Recently in Net Effects Category

I've been intrigued for some time with the prospect of electronic ink and paper. Geekzone reports that Philips Polymer Vision developed a prototype device using the technology in months rather then the 2 years they thought it would take.

With four gray levels, the monochrome, 5-inch QVGA (320 pixels x 240 pixels) display provides paper-like viewing comfort with a high contrast ratio for reading-intensive applications, including text, graphics, and electronic maps.

Looking forward to when these things are commercially viable. I think its emergence will be quite profound on computing devices as we know it. Imagine what someone like Apple could do with this technology?

Alex Bosworth has announced an interesting social networking/wiki project called Swik.

A common complain about Open Source is that it's hard to find out how to make it work. I don't really think this makes sense: if Open Source has any strength, it's strength in numbers, and if there are many other people figuring out how to use software, they should be able to pass that knowledge along to everyone else.

Unfortunately, life is not always that easy for users of Open Source yet. That's why SourceLabs is developing Swik, a web service for letting information about Open Source software flow from user to user, in a free and open way.

Swik is a wiki for any open source project. It's a set of CreativeCommons pages that lets anyone share tips, links, definitions or instructions.

Sounds promising. I'm already doing enough documentation in with my current projects load, but potentially having a respository tech how-to akin to Wikipedia is really quite appealing if it works.

Over the weekend I got to read and contemplate Jason Kottke's post A whole new internet? that got my special attention because it solicited a response post from Mena Trott taking the bait.

Jason touches a couple of areas I'm quite passionate about and have been investing a lot of thought lately. So much so, that I'm dividing these thoughts into two parts. This first post covers the broader issue of how successful application handle success.

Kottke points out that innovation in the last few years came from creative and passionate individuals with no funding and shoe string budgets at best while unemployed or unfulfilled in a job. This is now changing as funding is becoming available and these projects are being turned into business ventures. There clearly are many cautionary tales to be noted as to not to repeat history or loose the essence of what launched these innovations.

His observations are quite correct benefiting from the perspective of the (first?) dot com boom that he was a veteran of. Being one of those veterans myself I agree and understand his perspective.

I'm not sure if this post is meant to be a criticism of these new Internet upstarts or simply observations with historical perspective sprinkled in. Perhaps it is a little of both.

Whatever the case, what Kottke describes from my experience is a basic and unavoidable part of evolution to any successful application. This echos the bottom-line of my O'Reilly Network Movable Type 3.0 and Eating post of nearly a year ago though from a different angle.

When a project strikes a chord with a large community of individuals, how does it manage and survive its growth?

Balancing innovation with business and funding is an underlying theme I keep seeing for better or for worse.

Eventually these projects far outstrip the waking hours of its core team to handle the needs of the gathering masses let alone maintain their rapport with its existing supporters.

Distribution of the application (whether it be code or a service), in addition to any online documentation, support forums and mailing lists, cost increasingly more money. There are plenty of free software tools (Perl, MySQL, emacs, Apache) to cobble together systems. However there is no such thing when it comes to bandwidth or servers. Each and every month expenses are incurred and, as its success grows, so do these expenses. The goodwill of the community (donations) no longer cut it (if they ever did) to paying these bills, let alone carrying the cost of an employee – the biggest expense any company will incur.

All of this can be summarized by a line taken from Clay Shirky badly misquoted – a successful application is its own worse enemy.

In my opinion, the challenge for these early adopter communities is understanding this evolutionary process and participating in it through realistic feedback and support that manages success without selling out wholesale to the irrational exuberance of dot com boom.

How does a successful application protect itself from itself while still continuing to grow and evolve? It's one that should and will be asked again that I'm not sure there is one right answer for.

Over at AdFreak, Mae Anderson writes about the Spike Jonze directed Adidas commercial featuring…

…a breathy track by Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (doing her best to channel Cat Power) and Squeak E. Clean. The track is available exclusively on iTunes and has risen to No. 11 overall on the downloads chart, alongside Gwen Stefani and the Backstreet Boys. (It’s No. 5 on the alternative-music downloads list.) Might the TV spot/iTunes combo be the future for record labels trying to reach the masses? Hello tomorrow.

I agree. This is a great example of what I meant when I wrote over 2 year ago...

I find it fascinating how commercials in recent years are becoming the modern day radio hit or MTV video. Commercials are becoming a serious source of income and potential startum for previously obscure artists like Nick Drake in addition to upcoming and independent artists like Telepopmusik or Dirty Vegas. Even well established commercial artists are benefiting. It was reported that there was a spike in Sting's Brand New Day sales when Desert Rose was running in a Jaguar commercial.

With product placements in movies and commercials as short-film features, perhaps this could be the future.

While the posts to this weblog haven't been terribly interesting or frequent lately, I've been quite busy coding away. Here is a lot of what I've done that is now public.

CPAN Modules

The links in this section are to the latest version in CPAN as of this post.

Text::BIP 0.51

The Blosxom Infrastructure Package (or simply BIP), is an object-oriented module for facilitating event-based file system indexing. Release back in January after almost a year of internal evolution and refactoring, the purpose of this module is to provide a lightweight mechanism for facilitating event-based file system indexing. In many ways it's File::Find with a slightly more specific and object-oriented interface.

When Rael Dornfest released blosxom, his lightweight yet feature-packed weblog application, I was intrigued by how much could be done with so little. The one feature that made the biggest impression on me is how blosxom used the file system as a simple hierarchical document database. I began to apply this technique in a number of my scripts whose scope was outside of the realm of the traditional weblog uses blosxom was designed to handle. To better organize and reuse my code, I created a module that implemented an extensible framework that I could begin dropping into my scripts. The result became BIP.

Text::Tiki 0.73

TikiText is a structured text formatting notation that primarily descends from wiki and plain text email conventions. It strives to more intuitive then common wiki notations by using the least amount of characters from plain text. It is easy to learn to learn the basics, but provides richer functionality for those who want to dive in. Like most text formatting engines, Tiki abstracts users from needing to know or understand markup whenever possible. It differs in that it makes valid and semantical XHTML markup easy and lets CSS do its job.

Besides internal refactoring and bug fixes, 0.7x includes functionality and hooks for wiki linking. While wikis are a part of TikiText's lineage, it was never my intention to create a new Wiki notation or tool. Based on the feedback I received from the initial releases, that changed.

XML::RSS::Parser 2.12

I released a major refactoring and enhancement to my liberal object-oriented parser for RSS feeds. Version 2.x has what I think is a much better and simpler object model then the short lived 1.x release. It supports XPath-esque queries as of 2.1.

XML::RAI 0.1

The RSS Abstraction Interface or RAI (said ray) is a bit of an experimental module for me. It is an object-oriented interface to XML::RSS::Parser trees that abstracts the user from handling namespaces, overlapping and alternate tag mappings that is common in the RSS space. Its only a 0.1 release, but I'm using it internally and it seems to be working quite well. It will be interesting to see if it lives up to its mission in the wild.

Net::Trackback 0.991

This module is an object-oriented interface for developing Trackback clients and servers. The big change in this version is that it has been fully OO-ized and hence more adaptable. This previous version (which had an upper case B) was a crude hack of the standalone Trackback client Ben and Mena Trott released. Recently I had to use it and had forgotten how poorly it was so I HAD TO rewrite it.

XML::Parser::Style::Elemental 0.40

This module is a slightly more advanced and flexible object tree style for XML::Parser. I wanted something simple and virtually transparent, but wasn't satisfied with the built-in styles of XML::Parser. I needed a reference to a node's parent and namespace support. In developing my code, I decided to go the distance and made it a reusable module I could distribute.

MT Code

mt-closure

A utility script for closing comments and pings open for a specified period of time. Is a pure MT solution and is not tied to a specific database. Not rigorously tested. (Treat as beta for now.)

XSearch 0.2

The built in search functionality in MT does fine, but at times I've found myself needing something more or different in my work. What I've wished for was a pluggable search facilities like MT's template engine.

In scratching my own itch, I've thrown down the gauntlet and finally done something about it. I've created MT::XSearch an extensible framework for creating search plugins for Movable Type.

Announced on the mt-dev mailing list, this framework is for coders. My hope is that other coders will create various search and application functionality off of this framework.

Up on deck is adding some type of template tags for navigating through large search results.

mt-publish-on 0.11

Nothing really new here, but I thought I'd mention that I fixed a bug where dependent pages (such as an index page) were not getting rebuilt with the newly published entry.

The recent discussion of RSS profiles and an optional default namespace hosted by Sam Ruby that forked into a heated discussion as to the rights of weblog comments and moderation has brought mind a keynote Clay Shirky gave at the O'Reilly Emerging Technology conference just over a month ago. I took notes on Clay's keynote as he was speaking and posted to a weblog. Here are some select passages from those notes that I thought where relevent to this situation.

Too much open access and too much freedom caused an early online community (Commitree) to collapse because it could not defend themselves from an onslaught on teen age boys that overran the group with obscenities and fart jokes.

The increasing need for structure grows as the group attempts to defend itself from the group.

The core group have rights that trumps the whole group. Absolute citizenship is a harmful pattern. A contenious group can derail anything otherwise.

All groups of any integrty have a constitution. The formal way is in the code. The informal part are the social interations(?) There will always be both parts.

I won't rehash how this conversation diverged and derailed. You can read the comments on Sam's weblog and Shelley Powers.

I have to say that I'm taken aback by Shelley's reaction and see it as being exccessive. I also find it ironic that Shelley is so outraged by group structure and its defense that she just began as a guest contributor to the social software weblog.

It would have been nice had Sam given advanced warning before modifying comments. At the same time there was precious little time to attempt tp protect what was a productive conversation from going astray. Sam, being that it was his weblog (I don't think anyone is surprised by that), reacted to protect the group from itself. Unfortunately, depsite his attempts, it would seem this overreaction threw cold water on that conversation. I hope it recovers, but now I'm not sure.

I got one of my comments marked up so I think it's fair for me to comment – especially since this is my weblog. I didn't even think twice about the practice Sam started – I actually thought it was a good idea. Sam has my utmost respect and I trust his judgement when he marks something as flamebait. I will take that into consideration next time I comment. I am thankful that he didn't just delete any of the comments in question – especially since some good thoughts where interlaced with the inflammatory statements and smack downs.

On an aside, Scott Andrew nails it when he writes Of course, there's irony here in that Sam's clever approach to handling comment flames has all but upstaged the dialogue on RSS within the blogosphere. Which may indicate, some might suggest, that further debate on RSS is futile and unnecessary. And while we're at it, let's throw FOAF and RDF on the pyre too, since no one cares about the former or comprehends the latter. Perhaps marshall law imposed by a few with power is the only way to ever establish order.

While buried in my work the past few week, I missed noting two happenings I'm happy to have assisted in. The release of mt-allconsuming and Sun retitling an inflammatory JavaOne session.

Dave Seidel announced the release of mt-allconsuming a MovableType plugin for integrating info from the All Consuming service. I let Dave use some of the code from my mt-rssfeed plugin. Dave also mentions that my Developing MT Plugins article showed him how to get it done. Glad I could help. Good work Dave.

A few weeks ago I noted a post by Andrew Oliver via Sam Ruby in my O'Reilly weblog. Andrew pointed out an inappropriate and inflammatory titled of a JavaOne session where an independent view (Sun staff was on the panel) of why the JCP is better then open source. Last week Andrew noted that we can make a difference. The chain-reaction of our posts succeeded in getting Sun's attention who have retitled the session to something more appropriate and less inflammatory. Andrew writes I hope this demonstration proves that we can make a difference. I have a lot more hope that with each of us watching and speaking out, that Sun will over time behave well without our help. Its up to us to be watchdogs. The onion smells much better today. I agree. Good work Andrew.

Interesting work is afoot in the world of TrackBack and other related concepts.

I received an email from Aaron Straup Cope that he has put my newly released XML::TrackBack module to work. Aaron is developing a OOP-ish interface to the Internet Topic Exchange dubbed Net::ITE.

The Internet Topic Exchange site is an implementation of Ridiculously Easy Group Forming concept. In its current form, ITE is a TrackBack repository with a twist -- participants can create channels that they and others can ping. The integration of a Wiki into the mix, albeit a loose one, is intriguing and one that has yet to be touched upon and explored.

David Raynes has been working on two concepts based on TrackBack infrastructure that he calls ComeBack and Post-It. Post-It allows users to publish whole entries to a MovableType weblog while ComeBack enables distributed comment authoring. I tested both with some basic test scripts using XML::TrackBack. Post-It works without issue. ComeBack uses a slightly different interface that returned an error when pinged. David has now integrated the two in one site achieving a forum-like effect where a user can make a post and others can comment on it.

The notion of a remote commenting interface that ComeBack represents is an intriguing one. This is a topic I will return to in a later post. Too much to write about here. Post-It is not as apparent to me. As a publishing API, Post-It bears a great deal of similarity in principle to the RESTLog API. The value of free-for-all posting that it enables via TrackBack I'm not entirely sure about.

Yesterday, Ben Hammersley was his own guinea pig as he attempted to implement TrackBack threading on his site. Ben had to retreat for the time being and shares his learnings in a later post here.

Sam Ruby recently put a different spin on Mark Pilgrim's automatic linkbacks system by utilizing RSS feeds as its source of excerpts. Sam explains To participate, you don't need to use weblogging software that supports trackback or pingback, you simply have to update your templates to have a link to your RSS feed. In a follow-up post he reasons I actually experimented with mark's code for a bit, but the biggest problem I had was that it looked like it would require continual investment to weed out the ever growing number of portals and personal aggregators. I was also concerned about the feedback loop that could occur given the amount of back traffic I get whenever I mention anything on Mark's page.

Shelley Powers continues to advanced something she calls BackTrack on top of TrackBack information. In this post she explains its purpose In each individual posting page is a section labeled with Sticky Strands and listing all of the TB pings the posting issued. The functionality I added today takes those pings, follows them back to the posted weblog, and then lists all of the trackbacks that weblog posting has received. Sam Ruby has joined in.

Both are excellent ideas that underscores the increasing value (and necessity) of meaningful titles and excerpts.

This experimentation has all been very intriguing and worthwhile in our discovery and understanding of the network and social effects of two-way hyperlinking systems. In reviewing this work I'm beginning to see some emerging issues and topics coming into focus. (In no particular order.)

• Extensibility of TrackBack. How should this is achieved without breaking some semblance of interoperability. For instance, I was unable to make a ComeBack post with XML::TrackBack because email has been added, excerpt renamed comment and blog_name renamed agent. All are required. So a TrackBack enabled tool cannot interoperate with a ComeBack interface, but does it have to be that way? It would seem not if these situations where examined for consideration to developing standard.
• What is the appropriate use and display of these various mechanisms? What improves usability and what degrades it? In commenting on Ben Hammersley's TrackBack threading experiment I wrote it seems the time is near, even here, where we need to begin discussing when is it appropriate/useful to use these different mechanisms and how are they best presented. Another case in point, since implementing a number of these mechanisms, Sam Ruby's comments board have been filling up with various links and excerpts to the point its becoming hard to grok.
• Integration of RSS and a consolidation of efforts. Post-It uses a superset of the TrackBack. Is ComeBack was based on TrackBack's infrastructure and has a very similar interface, but breaks comparability. Post-It is quite similar to RESTLog. All make use of RSS or RSS-like structures including Sam Ruby's automatic linkbacks and let's not forget MLTFO (More Like This From Others) effort that happened over the holiday season. One thing is becoming clear RSS is bloody important and highly useful and far more then just a way to read news outside of the browser so we can stick it to the BigCos.

The subtle and underlying theme I draw from all of this is that RESTful interfaces that inherent in the Web's design work and have yet to be fully explored.

Here is to experimentation, innovation and evolution.

lazy \La"zy\

1. Disinclined to action or exertion; averse to labor; idle; shirking work. --Bacon.
2. Inactive; slothful; slow; sluggish; as, a lazy stream. The night owl's lazy flight. --Shak.
3. Wicked; vicious. [Obs. or Prov. Eng.] --B. Jonson.

Source: Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary

I'm all for the concept of the LazyWeb and I'm quite excited by its potential. Shelley Powers put it best when she wrote I think we're seeing a new form of open source development, based on technology developed for the community and its immediate, expressed needs. A case of community searching for technology rather than technology on the hunt for a users.

Lazy doesn't seem to be the word for it because members of the community describing its needs are taking action requiring some work to clearly articulate their need.

In his article covering the LazyWeb and its significance, Clay Shirky explains that term first coined by Matt Blackbelt Jones initially meant If you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you are thinking about. The concept has since evolved to mean I describe a feature I think should exist in hopes that someone else will code it. The concept has evolved, but the name has not to reflect that change.

I'm actually not sure what the right term is, so I suppose in essence this is my description of a need -- the need for a more appropriate term. The term seems like a slight that doesn't exactly encourage participation for those who are unfamiliar with the concept. (A form of Developers Have Blind Spots?)

I'm the type of person who reads a request and develops something. Community software development needs more input from users and needs to encourage their participation anyway we can -- like not describing them as slothful or the like.

In the continuing the review and discussion of Safari, Jason Kottke asks the intriguing question why are Safari and Sherlock two different applications? Jason argues that there is little distinction between web browsing and using specialized interfaces for structured data. He provides screen mockups of Safari to illustrate his point. An active discussion in the comment boards follows.

Back in September I wrote as the Internet continues to evolve into an 'Internet operating system'--programmable interfaces, ubiquitous access, and distributed computing resources--the document-centric browser is an awkward solution to a growing number of emerging needs. The browser is not dying by any means; it just needs a mate.

Reading about Remote Application Development with Mozilla, the mod_pubsub open source project KnowNow kicked off and discussions like the one Jason is leading have me reconsidering my view. Does the browser really need a mate in as much as it needs to expand its range?

Could browsers like Mozilla and Safari/Konqueror be the basis of simple lightweight structured interfaces for accessing network resources and microcontent? What if these browser brought bookmarklets and remote XUL to the forefront as equal partners to viewing webpages?

More intriguing questions and experiments lie ahead.

Apple announced the public beta of their OS X browser Safari with much buzz and less then stellar reviews.

• CNET : Apple Computer's Safari browser offers little challenge to Microsoft's browser dominance, analysts said Tuesday, but the Mac maker could benefit enormously if it can wean itself from Internet Explorer.
• Mark Pilgrim I’ve downloaded and installed Safari. This review is mainly for web designers who now need to support yet another browser. It is in no way a judgement on Apple. All browsers have bugs, and all web designers need to know about them. Dave Hyatt, one of Safari's developers, responds here looking for test cases.
• Mena Trott: My initial response is this: Safari's bookmark and history management, the Google bar and spell checking are the three biggest gains for my own use. The inability to turn off anti-aliasing text really puts me off, however (like previous versions of Chimera, we may be able to fix this by editing the preferences file -- wherever that may be).
• Ben Hammersley: Sadly, at first glance it's shit almost-shit - No tabbed browsing.
• Anil Dash: Today [Apple] launched Safari, which is a Gecko (Mozilla engine) browser that loses Chimera's tabs and adds brushed metal ugliness. Maybe the tabs will show up when the browser's out of beta.
• Scott Andrew: It's too bad that Safari identifies itself as Mozilla/Gecko, when in fact its rendering engine is based on that of Konqueror. There's going to be a lot of confused user-agent sniffers out there. A lesson, I suppose, on the perils of trusting the USER_AGENT string, and other spoofable HTTP headers.
• Ben Hammersley (again): In what must be the fastest, most in-depth, distributed product review in history, Apple's new browser, Safari is being bashed about all over the blogosphere. Last night I was less than overwhelmed, but this morning I'm a little more happy.

Apple's use of the Konqueror/KHTML rendering engine as opposed to Mozilla Gecko is a bit controversial (or more accurately intriguing), but in the long run will be beneficial to the space. Instead of one open source engine, developers will have more choice and the inherent flexibility that two different efforts provide. There is some valid concern that another engine will divide the efforts of the community and introduce additional quirks and standards incompatibilities for designers concerned with universal access to work around. With Apple's support and dedication, I'm optimistic that those issues will be surmounted -- take David Hyatt and quick and open response to the community's feedback.

The 17 inch monitor PowerBook Jobs introduced is rather awkward looking. While its only an inch thick, the length and width in addition to all of the dead space around the keyboard reminds me of the old school laptops that that where the size of a suitcase.

I'm still resolved to follow through on my resolution. With reviews like InfoWorld's who wouldn't? I don't think the jumbo screen model is for me though.

[UPDATE: I've made a post to my O'Reilly weblog based on this one here. (The comments board is open.)

The holidays (and associated downtime) are over and its back to business. This is a summary of the interesting and noteworthy news and posts that where made while I was out.

MT: Simple and Powerful Text Formatting

To allow both more control and easier formatting, we're adding a new feature in the next version of Movable Type: Text Formatting. This will replace the current "Convert Line Breaks" option. Or, rather, the current "Convert Line Breaks" will simply be one of the available text formatting options, along with (hopefully) many other options, from POD to XML to Wiki. [SixLog]

I'm looking forward to this new feature. It couldn't have better timing. (OK I could be have come out over the holiday, but you get the idea.) I'm starting up on a project for a client who needs a content management system. I recommended MT and they took my recommendation. Now the issue I face is that the know nothing about web development or (X)HTML markup. What little web development they've done has been with FrontPage. In order to save them from learning and then struggling to publish their content and news with (X)HTML markup, I considered some alternate text formatting system. I've examined a couple different Wiki formats, Zope's Structured Text and Textile. While all are a step in the right direction, they are a bit more cumbersome and obtrusive for a non-technical user. I'm now nearing a first draft of a text formatting system that is based on the text formatting conventions commonly used in email. I hope this is simpler and easier to learn. Watch hear for more on that.

MTAmazon TrackBacks

The MTAmazon site is now running MT. It’s quite amazing to me that a free service like SourceForge would provide CVS space, download servers and bandwidth, AND Web hosting that supports MySQL and Movable Type. [Adam Kalsey]

This is an intriguing use of weblogging tool. Makes complete sense though I have seen very little of it happening. MTAmazon's use of TrackBack to create a list of MTAmazon will be interesting to watch as a similar discussion has begun on the mt-dev mailing list.

The LazyWeb

Ben Hammersley announced the creation of the LazyWeb using TrackBack links. "If you have something you'd like made, or invented, or written, write about it on your blog, and then trackback to the LazyWeb site (trackback url: http://blog.mediacooperative.com/mt-tb.cgi/1080 ). The rest of us can watch the site or feed and see if we can help out."

Shelley Powers comments "I think we're seeing a new form of open source development, based on technology developed for the community and its immediate, expressed needs. A case of community searching for technology rather than technology on the hunt for a users."

Trackback Threading

Sam Ruby notes on Greg Reinacker's call to action: "So, everyone, how about implementing TrackBack and/or Pingback on your weblogs - and let's see where it takes us?" Sam points out that the next logical step is trackback threading though issues may exist. I think we've only begun to scratch the surface of TrackBack's potential. Its an area of thought that I'm going to be giving considerable thought and attention to in the coming months.

Blosxom 0+6i BETA 1 released. 0+7i already on deck.

Aside from some basic cleanup, the big deal here is -- yes, it's true! -- STATIC RENDERING. [Rael Dornfest on the blosxom mailing list]

This is a much awaited feature. Much of the code (about 137 lines) is display text. In lurking on the mailing list it would seem the script are generally modified from its original form. Makes me think. In his announcement Rael also said "I've already started work on 0+7i's actions and pluggability (woohoo!) which I'll put into beta over the next couple-three weeks or so."

Software, Jim, but not as we know it

As we boldly explore the new universe of service-oriented architectures, we should not be surprised if software begins to assume unfamiliar, alien forms. [Phil Wainewright]

Agreed Phil. To quote a famous philsopher "you must unlearn what you have learned." We must forget what software is/was and seek out what it is becoming. Phil pointed out the recent example of Jon Udell's LibraryLookup as an example.

Udell's BYTE.com archive restored.

Early in December, Jon Udell reported that his former employer CMP had chosen to make the entire archive of BYTE.com a subscription only services. Just before Christmas Jon announced:

The 115 columns I wrote for BYTE.com are now restored to the public Web. I took this step reluctantly, and would have preferred that the original namespace remain intact, but so be it. Those columns that have continuing value can now weave themselves back into the fabric of the Web.

Great. I agree with Jon that those columns have value. I have a deep appreciation for many of his insights and the elegance in which he expresses them. Here are some of the articles that I’ve been going back to lately:

• The Universal Canvas
• The Universal Canvas Revisited
• The power of the URL-line
• The Event-Driven Internet
• Website API discovery

Microsoft ordered to distribute Java.

CNET (amongst many others) reports "A U.S. district court judge on Monday ordered Microsoft to include Sun Microsystems' version of Java with the Windows operating system, citing the software giant's history of undermining the platform-neutral programming language." Of course, Microsoft is appealing.

I have mixed feelings about this ruling. On one side I'm glad because I was highly disappointed with the DOJ's settlement with Microsoft after being declared a monopoly. Now that great injustice is in the books all that is left are civil suits. So I'm glad to see some momentum the other way. At the same time I am disappointed that Java is being forced onto users. If Java on the desktop was well done and useful I would expect a significant number of users would have opted to install it. Java on the desktop and in the browser is rather poor and demonstrate Sun doesn't get it -- or perhaps they are too stubborn and blinded by their own hatred of all things Microsoft.

My friends Pete (who doesn't have a weblog) sent me a link to this well-done editorial by David Pogue entitled "Profit and Innovation at Microsoft." (Free registration required.) Pogue's editorial susinctly and rationally gets to the crux of the matter. Having been on the receiving end of Microsoft's "innovation" more times then I care to remember, I appreciate can apprecaite this viewpoint.

Why does Microsoft bother me so? Because, in my view, its success relies primarily on this unique "you're our customer whether you like it or not" arrangement. If Microsoft won through the superiority of its products or the brilliance of its new ideas, I wouldn't resent its dominance one bit. (You go, Sony!)

But that's not very likely to happen. Beyond Windows and Office, when has Microsoft become the dominant player in a market it covets? It's either a distant second-place player or a complete loser in palmtops, digital music formats, online services, set top boxes, game consoles, phones and other areas it has set out to conquer, no matter how many hundreds of millions of dollars it spends. If Microsoft were truly the quality-driven innovator it claims to be, surely it would have claimed the #1 spot in some of these other categories.

Instead, according to an article this week in The Financial Times, the numbers tell the real story: Microsoft's Xbox game division lost $177 million last quarter, its MSN online service lost $97 million, its application-software division lost $68 million and its palmtop division lost $33 million. The only profits at Microsoft, in fact, came from its Windows monopoly money: $2.84 billion. (If there's any doubt that Microsoft is abusing its monopoly, that's an 85 percent profit margin.)

Kevin Werbach's "Death by Spam" has been the talk of the net lately. Werbach predicts the end of email as we know it (pervasive, flexible, universal connectivity) as the spam problem continues to worsen. Werbach concludes "Like it or not, the only way to kill spam is for an element of e-mail to die as well."

Jon Udell offers an intriguing thought (again) for fighting spam that Werbach does not cover. Instead of "whitelists", the equivalent of Instant Messaging buddy lists, Udell proposes that the use of digital identities could help filter email into two piles. Those who have asserted their identity go into one pile (mail you want to read) and those who have not go into another (mail you probably don't want to read). Digital certificates are better then whitelists in that they facilitate "trusted communication without prearrangement."

Every user suffers from and understands this plague. Blocking spam could finally incent the masses to use digital identities. There are other issues that need to be addressed. Udell goes on to point out that users still need to "jump through the hoops that now complicate the acquisition of a digital ID -- or to spur vendors to simplify that process. I've often wondered what it would take to get us over the activation threshold."

I wonder too. Personally I do not use a digital identity though I realize I should. It is a weak excuse, but I'm aware acquiring a digital ID is burdensome and simply haven't had the time or energy to take that on. I'm very reliant on email and I'm growing increasingly sick of spam. Perhaps it has come time to take this on and do my part to set an example.

Tim O'Reilly posts his answer to the question "is O'Reilly a free software business?" that was made on the free software business mailing list. He also points to an answer made by Simon Cozens that he particularly likes:

For programmers, writing software is fun. It's actually enjoyable to produce a free version of something you "can't" have because it's proprietary. Why do people write free software? Because it's either necessary to have a free version, (whether pragmatically - we need a free version of this software because there isn't a commercial one we can actually use - or dogmatically - because we believe that everything should be free) or it's fun to do.

Documentation is different. For most programmers, writing documentation isn't fun. So the question is, is it necessary to have a free version? If there's a reasonably-priced book available in a shop, it's probably not pragmatically necessary. That only leaves dogmatic necessity. And that's pretty weak - the only people who are really interested in dogmatic necessity are those who spend more time playing politicians than they would writing documentation anyway.

From Scott McNealy's keynote at Linuxworld: "I am a capitalist and am not ashamed of that. One of the ways that we will go make money is selling hardware. I have not seen the open source equivalent of downloading a server over the Internet."

UPDATE: I wanted to revisit this post to note the duel significance behind the quote from Scott NcNealy.

1) Many open source conspiracy theorists seem to forget that Sun (and other companies like them) are capitalist ventures and not academic consortiums or communes of ideological enlightenment. Scott McNealy's comments in a recent interview have been overblown and are more likely to be off-the-cuff unfiltered thinking on his part. One of life's early lessons that I hold dear is that actions speak louder then words. Sun has been one of the most generous commercial technology vendors to the open source community and continues to work with and support that community while balancing its responsibilities to its shareholders -- and its licensees.

2) McNealy's comments continue to reinforce that, as a capitalist, you can make money with open source -- it probably won't be directly though. Sun is a hardware company. Their hope is that the open software brings more value to its customers and drives more hardware sales. Through these hardware sales they will generate revenue (and soon profits once again) that allow them to continue to support the open source community. (Joel Spolsky articulates this point well in his essay "Strategy Letter V".) To this same point hardware and services cannot be open source or free. They have different economics that requires significant up-front and on-going investments in revenue. I believe that increasingly over time, standalone "shrink-wrapped" software companies will get squeezed out of existence, into a small niche or a supporting revenue channel such as hardware or services. Witness Microsoft's battle to discredit open source while eyeing a switch to subscription based services like the sidelined .NET My Services (Hailstorm) initiative.

The U.K. government confirmed on Monday that it will consider open-source software as a way to avoid getting locked into proprietary information technology products.

Not only central government will be affected by the policy: so too will local governments and the wider public sector, including non-departmental public bodies and the National Health Service. Contracts will be awarded on a value-for-money basis. [CNET News.com]

Microsoft as the Alexis de Tocqueville Institution (ADTI) are horrified. The UK aren't the first, other national governments have made similar moves. This is starting to become a trend that Redmond is sure to sure to try and stop. Besides the open source FUD report I highlighted Microsoft is proported to have encouraged, Wired News reports Microsoft has enlisted the US Ambassador in Lima to lobby to kill a bill mandating the use of open source technology in Peru's government system.

Joel Spolsky doesn't post very frequently, but when he does I always enjoy the clarity and insightfulness his writings brings to a relevant topic. His latest post "Strategy Letter V" is no exception.

In this post Joel debunks many of the myths, oversights and misconceptions of free software economics on the industry by first pointing out how "smart companies try to commoditize their products' complements." He then goes on to demonstrate how commercial technology powerhouses such as IBM and Sun are putting free software to this use.

Boing Boing's Cory Doctrow comments positively, but points out that Spolsky's criticism of Sun's "strange" and seemingly scattershot market approach of supporting write-once-run-anywhere software (Java) is mistaken. "Sun's unique sales proposition is what it has always been: interoperability," says Doctrow.

I have to agree with Joel somewhat that Sun's rhetoric and actions seems more focused on undermining Micrososft then developing their own business. However Sun has been at that game for years and has continued to be relatively successful in the commercial space by supporting free software and advocating Java. (Whether Sun's success will continue is another issue in light of a tough economic climate and mounting competition from IBM and HP to name a few.)

I think there is something more subtle to Sun's actions then then Joel's assertion that "...Sun is a hardware company. Making hardware a commodity is the last thing they want to do." I do believe that Sun does not want their servers to become a commodity. I also believe that interoperability is certainly one as Cory points out, but what is not been brough up is the timing of Sun's release and support of Java. When you look back, Java came at a time when Microsoft's dominance of all computing systems was almost unchallenged with Intel hardware in toe behind it. Generally speaking, there seemed to be little advantage or momentum for Unix based systems.

Riding the emergence of HTTP, HTML and the browser as a publishing platform, the Java platform changed that (after one false start with applets) by providing a better economic and technological solution for server-based computing solutions in the enterprise. Given Sun's mainstay has been its powerful servers that outperform and provide more reliability than Wintel solutions, shifting the momentum towards the server makes all of the sense in the world.

Now that Java has contributed to this shift that benefited Sun, they cannot simple drop support for Java as it would be irresponsible and bad form. Yes, IBM, HP, and Dell amongst other hardware vendors can run Java applications on its servers, but they where slow to react and now that they have they're playing in Sun court and not down the street. I presume that Sun was betting that they can engineer better hardware and provide better service to its customers with better economic opportunities for system integrator and resellers then those companies. It was and continues to be a risky game, but in my experience Sun has succeeded and is poised to continue to do so with IBM and HP continuing with their plan to grow larger and more lethargic as one-stop-shopping megavendors.