We Talk About When We Talk About Open Source".  Sure, it's provocative, and it's bound to raise some eyebrows, and possibly step on some toes, but the underlying message about choice and competition (that both are ultimately a good thing) are sentiments that I wholeheartedly agree with.

And if any of you want to ding me for ending the previous sentence with a preposition, I am reminded of another Winston Churchill quote:  "From now on, ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put."

(2005-02-15 00:16:45.0) Permalink Comments [3]

Sunday February 13, 2005

Eyetools: What Do People Really Look At?
Greg Edwards, the CTO of Eyetools, just started the Eyetools Research Blog in early February.  If you're interested in understanding more about how the human eye travels around web pages, and what is more likely to catch people's attention vs. what is more likely to be ignored, check it out.  From Greg's first blog post:

"I love what I do and I believe that understanding visual interaction data (what people look at) can really help people design better websites... yet, other than talking directly with clients, I haven't had an opportunity to talk about all the really cool things that we discover —€” until now!

This weblog is going to be my vehicle to talk about surprising data I've seen, "rules-of-thumb" that we discover and interesting directions in the research."  - Greg Edwards

I particularly like seeing the "I love what I do" sentiment.  Props to Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion for pointing me to Greg's blog.

In keeping with the old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words, here is Greg Edwards' heatmap of people reading one of their blogs.  Cool.  Now I just need to put these lessons to use in the formatting of my own blog pages...

If you want to know even more about this area, Martin Hardee (the blogger behind "Sun.Com Usability, Design & Other Stuff") posted "Where your eyes travel on web pages" last October; the blog includes a link to the Poynter Institute's fascinating writeup titled "The Best of Eyetrack III: What We Saw When We Looked Through Their Eyes." It's all connected, too - the Poynter research was done in partnership with Poynter, the folks at Eyetools and the Estlow Center.

Technorati Tag: Eyetools

(2005-02-13 14:24:28.0) Permalink

Wednesday February 09, 2005

Scoble, O'Grady and the Blogosphere Last weekend, the hit rates on my blog went through the roof.  Why, I wondered?  Am I really that fascinating?  I mean, I know that my chocolate lab thinks so, but she doesn't have high-speed wireless. It turns out that Robert Scoble of Microsoft had blogged about my entry on the well-designed signage at one of our local airports.  Cool.  I had started a conversation.  I might actually get comfortable with blogging after all.

I'm also pleased to see that Robert has been watching blogs.sun.com.  Which is great.  I've been known to poke around Channel9 from time to time, where I particularly like the doctrine.  From the Scobleizer blog:

    "Sun's bloggers have made Sun much more interesting to watch lately. Don't you agree?"

The conversation goes a bit further. Andy sat next to Stephen O'Grady of RedMonk at a dinner last week.  Somehow they ended up talking about blogging, and it turns out that Stephen had read my blog, too.  Cool again.  People are actually reading these humble testaments of passion and commitment.

Of course, I had to return the favor and find out more about Stephen O'Grady.  That's when I discovered this gem in his tecosystems blog.  Check it out:

       "Looking to Court Developers?  Try Giving Them What They Want"

Good stuff.  All part of the conversation.

(2005-02-09 15:37:28.0) Permalink

Tuesday February 08, 2005

It's about the conversation Early in the OpenSolaris project (back when we still used a code name), I was invited to John Fowler's office in Santa Clara. At the time, John was the CTO for Sun Software.  He had heard that I was driving the OpenSolaris effort and wanted to discuss our current activites and focus.  John also wanted to share some of his open source experiences - to make sure that we "got it" and that we were on the right track.  That was my first meeting with John, and it was the start of many useful late-night email threads...

One of the main points John drilled into that day is a mantra that I have since used in every OpenSolaris presentation (of which there were many, to build the momentum for OpenSolaris inside Sun):

               "It's not about the source, it's about the conversation."

After all, it's easy to focus on the source, and the tools, and the (gasp) license, and all the other tangibles involved in open source.  At the end of the day, though, the true measure of success for OpenSolaris will be the community.  There is a vibrant and enthusiastic OpenSolaris community today.  Will the OpenSolaris community of tomorrow be bigger? Actively involved in the "conversation" with each other?  Will a community development model enable innovation in new areas?  Will OpenSolaris become a more attractive platform for coursework and research in Computer Science departments?  Will startups embed OpenSolaris into their products?  How many bookshelves at Powell's will be filled with books on OpenSolaris? How useful will the opensolaris.org website be as a forum for collaboration and discussion?

There are a lot of talented people both inside and outside Sun who are committed to building and strengthening the OpenSolaris community.  In a big way.  That's good news for customers (current and prospective.)  It's also good news for developers and entrepreneurs and professors and TAs.

Oh, and lest we forget - "It's not about the source, it's about the conversation."



Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2005-02-08 16:08:23.0) Permalink

Wednesday February 02, 2005

OSDL, Linus and OpenSolaris I spent some time at the OSDL Enterprise Linux Summit yesterday, wearing both my OpenSolaris and open source hats. It was a great opportunity to network and meet with people active in the open source community.  I particularly liked what Linus Torvalds had to say about competition in the Keynote Panel Discussion titled "An Open Conversation with Linux and OSS Notables", a discussion that included Brian Behlendorf, Mitch Kapor, Andrew Morton and Linus Torvalds.  Linus' comments about competition, from my notes:

"Cooperation isn't very motivating. It's a lot more fun to compete. It's good to have competing projects; it keeps everybody honest. If you try to unify too much, people get lazy because they don't see anyone nipping at their heels."

It's healthy that there are competing operating systems and that we push each other to perform and excel.  And of course, the nice side effect of competition is choice for customers, which I believe to be a very good thing.  No business wants the inflexibility that goes along with a single solution, especially when that implies higher costs and less innovation.

I respect what Linus said in Paula Rooney's CRN article titled "Torvalds: Waiting To See Sun's Open Solaris" as well. Linus is an intelligent, articulate and obviously accomplished person.  I respect him.  And for those Solaris community advocates among you, please don't take his "I hope they die" comment personally. I don't believe that he wishes that you, or I, or Andy, or Bryan, or Danese, or any of us die - well, at least not prematurely.  (Linus certainly didn't give me that impression when we spoke yesterday.)  At the end of the day, I suspect Linus would prefer that his creation win the competition and that OpenSolaris be left in the dust.  And that's understandable, and ok.  The thing is, though...  I really don't like dust.

Technorati Tag: OpenSolaris

(2005-02-02 22:31:26.0) Permalink