Tuesday February 28, 2006 links for 2006-03-01
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Top quality description of how to build a snow survival shelter.
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Copyright blackmail fund in Australia trying to get protection money for something that is not theirs. Looks like the RIAA has validated a model that the rest of the worlds middle-men want to copy. I hope they charge royalties...
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Scientific American has an article that warms the heart. Cocoa at bedtime is good for you; eating at Chocolat in Santa Cruz is presumably as good as a visit to a spa.
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Birds I can keep away from, but the cat that sleeps on my keyboard is much harder to avoid.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 28 2006, 05:20:10 PM PST )
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Monday February 27, 2006 links for 2006-02-28
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Democracy in action for the NetBeans community, where the only requirement to vote is that you have a NetBeans account.
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Now that Sun is releasing the UltraSPARC T1 design under GPL, we can expect tools to support Free development - and here they come!
Posted by webmink
( Feb 27 2006, 05:20:39 PM PST )
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Paying at the Point of Value
I've been thinking about that word "free" again - as in money, this time. Probably the number one question I get about Sun's open source strategy is "how can you make money if you give the software away free". The thing is, I don't believe that's what we are doing. Instead, we're working on the development side of the glass to create flexible value on the customer side of the glass.
What's really happening is that the point of payment has shifted again, like it did in the late 1970s. "Software Market 1.0" involved selling a mainframe-ish computer and shipping it with all the software included (usually with full source code). When I got my first properly paid job in the computer industry back in 1982 (I'd already been programming for a while by then), there was already a shift in progress, from shipping the software with the computer to selling the software separately from the computer, creating "Software Market 2.0" - the Great Unbundling as my colleagues at the time called it.
Paradox Lost?
Now I think we're seeing the emergence of "Software Market 3.0", where the payment for software is made not at the time of acquisition but at the time the deployer starts to see value. That's typically at the point where the software goes into production, and what people do at that point is pay for the essential services - bug fixing, patching, telephone support, on-site support - that either can't be home-grown or are cheaper bought from a supplier. In Sun's case this isn't really a "service" model by the way - you're paying the actual software developers, not an after-market service organisation.
In Software Market 3.0, it's not so much that the Freedom of the software leads to the freeness of the software - although, if you have the resources in-house, you never need pay anyone outside (that's a big "if" by the way). In Software Market 3.0, everything is available at no charge to somebody because of the need for developer freedom, so it's tempting to think it's all available to everyone at no charge - but it's not.
The real point is that the deployer is liberated to pay just for the things that result in value. It also opens up new ways of delivering the value - online, as a utility, by subscription and more. Open source on the deployer side of the glass is the shift to payment at the point of value instead of at the point of acquisition of the bits. Sun's new software business models are about being the perfect supplier at that point of value. That's how it is with Solaris 10, for example.
Paradox Regained
As Stephen O'Grady points out, there are some customers who know value and will pay however you structure the offering, there are some customers who might pay if they discover value and there are some customers who won't pay whatever you do. In the world of Software Market 3.0, those who will pay will still pay because the value is still there - they just pay later.
But more to the point, some of those who might pay get to discover the value because now they can see the software in action and find the value rather than have to pay to find it. Once the software is in use in both categories, it can spread easily because there's no licensing barrier to try innovating across the business.
And the others? Well, they still won't pay so we've lost nothing if they use the software we're promoting, but in deploying they will have to get that value somehow so will probably engage with and enrich the community on the developer side of the glass somehow. Net gain? More customers and a richer product, by apparently giving away the software. A paradox until you dig deeper.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 27 2006, 02:10:00 AM PST )
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Sunday February 26, 2006 Blog Family
This is a periodic pointer to the blogs that I run. Apologies if this is all familiar (but I know I have some regulars who aren't aware of this...).
This blog, SunMink, is where I write on technology topics related to my job at Sun as Chief Open Source Officer. Things written here do not necessarily represent Sun's (or any other entity's) official position, and have not necessarily been checked by anyone else at Sun.
Over at WebMink I write on other topics of personal interest, especially music, photography, reading, politics and metaphysics.
At The Mink Dimension, I aggregate both of these blogs together with my Flickr photos, del.icio.us links and other stuff into a single, chronological stream.
All of the above have syndication feeds so you can subscribe to as little or as much as you wish in your syndication tool of choice.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 26 2006, 08:32:18 PM PST )
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Saturday February 25, 2006 links for 2006-02-26
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If I were ever to move to the Bay Area I would want to study these new maps in great detail.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 25 2006, 05:19:59 PM PST )
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Friday February 24, 2006 The Other Side of the Glass
I've been thinking recently about how the role we play in an activity shapes the way we understand it. Getting my little roller-skate of a car serviced, the folk at the garage take the keys, go to the otherside of a big window and get to work on the service process while I sit in a comfy chair nursing a cup of coffee and worrying about how much it will all cost. We're both "getting the car serviced", but what that means differs hugely depending on what side of the glass you are.
On the oily side of the glass, it's all about quality, safety, parts, engineering, teamwork, participation. A group of experienced professionals is working to make sure my Roadster works just right.
On the coffee side of the glass, it's all about waiting to drive, when it will be finished, how much it costs and - most importantly - where to get more coffee.
I think "open source" is like this too. The "glass" divides software deployers and software developers. One side of the glass it's all about participating in a community of code, innovating, contributing and other developer issues. The other side of the glass it's all about value-for-money, freedom of choice of supplier, low exit costs and other business issues.
This is not to deny that some people are capable of "home servicing" - but for most folks there are two worlds that we should strive to avoid confusing. It's this that Dan Farber misses when he says:
... not every CIO cares about having access to code or hearing about social infrastructure and ages of participation.
It's "open source" on both sides of the glass but we misunderstand one another if we use the concepts and values from the wrong side of the glass when we discuss what that means. Just because we reject the arguments that motivate "the other side" it doesn't mean we don't need open source software ourselves.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 24 2006, 06:13:35 PM PST )
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Thursday February 23, 2006 links for 2006-02-24
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"Apple has chosen to not release source to key components of the OS, such as the kernel and all drivers. This means Darwin/x86 is dead in the water" -- Rob Braun
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Gervase recounts an enlightening experience that shows that Microsoft has successfully programmed trading standards officers to do its FUD-making for it.
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I think James is right. I was at Gartner's "Open Source Summit" in Orlando and it was clear they were seeing the open source revolution very differently to me. It's time they were transparent; he who pays the piper picks the tune.
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See what happened while I was travelling last week? They released the Java SE 6 (Mustang) beta. Huge congratulations, Mark & team.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 23 2006, 05:21:00 PM PST )
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Free Open Source Textbook
This just in: I just found out that the folks at the Sun Developer Network are giving away free copies of Ron Goldman's text-book on open source, "Innovation Happens Elsewhere", which I've mentioned before, just for signing up to SDN (which is also free). I can't see a catch - get to it!
Update: Looks like that was popular - all the books have now gone, but you can still get a free OpenSolaris t-shirt if you register soon.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 23 2006, 04:29:36 AM PST )
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Wednesday February 22, 2006 links for 2006-02-23
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The meek will inherit the earth, but the clueless will make it ready for inheritance.
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Another opportunity for Microsoft to describe Europe's democracy in the same terms the US usually reserves for North Korea.
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This has to be the dream of the consumer electronics industry. The ultimate removal of fair use rights, making all your property artificially valueless.
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Jonathan Schwartz is having trouble here - he wants to give away completely free servers and no-one believes him. Please help by asking for one.
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All the extra free time is obviously paying off for Cory - great piece on why Google's use of DRM is at best an attempt to become the leader in a pack of losing players controlled by the entertainment complex.
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Every time I've read Patrick's blog it's been worthwhile - take a look at this excellent meandering on how no good deed goes unpunished.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 22 2006, 05:19:05 PM PST )
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Avoiding the Digital Dark Ages
I'm home again from my travels, after a visit to Amsterdam on Monday and attending Peter Quinn's breakfast briefing for European politicians yesterday (also briefly mentioned by IT Week). Microsoft must be really worried by Quinn - they went to the trouble of shipping in their patent chief Marshall Phelps to speak in a hurriedly-arranged (and sparsely attended) parallel briefing in the room next door in the European Parliament.Peter continues to be inspiring, and the MEPs that came to the breakfast had some great questions. Today is apparently George Washington's birthday and one of Quinn's comments harks back to those days. Quinn's primary motive in starting the policy to use only open formats in Massachusetts was to ensure that the current political process has an trail of supporting documents that's at least as rich as the one we have today explaining American independence.
My fear, shared by Quinn, is that future historians will look back on today as the "digital dark ages", where only the final outcome of deliberations is available and all the contributing threads of discussion are lost to proprietary formats, obsolete media, impenetrable DRM and e-mail retention policies that delete everything after 12 months.
Quinn has already succeeded to a degree. Microsoft would not be at Ecma getting their Windows-only file format rubber stamped without him. There's still much further we have to go if we're to avoid the memory hole and escape the digital dark ages.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 22 2006, 04:18:42 PM PST )
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Tuesday February 21, 2006 links for 2006-02-22
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Fascinating pair of lists of words.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 21 2006, 05:23:16 PM PST )
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Hamilton Raving (but not mad)
Graham Hamilton is raving about Java EE 5, which came out for beta today. Graham has been saying for weeks now internally that this is the most important release of Java EE since it was invented, and I have to say I agree with him for two reasons:
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First, I was privileged to be a fly on the wall as Java EE was being conceived back in the mid 90s. I was working at IBM's laboratory in Hursley (just up the road from where I live now) on the brand new JTC management team, and sat in on many meetings where Ian Brackenbury distilled years of enterprise computing wisdom into contributions to the original design. What IBM, Sun and the other expert group contributors came up with changed the face of computing and is now the mainspring of the connected era.
However, it was a bit of an overwound main spring, as Graham expertly explains in his blog entry. Too verbose, complex to the point of obfuscation. This release uses the groundwork laid in Java SE 5 to enact enormous simplifications to enterprise Java programming. I think it's awesome.
- Second, this is the first release of Java EE to have direct input from the Glassfish community. That's not the first open source community to have contributed; the Apache Software Foundation was instrumental in the reform of the JCP around the turn of the millenium. But it's profited greatly from the work of the Glassfish community and shows the great synergy that comes from open standards and open source. Potential for some profoundly great work here.
So, welcome to Java EE 5. Graham's raving about it, but he's not mad - it truly is something to be excited about.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 21 2006, 04:49:08 PM PST )
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Monday February 20, 2006 links for 2006-02-21
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Of course, Steve and the others will deny there's any problem like they always do, but Mr Safe undoubtedly learnt a lot from Sam Ruby today.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 20 2006, 05:21:03 PM PST )
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Migrating to the second choice
Still not fallen off the world, just straight back into travel again - in fact, I just came back from a fascinating dinner with Peter Quinn here in Brussels, where I arrived earlier from Amsterdam after an impossibly early flight this morning from Southampton. Peter makes an excellent point as he discusses the need for legislation to control the lock-in that's cropped up all over government IT.
He says that it didn't take a law to create the lock-in, just lots of isolated, incremental decisions by CIOs all over every government. So while we're waiting for the equivalent of anti-trust legislation over file formats and protocols (which is surely coming, by the way), there's no reason why informed purchasing decisions shouldn't also be removing the lock-in one department at a time.
One question that needs asking, for example, are what are the exit costs of a decision. People are hot on procurement costs and "TCO", but the biggest problem we all face is that CIOs are able to make decisions without having to take into account the needs of the people who will have to undo their decisions.
My proposal: include in the procurement cost a calculation of the cost of migration from the number one solution on the short-list to the number two solution on the shortlist. That should give a good indication of the mininum exit costs from a given procurement.
Posted by webmink
( Feb 20 2006, 03:04:57 PM PST )
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