Social contracts

Spotted on Hugh McLeods’s blog - “how does a software company make money, if all software is free?” - an observation about the difference between closed-source aka Microsoft and open-source:

It took me a while to figure this out, but what applies to Open Source, also applies to Microsoft.

When you buy a Microsoft product, you’re not just getting ones and zeros. There’s also a form of “social contract” implicit in the commercial transaction. You gave them money, this entitles you to certain expectations.

A few weeks ago, I met a young developer who worked in an IT department of a large insurance company. I asked him what kind of software did he use. Answer: About 75% Microsoft, 25% Open Source. I asked him why did he not use more Open Source? I thought IT people loved Open Source?

“If something goes wrong with Microsoft, I can phone Microsoft up and have it fixed. With Open Source, I have to rely on the community.”

And the community, as much as we may love it, is unpredictable. It might care about your problem and want to fix it, then again, it may not. Anyone who has ever witnessed something online go “viral”, good or bad, will know what I’m talking about.

Which is only true for a given subsection of the Microsoft user base. If you don’t have access to that level of support - and most organisations below a certain size don’t - then you’re thrown back on the exactly same type of community resources regardless of whether you’re using open or closed source. The difference being that the open-source model provides the visibility of the source code, and the potential for fixed that this presents.

They’ll be prising his gun from his cold, dead fingers, then…

New York Times: Charlton Heston, Legendary Actor, Is Dead

Downing Street Twitters

I’m fairly late to the party on this one, but Downing Street is Twittering. As is HMGov, which came first - both being official UK Government presences in the Twittersphere.

My initial reaction was “meh” - about the very last thing anyone on the planet needs is yet another conduit for the tedious, unadventurous, corporate and just plain bland waffle that characterises the spoutings of central Government PR. After 11 years of New Labour media management, my default setting when hearing anything emanating from government is - to misquote Jeremy Paxman - “why are the lying bastards lying to me?”

And that pretty much sums up HMGov - it’s regurgitated press releases that noone read previously, shovel-wared via RSS into Twitter so noone will read them now that they’re only 140 characters long. Nice example of how to do it technically, but a waste of time from a “contributing to the good of humanity” point of view.

Downing Street started in much the same way - “PM marks 90 years of the RAF and 100 years of the Territorial Army in Downing Street statements”, “PM outlines measures to protect the UK from turbulence in the global economy at his press conference”, that sort of thing. But then as other Twitter users started to prod it to see if there was actually anyone behind the front door, Downing Street actually started to respond. Which is pretty much unique, as far as I can see.

Of course, the responding is being done by Downing Street staffers - I would guess they’d have to be civil servants, given the rules about how official Government channels can be used - and not the actual political inhabitants. Which is a shame, because it’s the politicians who need to be plugged into this - about the only people left in the country who think 42-day-detention is a good idea are Gordon Brown and Jacquie Smith, and *still* she spent Sunday morning lecturing Andrew Marr about how “the Government are listening”. Exposing them to something as immediate and conversational as Twitter could only be a positive thing.

I expect that this initial burst of conversational engagement will be fairly short-lived, as the more risk-averse holders of the levers of power hear about this - presumably by email - and clamp down. And it’ll be a cold day in hell before our Prime Minister Twitters personally. Trying as hard as I can to *not* be cynical about our government - and god knows how *hard* that is - it’s nice to think that this might be the *start* of something. And I’m impressed that I got followed back within 10 minutes of following Downing Street - so either there’s someone monitoring it, even at this late hour, or someone’s written an auto-follow bot. Both impressive in their own ways.

On Microsoft + Yahoo:

Microsoft’s web technologies are as unrelated to Yahoo!’s as the Dark and Light sides of the Force. Before you even begin your Comp. Sci. degree you’ve already made a decision to join one camp or the other. There’s no love lost between the two sides, and very few developers jump from one camp to the other mid-career.

Perl, PHP and Ruby developers carry PowerBooks with startup stickers on them, ride a bicycle and wear a tee and jeans. They are too skinny. They are more likely to have an iPod earbud in their ear than a phone. Microsoft developers wear chinos and a business shirt or collared tee, carry a black generic laptop identical to their coworkers. They are a little overweight, but only because they have a good wife at home who loves to cook. They have a full schedule of meetings and tasks always with them in their Exchange-connected phone, which they carry in a leather holster on their belt, with a blinking-blue Bluetooth headset always jammed in their ear. They think the Zune is “kinda cool” but like a quiet working environment.

The Fundamentalist Agenda

The Fundamentalist Agenda as defined by a theologist, which pretty much nails the intellectual laziness of the “my god’s bigger than your god” approach to life.

The most famous definition of fundamentalism is H. L. Mencken’s: a terrible, pervasive fear that someone, somewhere, is having fun

Having seen him on Newsnight this evening, I got the depressing feeling that Ian Paisley hasn’t read this article…

Former Osbaldwick Ladies

Spotted in the Osbaldwick & Murton Parish Link (hey, no-one can say that I’m not up-to-date with all my dead-tree reading):

Former Osbaldwick Ladies next meeting is on Wednesday 12th January at 11:30am at the Derwent Arms

I was going to be charitable and assume that they were merely ladies that had, for one reason or another, moved away from Osbaldwick - but then I noticed that the venue is in fact the village pub. Which means they must be former upstanding citizens who’s moral standards have dropped, mustn’t they?

BBC: Business chiefs ‘led at school’

I’m really at a loss to understand why this is news:

An overwhelming proportion of Britain’s top business figures showed their leadership potential while still at school, a survey has found

Surely it’s been held for years that past performance is a good indicator of future performance? And the sample size looks dodgy, as well.

So look closely and all is revealed:

The Mori survey forms part of a report to be published on Wednesday by human resources firm DDI.

In other words, it’s a press release…

Caffeine and wifi fix

My previously-favourite hotel in Leeds, the Marriot, has joined the roll of shame and started to charge an eye-watering £7 an hour for wifi access (previously it was was free.) So rather than shell out for that and the overpriced (and quite frankly watery) coffee, I’ve decamped to Starbucks. The coffee’s better, but the wifi is slooooowww, the music’s loud enough to intrusive and the signal strength upstairs is patchy.

Is there a valid business model for a chain of coffee shops that has free wifi, no music and decent coffee?

Sometimes I wonder if Dilbert is a documentary…

…rather than a comic strip.

This morning’s strip being a case in point:

Why things are terrible in Canada

The funniest thing I’ve read about the differences north and south of the border in ages:

[It] hasn’t really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what’s wrong with those freakin’ Canadians?