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10 Years of The Apache Software Foundation

This year at both ApacheCons we are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the incorporation of the ASF.  In Amsterdam we had cake and singing, and a panel of "Apache Pioneers" talking about how the ASF was formed.

This panel was great fun, and we'll be doing an even better version of it in Oakland.  Nice to stop and take a minute to reflect on how serendipitous the whole thing was.

By the way, both of the above pictures were taken last week in Amsterdam by my good friend Noel Bergman.

Just now I'm in London, doing some errands before I head up to Oxford for the first BarCampApache that isn't tied to an ApacheCon.  If you're in Oxford this weekend, hope to see you there.

Adam and his Mom

Just had to take a minute to post this pic of two folks I met in line who are so excited to be here in the Reality Distortion Field for a little while. Adam and his Mom got Platinum passes to MacWorld from the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Seldom have I met a fan so excited...and suddenly I remember what it was like to bleed 6 colors.

iPhoneDevCamp

Have a lot to say about iPhoneDevCamp, but I'm gonna start with a friendly poke at fantastic Adobe employee Dominic Sagolla who had the forsight to convince his company to allow iPhoneDevCamp to happen at their San Francisco facility.

I love this story. For those of you just joining in to iPhone frenzy, Adobe Flash isn't supported on the iPhone, but its not Adobe's fault. Abode's position is that their relationship with Apple continues to be strong AND that they would like to see Flash running on every mobile device. In the meantime, Adobe supports all the native file formats shipping on iPhone.

Raven Zachary, Whurley and some of their friends decided it would be cool to have a BarCamp for the iPhone...but they needed a place to have it. Enter Dom. He managed to convince Abode to donate the satellite facility (that used to be Macromedia world headquarters before the acquisition). But, above and beyond the call of duty, Adobe legal actually thought through the situation, and offered to waive their standard site NDA for the duration of the conference. And everyone associated with Adobe has been absolutely swell, from the janitorial folks to the security folks...Adobe even donated a few Timbuktu bags as giveaways. 300 people showed up today to iPhoneDevCamp, and they all came away with a great impression of Adobe.

So Dom helped Adobe do a great thing, just by asking if they would allow it. Way to go, Dom!

Tools of Change Conference 2007 - Day One Morning

I really wanted to check out this newest O'Reilly Conference, Tools of Change.  Its themed around the move away from traditional printing on paper (as well as a move away from all traditional printing entails including friction in the form of cost of production, distribution costs, obsolesence).   Of course people like the aspects of books that make them easy to carry around and actually read. I used to say I'd never read a novel online (before Cory Doctorow's Down and Out In the Magic Kingdom of which I was a huge fan).   These days I mostly "read" books in the form of audiobooks and I've been working off and on for the last year on a wiki-based book for O'Reilly called Art of Community, so I'm a prime candidate for Tools of Change.

Through O'Reilly I've met online publishing pioneers like comic book author Scott McCloud, and Philip Greenspun.  Wikipedia guided by Jimmy Wales has been a O'Reilly favorite project for a long time as much for its vision as for working out the first practical method for moderating publicly contributed content.  This conference is a first stab at discussing these trends and generally starting conversations in the traditional publishing world.

So, sitting in the morning keynotes.  First keynote (after intro remarks by TimO and conference co-chair Sarah Milstein, including this funny video Introducing The Book)...is Brian Murray, a muck-muck from Harper Collins Publishers who told the story about their path to digitizing content (very marketeerish but full of information if you were willing to parse it).  Most interesting was that they had to look hard for a vendor to support their transition to "Digital Warehousing", and their plan to build what they needed, including rolling in some of their existing digital assets in the form of their pre-existing workflow and electronic text management systems.  And of course they are reaping benefits in the form of less dupilcation of effort and wider distribution...however they are still holding a lot of the cards to try to drive all traffic to their own site.  Their content browser for instance is distributed as a widget that drives eyeballs back to their site rather than running native on the site you were originally browsing.  I'm wondering if and whether that kind of proprietary hold on things will hurt them in the long run?

Next up was Wired Magazine Editor In Chief, Chris Anderson (also Long Tail author, who apparently has a new book in the works called "Free" about the economics of giving things away).  He says that in the 20th Century radio and TV changed the game via the economics of broadcast, which was the first widespread example of frictionless distribution and made advertsing a viable financial support model.  Today this broadcast model is so pervasive that physical magazines such as Wired essentially sell eyeballs, and charge only because it converts free readers into advertising assets.  Anyway...this man is writing a book, which will come out in 2 years time as a physical book (because he thinks physical books will not be obsolete any time soon because, well heck, they are comforting to have, hold and read).  He thinks Free is the business model of the 21st Century, and so his book about the topic will explore as many aspects of free as he can arrange...so for instance, the audio book version will be free (because he is buying the rights).  The unlocked e-book may be supported by ads (which he defends from his position as a glossy ad-driven magazine editor, but I'm not sure I relish).  The physical book he's thinking of making a "sponsored book", or possibly a "loss leader" book for advertising purposes as he did with Long Tail (of which he gave 800 copies away to anyone who would blog a review).  He may also offer a rebate on purchase if he can work one out.

Chris Anderson's reasons to give a book away:
1) Free Advertising
2) Digital books are still considered inferior, and some fraction of those people will convert to a physical book
3) Maximizes access to the "new influentials"

Why more books aren't given away:
1) Charter conflict....authors want to increase their personal fame and influence, but publishers want to make money (and don't yet understand that free can be an asset)
2) Channel conflict...bookstores don't want their product undercut
3) Fear

Have to take a moment to applaud Chris' willingness to work without Powerpoint Slides.  His talk was wonderful and IMHO more interesting to listen to without visuals.

Last before the break,  Tim O'Reilly talked about Web2.0, (again...but this time with a special publishing bent).  He pointed out that while user generated content is really an important sea change, at the same time its not that new (since nearly all authors start as readers, witness J.K. Rowling).  Like the Harper Collins guy, he talked about O'Reilly Media's entries into online publishing, Safari.  Search changes the reading experience.  Online readers only read 20% of a given title, but older content demand is satisfied.  Search drives readership of out of print content.  40% of the content read on Safari accounts for only 9% of physical book sales.  O'Reilly is still working out what implications this trend implies for the future of their business, and they are engaging in various experiments.  On the subject of piracy, Tim thinks its progressive taxation...you get more out of additional exposure than it costs in lost sales.  Tim ended with a call to be fearless and look to the future to re-discover publishing.

There was a Q&A, but as I asked a question, I didn't capture it.  It was short (3 questions).  Mine was about why the Harper Collins widget doesn't show up on Amazon, although I also commented in support of the notion that digital format books may actually be MORE compelling than print over time, since novels can include a soundtrack or rich image files.

My conceptual artist friend Catt Avery, who is sitting here with me at the keynotes, wonders how many folks in the audience today have YouTube accounts?   There are lots of trad publishers here, so I'm guessing not many.

FOSS.in Looks Great This Year

Those of you who read my blog know by now that I love India and go there whenever I can.  The FOSS scene in India is fascinating...more than in any market, India is the front lines of battle between software self-determinism and software vendor lock-in.  Microsoft spends a huge amount of money there which is no surprise since it is one of the two largest potential software markets left in the world.  India has the second largest professional class in the world (second only to that of the aggregate European Union), and turns out a reported 300,000 new developers every year.  Most of those developers get a huge dose of proprietary thought and dogma in school, furnished by any one of several proprietary companies who fund equipment and internships (Microsoft isn't the only one).  As a result they come out of school spouting misconceptions such as "Why should I give away for Free what I can charge for?" and the ever-popular "Won't Open Source undermine the whole technology industry"?

I and others have for years been supporting the many FOSS conferences in India to try to broaden the range of options Indian developers consider when charting their technology careers, with some successes.  The annual FOSS.in conference is the largest and oldest of the grassroots (developer focused) conferences held in India.  They've just published their schedule for 2006, and it looks fantastic.  If you are in India or even just near enough to get to Bangalore next week, you should go!

And another list...this time Metros I've ridden

I actually love to ride Metros...I try to ride them whenever I travel to a new place. My husband and his LiveJournal friends found a new site that lets you rack up a list of icons for the metro systems you've traveled. Must say I found a few missing, notably the Mumbai metro.

Anyway...here goes:

Got at b3co.com!

GNUnify 2006

Today I'm in Pune, my favorite city in India. I'm speaking at GNUnify 2006, which is a very sweet small conference held at Symbiosis Institute of Computer Studies and Research.

What a great experience! This was the 4th year of this 2-day conference organized entirely by a student committee. Students dressed in very smart formal suits and saris were our hosts and facilitators. Last night there was a lovely reception where we were treated to a cultural program of dancing and then a dinner, and I was privileged to chat with Dr. S. B. Mujumdar, Cancellor and Founder of Symbiosis. His idea 30 years ago was to create an international university embracing a wholistic curriculum with lots of practical experience as well as personal discipline through mandatory yoga and phys ed classes together with the usual theoretical and technical training that comprises traditional education. Today Symbiosis is 31 academic institutions spread around Pune and a small new campus in Dubai, UAE. The student community is 35,000 Indian and International students (from 42 countries) on eight campuses, and another 80,000 students participating in Distance Learning. Last year Dr. Mujumder was awarded the Padmashri designation, which is sort of the Indian equivalent of being knighted.

This academic year Symbiosis has implemented WiFi pervasively in all classrooms and common areas (just like MIT ! Many of the Symbiosis students have purchased low-cost laptops (thanks to the local HP office) to take advantage of this new reality...which is potentially GREAT for their FOSS participation. The biggest barrier to FOSS participation I encounter in most developing countries is lack of access to the Internet and computers during leisure hours. I really have to applaud Symbiosis and HP for taking a lead on this...

What I'm wondering now is when and whether other companies are going to offer support and encouragement to this brave experiment in education that is Symbiosis.

The Google Effect

Sitting in the inaugual eTel Conference, musing on the way Yahoo! employees sound when commenting in public about (or even anywhere near to) Google these days...very defensive. "We're bigger" seems to be one of the main messages...which frankly isn't compelling (especially if you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, where MiniCooper ads have informed us fully that "Small is Beautiful". We love small and independent. Its not cool to go to Starbuck's when we have Peet's and Muddy Waters...Its not cool to go to Home Depot when we have Cole's Hardware and Cliff's Variety....)

So, What's Up with the Yahoo! folks? IMHO, they should welcome the competition and use it to get stronger. Healthy competition and diversity makes for healthy markets. Stop being so darned defensive and focus on just being great!

Women @ ApacheCon Europe 2005

After London I flew down to Stuttgart for ApacheCon Europe 2005 where I was the second keynote speaker. I gave a talk called "Strategic Commons: Open Source in the Developing World". The slides should be up on the ApacheCon website real soon now.

This is getting to be a very popular topic (which is gratifying after spending years feeling like the only one who was doing talks about anything outside of Europe or North America). My fellow OSI Board member, Sanjiva Weerawarana is giving a similar talk at OSCON next week, and then I'll be doing my version of the talk again at EuroOSCON .

Anyway, while at ApacheConEU I was asked to give a lightning talk on "Women in Open Source" and many, many conference attendees wanted to talk with me afterwards about it. Interesting to have such a short talk garner so many comments. I guess I should be used to it by now. Its evidently a controversial topic. I'd moderated a panel at Grace Hopper last year on the subject (see notes here by an attendee at that panel, Sarah Allen), and I'm moderating one at OSCON by the same name.

When working on pulling together the OSCON panel, I spoke with many of the women I know about their experience. That meant contemplation about whether there is a "female experience" of open source and whether the question is one we need to ask. My former OpenSolaris boss, Claire Giordano, wrote some yesterday about what one of those conversations brought up for her and it really maps to my own journey in thinking about the topic. I hate it that I have to identify myself as a woman in a field where gender bias should not exist...but it does.

As a result of the response I got from the lightning talk at ApacheCon EU, I got to meet Jean T. Anderson, a woman committer on the Apache Derby project. Jean and I formally suggested creation of an Apache-Women mail list to improve on the number of women who try to join and actually end up sticking around Apache.

Whether the mail list is approved by Apache board is still in debate, but I'm encouraged by the results the Debian-Women list seems to be having. I'll keep you all posted.

DebConf2005

This week I'm in Helsinki at my first DebConf (although its the fifth one for many of the people in this picture)

Another great grass-roots project conference is this DebConf. Had a fine dinner with some of the leaders of the mother project (and its many famous and less famous distros). Very interesting to try to figure out all of the subtextual connections and history between and around all of it. I'm feeling a bit like Rip Van Winkle, waking up after a few years (since I considered Debian very deeply) to discover a lot has changed.

I also have been noticing the many lovely Debian Women wandering around this conference, and I just subscribed to their mail list. I like the proactivity of their involvement in this community very much. There are more women (and they are mostly well-informed on technical issues) than I'm used to encountering at FOSS conferences.

We just watched Mark Shuttleworth speak to most of the conference attendees about Ubuntu and the impact he believes it is having on Debian. The Q&A went far into the lunch break, its clearly a big topic. Interestingly enough Mark was partially there to debunk rumors resulting from his announcement last week about endowing a Foundation to preserve Ubuntu. He believes he's set it up and funded to last for "at least a technology generation".

This has me thinking, because last night at dinner Mark, B'Dale Garbee and I were talking about "How long we think it will take for FOSS software to take over". Mark thought it would take a whole generation. The nice lady who happened to be sitting next to us thought that maybe technology adoption cycles were compressing and that there was a shorter generation than the one we usually mean when we say generation (defined by the human reproductive cycle)...she said that Grandparents are learning from their Grandkids about technology now. Certainly that's happened to my Mom.

The last thing Mark said to me last night was that he thought I'd like spending time getting to know the Debian community. So far, so good :-)