Nigel McFarlane

Words for The Mozilla Community

Written by admin on May 5, 2009

Markup is What People Do

The suite of HTML standards developed by the W3C are well established, and are today in real danger of full support by implementations that are of practical use. Against the sense of nearing completeness is a general restlessness, particularly evident amongst key specialists, about the apparently unsatisfactory way in which these carefully crafted markup standards and their matching software is being hamfistedly used by various user groups. In this essay I argue that attempts to mandate any kind of standards compliance across the built Web is useful only in special cases. There are other, overriding concerns.

Forward-Thinking Government Roles in Open Source

Written by admin on April 28, 2009

Open Source software provides second-generation offerings of well-understood ICT architectures and componentry. For government organisations with any experience of first-generation software, such as UNIX or Microsoft Windows desktops, Open Source represents a chance to capitalise on existing experience without falling behind supplier-pushed advancements. In fact, the open and public nature of Open Source software means that there is little need to play catchup with specific supplier-pushed technology at all. This represents, in effect, a breathing space for government ICT, and that space is a fertile source of new government roles.

* The cost reductions, duplication and stability of existing infrastructure by Open Source software and related hardware mean that ICT activities within a government organisation can be reduced in favour of more emphasis on core organisational goals. For the near future at least, the technology blow to organisational systems is muted by the Open Source change, which is a simple replacement-for-equal-benefit strategy. This change is not locked to a vendor-engineered forced migration for the purposes of maintaining a profit stream. It does not require another conceptual leap by anyone except for a few technicians.
* The public nature of Open Source software allows agencies and utilities to form linkages that pool and exchange ICT experience in new ways. There is less compartmentalisation by supplier, since there is extensive supplier duplication and transparency. Dialog about ICT technology can be forward-looking rather than merely reactive to supplier announcements. Just as there are best practices in Occupational Health and Safety, a matter of individual and collective concern to all government organisations, so too public Open Source software enables dialog about best practices in ICT. Such public and publically owned discussions are empowering for organisations that might otherwise be isolated by the need to spend energy keeping up with a single supplier.
* As a publicly owned asset, Open Source software is a building block of civilisation, and one that is increasingly central to modern day life. There is no doubt that this asset will be subject to government policies that will be implemented in turn by suitable agencies. Whether it be educational institutions building intellectual capacity, regulatory bodies discriminating the worthy from the dangerous, or technology mediated service delivery, Open Source software is a growing aspect of the built and intellectual environment, an aspect whose public issues naturally devolve to government to address.

In summary, this article argues that the emphasis on suppliers for strategic technology leadership is decreasing in the face of Open Source software. As Open source software grows, as all indicators say that it must, the benefit to government organisations is an increasing freedom to determine the nature and scope of their relationships with the ICT technology they use.

- Nigel McFarlane.

Someone Else’s Changing Angst

Written by admin on April 28, 2009

The core issues of most government organisations have nothing to do with the growing pains of ICT. In the noble pursuit of profit those pains have, to date, been most directly digested by the private sector. This has provided the private sector with a leadership position, to which the public sector has turned for advice, or around which the public sector reactively forms user groups, steering committees and centers of competence. Only in government ICT research, a tiny proportion of all government activity, is any attempt made to directly engage with the bleeding edge of ICT that private sector suppliers have otherwise adopted as their problem.

This historical situation, however, is changing, particularly in the area of software. There are now a number of well-understood standard software building blocks: the desktop, databases, file systems, graphics and others. Many vertical niches in software, such as accounting packages, inventory management and word processors are also well understood. Overall, their number is inching forward rather than exploding. Even the relatively recent hypertext and hypermedia Web browser is now over ten years old. These days, software is a city of solutions, not a fresh field of virgin opportunity.

The advent of Open Source software is evidence of this software maturation. Such software duplicates the features of well-established and successful architectural elements, at lower cost. Supplier’s anxiety about technical leadership thus receives a double blow: such leadership is no longer predicated on past lucrative profit models; and such leadership no longer maintains a large information lead over buyers. Open Source software doesn’t eminate from private projects, so there are no sudden revelations.

Open Source: Safer at any Speed?

Written by admin on April 28, 2009

Government agencies and utilities implement government policy. The tumultuous development of ICT technology in the late 20th century has been a massive and externally-driven digestion activity for such organisations. This article argues that Open Source technology is rather different from past shrink-wrapped technology advancements. It is assistive rather than disruptive to the stable management of public concerns both inside and outside government organisations.

Your Mileage Certainly Does Vary

In technology discussions, particularly those mediated by USENET, “Your Mileage May Vary” (YMMV) is an oft-quoted disclaimer when advice or observations are offered to peers. It means: no two circumstances are alike – my experience is no absolute forecast of what your experience may be. Indeed, your experience may be entirely different. No better disclaimer than YMMV can possibly exist for government adoption of ICT technology, which is provided by suppliers whose goals are utterly different to those of government.

The Supplier/Government Sponsor relationship in ICT is flooded with meaning driven from the supply end of the partnership. Suppliers have relatively straightforward and tractable performance metrics: make money, preferably as profitably as possible. Sponsors, on the other hand, often have intractable or at least impressively difficult performance metrics: poverty, unemployment, health, security, local government, international trade, culture, community, public infrastructure. The ICT industry and all its toys have, in the late 20th century, been a hammer blow to government organisations, a blow driven by the conceiving and packaging of software in terms framed to meet supplier metrics. In turn, such organisations have been forced to spend resources absorbing the impact of the ICT blow (“implementing”, “upgrading”, “replacing”), rather than on their core performance goals. The circle of justification (fortunately with some validity) states that efficiencies, effectiveness, community access and industry benefits are the consequent benefits to core goals. These benefits are delivered by the indirect strategies required to absorb the distortions created by the ICT blow. As an example: rather than more ramps and more customer service, build a Web site and an IVR system with accessibility ticks. That will be strategic support for disabled clients, a solution we are happy with because it fits with the wrestling we have to do to get our Web site management strategy in place.

The mileage public organisations have derived from software advancements has, however, certainly varied; witness the many publically funded ICT projects around the globe that have yielded a fraction or none of their original intent. Even when ICT technology is not directly adopted, the consequences for government organisations can remain far reaching. Nowhere is this more evident than in the legislature, which in the early 21st century has reeled and reacted under the hammer blow of escalating media technology and the digital rights management “problems” thus revealed. Choruses of “it won’t work” from academics and others do nothing to assist government functionaries with their fundamental problems of finding focus and implementing policy as the technology ground shakes and sways.

We tend to forget that it is not MP3s or Kazaa that are newly destroying the recording industry; the genie began squeezing out of that bottle the second a vinyl record master was used to duplicate music for the consumer’s pleasure. The DRM hammer blow is just an escalating supplier concern over a supplier metric – profit – that is forced on a specific government function, in this case, the legislature. The legislature might care, but it also probably has better things to do, like addressing drug networks and crimes of violence.

Open Source Redux

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

Open Source is not a self-propelled force driving towards liberty, freedom, fraternity, new markets conditions or any other specific ideal. Those things are at best someone’s personal politics. Open Source is just an example of a natural human process: It is eventually less burdensome to share useful secrets than it is to keep them hidden. In economics, burdens are measured as costs. The lower cost of Open Source software is a direct consequence of its less secretive nature.

- Nigel McFarlane

The Version Twist

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

This one simple question of secret software versus Open Source is deeply confused by the matter of versions. The central problem with software is that it is fallible. One can prove a piece of software does not always work as it should. Occasionally one can prove that a piece of software does not work at all. Tools exist that can bring any piece of software crashing to its knees, so a degree of fallibility is near-universal. The fallibility of secret software is not obvious until that software is finished and exposed to the market. So secret software is recognised as fallible after it receives a version number and after work has ceased. Public or Open Source software is acknowledged as fallible before it receives a version number and before work has ceased. So Open Source software appears fallible at an earlier stage in its development than secret software.

By the merciless process of logic, however, it is clear that an Open Source version (say 1.0) must be better than a secret version. This is because developers of the secret software do not have access to all the insights that others would provide if the software wasn’t secret. Secret software developers are therefore handicapped from the beginning.

Managing Complexity

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

For all this, the ICT industry still has a major structural problem. Even Open Source software is shrouded in a sense, either by its extremely fine grained complexity or by translation to unreadable data. Unlike the Law or Accountancy, the essence of software – the source code – is not yet digestible by humans in an ordinary way.

The intermediate solution to this problem is to subcontract the understanding of Open Source to specialists. There are three layers of support currently. At the coalface are the individual Open Source programmers who do understand the software (“trust me, I’m a Doctor”). At the second level are the funding organisations that support these people. Currently this funding is a combination of university, business, government, not-for-profits, grantmaking bodies and grass-roots volunteers. At the third level are businesses that profit from bringing needy buyers and available software together. In short, everyone is involved.

As more ICT secrets are revealed as Open Source, this subcontracted understanding must expand. Therefore, the Open Source community is growing. If there is any revolution at work, it is a very long term one as our society moves an ICT industry that consists mostly of owned secrets to a new public domain infrastructure of publically known quantities. Who administers such an infrastructure is a matter for governments and business to decide.

The displacement of concepts from secret and private places into the light of day has other benefits, especially where the secrets are reprehensible. Insider Trading and Organised Crime, for example, should be exposed to public media discussion. They should be described in government-sanctioned public laws. Only people at the margins of acceptable human behaviour are likely to be affected. The rest of us are merely better off in some lesser or greater way.

The exposure of secrets does not, however, bring about the ruin of everyone. For business consumers, the only Open Source question worth asking is: for the ICT services I need today, is the transition process complete enough that I can rely on the public solution yet? If it is, I must pay to interact with those public solutions usually through a vendor. If it is not, I must pay a premium to a vendor that retains unshared secrets. In between is a grey area: would I spend less supporting the transition process than I would keeping a secret holder in business?

We see that a natural process is underway. Most major computer vendors now have billion dollar businesses providing customers with access to Open Source technology. No one is ruined yet, and only an unlucky or recalcitrant few have ruination as a likely outcome.

Moving from A to B

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

The computer industry has to date relied greatly on secrets. Such secrets originate merely from the desire to get something done. It is more efficient to complete a work and push it out than it is to complete a work and spend extra time deconstructing it for the full scrutiny of others.

Unfortunately, when an invisible or opaque piece of software is presented as a solution to a problem, its own nature is held back. It acquires the mystique of a witch’s potion, and engenders concern in everyone but the originator. Because most software is translated from somewhat readable source to unreadable data (shrouding), and only the unreadable data is delivered for inspection, the buyer has no choice but to operate in ignorance. If that situation prevailed in the law, the only true law would be: Beware the King’s Wrath.

Despite the youth of ICT, it has not take academics and others long to openly debate (and thus reveal) many of the early computing secrets. It has not taken long for enthusiasts to duplicate the logic used in simple software. Many of the former secrets of the software industry are now public knowledge. That knowledge has been delivered to the fields of Computer Science and Software Engineering. Such public knowledge is also constantly growing. When former secrets are captured in publicly available software, they are no longer shrouded. They are open for all to see, hence Open Source.

In ICT it takes longer for elaborately transformed secrets to leak out than it does the simple ones. The Law and Accountancy are not, however, exact analogues to software – they have natural stopping points. In those examples, participants will only tolerate a certain complexity. In those industries, individual humans (or at least groups of humans) must be able to appreciate any given piece of law or any accounting practice. ICT has a much higher tolerance for complexity, because the original secrets are shrouded in a way that prevents a detailed examination. Like the fable of the four blind men and the elephant, one can only grope at a part of a software whole, with partial conclusions at best. At face value, ICT professionals thus allow themselves an ignorance that lawyers and accountants only indulge in when they can get someone else to do the work.

The Open Source movement is a corrective action aimed at revealing all the elaborately transformed software secrets in the ICT industry. It is a simple response by the have-nots to the haves: go and make your own lunch.

Some secret-holders are willing to contribute their secrets to Open Source, even if they strive to retain some control (Adobe, Sun). Other secret-holders do not go gently at all (Microsoft). For the uncooperative secret holders, the Open Source movement must take a combatative stance. There is no choice but to hand-duplicate the labour of the secret holders. Even if this is done on a full-time, professional basis, it is still a lengthy catch-up process. That is why Open Source software takes so long to evolve.

At the end of this catch-up, software will no longer be a secret. It will be written down in the public domain and exposed to public comment. When that comes, businesses should expect to benefit from it the way they benefit from Tax Law or from Accounting’s double entry methodology. There is a cost of interaction (or access), but no concept of ownership. The yielding of secrets to the public domain is a natural process with no natural obstacles except time. In truth, there are only artificial obstacles. Open Source is an end to which all of ICT turns.

Open Source: No Secret Burdens

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

There must be something underneath the talk of Open Source software that is more concrete that just fashion,  and there is. At the heart of the ICT industry and the Open Source movement is the matter of the cost of maintaining secrets.

About Secrets

It is common knowledge that organisations can grow strong based on closely-held secrets. Closely-held secrets are an information advantage for the secret holder. While everyone else walks in circles guessing, those that know can move forward. There’s no doubt that secrets are useful and strategic things.

It is also a matter of common knowledge that secrets leak out. Some secrets last longer than others, but no secret is perfectly indestructible. Copyright and patents lapse, information once critical becomes irrelevant. Secret holders can sometimes appear foolish keeping secrets that are relevant to no-one. Although secrets are useful, they also take up shelf space that sometimes is better purposed elsewhere.

In most well-established modern civilisations, the written media has made many secrets public knowledge through the fast and concrete medium of print. For example, the Law is no longer the secret thinking of rulers or potentates; it is written down, widely distributed and draws public comment. Similarly, accounting practices are no longer the secrets of a few port-side city state merchants; they are written down, widely distributed and also draw public comment. Such secrets are now non-secrets. It’s easy to benefit from the non-secret Law or non-secret Double Entry. Just read as little or as much about them as you want.

Exposure to the public view does not freeze the intellectual state of freed-up secret information either. The public corpus of the law evolves slowly through debate, critique, lobbying, fashion and plain hard work. Accounting practices are also regularly updated. The ICT industry is far younger than accounting or the law, and the idea of slow but constant evolution in public software is not yet accepted as a fundamental principle.

Welcome

Written by admin on April 21, 2009

Welcome to my Open Source shingle on the Web.
I’m an Open Source software analyst and technologist with a customer focus and a broad background in technology and software engineering. I’m also author of several books.
When words are important, I’m a quality source of dialog, education and strategic and tactical information. When deeds are important, I’m a quality source of technical competance. Can’t find what you want here? Contact me.
I’m also the world’s leading professional commentator on the subject of Mozilla technology. That technology is an excellent example of all of the issues common to Free and Open Source Software. The Mozilla Platform is the most successful test case to date of the potential of Free and Open Source software, having survived and surpassed closed source competitors that are also free. It is a software technology strong in the areas of user interfaces, networking, objects and XML. It is flexible, complex, and remarkably large. I am a living bridge between the project-focussed Mozilla community, and the external needs and concerns of others.
I’m an active member of forward-looking and energetic Open Source Victoria, and also a member of the newer Open Source Industry Australia cluster.
If you are curious about Mozilla, but don’t have a clue what it is, then here are some recommendations. For the daily news buzz, try www.mozillazine.org. For the seminal project driving the technology forward, try www.mozilla.org. Or you could read a book.
I have many other arrows in my quiver. If you find my style appealing, then a straightforward and perceptive approach is at your service.
- Nigel