10 December 1998
Copyright,
1998, Max K. Goff, all rights reservedWhat a week this has been. The Java Business Expo (JBE) was the big news of the week. Java and Community Source. Not "Open Source" strictly speaking. But a model that compels licensees to keep in step with Sun's standard. A model where Sun doesn't make money unless developers make money, while still maintaining free community source access. Thesis. Antithesis. Synthesis. Proprietary Source, Open Source, Community Source. The evolution of ideas. The Community Source model will work, and only add to the momentum of the Open Source Movement. Now if only Micro$oft (M$) would follow suit. Don't bet on it.
I didn't attend JBE. I attended a M$ developer conference instead. I figured there would be plenty of Java enthusiasts at the Javits Center, so I attended an "NT and RAS" session at the Grand Hyatt. I was hoping there would be something -- anything -- that would help me to see the value in using NT. Anything. Certainly M$ must have a viable story at least? NT and RAS in the same sentence is funny. RAS stands for, "Reliability, Availability and Serviceability," characteristics of operating systems that have been measured for years -- not something for which M$ is well known.
There must have been 500 people in the room. The speaker was adequate -- good even. A darn good SE, from what I could gather. He spoke to his slides, bullet by bullet, and filled in reasonably well. But the story itself was weak. No solid advice. Masked apologies at best.
Hardware. That was the first message. You have to buy decent hardware if you want NT to run reliably. Good boxes. No K-Mart boxes if you want reliable NT installations. And okay, yeah, NT 4.0 maybe wasn't so hot, and maybe you did see the old blue screen of death once too often (the audience laughs when the speaker jokes, "No more blue screens. We're changing the color."). But just you wait until Windows2000 or NT 5.0 or whatever you want to call it. It's better. Bigger too. More stuff.
And time. You have to put time into it. It doesn't come for free. NT needs to be thought about just like UNIX does when it comes to RAS. You have to think about it and design it and make sure you have enough good hardware. Clusters. That's what you want. Clusters of NT systems. So when one goes down, there's another one there to pick up the pieces. Hardware.
And okay, yeah, maybe you've seen that old UNIX system that's been running for 27 years without fail. But when you dig down into it, when you get the full story, you discover that the darn thing only ran one application all that time, and when you really dig down, you find out there's darn good hardware there.
That was the story. I was stunned. I was even more stunned at the questions -- or complete lack thereof -- from the audience. Only two questions were asked, both about applications on M$ platforms, neither of which had anything to do with RAS. No grueling inquiries. No cross examination. I looked around in disbelief. Were they all hypnotized?
I remember hearing when I was younger that no one was ever fired for picking IBM. Maybe M$ now enjoys similar appeal. I fail to understand such choices otherwise.
M$ needs to open up its source base and join the community.
Bill Gates is the last great industrialist. Although M$ has been wildly successful, one of the pioneers in this infant Information Age, Bill Gates is nonetheless the last great icon of the Industrial Age, as monopolistic thinking is an artifact of that era. The free flow of information is vital and unstoppable in the internetworked thing that's been growing on this planet for the past three decades. Just as the internet will route around network failures, or water will find the most optimal path to the sea, information will find its way and flourish freely.
No one can have a monopoly on information or ideas. And to use software to artificially addict and then spread that addiction into the community is a strategy bound for failure in this new age. It's appropriate that Wired magazine's recent cover story, 83 Reasons Why Bill Gates's Reign Is Over, cited Karma as the number one reason. The nature of this thing we call the internet is to empower individuals and to promote global communities. Once empowered, there is no monopolist this community will abide. As a community, we know that the value of the network is the number of nodes on the network squared. Include everyone, and we achieve optimal value for all. A monopoly, by definition, excludes all but the owners, fails to deliver optimal products and siphons off precious community resources into the monopolist's pockets. But in the Information Age, the monopolist cannot survive for long.
Why? Because it's information. And no one can own it. The value proposition can literally change over night. We vote in this new age by the choices we make, the products we buy, our investments, and the limitations we suffer. Evolution will define the software genome as with any complex system of interest. And the collective spirit that lives online will prune the branches too rich in fruit but light in substance.....out of self-interest.
This past week I've been both actor and evangelist for a television pilot that is being shot. The good fortune of being cast as the on-camera host for an excellent and compelling project has its price, however. I've been forced to cancel -- or rather postpone -- my trip to Costa Rica. Alas. But in truth, it is a small price to pay for this experience. The production values have been very high and the vision and potential of the project are magnificent. I've had experience now on a virtual set, and have honed my to-camera work. And it was for something I strongly believe in, which is to say that it was technology (and open software) at its core. But more importantly, it was humanity at its core. Technology is so very rapidly changing the processes of life on this planet. In the end, it is the empowering nature of information technology that is the only reward. And that means people. Individual people. We are the inheritors of these gifts. It is only as a global community that we will live long and prosper.
