RasterWeb!This is a game I made for the June 2010 Web414 Meeting. You have to guess… it is the name of a snake, or the name of an open source software project.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this game! Check out Web414 any second Thursday of the month at 7pm… at Bucketworks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
I have this problem… whenever I see some commercial service demonstrated, I start to think of the alternatives to it. Why is that?
I got a demo of an interesting service recently, and the first thing I thought to myself was “hmmm, this is really similar to what I had running in Drupal two years ago” and then I thought about how the service could be cloned with a few Drupal modules and a few days of hacking. I was relatively sure WordPress also had similar plugins to attain the feature set. (I’m probably underestimating the amount of work, but we tend o do that sometimes, don’t we?)
Don’t get me wrong, the service I saw was not without value… it had great value! But the support for the service was probably the number one value. I mean, the software wasn’t magical (it may have some magical stuff on the inside or on the backend filter that I didn’t see) but the basic functions were not in any way amazing. For someone who doesn’t want to think about it, and outsource all the technical voodoo to someone else, it would probably appear pretty damn amazing, so if that’s you, then yes, it was amazing.
At that point I start to wonder… should they have built their product on top of any open source platform like Drupal, and then build things on top of the plumbing it provides? Expertise, customization, support, hosted services… and on and on.
Maybe it’s the whole “we have tiers, it’s $XX per month, or $XXX per month or $XXXX per month depending on the features you want” where I start to think that cloning it would be a great idea for someone, because somewhere, somehow, there’s always someone who wants to build it themselves, or modify it, or make it do something someone hasn’t thought of yet, or even just not pay $XXXX per month for something.
Maybe business deserves to be disrupted sometimes.
I’m a fan of open source… I’m a user of open source… I’m still a believer in open source… but I don’t always use open source. So by The Book of Doug, I’m a sinner…
I own/admin at least 5 Linux servers, have a Linux netbook, use Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice, NeoOffice, Perl, PHP, MySQL, Adium, jEdit, VLC, ffmpeg, Audacity, Apache HTTP Server, WordPress, Drupal, and on and on… I’ve also contributed to open source software projects, typically not with code (since I’m just a hacker) but with support, add-ons, and even monetarily. I’ve written and released applications, code, scripts, and various media (photos, video, audio/music, words) under open source and open content licenses.
Look… I use Mac OS X, and I know it’s not open source… I’m a sinner. Please forgive me. I do my best by installing and promoting open source software on Mac OS X. Every Mac I set up has the best open source software on it for the user that will use it.
It’s still not enough. Doug wants me to try harder.
I’ve also worked towards putting on things like BarCampMilwaukee, in fact, we just had the 4th one, but Doug wasn’t happy because of “Microsoft putting their dirty paws on events like BarCampMilwaukee4…”
I’m not sure what they did, other than helped feed everyone there. Like all other sponsors, they supported the event financially, and got no special treatment in return. No keynote, no booth, no 20 foot wide banner. I heard no reports of Larry Clarkin forcing anyone to install Windows or insulting Linux. If anything, Brennan pushed more Microsoft propaganda my way, and he doesn’t even work for Microsoft! And Doug, I’ve asked open source companies, including Red Hat, to sponsor BarCampMilwaukee in the past, and never got any response.
Oh yeah, back to Doug… I like Doug, I really do… His intentions seem honorable, but he seems frustrated, and is convinced that talking to people won’t change things. Still, he writes a blog post about it. Doug, don’t give up! Talk is cheap, but discussion has value! Try talking to people, not at them, and follow it all up with action, but be nice about it. Nobody likes a jerk talking at them, but plenty of people like a friend talking to them.
Now go open some source and bridge that open-closed divide!
I’ve been using open source software for over 10 years now, and I’ve been publishing for over 20 years. I tend to be one that likes to share what I create with the world, and also appreciates when others share what they have created. To me, this is much of the basis of open source software – the creation and sharing of not just code, but ideas and ideals. When I say I’ve been using open source software for many years, I don’t do so begrudgingly, I do it because I believe in it.
(Photo by Janet Towbin)
When Creative Commons came along, I immediately saw a benefit to it. again, I’m not just a consumer of things, I am a creator of things, and I’ve published music, and created videos, and images and words, that I’ve carefully chosen a license for. I want others to be able to properly use my work, as I want to be able to use theirs.
BarCamp is a great example of open culture, and I’m proud of being one of the people who brought BarCamps to Wisconsin. Our local group, Web414 is modeled very much on the way a BarCamp works, ad-hoc and open. (In fact, we even declare our meetings a “Creative Commons Zone” and request that media created at the meetings use a Creative Commons license when published.)
(Photo by Leo Reynolds)
Almost all of the feedback on things like BarCamp and DrupalCamp and Web414 has been positive. Now, I did say almost, because there exists this small group of people who seem to exist to take and not give, to do nothing but shoot things down instead of lift things up. They’re similar to trolls, but really, they are like leeches in that they tend to suck things out, and give nothing in return. They don’t share, they aren’t open, and they are negative to those who do, yet… they are more than happy to take what they can (for free) while never seeing the contradiction in their actions. Even those who make a living on the net, which was largely built on the ideas of openly sharing, don’t get it.
(Photo by Chris Dunphy)
And that’s where I’m done. I don’t want to deal with these people. They won’t change their minds, and I waste my time trying to get through to them. What’s the point? I’m more interested in positive and creative people who are doing interesting things, making the future happen, and willing to share that with the world. People who get excited about the work they are doing, whether they get paid for it or not. The people who care only about creating things in exchange for the almighty dollar, I have no time for you. Leave me be…
I’ll continue my pursuit of people and ideas and cultures that are open. That’s where the future is, or at least the future I want to be a part of.
Gabe wrote a post about his recent experiences with Office Suite software. I left a comment there, but thought I should expand on it here.
Here’s the comment I left:
I am very close to being 100% happy with NeoOffice (which is an offshoot of OpenOffice, for Mac OS X.)
I do not compare it to MS Office the way you might. For me, it is free and open source. This means I can install it on the 10+ Macs that I manage for $0 (in reality, I donated money to NeoOffice because I do find it valuable, and want it to flourish. Still, $25 for unlimited copies?) Anyway, the only features I care about is that it can open all those damn MS Office file formats. That’s it. For all I know, it completely sucks in every other respect. I don’t care. To me, it’s pretty much a viewer/converter. I do use it for simple document creation, but I could use other tools for that as well. It even handles Microsoft formats the the Mac version of Office can’t handle!
Sometimes innovation is found in just being an alternative.
Honestly, I’m coming at it from an entirely different direction that Gabe, so I’m in no way trying to discount his opinion, I’m just pointing out that different people have different needs. For the last 10 years I’ve been building web sites for clients, and sometimes those clients send me Word documents, from which I need to wrestle out the text. Believe me, try as you might to ask people to send you plain text files, or even RTF files, they just don’t get it. That’s fine. Today you can send me a Microsoft Word document, and I can open it, and get that precious text out of it. And I can install the software that does it on as many machines as I want, and not have to worry about license keys working, or buying more copies, or having to pay for upgrades, or any of that crap.
Years ago I was really excited about open source software that came out that dealt with things I did every day, text editing, web serving, graphics work, etc. But an office suite? It sounded like a movie with a cruel twist: “You get to work on open source software! By the way, it’s an office suite!” So the real innovation to me is the disruption in the status quo, being the alternative, the “here, this is free, it’s not perfect but may fit your needs just fine” compared to the polished commercial product filled with restrictions and hoop-jumping.
Big thanks goes out to the NeoOffice guys, as well as the OpenOffice folks, and all that contribute to open source software.