2005 silverorange Summit Keynote Address

silverorange slice logo

Earlier this month, those of us at silverorange retreated to a beautiful cottage on the north shore of Prince Edward Island to take stock of the year past and plan for the year to come.

Dan James, the CEO of silverorange, has posted his keynote address from our summit. Don’t be fooled, though, by our appropriation of large corporate terminology (summit, keynote, CEO). There was no convention center, no podiums, and no power-point projections (though we did use a projector to play Mario Kart). Our technology infrastructure for the weekend consisted of a mass of ThinkPad power adapters, wifi hubs, and game consoles.

We were really just 10 people sitting around a fireplace talking about how to make next year better than the last.

 

Objects That Come From Nowhere

I’ve noticed that there are certain types of items that I never seem to have to purchase. They just appear. No matter how many of these objects I lose, discard, or give away, there will always be more lying around somewhere.

  • Pens
  • Mugs
  • T-Shirts
  • Mouse Pads

This has to do, I think, with the way in which organizations have a tendency to produce cheap paraphernalia in a vain attempt to render into things tangible, their intangible existence.

 

How I Became a Free Software Zealot

It started innocently. I started using a free/open-source web browser, then called Phoenix (now Firefox). It seemed to me to be faster, easier, and generally better than Internet Explorer on my Windows XP powered laptop. Soon after, having been unhappy with the performance of Microsoft Outlook with my large volume of archived mail and unwilling to pay for or pirate the promising new (2003) version, I switched from Microsoft’s Outlook to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail application.

Soon after, I made the switch from Trillian to the free/open-source instant messaging client, Gaim. It then dawned on me that the three applications I use most, my web browser, email client, and instant messaging client, were all free/open-source software. Not only were these applications free software, they are also available across multiple platforms (Windows, Linux, and some for Mac OS X).

Armed with the realization that I was close to platform independence, I intentionally sought to weed out the few remaining Windows-only applications in my arsenal. I made the switch from Microsoft Office to OpenOffice.org. This left some games, and Photoshop/Illustrator as the last key proprietary/closed-souce applications in my regular use.

Driven primarily by curiosity and technical/professional interest (particularly in alternative user-interface design), I decided to exercise my newfound platform/operating-system independence and switch my primary laptop to Linux. This was over a year ago and I’ve been relatively happy, given some challenges, since.

All along, these decisions and similar decisions at the company-level where I work were pragmatic. Open-source software is good, but it’s really about using the best tool for the job, be it free/open or proprietary. While the free/open systems were generally beating out the proprietary systems, the decisions were still driven primarily by a (relatively) qualitative comparison of features/quality, rather than any philosophical best about licensing.

I had always been turned off by Microsoft-hating Linux-zealots that play into my stereotype like a bad gay sitcom character. Microsoft has many problems, but they also develop some remarkably good software (I’m a fan of the Office suite and love Microsoft Streets and Trips). What bothered me more than the last-computer-conference-I-was-at-Tshirt attire was the fundamental belief that free/open-source software was better than proprietary alternatives.

However, having lived in a mostly free/open-source software environment for over a year now, I am starting to drink the kool-aid.

I had been running Mac OS X on a old iMac for browser testing purposes and following the development of OS X for a while too. It dawned on me that one of the primary reasons keeping from using OS X as my primary operating system (in addition to not wanting to replace my working hardware), was due the licensing, control, and ownership of the software and platform.

Mac OS X, since it is built largely upon open-source components and protocols, carries with it many of the pragmatic benefits of open-source software. However, since a significant amount of the Mac OS X system is not free/open-source, you do not have all of the freedom you would have on a completely free/open-source system. You are, in the long term, still at the whim of a private corporation (Apple Computer).

To many people, quite understandably, this will not matter – especially since Apple is producing some great software lately. That’s fine with me. I’m not at a point where where I want to force everyone to use free/open-source software. The idea of forcing something in the name of “freedom” just doesn’t sit well with me.

That said, I am starting to think that governments and other public institutions might have some kind of moral and ethical (though not, at this point, legal) obligation to share software it develops or has developed on its behalf.

While I’m not about to start burning the Windows XP license that came with my laptop in the street, I’m starting to take into account licensing and freedom to use and control software in the decisions and recommendations I make for myself and those around me.

 

Cleaning Your Bedroom and Improving the World

When I was growing up, my bedroom was always a mess. Every week or two, my parents would get me to clean my room. I wasn’t interested in cleaning my room, but I had to get it to at least pass a quick visual inspection my mom or dad.

To make sure I passed the informal inspection with minimal amount of work necessary, I would stand at the door of my room, where my parents would stand, and look in. I would scan the room and make note of the first thing I noticed that was out of place – pants on the floor, the unmade bed, or whatever was the most visually obviously out of place. Once this was taken care of, I would go back to the door, have another look, and pick the next thing I noticed. I would repeat this simple process until things were looking good enough.

This process has stayed with me ever since and often proves to be useful way to decide what to work on first. Over the past year, I’ve tried to apply this bedroom cleaning prioritization technique to help improve, in a small way, the open source desktop computing experience.

Last fall, I looked at my desktop computing environment and took note of the first thing that didn’t feel right. At the time, it was the ugly old Firefox icon (then called Phoenix). That helped, in small part, get the process started that culminated in the redesign of the visual redesign of all things Firefox and Thunderbird.

More recently, now having a beautiful web browser, I returned to my bedroom cleaning technique and took another look at the desktop and see what bothered me next. This time, it wasn’t visual. Rather, it was the sounds used in the Gaim instant messager application that were the most prominent rough edge.

I set out a few months ago to improve these sounds. Like with the Firefox visual work, I didn’t have all of the skill needed to do the work myself, so I looked to others for help. This time it was Brad Turcotte, a musician (aka Brad Sucks), that came to my aid. He and I bounced sounds that he created back and forth for a while until we had something that sounded right.

These new sounds have now been accepted by the Gaim developers and will be included in a future release.

Now, I’ll have to head back to my bedroom door and take a look around to see what rough edge I notice next.

 

Lazy Journalism on Buy Nothing Day

When “news” becomes a product delivered on a regular schedule, press releases and made-for-news events must become pretty attractive to journalists.

Today, most major American news websites are running something along the lines of “Lots of People Go Shopping” as their leading story.

Screenshots from MSNBC.com and CNN.com on November 26, 2004
CNN Screenshot
CNN screenshot #1
CNN Screenshot
CNN screenshot #2
MSNBC Screenshot
MSNBC screenshot

The CNN front-page story blurb reads:

Early bargain hunters packed stores across the nation this morning, but industry watchers say it remains to be seen if the buying momentum will hold going into the weekend. The day after Thanksgiving is one of the most important shopping days for U.S. retailers.

Is this news? Who decides to run a story like this? I understand that holiday shopping is a powerful economic driver in the U.S., but this is so hollow a “story” it feels like a vacation for journalists.

Note, as always, the “More News” stories on right side of the CNN.com screenshot are so absurd as to be hilarious. All of this on Buy Nothing Day.

 

Garment Interlocking Standards

I wrote last year about a simple marvel of real-world standards when a paint-roller handle broke and we were able to screw in a broom handle into the same socket (fantastic!).

I was amused and amazed at lunch the other day by my colleague Peter Rukavina with another simple display of standards. He was layered up in two coats. The first coat (green) was purchased at the REI corporate store in Denver, CO in April of 2004. It was assembled in Mexico of US material. The second coat (grey) is a Ralph Lauren Chaps-brand coat purchased at the Eatons store in Toronto in 2000. It was made in China.

Both coats sport the ubiquitous YKK zipper brand and as Peter demonstrated with flair, despite their distinct origins, the coats can zip together because they share a common zipper type/size.

Also dining with us during this marvel of overcoat synergy, Dan James informed us that sleeping bags can be easily zipped together. This seems like the thing of nightmares for the parents of teenagers on co-ed camping trips.

 

Weblogs on The West Wing

The latest episode of The West Wing features weblogs breaking a news story before the mainstream press. It’s a cute episode in which weblogs pick up a story of a White House staffer test driving a huge SUV right into a brand new Toyota Prius hybrid.

 

PBS Frontline: Rumsfeld’s War

Screenshot from Frontline documentary, Rumsfeld's War
Watch the PBS documentary in small streaming format from PBS.org or download the higher-quality bittorrent version

The PBS Frontline special, Rumsfeld’s War, details the internal power struggles that have shaped American foreign policy over the last ten years. The documentary is available, as one web forum poster put it, “…in Gameboy size resolution and s-s-s-s-streaming format…” at the PBS website. For a significantly better viewing experience, there a complete bittorrent version (bittorrent file) with much higher quality.

The documentary is striking for several reasons. First, the internal political posturing that characterizes the most powerful positions in U.S. foreign policy is as fascinating as any Hollywood war drama.

Second, the line between fiction and reality is eerily faint when all of your information comes through a small color screen in your living room. Last week, I was struck by the lack of contrast between the depiction of the Middle East conflict (or as Jon Stewart calls it, “Mess-o-potamia”) as depicted in the NBC drama, The West Wing, and the nightly America television news.

Regardless, the PBS special, Rumsfeld’s War, is worth watching.

 

The Descent of the American Empire

Flag Art

Growing up a couple hundred miles from the U.S. border in Canada’s smaller province, I’ve always had a sense that we in Canada have a unique vantage point on the United States of America. From here, we can see that America is a large beast, but we are too close to see the whole thing. Sleeping with an elephant, we sometimes say.

I grew up with a feeling that America was the center of the world. There were people in the rest of the world, but that was just the backdrop to America. Maybe someday, the whole world would come to be like America.

More recently in my life, I’ve become aware that while America lumbers on, still the center of it’s own universe, the rest of the world isn’t paying attention anymore. America is becoming irrelevant.

The American military is without equal. That sounds good, until you realize that a massive military without an equal means you have an irrelevant army. America is building a missile defense system after being attacked with domestic civilian aircraft. America sees the world in need of policing, while the world sees America as something from which you should protect yourself.

Europe wants its own global positioning system, because they know better than to have their governments and companies rely on a system being run by an increasingly isolated America. China wants its own software systems, because they know better than to build their economy with tools built in an increasingly isolated America.

Economically, America is clearly still a massive power. However, thanks in large part to the success and growth of large American corporations, economic power no longer respects international borders. Great American brands like WalMart, CocaCola, and General Electric, know that there is money to be made in the rest of the world.

We use American institutions and companies as a barometer for the adoption of open-source software, while the power of open-source software is happily moving on without the US.

While the coming US election seems like the potential turning point inside the US, and the rest of the world will move regardless of who sits in the White House next year. The future lives in Asia, South America, Europe, Africa.

Meanwhile, America responds by talking louder, listening less, and tightening it’s borders. In ten years, or fifteen, or twenty-five, the lights in America will dim and it will see beyond its own glare, look around, and see that it is no longer the center of the world and that the rest of the planet has moved on without them.