Open source software is a choice, a check-and-balance, an innovation...and something that makes Microsoft very uncomfortable. (That last just gives me a warm glowy feeling.)
May 02, 2001
Lately, Microsoft has been dissing the Open Source movement. It’s not an economically sound model, they say. It’s the same business practices that helped sink the dot-coms, they say. (I’m not going to touch their flawed initial premise that the open source system is based solely around making money...but I digress.) The talkback over at ZDNet, plus a follow-up rebuttal article, showed different points of view with the majority of them supporting OpenSource and condemning Microsoft for its hypocrisy. These folks do an excellent job of deconstructing the speech — I just wanted to weigh in on why I personally throw my full weight behind the Open Source concept.
The emperor is wearing real clothes
Open source software is not just “free to take, reuse, resell, recompile, rip off”. There are several licences that provide varying degrees of re-use and profit protection, including the most well-known, the GNU Public License (GPL). The GPL states that while anyone may see the source code of a program, may alter the source code of a program, may even give away this altered source code, and may do so without paying the author However, a person may not charge or accept any monies or other form of barter for any changed product — that is, they can’t change the code and then sell the application as their own work. They can’t even use a small portion of GPL-protected code in a larger application and then just include charges for that program. If I create graphics, for example, and offer them for free on my web site under the terms of the GPL, then anyone may take and use my graphics — even in paid projects. They just can’t redistribute the graphics in any form for which they receive any renumeration. This includes massive graphics galleries like ArtToday, CDs that are either available on their own or bundled with other software, or in any other form. The full text of the GPL is available online, and anyone is free to examine it.
What Really Sank the dot-coms
Giving things away for free was not what sank the dot-coms. What sank the dot-coms was poor business management, market oversaturation, and consumer greed. I’m not talking about folks who visit lots of sites and use as many free services as they can, I’m talking about the semi-ignorant day-traders and golden-boy (and girl) CEOs frantic to star in their own garage-to-gold fairy tale, a la Hewlett-Packard. Sitting here typing this, I can easily think of twenty people that I worked with who said, at one time or another, "I’m here to suck out a few hundred thou, then I’ll retire when things peak and get out while I can."
"Gosh, what laudable ethics you have."
"All the better to fuck you over with, my dear."
Why I Love Open Source...and you should, too
I learned HTML in 1991, back when I was in university. I have not ever taken a single formal class in web design, development, or architecture. When I started learning HTML, I was living in a mentor-rich environment, and I took advantage of that. I asked questions: of the people around me, of the owners of web sites I admired, of other programmers whose work I ran across and wanted to learn. Even Bill Gates says that the best way to learn to be a computer programmer is not to take a class, but to study code from other great programs (and, by extension, web sites).
But finally, I support the Open Source movement for the same reasons that I support legalisation of abortion, legalisation of drugs, and freedom of speech. I like being able to make my own choices about how to live my life, as long as it does not impinge upon the freedoms of others: choosing where and how (and even -=if=-) to worship, choosing my own vote, choosing my own job, choosing from a variety of products all with different advantages and disadvantages, choosing what tools to use to accomplish tasks. There are responsibilities that go along with these choices, true; and I even have the option of choosing to have someone else make certain choices for me. But ultimately the choice, and the responsibility, is mine. I have the option to exercise as much power as is possible over the events in my life.
Keywords: | philosophy | Open Source software | marketing | choice | business model |
Permalink
Gentlefolk, get on your soapboxes.
Apr 26, 2001
My favourite thing about the Internet is that ever since I started using it — I hopped on USENet, back in 1986 — I was instantly empowered to make my contribution. Posts to newsgroups. A reply on a BBS. Then a web page, the ubiquitous guest book signings, and then my own web site full of whatever I wanted to say, whenever I wanted to say it.
Radio, television, and the printed word may reach lots of people (sometimes), but those industries got their paradigms set decades ago. To be on television or radio, or to print a book or even a pamphlet, you had to have money, connections, and some modicum of talent. You could also be given a gag order by the commercial PTBs: we don’t want to publish your book/give you airtime/hear what you have to say. Go sit down and be a good little consumer. Sure, things like public radio and vanity presses (and in the 1990s, public-access cable) let more people come to the party. But even then, there was more of an initial investment — usually in money, which is nice to have for those pesky things like rent and food. On the Internet, anyone can sign up for a free site and publish nearly any kind of web content they want — and unless they break some local or federal law, no one can shut them up.
Sure there may be a lot of crap out there. Some may argue that this site is a steaming example thereof. But I get to talk about whatever I want, whenever I want...and people get to read it whenever they want. They don’t have to buy a book or tune in at a particular time. They can take a break in the middle and get a coffee — or repaint a room in the house. They can read while naked (and if that’s the case, pleaseandthankyou, I really don’t care for details. If you’re not so good looking, it’ll just annoy me. If you’re good looking, it’ll just frustrate me. Neither is particularly delightsome.)
Rail all you want. Decry the gradual lowering of content standards. Get really bored with this site and fire off an angry missive. Then go back to your own site, with your own journal, and rant about how unutterably stupid, how quelle pathetique, this laughing muse person is…
...because I’m not shutting up any time soon. I hope you don’t, either.
Keywords: | opinions | blogs |
Permalink
Forget the Pentagon's $20,000 screwdriver. We've got $10,00 a day for internal marketing memos (now that's hardcore waste.)
Mar 31, 2001
How often a day do I need to receive emails from some department in the company that basically consist of one sentence of real news and a paragraph or two of congratulating “the marketing team” or “the sales team” or “the implementations team”? Companies are laced with this self-congratulatory bullshit. While you do need to recognize peoples’ hard work, it’s very possible to go too far.
Companies have done studies on how much time their employees waste surfing non-work-related sites on the Internet (to me there almost is no such thing, since I’m a big fan of associative learning...but I still can’t be convinced of the efficacy of examining porn sites for their stunning insights into online usability.) Companies have also intensely scrutinised the time spent on internal procedures, time spent in meetings, and time spent on such details as getting materials to pieceworkers. They’ve done all these studies in the name of cutting out wasted time and motion, all to increase productivity. Good! Great! Now, has anyone done a study on the time spent (and wasted) deleting work-generated e-masturbations? I’d bet the numbers would make even the marketing departments — usually the worst offenders — blanch and swear off the keyboards.
The Breakdown
In an average week at one company, I received, skimmed, and deleted six pieces of mailbox dross. One particular day, I received seven. That didn’t count the other four that had come shuttling down the pipeline during the rest of the week. Since I don’t just delete these messages automatically (the other marketing information-blurbs are written by the same person, so read and look very similar, and I actually need those emails), I spent a total of 30 minutes on that single day, reading and deleting useless email that came from within the company. I was a contractor at that job, so while my takehome pay was one figure, the company was actually paying quite a bit more for every hour of my time. Then there was the post-delete bull sessions: the five minutes per message that we all spent passing around uncomplimentary remarks about the IQ, personal habits, and probable ancestry of the email’s originator. There’s about 10 more minutes of productivity time gone. So far, for one person, that’s up to one hour of dead time. Then there are the other 49 people in the office who also wasted their time — oh, some of them probably actually read it, certainly the VP would file all that away somewhere for use in compiling the annual reviews, and any other members of the originator’s coterie of yes-men would have read it and spent some time in their own version of water-cooler chatter. One hour x 50 people equals 150 man-hours. And keep in mind that this just covers one office of this company (there were six at the time). Add on the 15-30 minutes per message spent on composition, and there’s at least another hour wasted, for a grand total of 151 hours. Care to attach a dollar figure to that? If the average hourly equivalent of all of the people involved in the Great Message Circle was $60.00, that’s 60 x 151 = $9,060.00. The average figure includes contractors, regular workers, the VPs, management, and support personnel for a 50-person office...I might be underestimating the figure, but it’s good enough for illustration purposes.
$9,060.00.
In one day.
That’s kind of sick, it really is.
A Modest Proposal
No, the modest proposal does not state that a marketing manager is indeed a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout [J. Swift]. There is a valid need for marketing managers. No, my proposal is much simpler than that. Just compact all those separate emails down into one weekly missive. Attach it to a company-wide newsletter or memo; or if that just won’t give enough recognition, send it by its lonesome...but just do it once a week. You’ll still get those atta-boys (on which employees do thrive, and marketing wonks seem to subsist) sent out, but instead of having to compose and send — or read and delete — several messages, you do it once. Instead of spending upwards of an hour writing messages that most of the company will deride and delete (in that order), you spend under 30 minutes writing a single message which will have a much better chance of being read and not perceived as another useless piece of bitsam flotsam. Instead of spending an hour processing and then discussing these messages, the time to digest and dissect is cut to 30 minutes tops. You save time, your readers save time. Work smarter.
Looking at it from a cost basis, that $9,060 figure would have been cut in half. That would have be an extra $4,500 for operating costs — or buying pizzas every day a month (or more likely, every week for half a year, less if you throw in beer and sodas). More time to spend on getting a quality product put together. More time spent selling said quality product.
Or, more likely, concocting more buzzword-laden press releases to try and secure one more round of funding.
Keywords: | work | time management | internal communications |
Permalink
Why I choose not to have children. Ever.
Feb 09, 2001
We’ve got a work ethic that infuses almost every facet of the culture: everything is work, and there is no excuse for slacking. This, in part, means that many people simply assume that all women want to have children at some point in their lives. I have a healthy work ethic, but I don’t want to have children. If hysterectomies were voluntary procedures, I would have had one shortly after I hit puberty. My appendix will probably get more productive work than my ovaries. My reason for not wanting children isn’t based in childhood unhappiness, or in fears for my health, or financial worries. It’s much simpler than that. Problem is, my reason sounds to most people like an excuse or a dodge.
American society (and to an extent most Western societies) is full of messages that say that women should not only have children, but should want to have children. New mothers are like zealots, trying to convince other women to have a child because it feels so great. When you find a truly enthusiastic woman, the experience of being coerced into giving birth can be like attending an Amway sales convention or a religious revival. Some people may argue that a woman’s body is made for having children, and that by not having children I’m not fulfilling my potential. I reply, I have the ability to use a handgun...or a club, for that matter. Should I then go out and shoot or beat people to fulfil that potential? I think not. Bearing children is one thing that I am physically capable of doing. It doesn’t mean that it’s something that I should do. (Another analogy is: I have the physical capability to have sex with every man I meet, and there’s no -=WAY=- I’m doing that. For one thing, there just aren’t enough colours of pink.) Others may say the Bible tells that God charged man with being fruitful and multiplying. I say to them, read the rest of that verse. You know, those last little words that read “...until all of the Earth shall be filled.” Have you taken a look at global population numbers lately? We’re there and past the point, and still the population is growing. The annual global birth rate exceeds the death rate, meaning that there are more and more people on the earth every year. Unfortunately, the resources — like food, space, even something as simple as meaningful work — aren’t keeping pace.
But underneath it all, I didn’t choose not to have children because of any noble reason like not wanting to contribute to overpopulation, or breaking the stereotype of all women wanting children. Those are explainations, true; and I do believe that they can be good reasons for not having children. But the real reason is that I don’t want that responsibility.
Children can be a joy to their parents (just ask the mother or father of any newborn), but they’re also a responsibility. This is another person that you have to care for, feed, clothe, shelter, teach, and entertain. This is no short-term job, either. This will go on and on for at least eighteen years, longer in many cases. You need patience, and tolerance, and a sense of humour. It seems to me that many people have children without considering the responsibility they will have for these children, and giving the matter a really good think. They end up unhappy. The children, who are completely innocent and have no coping mechanisms for this kind of wrongful blame, bear the brunt of the unhappy parent’s dissatisfaction.
I know myself well enough to know that I would not be happy as a mother. Setting aside the physical pain of passing a bowling ball and the back troubles my pregnancy would give me, I do not have patience when I think someone should know better. I am very patient with ignorance, and several people have told me that I’d make a great teacher. But when I believe that someone should know something, and they either don’t know it or don’t know it and make no effort to find out, I’m not a pleasant life form to be around. Kids make lots of mistakes. They push boundaries. This is all a part of learning and growing up, and sometimes they have to make their own mistakes and take the consequences. Being a good parent means finding that balance between supporting your child and smothering them. I simply don’t have the patience to keep finding this ever-changing balance.
I don’t think I could be selfless enough to give a child the mental and emotional arsenal that they would need to thrive in today’s world. Sometimes I’d be a great parent. Other times, I’d be a hideous parent. I would want to do things that I couldn’t, and I’d get resentful and take it out on the child. Okay, let’s revise that. I’m sure that if I suddenly had to care for a child, I could probably modify my behaviour and become more supportive to the child. I just don’t want to if I don’t have to. I don’t want to take on the responsibility of raising even one child. Two cats are enough, and they mostly take care of themselves. They don’t ask for allowance, they don’t need to be clothed, and they don’t need braces. They won’t ever be attending university. They won’t call me nasty names, then ask for the car keys in the same breath. I always make sure they have enough food and water, I clean out the litterbox, I play with them, I take then to the veterinarian every year, keep their claws clipped (that and bathing them are adventures in and of themselves), and I let them know how much I love them. I get someone to watch after them whenever I go on a trip. I enjoy petting them, watching them, and playing with them. But I don’t have to teach them right from wrong. I don’t have to let them go out on dates with other cats who I think might not be good for them. And while owning a cat can also be a commitment of eighteen years or longer (if we’re lucky), cats are able to care for themselves after a few months — not after a few years. Of all mammals, humans have the longest time span where the young are utterly defenseless, and completely dependent on the parent for the basics of living (5 to 7 years). Humans aren’t even physically mature for the first decade of their lives. Our society has effectively extended the time of childhood out to 18 years. While this does give children more time to simply learn without having to divert resources toward survival, it does mean that the parent is partially to completely responsible for providing at least the basics of survival for nearly two decades. That’s a long time. I don’t want to do that. The payoff is not, for me, worth it.
I don’t get along well with most people. I am not incredibly social. Given a choice between attending a party and reading a book by myself, I’d choose the book every time. I know that it’s just a matter of learning. But if I don’t truly long to be the parent to a child, then I shouldn’t take on that responsibility. This isn’t like cooking a meal, or even building a house, where if you don’t like the results you can just throw it out and start over. This isn’t even like writing a program, where you can erase the offending code (or leave the program untouched for months at a time). You have one chance at helping this person grow, and the tiniest mistake can have unforseen consequences and the cost of fixing the mistake can be very high, both to society and (most importantly) to the child itself. Plenty of other people make the decision to have children, and lots of them are very happy. That’s great! People who really want to have children and raise them, who know the responsibilities involved, are prepared to take on those responsibilities, and still really want to raise children...should definitely have children.
I just don’t want kids.
Oh right, on that “passing a bowling ball” remark: I’ve heard from a number of mothers that giving birth gives you a feeling like no other in the world. There is pain, yes, but afterward you feel so amazing..! Got news for ya, folks. That’s a very simple chemical reaction. A pregnant woman’s body is in varying degrees of pain for four to eight months, not including the birth itself. Once the baby is born, there is no longer a weight pressing on the kidneys and other internal organs. There’s an instant weight loss of 20 lbs. or more (the baby, plus the fluids), which means that the back isn’t being stressed. Weight is removed from the pelvis. The leg muscles don’t have to support this weight any more. It’s a huge release of endorphins as your body’s systems slowly come to realise that they’ve just been freed of constantly carrying around a 20+ pound, 2.5-foot-round object. That great feeling that women get from childbirth is your body -=partying=-.
Keywords: | family planning | childfree |
Permalink
6 of 6 pages « FirstP < 4 5 6
Click here to join