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Glass half empty of half full? Yes, this legislation would end to benefit larger players in the market, but at the same time, how many people have been fretting about the potentially bottomless market if artificial scarcity ceases to be a viable business model? This surely provides a clear point for monetisation for open source software: warranty.
Author: patrickfinch
links for 2009-06-08
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Users are "leeches" ? If you produce open source software and you think of users as "leeches", you are probably using the wrong business model. Users are always good.
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"It takes real courage to stand out front telling users about this major hose-job and try to find a way to spin it so the users won’t turn into a lynch mob." – a lively commentary about the MSFT .Net framework assistant Add-on.
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Brain Krebs on MSFT's "silent" Firefox add-on: "Anyway, I'm sure it's not the end of the world, but it's probably infuriating to many readers nonetheless. Firstly — to my readers — I apologize for overlooking this…"feature" of the .NET Framework security update. Secondly — to Microsoft — this is a great example of how not to convince people to trust your security updates." Indeed: the lack of respect for the user's preferences with respect to their own security is pretty staggering.
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Disturbing piece this, in which a Motley Fool columnist describes a European Commissioner as exhibiting "idiocy" and a being a "joke". Particularly telling was this comment: "IE doesn't give MSFT any competitive advantages at all.", which displays the author's ignorance of how the web works, and indeed, how technology markets in general function.
Goal of the season?
Anyone see a better goal than this effort from everyone’s 4th favourite league?
Or indeed, did anyone hear a worse commentary?
5th International Conference on Open Source Systems
(Updated 9th June, added links to papers)
I spent most of last week at the Open Source Systems 2009 conference in Skövde (pronounced “hwerv-duh”), Sweden. It was an interesting few days, and I was impressed (rather than flattered) that the conference chair, Prof. Tony Wasserman, was able to remember that I used to work for Sun Microsystems on the basis of a 10 minute conversation we had shared in Orlando, Florida in 2005.
I thought that the keynotes were good, general introductions into the state of the ecosystem movement community topic, that Stormy Peters’ (ironically breezy) overview of open source business models managed to be inclusive without being turgid. Brian Behlendorf’s talk on “How open source can still save the world” was not what I expected – although it was an interesting study of several essentially public sector projects (a theme of the conference) which open source can be proud. Indeed, at the OSSCOM workshop on Saturday, Jonathan Allen started his paper with the comment that open source can also save business.
At the OSSCOM workshop, I also made my own modest contribution, “Considerations for Trademarks, Nomenclature and FLOSS Communities”, which I thought went well, although David scored me a lame 12.5% on adopting his excellent feedback. Sorry David, I will try harder next time.
In my paper, I argued that the importance of trademarks to open source communities is largely unrecognised. Any sustainable project should be aware of whether it is naming its code base, its distributed product (of course, there may be several), its community, or even the right to provide services for that product.
During the subsequent discussion, one question emerged that the workshop seemed to find important, namely, “how can you tell if a company controls a project?”. My answer may seem like a simplification, but I would argue that whoever controls the trademark by which that community’s product is known, controls the community (in so much as you can control open source at all). There is an implicit contract between trademark owner and community members – and where the contract is not acceptable to all parties, a fork occurs (or people leave the project altogether). While copyright ownership may seem more important, it is only really relevant for dual-licensing (or any possible license change). But if you want to know who governs the project, look for the trademark holder.
Community Meetup in Stockholm, June 2nd
A belated thanks to everyone who made it to the Mozilla community meetup in Stockholm last Tuesday (50 or so souls, by my counting), and a special thanks to our speakers, to Tim at bwin, and a shout out to Andreas Nilsson, who made the trek all the over from Göteborg: we appreciate it! David has a nice write-up here.
William surprising his audience at Stomozcom
All I would add to that would be to encourage anyone who wants to be informed of future meetups to sign up to the Mozilla Sweden mailing list by sending a mail with “Subscribe” in the subject to mozilla-sv-request [at] mozilla.se. Indeed, if you have Sweden-related Mozilla news, please do post it to the alias.
And thanks to those people who provided feedback on the programme. We spread our net quite far and wide on this occasion, covering support, QA, add-ons and marketing. This meant that there was something for everyone, but probably also that not everything was for anyone. Might we want to focus on a specific topic in the agenda next time? Get in touch and share your thoughts.
links for 2009-05-29
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"The term ‘beta’ as we know it in the software industry and the way it’s being used by Google is not really the same type of use," Rochelle said. "We’re selling these products, and we don’t treat them internally like they’re a beta." I really welcome this. It is problematic promoting Beta testing (because that is what you do with a Beta) when the biggest company on the web uses the term in an inappropriate way.
And yet they still call them betas.
links for 2009-05-25
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"Mozilla could soon be in a position to be a quasi-king maker. They're independent-minded and, having emerged as a credible alternative to Internet Explorer even among mainstream users, they seem to be on a mission of sorts." A mission *of sorts* ? Well, we are on a mission.
links for 2009-05-19
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This certainly raises my eyebrows. There are 2 issues:
1. Google Chrome installs to a user's own directory (where the user has full write permissions)
2. It applies updates automatically without asking the user's permission.
Should we accept this from any vendor? What concerns me is the lack of respect for the user: if users understood this was happening, would they agree to it?
links for 2009-05-15
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What's really interesting to note here is that it is a flaw in WebKit that was exploited. Since both Safari and Chrome use WebKit both were at risk. This could mean that for an attacker, if they can find a critical flaw in WebKit they could potentially take down two browsers at a time.
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I frequently disagree with Keir Thomas' writing, and I certainly disagree with his notion that trademarks harm open source, a "No Logo" for software. In fact, I will be presenting a paper on 6th June at the Open Source Systems Conference on the importance of open source projects to have control of their name.
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"stop the barbaric practice once and for all" Michael Arrington is, it seems, on a mission to end hand-shaking, fearful of germs. Speaking as someone who does wash his hands – every time – and who does like to shake hands, I find myself being described by the TechCrunch editor as "barbaric". Ludicrous. Let us not confuse the unhygeinic with the barbaric. What about a campaign to get people to wash their hands in public toilets instead?
links for 2009-05-14
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"Obviously, we've known for quite some time that children get bullied for being geeky and nerdy, but all the research shows that over 50 per cent of young people in the UK are affected by bullying which means an absolutely huge impact of achievement if millions of children are dumbing down and not meeting their target attainments." – Sarah Dyer of BeatBullying on the impact of bullying on academic performance
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I have long had misgivings about the way Google Chrome effectively inserts Google between the user and any destination they want on the internet. I hadn't considered the effect on the economic relationship between Google and websites.
Mozilla i Sverige: Det blir kul!
I am very excited to announce that we will hold a Mozilla get-together on the evening of June 2nd, starting at 6pm at the delightful offices of bwin games in Stockholm. You can register here.
Speakers
We will have four talks on different aspects of the project:
David Tenser will discuss SUMO, community-based support for Mozilla;
Carsten Book (Tomcat) will talk about QA of an open source project;
Casten Book and David Tenser. Credit for image: David Tenser
William Quiviger will talk about volunteer marketing and advocacy;
William Quiviger
and Robert Nyman will give his acclaimed (by me at least) talk on Developing add-ons for Firefox.
Robert Nyman
And, even more importantly, we will have pizza and beer and a chance to get to know eachother. All details are on the event wiki.
Attending
Everyone with an interest in the above topics, Mozilla, software freedom or the open web is most welcome to attend. You don’t need to speak Swedish or English to attend, but speaking at least one will be a definite advantage. But you do need to register, as we can only manage with so many people.
Getting there
We will be at the offices of bwin games, Klarabergsviadukten 82, Stockholm.
We are very grateful to our hosts, bwin, for their help. During the daytime the facility is home to the 400 employees of bwin Games, the leading developer of next generaton online poker games and digital entertainment. The office is a high-rise tower with a great view of Stockholm, and is just next to Stockholm central station (literally, just over the road).
It is really easy to get to if you are in the Stockholm area. For those who are not, please get in touch with me as I’d like to know where you would like to meet next time.
As far as I know, it has been a while since there was a meeting of the Mozilla community in Sweden. I am really looking forward to meeting up. Vi ses!
(Förresten, jag kan lite svenska men eftersom jag bara bott här i två år är jag fortfarande ingen expert. Om du vill får du gärna skriva till mig på svenska, men jag kanske svarar på engelska!)
links for 2009-05-06
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Curious that Safari and Opera users are less inclined to patch to the latest versions. Is this an interface question? I think Firefox does a good job of respecting the user with new updates, although I gather not everyone likes this approach.
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Timothy Prickett Morgan's article is coy about just how tounge in cheek it really is – but one thing he overlooks, and Oracle are unlikely to in their acquisition of Sun is just how important a supported stack is. Yes, Sun's software is open source, no, that does not mean that you can simply undercut existing suppliers in their installed base: Oracle have already seen this movie, it was called Unbreakable Linux and Red Hat is still the dominant enterprise Linux vendor.
links for 2009-04-27
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As the author notes in the comments, this might better be titled, "Could Firefox kill spam". I know that Firefox' antiphishing features are not uncontroversial, but spam remains a real problem.
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"So what that tells me, is that even though the stable channel is supposed to be more stable, if you're looking for the best security when running Chrome you might be better off running either the dev or beta versions."
OK, I am confused. There is the dev, the beta and stable. And the stable is the least, erm, stable? Seriously, Google's use of the term "Beta" for what is essentially production software does confuse me, and I am sure I am not alone. -
Friends ask me when there is a new Firefox version (like 3.0.9 yesterday) what is going on. But a process that allows for frequent and transparent fixes is the best way to ensure user security. Hoping that you can keep your problems obscure will probably mean that only those who wish to exploit them secretly will learn about them.
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I think Jeff Waugh's point about Ubuntu's branding is a very good one, and one I feel that most respondents on his blog miss. Once more: it does not matter if you like or dislike branding – what counts are the signals it gives, the feeling it conveys. Ubuntu was the best branded OS out there, including Mac OS X. It seeped identity, purpose, distinction. The new gdm login screen? Not so much.
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Of course, it's not all about speed, but yes, Firefox 3.6 (which is a ways off still) is exciting.
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"The problem is that open source development is not a democracy." I have to agree with Sergar Yegulalp's argument here: calling open source software "democratic" software would confuse the issue, and offer little additional understanding. His suggstion, "publicly developed" is better, but I think "open source" remains the least worst way of describing it (or just "open" ?)
links for 2009-04-23
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I took part in this. It was an interesting exercise, and interesting to watch as it happened
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“If Oracle isn’t completely dumb, it will appreciate quite what an incredible asset it has acquired – because this know-how can help every part of its business. Peoplesoft cost Larry $10.3bn. Sun looks like a bargain.” I think that this is excellent analysis of the Oracle-Sun deal by Andrew Orlowski. He is absolutely right that the E10k product was the centre of the dot-com vortex and is what ultimately unbalanced Sun’s strategy (at least, from where I was sitting). Although I don’t know what “Kumbaya hype” he is refering to around open source (especially as I helped write some of it…)
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It’s nice to see BrandThunder making headlines with customised builds – another part of the add-on ecosystem.
links for 2009-04-17
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Blimey. Firefoxes (red pandas) are the first animals that seem to like artifical sweetner.
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"But hey, didn't they same the same about Firefox? Surely this upstart browser couldn't make a dent in Internet Explorer's dominance. " Really nice article about the fabulous Songbird. I am excited about Songbird, it's like iTunes but without all the b&##€@!t. Have you tried it?
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"the bottom line is that Firefox and its friends still give me a better over-all Web experience. And, when you're like me and you need to find information quickly on the Web all day long, that's no small thing."
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"Firefox support is free for everyone and powered by the Mozilla community, just like Firefox." Tenser scores ink! Eskilstuna's own helpful rockstar on the SUMO project.
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' 'I don’t like the design of the Google Chrome.page. All of the toolbars I’m familiar with are missing, and I don’t even know how i got it. If I uninstall it, will I be able to get just plain Google?' wonders Stellar. " And so on and so forth. If you promote software as aggressively as Google have, you end up with users who wonder how they got there. How many Chrome users were not aware they were getting a new browser?
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I love this quote from Ian. He's 100% correct, and we were all having those conversations. "To me, what Sun needs to do with OpenSolaris was obvious. And from some conversations with some people at Sun on an individual basis, it was obvious to the individuals. But collectively, large organizations tend to have a lot of inertia. And getting beyond that inertia was much more challenging than I thought it would be based on those initial conversations."
From Åkerö 