Open Source Lessons

Writing in The Observer (a UK Sunday Newspaper) Simon Caulkin suggested that open source development represented a new way of working with wider applicability than software development. Commenting on a new book by management guru Gary Hamel, he points out that existing top-down management structures are both expensive and inefficient, and then continues:

But internet-enabled networks offer a credible third way, Hamel believes. The prime exemplar is Linux, the open-source operating system developed by a self-selecting band of volunteers linked only by the web and their motivation to contribute. There are now 150,000 open-source projects using the freely given energy and initiative of 1.6 million people, according to estimates. While many of these are not-for-profit enterprises, the lessons that they embody have wide application...

Leaving aside that the primary purpose of management books is to sell management books, there is clearly a grain of truth here. The self-organising teams of the agile movement, and the open source community have shown that it is possible to manage complex endeavours without a huge management overhead, and often in a way that is far more enjoyable for the workers than conventionally managed efforts. The main objection that I can see is that the members of successful agile development teams and open-source projects are largely self-selected and drawn from a very thin layer at the top of the development gene pool. Translating their experience to the wider working world will be challenging; and of course, getting management to support it will be like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas :-)

Why did he jump?

That's the big question he doesn't answer, but apart from that this interview in the Microsoft Architecture Journal with Don Ferguson, ex-Chief Architect for IBM Software Group and now a Technical Fellow at Microsoft, makes interesting reading. Some selected nuggets of wisdom:

You should never underestimate the importance of a social network. You don't know what you don't know. You don't know what someone may say to you that can push the reset button in your brain and make you think differently.

...communication skills matter. They really do. It's really important to understand how to write well and how to present well.

Secondly, many people who work in technology suffer from the "endgame fallacy." We are all pretty bright. We see a lot of customers. We see what they are doing and then plot a trajectory for where they will be in a few years. Once you do this, however, it's too tempting to build what they will need in five years, and not what they need next or are ready for.

Still wish he'd explained what was behind his move from the top technical job in IBM software to Microsoft though.

I paid £4...

..for the new Radiohead album, 'In Rainbows. I thought that £4 was probably more than the band would get if I bought a CD, or downloaded it from iTunes, but it was less than I would be prepared to pay for a CD. I almost never buy downloaded music, because I hate the DRM schemes that limit the devices on which I can play it. If I buy a CD, I can listen to it in my car, in any one of the 6 rooms in my house that have a CD player or three rooms with a computer, or I can rip it and listen to it on my MP3 player. If I lose my player, or a hard disc, I don't lose my music. I know I can get round the DRM if I can be bothered to do a bit of research on the net, but it is the principle of the thing. So I still buy CDs, usually from on-line retailers now that Fopp is gone.

What about the music? Well, I've only listened all the way through once, but I like it better than 'Kid A', or 'Amnesiac', or 'Hail to the Thief', but less than 'The Bends' or 'OK Computer' - it's rockier than the last three releases without being a return to the dense, complex textures of the earlier stuff. I do wonder how the rest of the band feel - it seems to me that everything they've done since 'OK Computer' has sounded like a Thom Yorke solo project rather than a full band effort. Still, I guess they get a fair share of the cash.

Spb Time review

I wouldn't be writing this review at all if Windows Mobile 5 didn't have some serious shortcomings in the alarms department. As a recent deserter from the Palm camp, I'd been used to using my PDA (a Palm TX) as my alarm clock - I always had it with me and with some add-on midi files the sounds were fine for waking me up. Trying to use the WM5 Alarm applet in my Orange SPV M600 to do the same thing got me in to trouble. Sometimes the alarm just wouldn't sound at all, leading to some embarrassing oversleeping incidents, and if it did sound, there was often no way of cancelling the alarm, so it just kept on sounding. A bit of googling revealed that these were known issues that had been around a while but which Microsoft had not thought important enough to fix. My searches also revealed that there was no easy solution to these problems.

I tried a couple of freeware alarm programs, but wasn't particularly impressed - some of them suffered from the same issues as the built-in app, and all had pretty ropey UIs. So I turned to the commercial solutions. Spb Time was actually the third of these that I tried. One of a suite of applications from the same developers, Spb Time's UI is anything but ropey, my alarms now go off when I want them to and can be cancelled by a nice big red button or snoozed with a big green one. I also now have a very nice skinnable clock and world clock, countdown timers and stopwatches (with lap times that can be saved to a text file) all accessible through a Today plugin. Alarms can be set to go off on particular days of the week, so it is easy to set different alarms to get you up for work in the week and for whatever you do at the weekend. You can also set a one time alarm for a time in the next 24 hours. There are plenty of options for sounds (MP3s included), repeat intervals, auto-snooze and snooze delays. All in all it is a great little application, does exactly what is claimed for it and the cost is reasonable, particularly at today's $/£ exchange rate. If the experience encourages you to try other Spb apps you can get a discount on those as an existing customer. I hope you can tell, I'm really very impressed. Just to be clear, I have no connection with Spb Software except as a satisfied user of their product.

Just as a footnote if unlike me you've stayed loyal to Palm you can get pretty much the same functionality from Palmary Clock, which was one of the most used applications on my old TX.