andthennothing.net

Today I have played a little with Ruby. I have tried it before but had great difficulties writing anything useful (and since I knew some Python I didn’t really see the meaning of learning another similar script language). But this time I read some of the documentation, which made it a little easier :-)

The reason why I played with Ruby today was to get ready for Burger. So I’ve created a XML-RPC server which mimics the appearance of Blogger (b2, MovableType, Nucleus, BigBlogTool, BlogWorks XML and Blogalia all have the same Blogger look-alike API). That way I can use the same tool for editing the blogs as I do today, namely w.bloggar (there are other equivalent tools as well). I’m not finished yet but I’m able to post new entries and edit old ones, so I hope it will be quite easy to adapt it to Burger.

By the way, I saw Spider-Man today at the cinema. It was an awesome movie!

Peter is writing his own blogger software, called Burger. I hope that he succeed, and publishes the source for the whole world to see when it starts to be functional. I would love to use a software solution, instead of a web based solution, such as Blogger which I’m currently using. Not that there is anything wrong with Blogger, just that I would like the control of using a local solution, i.e. storing everything locally and not on some remote host. And it really bugs me that I can’t change various details of how the blog is rendered. I feel a little envy against those who can use powerful tools such as Movable Type...

So Peter, let me know when you are self-hosting, using Burger!

As mentioned before, my firewall is an OpenBSD box. I chose OpenBSD primarily since it is supposed to be really secure. But this week (I think) they changed their slogan to: “One remote hole in the default install, in nearly 6 years!”. That is not good news (it was zero before)! Apparently the problem was related to OpenSSH. I didn’t pay the issue much attention until I “overheard” a few youngsters on IRC talking about how easy it was to gain root-access to an OpenBSD box. That’s when I decided to patch my box! :)

I hadn’t done that before, but it turned out to be quite easy. The main problem was to realize what to patch—it wasn’t too clear on OpenBSD’s web site. But I chose a patch that I thought was the right one, and after some small trouble, and a long wait, I managed to apply the patch. However, afterwards I realized that it wasn’t the right patch :) But after getting the new version of OpenSSH to compile it was quite easy (a long wait here as well).

So now I feel a little more comfortable with my *nix skills. I guess the next step is to compile my own kernel. Yikes! :-)

I just stumbled across Weblog BookWatch in my referrer’s log. It’s a great service that searches weblogs.com for blogs that mentions books (through checking links to Amazon.com). Thus, BookWatch keeps a top 10 list based on the number of times a book has been mentioned.

I wonder when I will come up with such a brilliant idea!

Is it time to do the switch I talked about earlier? When even an owner of a large software company is switching [via both2and: beyond binary], what can you do?

I have now finished reading The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond (I have mentioned it here before). I must say that it provides a good insight into the hacker/open source community. I find the parts which describe how communities arise and function around specific project, such as Linux, especially interesting (it wouldn’t hurt with even more of this). These different communities share a tradition of slang, history, and myths. I believe that this is crucial for the communities in order to be able to communicate and work together. This is something quite obvious from a knowledge management perspective. For knowledge to be created and exchanged there has to be a strong culture—a shared frame of reference. When there is a strong culture communication becomes much easier, it’s easier for people to understand each other. This is especially important for tacit knowledge. In a company this is essential as well, however in the open source communities the means of communication are quite poor and the people rarely meet face-to-face.

The culture and implicit rules hold the communities together and facilitate the work. But since the participation of the communities is absolutely voluntary there has to be something more. In fact, for a person to be loyal to a community it must be easy to move in to and out from the effort—e.g. if it isn’t possible to fork the project people might choose another effort where such possibilities exists. Raymond mentions two main sources of motivation: doing work because you need the outcome/love the challange, and gaining respect of your peers. I don’t know if this kind of freedom is possible or even desirablein companies, at least in small and medium enterprises.

The leaders, or the project owners, are according to Raymond quite humble. It is not regarded positive if a leader takes the credit for the community’s work or even strive for being a leader. The leader should be knowledgeable, sharing and humble. I guess those are nice characteristics for all kinds of leaders.

One thing that is, at least to me, quite controversial is that there are no deadlines. Deadlines are often regarded as something good. I think they are good. Deadlines put some pressure on the developers and provide a sense of urgency. Hopefully they will get some positive stress, and not negative stress. One thing that I really like about XP and Scrum is that they use time-boxing, i.e. regular and firm deadlines. I have problem understanding why this couldn’t be used in open source projects, perhaps it would be considered as an infringement of the freedom.

Raymond also describes different approaches for how companies can embrace open source to different degree. I think that open source could be used by far more companies than presently. But it requires that they change from product orientation to service orientation. There are much more things than the actual software that could be sold. However, there are probably quite many companies that would benefit from not opening the source to their software.

When reading the book my assumption that there is a conflict between the open source community and the software industry (at least the traditional, non-agile) grow stronger. Take for instance JohnDoe: JohnDoe is highly involved in an open source project before he starts working professionally, and get accustomed to that way of working. It is the open source project that JohnDoe is involved in that convinces JohnDoe to engage in a professional career as a programmer. As JohnDoe starts working professionally in a traditional company much of his freedom is lost, and also the passion for programming. The question is where to get in touch with JohnDoe—I would really need such people to my master thesis. It would also be interesting to see if there are people who didn’t have any large problems with migrating from an open source community to a software developing company. I guess I will have to start “head-hunting” :-)

On Sunday evening my Internet connection went down. However, I noticed that I could connect to other computers using their IP addresses. So clearly there was something wrong with the DNS. It was quite odd since I noticed that I could see some web pages using the browser. But I realized that it was Naviscope (a wounderful little utility), which had cached the DNS queries. Yesterday I got an IP address to another DNS server since the original DNS didn’t feel too good. And everything worked just fine!

But yesterday evening my Internet connection went stone dead. I thought that it was the DNS again, but it wasn’t. So I didn’t use the computer any more and thought that it might be some temporary problem with the ISP. However, it didn’t work today either. What had went wrong? As time passed and the situation didn’t seem to solve itself I started troubleshooting my firewall (an OpenBSD box). The firewall could access Internet but my other computer could access neither the firewall, nor the Internet. When I rebooted it, the screen read “NE1: device timeout”. I tried to reboot some times but the same message appeared each time. I tried to connect my other computer directly to the socket, thus bypassing the firewall, and it worked just fine. Thus, I was convinced that it was one of the network interface card that had broken. So I switched it to another card, but it didn’t work. As I was ready to give in I tried to switch back to the original card. And, to little surprise, it worked perfectly. :)

The bright side is that I got a reminder of why I didn’t pursue a career in computer hardware. But I really don’t have time for tinker with computers now. :)

While catching up on my favourite blogs after a weekend out of town, this entry at Tesugen.com caught my interest. In it Peter writes that he would want the company he works for to try having work-free Fridays. I think it’s a really good idea! For some months ago I read about a company called Tankebolaget, where they are using this idea (they call it personal development). Each Friday the employees are allowed to devote some time to enhance their competence, following personal competence development plans. I remember from the article that one of the employees was taking welding classes, which I found quite funny. I guess that most employees did things more directly related to whatever Tankebolaget is doing, but it shows that there are some freedom.

Another company that uses roughly the same idea is 3M. 3M is a company that put a large emphasis on continuously coming up with new innovations. They have a so-called 15% rule. The rule means that all employees are encourage to devote 15% of their time on pretty much anything. But it seems to be common that the employees use their 15% to explore new ideas. If one person gets a new idea for an innovation, s/he rallies some other employees to devote their 15% on the idea as well. Thus, small groups of people use their 15% on exploratory ideas for some time. As the idea is starting to become a little more stable, and considered worthwhile, the idea is turned into a “real”, official project. The 15% rule is thus a kind of distributed R&D.

I think these kinds of approaches are great, especially in the long run. I believe that it’s things like these that Tom DeMarco’s new book Slack is discussing. If I have understood it correctly, “slack” is referring to let there be some slack and not to optimize everything (e.g. let there be some time where nothing is scheduled). I hope to get a chance to read that book some time.

In the entry mentioned above, and an ealier entry, Peter is discussing the use of using cooperative games as metaphors for software development. I think that both cooperative games and craftsmanship are far better metaphors for software development than engineering. Engineering implies that software development is something that can be controlled and fully understood. Cooperative games and craftsmanship imply that software development is an exploratory effort that can’t be predicted in detail in beforehand. In games you cannot rely on strategy alone in order to win—there must be a good use of tactics involved to succeed. In craftsmanship you also have to continuously adapt to the environment (at least that is what I think of when thinking of craftsmanship). A craftsman is, to me, someone who has a large set of techniques and uses them in various, and brand new, situations. To conclude this section, I hope I get my degree: “Master of Science with a major in Software Engineering” soon! :-)

ps. There should be a law against posting to mailing lists during the weekend. 241 unread messages at the XP list. Sigh! ds.

To get a better understanding of open source communities, such as Linux (see earlier post), I started to read The Cathedral and the Bazaar by Eric S. Raymond. I really like the book so far (have only read half of it). I guess it’s one of the books that you are supposed to have read. I think there are some good lectures to be learned about how to develop software from open source communities. Most certainly I will write about this soon when I have read all of the book. But due to the fact that Midsummer is coming up it might be delayed for some days :)

Now I really must go to sleep (I’m going to wash my laundry at 8 a.m. tomorrow)! :)

Today I met with both my advisors of my master thesis. I just love feedback! My new advisor is an economics teacher so I got some good input from an organization theory point-of-view. He helped me getting some more idea of how to perform my empirical part. I’m going to study some persons who come from an online community (perhaps Linux) and how they experienced their encounter with traditional software organizations. I’m not quite sure of excactly how I will do the study or who I will study. I’ll have to think on that for some time. Hopefully I get hold of some people who are interested in devoting some time. I’m not sure if I will do a case study on a company as well.

I also learned that Agile Software Development with SCRUM by Ken Schwaber and Mike Beedle, and Agile Software Development by Alistair Cockburn will be included in the reference list of the course Project Management of the masters program this autumn. That’s great!

Now I really must get something to eat!

ps. I did not get anything useful done yesterday. It was too interesting to discuss management and leadership on the XP list at Yahoo. :-) ds.