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January 30, 2005

Spreading the word

In a couple of hours, Carsten and I will be heading down to Frankfurt to hold another Cocoon course there next week.

Later: Sitting in the hotel lobby using Wifi for 3.95 € for 30 minutes.

Posted by Matthew at 12:03 PM | Comments (1)

January 29, 2005

Speaking about Social Software

I'll be speaking about Social Software in the enterprise at the Jax conference in May. Last year saw over 1000 attendees and this year the conference will be at the Frankfurt congress center.

Posted by Matthew at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

January 28, 2005

Give me the portal tools

Today, we submitted a portal tools framework to the Apache Cocoon project. Goal of the framework is to allow the easy integration of tools into the existing portal framework. The package includes the apis, a few example tools and documentation. My colleague Jens is our portal tooler.

Posted by Matthew at 02:40 PM | Comments (0)

Bidding on blog advertising

This is something I will be watching to see what the end price turns out to be. Maybe it's an idea to follow to generate at least part of the costs for hosting and bandwidth. On the other hand there is no mention of the ad being included in RSS feeds - and I'm sure that's really what you need to do if you want to reach a major portion of your readers.

Posted by Matthew at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2005

An honor

Doc Searls has added this weblog to his Linkbag over on IT Garage. I'm honored.

Posted by Matthew at 02:06 PM | Comments (0)

SourceLabs talks about customer concerns

SourceLabs have listened to my rant and now you can find their weblogs here and through other links on the website. In his weblog, Cornelius Willis (VP Sales and Marketing) writes about the concerns customers have about Open Source. Interesting remarks and I have a couple of comments.

Today most open source software testing is limited to functional unit testing, i.e. does the component do what it was intended to do. There is no stress testing (throwing millions of transactions at the software for periods of weeks and months), there is no failover testing to determine how the software fails and recovers, no system regression testing to determine the effect of changes on other components, no scalability testing to understand how the software scales in different configurations. At SouceLabs we are building out an integrated testing regime we refer to as CERT7 to ensure the dependability of the open source software stacks we support. These certication tests and their results will be freely available so that anyone can reproduce or recalibrate them as needed.

But this doesn't help in actually testing the system dependability of the end-product. As long as Open Source is still only at the infrastructure level (i.e. frameworks, database, app-server) then the actual solution will be comprised of additional components or integration modules built on top of any Open Source solution. Any industry-specific solution will still require dedicated testing.

This is the very reason I'm so sceptical about complete stacks of Open Source projects being that interesting to corporations - at the moment. Today, they still go out and "mix and match" the bits they need to glue their own solutions together. I say "at the moment" because I do think there is a way around this and we'll see it happen in the next 12 months or so.

Lack of mission critical support Customers who bet their business on their computer systems need to know that someone is on call to fix problems without question. Even if a system fails at 3 AM on Saturday, a team needs to be available to start working around the clock until the problem is fixed. While many companies sell support for individual open source components, no one provides support for integrated, tested systems of components, providing the proverbial "one throat to choke" when something fails.

This point is obviously true. Any company wanting to use Open Source in mission critical applications will need a form of SLA that allows them to sleep at night. As I've said before, it's no good posting to the community mailiing-list at 4 in the morning and hoping you'll get a response or a fix within minutes. Cornelius is also correct about there not currently being a single company that provides this type of support for a complete stack of products (I guess this is something JBoss will offer for JEMS). However this is also tremendously hard to actually do. Given the amount of experience you need in an Open Source project to be able to "fix anything" at a 24x7 level and I think it will be very hard to apply that level of knowledge to several projects at once. A company wanting to do that would - in effect - need to buy at least one lead developer from each project. Which of course can be done.

My personal view is however that you also need to do more than just "have that developer". Customers will expect to find you inside the community, speaking and writing about the Open Source project and in general being a good community member. Something very hard to maintain for one project - let alone several.

Posted by Matthew at 12:02 PM | Comments (0)

Open Source program manager wanted

Google is looking for an Open Source Program Manager.

This position will involve travel but can be satisfied by candidates located in New York, Kirkland, Wa., Santa Monica or Mountain View, Ca.

I wonder what my wife would think about moving.... :-).

Update: Steve is too far away as well :-).

Posted by Matthew at 08:49 AM | Comments (2)

January 26, 2005

The vanishing Google blog

Unless it's all a hoax, it looks as though a new Google employee took the "there are no secrets" meme of blogging a little too seriously. He posted some interesting insights into life at Google (the parties seem to be the same in any large successful company) and now his postings have - umm - gone. Luckily they still appear in Yahoo's cache. Not in Google's however. I wonder why.

Posted by Matthew at 06:28 PM | Comments (0)

Ugo on Source.zone

Ugo picks up an idea I seem to remember and runs with it.

Posted by Matthew at 06:07 PM | Comments (0)

Demand driven itch scratching

For a while now, Doc Searls has been speaking about DIY-IT or how the demand side is supplying itself. One industry has been demand driven ever since it was started - Open Source. In publications on Open Source you don't see the term "demand driven" being used often - but you'll see a lot of talk about "itch scratching". In fact it's one of the first answers you'll probably get if you ask in an Open Source project why a particular function is missing - "If you have that itch - then scratch it". When you talk to large corporations about a particular Open Source project you often find yourself in the assumed role of the salesperson.

Customers will look at you and ask why a particular function is as it is - or missing - and you find yourself defending the Open Source project as if it were a product your company is trying to sell. This is one of the reasons we try and emphasize the itch scratching philosophy behind Open Source as often and as early as we can in talks to corporations. You have to remember that this is still a very alien world to many companies. People who are used to banging on the table and demanding a certain function be implemented "or else" now find themselves being told to scratch their itch themselves. "It's Open Source - if you want something changed - then go ahead and fix it".

Posted by Matthew at 08:09 AM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

Wiki simplicity

A group of us meet regularly to organize each others 40th birthday "surprise". Up to now the group had been exchanging emails or Word documents with the details of what we had planned. The group is made up of mostly non-techies (i.e. people who use their computers for just - well - work). And of course most of them have not heard of weblogs or wikis. Anyway, tonight I suggested we use my wiki to plan the next birthday as it would allow us to collaboratively work on what we have planned without the need to exchange countless documents and emails.

Immediately, I could see my friends "get it". They realized straight away how much easier it would be to use the wiki instead. The nice thing about a wiki is that not only is it easy to use - but you can easily explain the concept to people who don't spend every hour of the day online. Simplicity.

On a side-note I upgraded my Wikka Wiki installation to the newest version as well. Although I haven't done that much with it yet I really like the concept and the way additional functionality (calendar anyone?) is provided through actions you can include in your pages.

Posted by Matthew at 11:43 PM | Comments (0)

Google goes video

Google introduces a way of searching recent TV programs. Now if only they'd link the search results to a torrent....

Actually there's this from the FAQ:

Can I play the videos that Google Video finds?
Not yet, but stay tuned...

Posted by Matthew at 11:49 AM | Comments (0)

A personal view of "Open Source Business"

The Open Source business conference will take place in San Francisco on April 5th and 6th. Here's a blurb from the press release:

OSBC is a unique venue for gaining insights from the leaders in open source and business. Where do the top venture capitalists see the biggest market opportunities? What is Microsofts evolving strategy around open source? After SCO, where do legal authorities see risks in open source software and how can your firm best prepare?

Well, that certainly sounds "interesting". We have all the right buzzwords in less than a paragraph, don't we. The lineup of keynote speakers is also worth taking a look at (I'm not going to pick on anyone particular - but if you take a look you'll see what I mean).

Of course I'm just pissed they didn't ask me..but still it seems a no brainer to imagine what those people will be talking about. Anyway, if I was speaking at an Open Source conference about business - I would want to tell a story - and this is how it goes:

And of course all this.

Things got a lot easier for Open Source related business in 2004, but still I think there is more to it than this conference and keynote speakers will have you believe.

Posted by Matthew at 09:43 AM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

RoboWife revisted

I had promised not to use the term RoboWife again (faithful readers will remember what happened in November 2003). However, today my wife went back into hospital for surgery to remove the metal plate and screws. All went well and hopefully she'll be home mid-week. And again for a few days I am Mr Mom. It doesn't get easier - let me tell you.

Posted by Matthew at 08:12 PM | Comments (0)

A Wikka Wiki this way way came

After chatting to the guys on #mobitopia over the weekend I took the plunge and installed a Wiki on my box this morning. I chose the Wikka Wiki and in all the installation is painless. Upload the unpacked distribution to a web-visible directory. Create a MySQL database. Call the Wikki installation page, fill out a couple of fields and off you go.

Posted by Matthew at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

Resident artist

My Mum is resident artist at "The Studio", Bull Street in Holt, Norfolk, UK for 10 days from Wednesday. If you're in the area then make sure you drop in and take a look!

Posted by Matthew at 08:06 PM | Comments (0)

Kicking the habit

One of the growing problems I find when trying to concentrate on what I really need to do are the number of distractions that litter my PC. So, today I made the following changes:

I changed my email procedure so that I now have to explicitly send and receive my email manually. This is instead of it being done automatically every 5 minutes which causes a little "you have email" popup to appear.

I removed the Bloglines notifier. This was a hard decision to make because I'm a Bloglines junkie. I need to switch to a "check Bloglines when you really have time" mode instead of the notifier trying to catch my attention like some drug-dealer (pssst...somebody blogged something ...just a quick look to see what's new....it won't take long....no harm done....pssstt).

More to follow.

Posted by Matthew at 12:51 PM | Comments (1)

Cocoon portal poll

I started a poll on the Cocoon mailing-lists in order to find out how and if people are currently using the Cocoon portal framework. Hopefully the poll will also provide some input on what sort of things people think are missing and raise a bit of awareness for this Open Source portal alternative.

Posted by Matthew at 12:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 22, 2005

Apple Mac mini - yes, but..

Ever since I saw the Apple Mac mini I've had mixed feelings about it. On the one hand it looks pretty awesome from a size-form perspective and I guess the specs are par for the course. But, I've always had this niggling feeling about the BYODKM thing. I mean when I first saw Steve show the Mac mini I sort of waited for him to pull out the complementary keyboard, mouse and screen. I don't know why because I just bought a PC box for my son and then had to do the BYODKM thing there too. Even so it seems strange to imagine connecting up "normal" peripherals to a Mac. Must be me.

On a side note - I bet Apple come up with "made for Mac mini" DKMs soon.

Update: Russell got interviewed by CNet while waiting in line to get his Mac mini this morning.

Posted by Matthew at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

Mobitopian Gift-giving

Matt has a write-up on how we got together to get Russ a present for his birthday. So today, Russ hopes to be first in line for a Mac mini when the Apple store opens over there in a few hours.

Posted by Matthew at 11:14 AM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

Revisited - The Long Tail of Open Source

Wolfgang commented on my post and his valid point got me thinking.

The economic model applied to Amazon or iTunes Music store is that (because there is no need for shelf space) it pays off to offer access to basically every song or book ever written. Even if the audience of each niche title is only very small. The collective sum of those small audiences is larger than the mainstream group that goes for the hits, so it becomes economically feasible. However, this is only possible because of the "storefronts" Amazon and iTunes providing access to both the mainstream part and the long tail.

But I think there's more to it than just the economics. The original example in Chris Anderson's article talks about an obscure book becoming popular because of reader recommendations.

What happened? In short, Amazon.com recommendations. The online bookseller's software noted patterns in buying behavior and suggested that readers who liked Into Thin Air would also like Touching the Void. People took the suggestion, agreed wholeheartedly, wrote rhapsodic reviews. More sales, more algorithm-fueled recommendations, and the positive feedback loop kicked in.

A first step - when applying this to Open Source would be to create a similar storefront for the access to Open Source projects. Sourceforge is already part of that storefront, but it doesn't include any of the projects under the Apache umbrella or in the other Open Source repositories. The unified "storefront" would also need to have the same level of participation that users give back to Amazon or iTunes by providing their personal feedback in form of wishlists, comments, playlists etc. "Readers who bought this book also bought that book". Could this be applied to Open Source? "Users of this project downloaded that one", "Developers on this project are also working on that project", "User Max releases his top ten Open Source all time favorite project list", "Here are the last 10 endorsements for developer Peter" etc. Sourceforge already has "most active" and "top downloads".

This would help increase the visibility of Open Source projects that - to date - may have received little attention. If I were looking for an Open Source based CMS with integrated BPM for say a financial application, then it would be great if I could see whether there were other people doing exactly that and what Open Source projects they were using.

And maybe some of those projects that are currently hidden in the Long Tail would become popular, attract developers and users and become the JBoss or MySQL of tomorrow.

Posted by Matthew at 12:13 PM | Comments (3)

January 20, 2005

The Long Tail of Open Source

The article written by Chris Anderson on the subject of how we are increasingly creating economies around the niche markets at the shallow or obscure end of a particular commodity has developed something of a life of its own. You read about Long Tails here there and everywhere.

An area that lends itself to the meme is that of Open Source. How many Open Source projects can you name? A handful? Maybe ten or twenty at the most. Those are the Open Source projects most people know because they have a high visibility and receive widespread publicity. But there are thousands and thousands of Open Source projects on the tail end.

Let's look at Apache as an example. How many Apache projects do you know? What if I told you that the XML project alone houses more than 10 individual projects. The Jakarta project has over 15, The commons sub-project of Jakarta is home to over 30 individual components. And so on and so on.

Of course Apache is really just a small part of the Long Tail. SourceForge is home to tens of thousands of Open Source projects. Sure, if you apply the 80/20 rule then 80% are probably not worth looking at but even the 20% would still leave you with around 15.000 projects.

The problem is that it's currently hard to find the correct project that suits your needs. But really that's only because someone hasn't come up with the Amazon type storefront and built that in front of the repositories, so you can search and find the project you may need. And even if the project is run by someone on a remote island on his own - who cares - it might be exactly what you were looking for to build that particular solution someone really needs.

Providing an easy way of tapping into the Long Tail of Open Source may be a business model waiting to be found.

Posted by Matthew at 08:20 PM | Comments (2)

Help! Problem with Adobe Reader 7

There are several people around the Net having a strange problem with Adobe Reader 7.0. When they try to open PDFs that worked without any problem in Reader 6 they get an error message "There were too many arguments". Cancelling the error message brings up the document without any visible problems. There are several messages in the Adobe forums (without any anwser yet) and on the FOP list. The problem doesn't however seem to be limited to just FOP generated documents. Eric Wagoner has put some example PDFs up that show this problem. We're also experiencing the same problem using FOP and so I'm hoping someone out there has an idea.

Update: My post over on the Adobe forum seems to have generated a promising answer.

Update: Looks like the error was fixed in a newer FOP version.

Posted by Matthew at 11:31 AM | Comments (1)

Getting back to work

An insightful article on procrastination (via 43 folders).

Posted by Matthew at 08:41 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

Situated software is only half the story

I've been following the various discussions surrounding the Long Tail meme that Chris Anderson started. Now, Scott McMullan (the new director of developer relations at JotSpot) combines the Long Tail with Situated Software in an article summarizing various examples from that space. Now what I would be really interested in discussing is how the situated software concept can be applied to enterprise solutions and how a wide adoption of situated software would affect traditional software-companies that today provide custom built solutions and services.

I can envision a world (driven by Doc Searl's notion of the demand side supplying itself) where in fact corporations no longer require the services of traditional software-shops but instead reach out to a mesh of micro ISVs, micro consultancies, Open Source brokers and maybe outsourced groups of programmers. By combining the strength of each node in the mesh with the concept of a software solution that is just "good enough" - and not more - corporations will be able to react to changing customer needs or demands far quicker than they can today.

But that is only half the story - not only will the software be situated - but also the supply side itself will be! It will be combined to be just "good enough" to supply the software the demand side needs. If this is the case - and you happen to be one of those software companies - then you should be making every effort to make sure you're ready.

Posted by Matthew at 08:22 PM | Comments (0)

Wiki battle - update

The article on the so-called Wiki-battle between JotSpot and Socialtext generated quite a few comments. Doc is covering the theme over on ITGarage. He is asking his readers to comment on how they use Wikis and what they think about both offerings. Graham Spencer from JotSpot posted a comment that puts everything into perspective from his point of view. Interesting to note how both Graham and Ross pretty much agree on how the companies differ in their respective offerings and way of approaching corporate customers.

Although one would be right in moving on and discarding the notion of a "war", it's still interesting to note the stir this one article caused. This shows that 2005 could well turn out to be the year of the Wiki.

Posted by Matthew at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

Google to announce new tag attribute

Birthday boy Robert Scoble is trying very hard not to spill the beans on a new tag attribute scheduled to be announced by Google later today. Dave Winer mentioned something about this on Friday. It's probably this step to fight comment spam. Speaking of which, I installed MT-Blacklist 2.04b at the weekend and so far it's doing a pretty good job.

Update: Google posted details. Basically the search-engine will not rank links that have an additional attribute "rel=nofollow". So, if you have comments open on your blog then the weblog software would automatically add that attribute to links inside the comment area, preventing comment-spammers from raising their ranking through spamming the comment with links.

Posted by Matthew at 07:19 PM | Comments (0)

Operation "Open Gates" - fact or fiction

Reports are circulating the Web about an operation "Open Gates" to be announced on January 25th. Open Gates is said to be a strategy by OSDL, IBM and Intel to rewrite parts of the Linux kernel to remove any possibility of patent infringement. Especially those patents held by Microsoft. However there are also reports that the whole thing is nonsense.

Posted by Matthew at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)

Big fish will eat little fish

Here is an article speculating on the fact that Yahoo doesn't have its own blogging platform and would therefore seem a likely candidate to buy Six Apart. Makes sense if you ask me. It also mentions the fact that providers like Google and Microsoft are likely candidates to roll out their own web based blog aggregator soon. Makes even more sense. And in fact that would be easy to achieve.

So, here's my prediction: Bloglines will be bought by a leading blog hosting company within the next six months. And I'm sure Mark is already touring the potential candidates. Due to the fact that a service like bloglines is a lot about scalability, I'd place my money on Google.

Posted by Matthew at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)

Have the Wiki wars started?

SiliconBeat has a short article today on Disney going to JotSpot as their first major customer. Disney was previously associated with Socialtext (via TJ). Of course it's not a war - stupid. It's normal everyday business and social software companies are no less in this to win (and sometimes lose) customers.

Interesting that JotSpot seems to have "leaked" the news. There is no news item on their official news page. Also no mention on the company blog page. You'd think a company like JotSpot would blog this sort of news straight away, wouldn't you.

Update: Ross Mayfield from Socialtext comments.

Posted by Matthew at 08:02 AM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

Open Source - yes, but...

A newly published report, cited on vnunet, talks about the acceptance of Open Source by European developers. According to the report, more than 60 per cent believe that using Open Source can have significant benefits. However, developers are also wary about lack of regular updates, unpredictable cost of ownership and ip concerns when it comes to utilizing Open Source software.

Reliable support services are quoted as being the main reason of developers to chose commercial vendors. This just shows that companies providing commercial support for Open Source projects are not making this fact known enough. Sometimes I think that we are really too complacent about the level of visibility we've achieved. There is still a lot of work to be done.

Posted by Matthew at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)

The simplicity that is Google

An interesting list of facts surrounding the user experience of Google - as presented by Marissa Mayer (Product Manager for Google) and noted by Allan Williamson.

On a side note - does Google have people in Europe going around doing these type of talks?

Posted by Matthew at 09:45 PM | Comments (0)

January 16, 2005

Open Source Titan

A group of enthusiasts have been using the raw images from Huygens to build and release pictures from Titan. The group managed to bring composited images online faster than ESA/NASA.

Posted by Matthew at 11:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2005

Opening the business plan?

I've been thinking lately about how companies are changing because of the way the Internet is forcing them to open up. Many of todays companies in industries such as software-development were started in the 90's and quite a few of them have problems adapting to how business and communication has changed through things like social software, Google, social networks like LinkedIn and open development as in Open Source projects.

So, if you were thinking of starting a company today wouldn't it make sense to be open from the beginning? By this I mean write your business plan on a Wiki and invite people to help you. If you're crafting a business for a specific market - doesn't it make sense to get your customers, potential investors and possible employees in from the start?

I hear you laughing - but wait a moment, think about it.

There are business models where this wouldn't work. For example if you were really going to come out with that killer application or product. You wouldn't want to give that away too early. But there is also also a large number of companies building themselves around services based on the know-how and experience they can offer to customers or partners. They might even gain by writing their business plan on a Wiki. Potential employees, investors and customers could join in the conversation, add their ideas and in so doing shape the resulting company. And you would know right from the start that you have a business that someone really wants.

Of course it isn't that easy. You could provide the business plan in an often updated, read-only version and then would need some sort of editing process for additions and changes.

I've turned commenting back on and am testing the best way to keep comments open - so, any comments?

Posted by Matthew at 11:28 AM | Comments (6)

January 14, 2005

The Love Potion

Take 7 red ingredients (e.g. strawberry joghurt, red gummi-bears, red grapes) and heat until mixed, stir 7 times clockwise, 7 time anti-clockwise then pour into a glass from which lovers have already sipped. Drink. My daughter, Victoria (8) made this with her friend today. I think they're now both waiting for the prince to arrive. (And no - I didn't try the potion - and if I did....)

Posted by Matthew at 10:26 PM | Comments (0)

Huygens on Titan

It looks as though the Huygens probe landed successfully on Titan and has transmitted plenty of data to keep scientists occupied for the coming years. I heard that there are scientists that have worked 20 years for this day and ask myself - now that the probe has landed, transmitted and died - what's next?

Posted by Matthew at 10:17 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

Building an Open Source services company

I figured I should put my money where my mouth is and, after talking about other Open Source service companies, describe what I would consider to be some of the building blocks of an Open Source services company. Here we go...

Successful Open Source projects are built around a healthy community. To be a successful Open Source services company, you need to be a part of that community. The reason is pretty simple: Because that is where your customers will expect to find you.

Make sure your employees (no, not you Mr. Chairman or CEO) are visible to the public. Get your employees to write about the Open Source project in articles or books. Get them to speak about the software at OSCON or ApacheCon. Make sure they rank high on Google for a particular project. The reason is pretty simple: Because that is where your customers will expect to find you. When you send someone to work onsite for a customer, chances are pretty high that your customer will first enter the name into Google and see what the result is (I've actually seen a customer do this).

Work hard to gain the respect of the project you expect to be providing services for. Take on a role no-one else wants in the project (release-manager for example). If you don't take an active role or give something back, then the community may kill your business with a single weblog post or email. Treat the community fair and you'll be treated the same in return. If in doubt - ask.

Get the community to shape your company, maybe by taking on key project members either as employees or advisors. Establish an advisory board - not full of "names" but with respected peers from the projects you've chosen.

Remember those glossy brochures you wrote to impress your VC? Burn them. Now, start a weblog and write about why you can provide the support and services your customers need and the community respects.

Find that quote on your website that reads "Open Source is great for enterprises because it means you can use the software for free" (I actually saw that one today). Delete it. In fact, delete the whole page. Don't pretend that a corporation can use Open Source software for free - they can't. They'll need training, integration work, support and maybe documentation. And you expect to make money off that - don't you?

Don't pretend you have recognized experts for oodles (sorry - "stacks") of Open Source projects. You don't - and your customers won't believe you. It can take years to become a recognized (and respected) member and expert in a particular project. Concentrate on one project (or a couple) to start with and build from there.

Educate your customers on the Open Source way. Be honest about your role and the role of the community in your business.

Building an Open Source services company isn't rocket science but to build a successful and respected one (and remember you need respect from both your customers and the Open Source project) takes more than you might think.

Posted by Matthew at 08:34 PM | Comments (0)

Another mini

As hard as it was I refrained from blogging about any of Apple's new toys. There was enough coverage elsewhere. However, it now looks as though "mini" is the meme of the week, with Google also releasing something called the "Mini". The Mini is a new hardware product aimed at small businesses. It can search company internal networks and costs 5000$.

Posted by Matthew at 10:01 AM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2005

12th September 1988

Frank points me to an even older Usenet posting of mine - from the 12th of September 1988 (I guess most of you weren't even born then :-)). I didn't have my own email address back then at Nixdorf so I used a colleagues address instead.

Posted by Matthew at 11:44 PM | Comments (0)

October 31st. 1990

According to Google, it looks as though this is the earliest message I posted to Usenet.

So, the meme for today is: Post the date of and link to your oldest Usenet post.

Update: That's so funny - first trackback was from Frank. And if you look closely you'll see that we were both working at the same company (Nixdorf) back in 1990.

Posted by Matthew at 09:28 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2005

Optaros - another Open Source services company

Optaros is another US company that is offering services in the Open Source arena. Funny thing is that now I always go straight to the company page to check out the "team" and see what sort of Open Source they've worked on. And you know - that's exactly what your customers will do too.

Posted by Matthew at 10:25 PM | Comments (0)

Rethinking the revolution

Ever since I wrote this, I've been sort of musing how better to describe my view on the current state of Open Source. Today, Ted wrote this piece which really nails it quite well. He writes:

So, the next time you hear "open source development", think "the most economically efficient method for matching resources to construct information products".

Ted is making the point for a commons-based peer development of software. I would take his view one step further. If you take a close look at corporations utilizing Open Source software, then you'll notice an actual change in the very methodology of how they conceive, design and roll-out the applications they need. Once they've grasped how this open and peer-centric way of developing software can benefit them, they become involved in other phases of the software-lifecycle in a similar way.

So, my extended quote would read:

The next time you hear "open source development", think "the most economically efficient method for matching resources to design, construct and deploy information products".

Posted by Matthew at 01:36 PM | Comments (0)

Graffito - a CMS platform for portals

Graffito is in Apache incubation. Graffito is "a flexible set of components, services and portlets which can transparently support different CMS engines. Graffito is packaged with a default cms repository implementation based on OJB but it also supporting a plugin design. You can also write your own plugin in order to access to a propriatary CMS repository."

Posted by Matthew at 11:33 AM | Comments (0)

Change broker

Over the weekend I have been thinking more about the cheese book. This story of how we react to change seems simple or even trivial on the outside. But if you think further, then it also gives a pretty condensed picture as to why things like the Innovator's Dilemma manifestate themselves in everyday business. Our tendency to ignore changes that we see happening around us lead to - for example - incumbants being overtaken by new companies entering into a market (or by disruptive technologies) .

So, what is a "change broker"? A change broker is someone who is able to spot changes happening at an early stage and build on those changes with business models or necessary adjustments an organisation needs to make. The change broker is that person who is able to think outside the box and create value that only turns into an ROI after maybe a year or so (once the change becomes mainstream).

Posted by Matthew at 09:51 AM | Comments (0)

January 08, 2005

Open Source in 2005

An article on what execs want to see from Open Source in 2005. I would agree with every point made.

Posted by Matthew at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

JBoss Inc moving to embrace additional Open Source products

There are plenty of signs around that signal the departure of JBoss Inc from just being an application server vendor to a provider of Open Source services around other Open Source products as well (for example the introduction of JEMS). The answer to the last question in the Web transcript of this interview with Bill Burke is an additional pointer.

Posted by Matthew at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)

U2 will become old

Frank points to Will Wheaton's amusing report on watching the Live Aid DVDs with his kids. Ah - memories. As Frank notes I received the DVDs a couple of times for my birthday. So, this weekend, I'm going to follow Will and watch the concert myself. I bet my kids will be screaming at me to "turn down that noise".

Posted by Matthew at 11:59 AM | Comments (0)

Weekend to-do

Write down my 90-day objective.

Posted by Matthew at 08:36 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

Fact overtakes fiction

One of the top-selling German fiction books from last year is this one. Currently available only in German, Der Schwarm (The Swarm) is a page-turning novel about nature (from the sea) taking revenge on mankind. One of the major plot lines is how the various species in the sea cause havoc by setting off - tsunamis. I won't give the exact plot away (the book is currently being translated into English and according to the local radio, Hollywood is very interested), but you can imagine that the author (who researched the details in depth) is now being interviewed - everywhere. German TV reported one case in Thailand, where a young boy was able to warn his family and people nearby because he had read the book and realized what it could mean when the water withdrew before the tsunami arrived.

Posted by Matthew at 07:55 PM | Comments (0)

How to sell your boss

Advice on pitching to the top.

Posted by Matthew at 10:10 AM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

The Lucene in Action website

Erik and Otis have set up a website for their new book - and a blog.

Posted by Matthew at 08:38 PM | Comments (0)

SpikeSource reveals more

A few days ago I wrote about not understanding the actual business proposition of companies like SpikeSource. However since then, I've listened to this Gillmor Gang "episode" and now this article reveals slightly more detail. It sure is an interesting concept and still is one that slightly puzzles me. In the past five years I've been bridging the Open Source/commercial divide I've yet to come across a company that actually wants a complete stack. Companies (and these are large pan-European ones) we deal with are more interested in using specific Open Source components and acquiring services and know-how around that component or solution.

Posted by Matthew at 09:29 AM | Comments (0)

Six Apart buys LiveJournal

The shakeup has commenced. Six Apart stands to become one of the largest weblog companies with over 6 million users.

Posted by Matthew at 09:08 AM | Comments (0)

January 04, 2005

Germany pledges millions

Several German TV shows are currently collecting donations for the flood victims in Asia. Last night one show collected over 10 million Euros from viewers and corporations. Tonight, another show has just received a single donation from the F-1 pilot Michael Schumacher over an amazing 10.000.000 $.

Posted by Matthew at 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

The cheese book

Last night I read the cheese book. Lookout maze - here I come.

Posted by Matthew at 07:10 PM | Comments (0)

January 02, 2005

Burying the dead and writing a diary

The online issue of the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung leads with an article on the role weblogs are playing in the Asia catastrophe. Here is a rough translation from the first paragraph: "The Internet-diaries of the bloggers are the best source (for information) in this catastrophe. Not only because they create a counter public view to the often toned-down reports from state media. But also because these are first-hand accounts from people who - until last week - were writing about music, film or anything really - until the flood came. The flood that forced them to write about fear, dead friends, missing relatives and graves they dug with their hands. Their eye-witness reports create a real impression of "being there" and they are forging a community, a community that not only blogs - but helps."

Posted by Matthew at 12:16 PM | Comments (0)

January 01, 2005

Liberating the employee

When we look back on 2005 (yes, I'm slightly ahead of myself here) we will call this the year "the employee was liberated" (or something similar). Social software will be regarded as the new trade union of our time. Trade unions are defined as an "organization of employees formed to bargain with the employer". Social software on the other hand is a way for employees to "bargain with the employer, the customer or anyone else interested". Basically trade unions gave the individual employee a voice within the corporation. Weblogs are giving the individual employee a voice that can be heard well outside the walls of the company. And, today at least, most of high-level management don't yet realize what's going on. The command and control structures they are so used to and that have been successful ways of operating an enterprise for the past years are actually collapsing around them. Things like Wikis and Weblogs are being installed under the radar of corporate IT and adopted by a growing number of employees fed up with the static rules and regulations surrounding traditional information systems. Customers on the other hand are peering deep into the corporation and requesting, not the services of the company itself. but of the individual they found by reading his or her Weblog or by entering their name into Google. To cope, organizations need to recognize that they have no choice but to embrace change and restructure the way they run the company. Employees are forming networks that know no corporate boundaries and from these networks new types of commercial entities will arise to form the "social companies" of the mid to late decade.

The old relationship between vendor and customer was like oil and water. The new relationship between the "social company" and customer will be completely different. It already is.

Posted by Matthew at 03:02 PM | Comments (0)

Boutique services companies

An Informationweek article on the increasing number of open source service companies.

Posted by Matthew at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)