open source

Mike Doughty, Ubuntu 12.10 and Amazon

Posted on by tarus

On Sunday I got back in the country after a two week holiday in the South Pacific. It was an awesome trip: no Internet and, for most of the time, no shoes.

I got my brain regrooved.

Now I’m trying to dig out from under the backlog, and I noticed that Mike Doughty has a new album called “The Flip is Another Honey“.

I’m a huge Mike Doughty fan, and since I’m always eager to listen to his work (even an album of covers) I went to Amazon and bought the digital version.

Now, I use Ubuntu as my desktop O/S, and while I still run the “Long Term Support” 12.04 release at home and on my laptop, I recently upgraded to 12.10 at work to see if the MTP support was any better (it isn’t).

One of the more controversial changes in 12.10 was the addition of an Amazon shopping “lens” to the Unity desktop that would return Amazon search listings as well as local (to the machine) results. It’s pretty easy to disable, but I must admit it is a little annoying.

When I access amazon.com via Firefox, an Amazon icon shows up in the launcher as if I’d launched an Amazon application. I really don’t need another icon in my launcher, especially one that duplicates functionality I already have in my web browser. In fact, that’s kinda what web browsers were for: getting rid of lots of little “apps” and just having a single interface to remote content.

(sigh)

I know Canonical is doing this for the Benjamins, and considering the amount of money I’ve paid to them (i.e. zero) I really can’t complain, but it rubs me the wrong way, much like the default Samsung software on my Galaxy S3 that considers the Yellow Pages search application a “system” app that can’t be removed. I’m a little more upset about that, because I did pay money for my phone, which is why I run Cyanogenmod, and I hate additional kruft of all sorts on my machines.

But the main thing that bothers me is that even with this new “integration” I still can’t download the music I buy on Amazon in one step. For “The Flip” I had to download each of the 15 songs individually since Amazon requires the “Amazon Downloader” to manage its .amz files. I looked to see if there was support for the Amazon Downloader in 12.10 but couldn’t find anything.

I would think that considering how much Linux-based software Amazon uses internally and the fact that Ubuntu went forward with this integration despite the potential to piss of their users, the least they could have done is create an Ubuntu Amazon Downloader client.

I look to Canonical to drive a lot of Linux desktop support (see Valve’s decision to provide their initial Steam Linux client on Ubuntu) and I can only hope that we’ll see better execution in the future.

Open Source Think Tank 2012

Posted on by tarus

I went to my first Open Source Think Tank conference in Napa, California last week, and since I’ve come back I’ve been trying to think of the best way to write about it without seeming like an ass (well, more of an ass than usual).

I didn’t like it, and found it slightly unpleasant. In defense of the conference, I am certain I was in the minority, and I did really enjoy the networking opportunities, but the conference as a whole was not for me.

I first heard about the Olliance Group’s Think Tanks back in 2007, and I commented about the first one in Europe back in 2008. The event is invitation only, and I complained, tongue in cheek, that I was never invited to such things. I was surprised that Larry Augustin took the time to comment on that entry that no one knew I was interested, and since then I’ve been invited to them all.

Considering our business model of “spend less than you earn” keeps me busy, I have never been able to justify spending several days at a resort in wine country, but it turns out that this year was I going to be in San Francisco that weekend anyway, so I decided to attend to see what the whole thing was about.

In the Thursday opening remarks we were told that we could talk about the conference, but it was courtesy not to quote anyone by name. This was to make sure the conversations could be as open as possible without the attendees having to couch their thoughts within a political agenda. I’m cool with that, so please forgive me if I’m a little short on details in this post. What happens at Think Tank stays at Think Tank.

The conference consists of a couple of days of panel discussions, presentations and in this instance, two case studies. Once a company presents an issue involving open source that they would like to resolve, the attendees break out into teams to discuss a number of questions and possible solutions. On Saturday morning, teams were to present their findings, and the best teams win a Motorola tablet.

One of the case studies consisted of a trade organization that was trying to establish some open standards, but as with most such groups they receive funding by basically hoarding information. We struggle with this all of the time with our involvement in the TeleManagement Forum. We are trying to develop open source reference implementations for a variety of TMF interfaces, but we get resistance at sharing them, since those interfaces are considered TMF intellectual property. I won’t say that the process is hopeless, not at all, but it is a struggle.

The second one involved a large application currently managed by a branch of the US Government that they are in the process of making open source, and they wanted input on how to get more community involvement.

Interesting questions, but nothing I really wanted to spend time talking about. I was there to get ideas on how to stay true to our open source ideals and yet make lots of money. I believe the answer lies in the fact that many open source projects are large, powerful and complex, and you can monetize making it simpler for people (i.e. SaaS, etc.).

So you can imagine my surprise that two of the people I met at this “open source” conference, and had a lot of fun with, were from Cisco and Adobe. I also met the legal counsel for one of our largest customers, a guy from Amazon that used to work down the road at Red Hat, and the woman who was ultimately responsible for nuking my paper submission to OSCON.

In addition I got to see some familiar faces, including Jono Bacon, Erica Brescia, Mark Hinkle and Ross Turk.

But cool people cannot compensate for the universal truth that panel discussions stink. There were a lot of them. And the whole tone of the conference was aimed at the “Go Big or Go Home” crowd, of which I’m not a part. This doesn’t mean I have in any way limited my vision for OpenNMS, but getting bigger for just the sake of size is just not me. I want to build a company that lasts, and through keeping a large and growing customer base happy, make a lot of money. The “Go Big or Go Home” folks seem attracted to models in which rapid growth is the only goal, and if the initial investment doesn’t fund it, future growth is taken out on the backs of customers (<cough>Groupon<cough>). I just found little I could use at the conference.

For example, at Friday’s breakfast I ended up at the same table with Martin Mikos. He has made a personal fortune under the banner of open source, but he keeps confusing proprietary software (with an open source component) with open source software. Through his leadership, MySQL ultimately ended up being owned by Oracle, and the inability of Eucalyptus to understand the difference led to the OpenStack fork. But what am I going to do, ambush him at breakfast? Not only would that not be cool, he would not care, and I seriously believe he is unaware of the difference. I think that was true of a lot of the attendees. To many, making money is more important than building something to last, although making something that lasts does not preclude making money.

I did try to introduce myself to Rod Johnson, but never got the chance. I was hoping he’d get a laugh out of this old picture I have of Ben Hale taken during one of our early Dev-Jam conferences, back when SpringSource was called Interface21.

I did have to leave in the middle of the conference to head into the city (the main reason I was out there), so it is possible that had I stayed for the whole event I might have gotten some answers to my questions and had a better overall experience. But I think overall the divide was too great between my experience with open source and most of the people there.

With all of the recent press about Red Hat becoming a billion dollar company, I can’t help but imagine how different that company would have been had it been headquartered in Silicon Valley. The Think Tank conference seems to primarily represent Valley thinking, and while that isn’t a bad thing in and of itself, it’s not for me.

I think there are better ways.

Some Thoughts on SOPA/PIPA

Posted on by tarus

It is doubtful that anyone who actively uses the Internet missed yesterday’s protest of the SOPA/PIPA bills now before congress (well, at least PIPA, I do believe SOPA has been stalled in the House but not killed outright).

I am, of course, against this legislation, but more due to the fact that I doubt the US Government would understand the Internet enough to correctly enforce it versus wanting to support piracy. Last year saw a US congressman lose his seat because he was clueless when it came to understanding how information on the network is made available, and my belief is that he was probably one of the better informed politicians. SOPA and PIPA go much farther than, say, legislation like the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), and there have been several notable abuses of that law (such as its use against Dmitry Sklyarov) that one can only imagine the horrors that would be unleashed.

I read a number of commentaries about these bills, including the one by Scott Adams and the one by Wil Wheaton, who both produce creative content and are against SOPA/PIPA (although for different reasons).

My take on the whole thing is that it is not a effort to protect the content industry from piracy, but instead it is an effort to protect a dying business model. Promoting entertainment, in the forms of music, video, books, software, etc., is both very profitable and controlled by a small group of people. It used to be necessary to have a studio, record company or publishing house manufacture and promote an artist’s work, but with the advent of the Internet both the cost and need of these industries has diminished. They used to be a necessary evil, and it appears that in the interest of greed they often screwed over the people who actually created the content (see Hollywood Accounting on Wikipedia). Now that they are becoming unnecessary, they are scared, and since we are talking about billions of dollars here, it is doubtful that they are going to go gently into that good night. They want to lock down and control distribution again, and one way to do that is to create legislation that lets them go after any site that displeases them, preferably with as vague and nebulous rules as it is possible to create.

Most people hate change (I think I am one glaring exception) as it tends to cause some friction and stress. In every great transition: from the telegraph to the telephone, from the horse and buggy to the automobile, from radio to television, even from closed to open source, there are those that want to hold on to the old way. But no matter how long it is delayed, change is inevitable, and it is often better to adopt early then to fight it.

That is why I always applaud when I see artists attempt new models. Bands like Radiohead sell directly to their fans (the biggest fear of the record companies) and performers like Louis CK are able to produce and distribute their own films. Those are examples of how the Internet changes distribution, but what really gets me excited is when business models change. Randall Monroe makes a free web comic, and he is able to make a living at it (it does help when the work is brilliant). Likewise, the band Phish makes money touring (even inviting fans to record and distribute their performances) in addition to record sales, and acts like Jonathan Coulton offer certain bonus “bundles” in addition to the music itself.

In the case of SOPA and PIPA, we’re lucky that it impacts a number of companies with as deep pockets as the media industry. The next time we might not be as lucky. The price of our freedom is constant vigilance.

A Wedding in Fulda

Posted on by tarus

I have been working with open source software for over a decade now, and I do hate it when people describe it as some sort of utopia, where wandering bands of freedom loving coders roam the countryside handing out gifts of free applications.

The fact of the matter is that most of my business transactions are simply that – business transactions. The client gives us money in exchange for services and we try very hard to deliver those services.

But there is something about open source that makes the whole experience much more personal. I consider almost all of my clients as friends, and a few of them very good friends. I never really got that when I worked in commercial software.

So it was with a feeling of honor that I was invited to the wedding of Daniela Barbaro and Uwe Bergmann.

As you may be aware, Uwe is an OpenNMS services partner in Germany through his company Nethinks, and he is the main sponsor of the annual OpenNMS Users Conference – Europe.

It was nice to be invited to an event that usually only includes family and close friends, and so we scheduled training in Germany the week before in order to make sure we would be in the country on the big day. Both David and I were invited, along with Antonio who came up from Naples.

I had never been to a German wedding before, especially one where the bride’s family was Italian, so while most of the service was in the German language, when the hymns were sung each verse would alternate between the two languages. Not being very fluent in either, I was pretty much equally lost, but I could easily understand the love and admiration that was in the room.

After the service there was a reception outside the church, complete with Italian sweets, German bread, champagne and gelato. When I got to the bride and groom they looked very happy.

I also ran into a few people from Nethinks.

The two gentlemen on the left are Michael Batz and René Kleffel. The are Nethinks OpenNMS consultants who helped out with the class this week.

The cute couple on the right are Jeri Ryan and Justin Timberlake.

Actually, it’s Christoph Seipp and his girlfriend Caroline. Christoph used to work at Nethinks but now he is working to get Cloud services like Google Apps adopted in Germany.

After the reception there was also an evening party. It was outside of Fulda in a town called Grebenhain-Bermuthshain. David wasn’t feeling well (he’s been on the road non-stop for some time) so he stayed back while Antonio and I drove out through the beautiful German countryside with Ulf, our Kiwi mascot.

Ulf wasn’t able to make it to the wedding, but he did have fun giving his best wishes to the bride and groom.

Antonio and I wandered around and met a lot of amazing people. Christoph introduced me to Kümmel, and I returned the favor by reintroducing him to the North American exports tequila and Jack Daniels.

Ulf seemed to have his own agenda.

I had a wonderful time, and the only thing that could have made it better was if my own bride had been able to join us. I used to travel a lot for business before working with OpenNMS, and I found it kind of lonely. Now am I always come back home richer for it, not just in money but in friendships, and I have a feeling I know which will last longer.

And Who Says Nixon Is the Only One Who Can Go to China?

Posted on by tarus

Please forgive me if this post is a little spacier than usual, but I was up from 2am until 6am this morning doing an upgrade at a client site.

When I came into the office, everyone was talking about a project Ronny Trommer spotted on Sourceforge called YbmNMS.

It appears to be a Chinese fork of OpenNMS.

I am always amazed at where our code ends up, and I think it is pretty cool that someone in China is using it. While I visited China in the 1990s (Guangzhou and Chengdu), I haven’t been back since, and we don’t have any commercial support customers in China.

I always worry, however, about whether or not projects that use our code obey the license. The code for YbmNMS seems to be hosted as the “Netcools” project on Sourceforge, and it appears that all that has been done, with respect to the copyright, is a global search and replace on the string “OpenNMS” and substituting “YbmNMS”.

From one file:

// YbmNMS(R) is Copyright (C) 2002-2005 The YbmNMS Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
// YbmNMS(R) is a derivative work, containing both original code, included code and modified
// code that was published under the GNU General Public License. Copyrights for modified
// and included code are below.
//
// YbmNMS(R) is a registered trademark of The YbmNMS Group, Inc.

Considering that not all of our code is there, YbmNMS may be focusing on just that functionality that is similar to IBM’s Netcool product, hence the Netcools name.

I tried to send an e-mail to the “mailto” link on their website (ybmnms@ybmnms.com) but it bounced, so I sent a note to Yin Bangmin to learn more about what he is doing and to get the copyright notice corrected.

“The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.”

-Oscar Wilde

Ten Years with OpenNMS

Posted on by tarus

It was ten years ago today that I first drove to the Oculan offices in Raleigh as an employee, and began working on the OpenNMS Project.

Oculan built a network management appliance on top of OpenNMS, and that was their main business. However, there was enough interest in the OpenNMS platform by itself that I was brought on board to build a service and support business around it.

I worked on that until May of 2002, when Oculan decided to focus solely on their appliance business, as well as to stop working on OpenNMS. I saw enough potential in the project to ask to take it over. Thus I became the sole maintainer of OpenNMS and started my own business called Sortova Consulting Company (named after Sortova Farm, where I live).

Somehow, I managed to keep the project alive as well as pay my mortgage. I owe no small part of that to a group of strangers that formed the inaugural class of the Order of the Green Polo (OGP). Although we had not met (yet), through IRC and the mailing lists they keep me going, if not the project itself.

In 2003 the business grew to the point where my satellite internet connection just wasn’t adequate. It was the only affordable option I had at the farm for any form of non-dialup internet, and since a T1 circuit with internet connectivity was going to run me close to $1000 a month, I decided it would be cheaper to rent an office in town and just get DSL.

I did that, but then I needed to get a new ISP (since I couldn’t afford both the office and to keep my satellite connection at home). Always wanting to “buy local”, I called up the local internet provider called Blast, and opened an account. While I was on the phone I asked about their monitoring solution, and was told I needed to “talk to Lyle”.

Lyle Estill is one of more animated and driven people I’ve ever met, and we hit it off. Since Blast was mainly a services company, he suggested that I bring OpenNMS and come work for him. So for the first time in over a year I ended up with a salary, as well as other people to help share the work around the .com side of the OpenNMS Project.

Through Blast I was able to hire David Hustace, and shortly after that, Matt Brozowski. We now had a real team of people working full time on the project, and things were looking up.

In 2004 Lyle decided to focus his time on a (then) nascent biofuels project. Before he left Blast, the three of us approached him about buying back the OpenNMS business, which we did to form The OpenNMS Group. That has been my current employer since September 1st, 2004.

We had reached the profitability tipping point, and have been organically growing ever since.

Working on OpenNMS has put me in touch with some amazing people. First there are my coworkers, who have been there through the best of times and the worst of times. Second are the people involved in the project itself, mainly through the OGP, but also the people I’ve met through the mailing lists and at conferences. Third are my customers. My job would be a lot harder without such a wonderful group of clients. They not only understand the value of OpenNMS, their input has had a direct impact on the development of the code. I’d be a poor businessman if I ignored the needs of the very people willing to pay me to build it.

Finally, I’ve gotten to travel the world. As a farmboy in a rural section of North Carolina, I’ve been to places like Singapore, Japan, Australia, Switzerland, Italy, the UK, France, Germany, Norway, Dubai, Portugal, and Mexico. I’ve been all over the US, including Alaska and Hawaii, and what I’ve found is that while the politics of our respective countries may differ greatly, people all over the world who love open source software are pretty much the same: bright, eager people who really enjoy having control over their software solutions.

Oh, I did I mention really good looking? Serious model potential here, yessiree.

This day did not come without some sad notes. I was looking forward to celebrating at the Ohio LinuxFest, with a number of those good people I mentioned above. Unfortunately, my usually illness free body betrayed me on Thursday, and with chest pains and a high fever I decided it was best not to travel. Things are better today and I should be fine, but it is still disappointing not to be there. Instead, I spent the morning watching David, my spouse and several of her coworkers in the Trooper Challenge Mud Run. It was a fun time, though not nearly as fun for me as the OLF. Oh, David finished 19th and plans to run the New York Marathon this year. He’s doing it for charity so if any of the three people reading this want to sponsor him, drop me a note.

Also today, Rackspace decommissioned server1.opennms.org. Rackspace Hosting is an awesome company and they have been both a client and a supporter of OpenNMS since 2002. When I started out on my own, they donated a server to the project, and it has hosted our mailing lists, website, FTP services, etc. over the years.

It was in their old datacenter in downtown San Antonio which is being closed, so they migrated us to a much newer and powerful machine out of Dallas. Still, it was like losing an old friend.

But on net, the number of friends I’ve gained in the last decade far outweighs that one loss. I am truly blessed to be able to make a living doing something I love, surrounded by awesome people who share similar goals.

Thank you.