The .NET Sweatshop (v2) : OpenSource

Finally An Unbreakable Linux!

SandyK — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 20:07:42 GMT

The challenge of being a fan of open source while working at Microsoft is that people often assume that it's not possible for Microsoft to appreciate open source. If there's one legacy that I'd like to leave at Microsoft to this point, it's that I fought hard for a CodePlex to be built because I believe in the .NET open source community. But as long as my checks keep coming from Redmond, I can't possibly be doing anything to support open source, right? If you don't believe me, read some of the comments that have been posted on my blog in the past few months. I've been at conferences where I (on behalf of Microsoft) have been accused of trying to kill open source. OK, first off, lets be clear about something: nothing will kill open source. Public domain software has been around a lot longer than Eric Raymond's phrase or the viral licenses that characterize it today. It is and always will be the lifeblood of the developer community, regardless of what you call it. But I did find yesterday's announcement by Oracle of "their own Linux" very interesting. Apparently, they'll be taking Red Hat Linux, stripping the brand, and providing their own support. There were too many fascinating aspects to this move that I couldn't go without dropping a blog to share my observations:

I'm a fan of open source as a concept, but not as a primary business model per se and this kinda explains why. If someone is allowed to take your product, do a Find/Replace with your brand and their product, and then undercut you without you being able to respond, doesn't that expose a flaw in the business model?
Give Oracle credit--they're not concerned about the "Not Invented Here" syndrome. Good artists borrow and great artists steal, right Mr. Ellison? Ellison is good friends with Steve Jobs, who is famous for borrowing that phrase from Picasso. Given OS X is built on top of Darwin (the open source core that draws from FreeBSD), perhaps the idea of selling Oracle's proprietary databases on top of other people's free software isn't so revolutionary.
The only thing Oracle is providing is support (and cool Oracle logos). Technically, any random company can have their IT department pull the Red Hat code just like Oracle, and brand it "Random Company Linux" and not pay anything (I can see it now "Bed Bath and Beyond Linux"). The reason you'd go with Oracle or have gone with Red Hat is support. It's insurance in case anything goes wrongm, which is part of my theory that the open source businesses are really insurance companies (there we go, "Prudential Linux"!). I've always found that to be an inverted incentive program. The better your product is, the less they need the thing they actually pay for. In fact, if Oracle's Unbreakable Linux (yes, that's what they're calling it) is indeed unbreakable, why does a customer need support? Unless it is hard to use...
Let's be honest. Oracle will be doing it to support their proprietary database systems and proprietary ERP systems and proprietary CRM systems and...are you sensing a theme here? Does anyone wonder why Oracle has escaped the scrutiny of the open source community all these years? Does anyone wonder if they still will?
The most insightful quote came from Zend Technologies CMO Mark de Visser, who said "This is a hostile takeover in the open-source world, and that is bound to happen again. What we're learning here is that the rules of capitalism apply as much to the open-source world as they do to the rest of the world.'' Amen to that.
Apparently, the irony of "Unbreakable" is lost on Oracle...

Well, I don't expect Microsoft to drop from the "Public Enemy #1" role to the open source community just yet, I am really anxious to see how people react to this in the long term. Boycotts? Pictures of Larry Ellison stealing Linus Torvalds' lunch money? Or maybe the opposite will happen. Maybe Oracle will spin it the way IBM does with Eclipse and those patents they give away. We'll just have to wait and see--safely from the sidelines on this one! :)

{Audioslave - Revelations}

My name is Sandy and I am a Wikipediaholic

SandyK — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 05:04:00 GMT

When I was much younger, I used to pepper my dad with constant questions about how things worked or who invented what. My dad would always respond with the same thing: "go look it up". Sitting in our family room was a bright, shiny set of Encyclopedia Brittanicas. Now, I don't know if my dad made me look things up because he wanted to teach me to be self-sufficient or if he just didn't know the answers. Either way, I did feel this sense of independence of going out and finding the answers. And I would not only find the answer to my questions, but also answers to a lot of other questions that I didn't know I had. Clearly, intellectual curiosity was satisfied by encycolpedias and I spent several years at home or in the library, perusing the large books of information. Then came the internet and suddenly answers to tons of questions came pouring out onto a screen. Any topic in a timely fashion and easy linking from one piece of information to another. I remember getting hooked in 1994, soon after Kurt Cobain had committed suicide. Having already been a huge fan, I spent hours in the CompSci lab in Upson Hall at Cornell, surfing the web (on a Mac, no less!) for information on Nirvana. Everything from song lyrics to conspiracy theories about Cobain's death. I was clearly addicted All I could think was "where was this when I was 10?" Of course, I needed to know where to look for different things and there was definitely a disparity in the quality of information. And, of course, there were the deserted sites that showed promise before the owner decided that the thrill of running a web-site was gone. Suddenly finding useful information became difficult because of all the noise out there. Of course, many credit Google for reducing the noise with their powerful search engine. But there's no standard level of information or necessarily any topic focus. Instead, I could get a random article or something about another topic that refers to my specific topic of interest. That's why, of late, when I want information on a particular topic, I forego the primary search engines and often go directly to Wikipedia.

No, this isn't meant to be a blog to tell you about the hot new site. Wikipedia seems like it has been around forever. Rather, as I reflect on the way I use the internet, I am stunned at my reliance on it. Any time I want a relatively objective scoop on a topic, I head directly to Wikipedia (actually I use the Wikipedia gadget off my Live.com home page in most cases). The breadth and depth of topics is phenomenal as is the currency of information. The community feels a true ownership of the content and take it upon themselves to keep the engine running. I've often thought about why the content owners do it after so many special interest sites (and now blogs) fail to be maintained. Why doesn't a topic just die? And to be fair, perhaps some topics have died. However, most I have visiting are incredibly current. I tend to think the quality of information is due to the ownership of the collective. There's something about being depended on as part of something bigger (think global, act local). In addition, the ability to open editing up to multiple people helps keep it more objective as people seem to almost police one another (as opposed to needing a uber-authority to monitor every change). But even through it's objectiveness, there's a level of informality that makes it even more appealing. So when I surf to the [ex-football star] Maurice Clarrett page or the "Welcome Back Kotter" page (yes, it's funny the different topics I find myself looking up), it's amazing how up-to-date it is (fyi, there's a "Welcome Back Kotter" movie coming out with Ice Cube as the star!). I remember talking to Ward Cunningham about it last year and he was commenting on how fascinating the coverage of Katrina was. It became a news source that was constantly updated and as many people were using that as were using many of the top news sources because the Wikipedia information seemed to be coming faster. Wikipedia went from a complement to Brittanica/Encarta to CNN/Fox News. It really is collaborative development of information with a lower barrier of entry when compared to open source code. Of course, with this comes a lack of fact-checking and a caveat emptor to the users. Even Wikipedia itself is adamant about not being cited as an official source. It reminds me of the difference between unsupported software and releases where companies stand behind it (not just talking about Microsoft, but companies like Red Hat as well). When I fiddle around with writing code, I am incredibly appreciative of some of the freeware or open source apps I use for writing better code. But if I run into a problem, I don't get upset with the authors. On the other hand, when Visual Studio doesn't work as promised, I do because the expectation is there as they are a company standing behind a product I paid for (well, I get it for free, but you know what I mean :) ). There's a place for both classes of applications. I am appreciative of open source tools, but if I am counting on something, then I should be willing to drop the $$. Of course, getting information on a random topic so that you look smart when the time comes for barroom trivia is a lot less critical than keeping an enterprise website up, so I think Wikipedia has less to be concerned about. Still, it's nice to know that they don't see their usefulness as a means to usurp all other sources of information, but rather serve as an incredibly effective utility that helps people achieve their goals. Coexistence can occur, whether we are talking about software or sources of information. To those that update the site with insightful information as well as those who write the freeware or open source apps that I have used, my hats off to you. You give community a good name...

Hey Zealousy - Reprise

SandyK — Tue, 01 Aug 2006 05:45:00 GMT

As I was going through my Inbox, I spotted a comment to my blog that seems especially connected to my last post. Apparently, last week, I was indirectly "Digg"'d (Dug?) when someone wrote about the OpenOffice ads and linked to my post from February. Well, the post was writted tongue-in-cheek, but I apparently upset a few people. Some blogged about it and kept an even temper about it, but one person was especially angered. He also called me a wimp for turning off comments. Truth is, comments are on, but I actually turn them off automatically after 90 days to avoid spam and that was a 5 month old post. But, to address this person's thoughts that I am not willing to present the opposing view, here is his rebuttal in its entirety:

you have the (guts) to post anti opensource, and anti amd comments, yet you do not have the (guts) to allow for people to comment? Hrrrm...seems like you need to grow a pair and quit being a fanboy for 'ol bill, he deserves no admiration. I think that it is nice that another company will stand up to your monopoly. Mikerowesoft uses its considerable market share, and money to prevent startups with better ideas from bringing their products to the market place. Either that or you lazy developers steal open source ideas that were stealing market share from your man bill. It is nice to see that to remain competative with open office the beta of office 2k7 steals some of the very features that make open office so popular.

--jrod

Note that I did edit and used the word "guts" as a substitute for a crude reference to my manhood. Otherwise, his post is completely intact as I received it. Well, I hope this somehow displays "guts". So, here's the quesiton: how useful this argument is to support open source alternatives? He makes it personal against Bill Gates, refers to the irrelevant issue we had with the gentleman named Mike Rowe who made a witty nameplay on his name to sound like Microsoft, and he implies that our developers are lazy. I've worked next door to the Office devs for years and I don't think lazy is the word that comes to mind when I watch them in action. Oh, and I didn't make anti-AMD comments--I was picking on Sun for bagging SPARC and going x86 with their Cobalt servers. Actually, it's kind of a compliment to AMD. And when it comes to an anti-open source route, there are better targets than one of the guys working with the CodePlex team.

Anyway, to "jrod", I thank you for your message. You've neatly support my theories on customer evangelists. Your mind is clearly made up and I am sure you will do your best to change other people's opinions. Good luck...

Hey Zealousy

SandyK — Fri, 28 Jul 2006 08:47:00 GMT

(title is a reference to an old Gin Blossoms song--if you remember it, that makes you old)

A couple of weeks ago, a few of us were having a discussion about customers and their ability to serve as evangelists. We talked about how Apple, Linux, and many others have extremely passionate customers that constantly make the case for them every day. My take was a little unique—I felt some of those customers were borderline detrimental to the product. I divided the customers up into three primary types:

· The passive advocate—They’re the ones who essentially like the product. When someone asks them whether they’re glad that got that specific digital camera, they’ll say “yeah, it’s great. I’ve really enjoyed it”. They’ll then wait for any additional questions as they return to their Cheetos.

· The active spokesperson—In Malcolm Gladwell’s book The Tipping Point, he referred to these people as “Mavens”. They’re knowledgeable about your product, but they also find it their sense of duty to share this information. When there’s a group of people standing around and someone says “hmm, I need a new digital camera”, the active spokesperson doesn’t wait for the sentence to finish before he or she launches into “Olympus makes the best digital cameras around. Ours has a 32X Optical Zoom, MMC Storage, 7.1 Megapixels, and supports the latest in CCD technology.” This is all followed by a litany of facts and figures that even the marketing people at Olympus can figure out.

· The Zealot—Ahh the zealot, found more in the computer industries than any other around. The one who isn’t interested in counterpoints. The facts are black-and-white and to refute them would be like suggesting the sun rises in the west. They have “I hate Kodak” websites and will flame anyone that suggests that Olympus’ $200 is inferior to $90 Nikon. It’s seems like the bonus for being a zealot goes up if it represents something counter-culture. Linux and Apple both represent counter-culture alternatives to Microsoft. At some point, their advice turned into preaching on a religious cause. I was watching an interview w/John Dvorak where he admitted that he would occasionally write columns to antagonize Mac fans by simply suggesting that their product was not the clearly superior choice. Meanwhile, the Linux zealot often comes one step short of suggesting Microsoft is responsible for murder in the third-world. Chill dudes—it’s only software.

I feel like there’s a analog with sports fans. Fans come in all shapes and sizes and it’s fascinating to look at the range of fans. A team’s passive advocate can probably name a few players and would probably tune in when the playoffs roll around if their team is still alive. They’d go to a game if someone got them tickets or if it was a special outing. With the active fan, you’re keeping an eye on the newspapers or ESPN.com, you’re attending a few games a year, and maybe your eve listening to sports radio. Then, there’s the zealot. I can only think of the character Puddy from Seinfeld in the episode where the NJ Devils played the NY Rangers. Puddy paints his entire body in the Devils colors and screams “WE’RE THE DEVILS” at the top of his lungs to anyone who will listen. OK, at some point, you have to wonder how ridiculous things need to get before you realized you stepped over the line.

Of course, zealots can be important to bring attention to a cause. Certainly, anything that inspires that level of passion is going to make someone curious. But at some point, you almost want to advise the zealots to chill—even if they are on your side. An argument seems far more potent if the person making it seems to be take a rational approach and accepts that the world is made up of many shades of gray. So while I envy a product that can inspire the zealousness that Linux and Apple do, I do NOT envy having to deal with the expectation of infallibility. I prefer the active spokesperson. Rational arguments, enthusiasm, and someone that will keep us on our toes.

CodePlex: The XBox for Community Developers

SandyK — Sat, 01 Jul 2006 02:07:00 GMT

I once blogged about "Glory and Danger" and the idea of taking on GotDotNet. One of the things I hinted at was, while we would do a revamp of the site, we did want to consider something from scratch that would be a step above. Then, I patiently stayed quiet about what we were doing. Well, the cat is clearly out of the bag now. A year or so ago, I was asking people how we should support community development going forward. After a year where we primarily stayed under the radar, CodePlex is now live and ready for the world. The team has even started their own blog. Having watched the thing in development over the past year, I can't help but smile when I cruise around the site. So many of these features were once little more than slideware. To those who think the "little guys" at Microsoft can't come up with a pretty good idea and have it supported, we are proof that anything is possible if you fight hard enough for it. I can still remember sitting in my old office, talking to Jim Newkirk about how we could affect the greatest amount of change in the company. We both believed that community software development was (and still is) vital to the health of the developer ecosystem and finding a place where people could do it easily would be so important to Microsoft. In our case, we both ended up leaving the patterns & practices team to join the Microsoft.com Communities Team to make it happen. As time went along, we were fortunate to add some killer talent to the team--guys that could've worked anywhere, but joined us because they saw the possibilities of what this team was doing. I couldn't help but think that this was what Microsoft is still all about--get a bunch of smart guys in a room and let them work on what makes them passionate. Then, open it up to the world and continually iterate to make it work better for them. Of course, it's never that easy. Jim and I have had countless late-hour IM conversations, trying the navigate the project through the many challenges that any software project (especially at a large company) goes through. I honestly believe no one else I know could've pulled off the project better than Jim did. The guy is top-notch both technically and personally and I am five times happier for him than for me.

As the team got closer to the finish line, I was reading a book about the development of the XBox and it was amazing to see the parallels. The leaders of that project knew that the secret to its success was creating a platform where developers could do their magic. While it's specs were awe-inspiring for that time period, the standalone XBox was useless, It's really about the games and what the game developers could do with the power of the XBox. My hope is that we do for community development what XBox has been doing for game developers--make the process easier and more enjoyable.

While this release is something to be extremely excited about, I am even more excited about what I think we can do in the future. We already have tons of ideas and we are hearing from many customers who have their own input that is helping us guide our roadmap. Comment on my blog or on the CodePlex blog and let us know what you think. Plus, there is the discussion board on the site itself. We really want to hear what you think, so let the team know. And keep poking around the site--I think there's gonna be some killer games, er, projects that will debut in the coming months.

Now I have a Microsoft Cube to go along with my Apple Cube

SandyK — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 18:25:00 GMT

I just saw this post from Korby Parnell about getting the famous Microsoft "Patent Cube". As Korby mentioned, I too received a Cube. He even referred to me as his "co-conspirator"--I think I like that term and I've certainly been called worse. :) Korby also mentioned that we also get a copy of the front page of the patent on a wooden plaque. Wow, I didn't know about that part. What a cool idea, although we will have to wait until 2009.

Getting a patent has certainly been a highlight of my Microsoft career. I think the part that makes this special is that in a big company, sometimes it's hard to be recognized for having a good idea. Microsoft said thank you with a few extra bucks in the bank account and the Cube. Honestly, I think I'll probably treasure the Cube more. It's a permanent symbol that represents a moment of inspiration that lasts a lot longer than the money (but for the record, I'll keep the cash too!). When I was at Intel, I got two patents and I've always been very proud of them. In fact, if you are ever REALLY bored, feel free to check out my work here and here (although I left the company before I got any commemorative schwag to stick in my office like a cube). Alas, those were the days when my programmer skills were worth something and I could code x86 Assembly and C with the best of them (second time this month I sound like Grandpa talking about the old days). I think the other great part of the Microsoft patent is that the idea wasn't something that we were required to come up with. It was a cool brainstorming session on my whiteboard in my old office that turned out to be a nifty idea (and the Microsoft patent people agreed). I know Google brags about the 20% innovation-time thing, but Korby and I didn't have that. We just got on a roll and proceeded to throw everything else aside for a short time while we hashed this out (though Korby certainly deserves the main part of the credit as he put most of the meat on the bones of the idea). Microsoft may not provide the official time for that, but they certainly provide the environment and the smart people. When you have that, you often do what you can to find the time (and then apologize to your spouse later for getting home so late).

Of course, the long-standing debate about patents is something I admit I haven't comeup with a well-formed opinion on (and Korby touched on this in his post). When people are protecting their inventions, I think I understand why it is necessary. After all, should software be under any different rules than semiconductors or pharmaceuticals (many open source people might say yes). But when I hear stories of law firms buying up patents for the intent of putting big companies in a position to that suffered by RIM a few months ago, I get worried that the industry will be held hostage by attorneys looking for extortion opportunities. I am not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV, so I can't begin to understand where that is really heading. What I can say is that corporate innovation is often measured by the number of patents filed and I'm glad I could put one on the board for the good guys (yes, we are the "good guys" :-) ).

OpenOffice ads and suggestions for future Sun ads

SandyK — Fri, 24 Feb 2006 22:22:00 GMT

I’m sitting on the bus right now and I see a bunch of ads for OpenOffice,org. I suppose putting ads on the route that runs from Redmond to Seattle is pretty clever as they’re sure to get throngs of Microsoft employees looking at it and surely having a reaction. It’s not so much that they are advertising as much as the slogans they are using. For those who haven’t seen the ad campaign, it is essentially the T-shirt covered torsos of men and women with each torso reading a different slogan for OpenOffice. Of course, pretty much every slogan is a dig at Microsoft or Office. The sayings include “Us-opoly”, “Compatible with expensive, closed, memory-loving software” (it’s like I hear Jonathan Schwartz’s voice), “Prehistoric reptilians welcome” (ahh, a jab at the MS Office ad campaign), and “By the people, for the people” (here I thought people made MS Office--I guess those prehistoric reptilians are actually the ones who write the software). Well, as a guy who did his stint in b-school and a marketing gig at Microsoft, I thought I could lend some creativity to help Sun with their next wave of T-shirts not just for OpenOffice, but for the whole company.

ü “We sell SPARC CPUs. Remember SPARC?”

ü “Sun Microsystems: Where Unix came to die.”

ü “Solaris, er, Linux, no Solaris, no Linux, uh Solaris, no, aw never mind”

ü “AMD CPUs. Linux OSs. We just add the cool logo.”

ü “It's a good thing we didn't buy Apple.”

ü “At least we didn’t throw chairs when Bill Joy left (they were repossessed).”

ü "We're the kings of open software (except Java)"

ü “Spite is so a business strategy”

ü “Yes, we are still in business. Why does everyone ask us that?”

Good luck Sun. I hope these help and you guys make a profit again.