powdermonkey

Randy Pausch last lecture

worthwhile watching, Randy Pausch last lecture, he is dying of pancreatic cancer:

Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

his web page: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/

ABC and DISA

More on Build versus Buy versus Opensource
good discussion on what to use when:

• For common problems use Opensource
• For rare problems use Buy
• For unique problems use Build
• And in all cases make sure you maximise reuse

Abhijit Nadgouda points out that “with opensource, it is quite possible that you end up doing all three”. Which is also something I agree with, I think we are heading towards a time when opensource is the heart of all software development, but with some local builds and some specialised builds in a hybrid model. The distinction between build and buy and opensource then becomes one of scarcity economics versus abundance economics. Everyone’s got bills to pay, we just have to get the funding models right. Whatever the answer, one thing’s for sure, the current model’s busted.

Louis Nauges takes the argument in a slightly tangential direction, suggesting that SaaS plus open APIs is a different option. I guess I considered it nothing more than a variant of Buy, but then I may have misinterpreted what Louis said. Yes there are SaaS examples that are free-as-in-gratis, but opensource to me remains free-as-in-freedom, so I can’t really find examples of “opensource” SaaS. I need to think about this a little more.

Jag takes a completely different line, one that I am still pondering. What kind of ontology and taxonomy is needed in order for us to classify the problems and their domains accurately? How do we have to educate IT professionals as a consequence of this? More of this later.

Once again, do keep the comments coming. I really do appreciate them, even where I don’t answer back individually. And I learn from them. Occasionally I land up with quite a backlog as a result, but that’s a nice problem to have.

And remember, these conversations are snowballs. None of us should be proprietary about how they evolve and where they get to. You start them off and soon they have a life of their own. Sometimes someone else starts them off, and all you do is add bits to it.

Yes of course the conversations get fragmented. But this is better than stultifying and straitjacketing the conversation in the first place. And if we use tags and folksonomies sensibly, we can always de-fragment them.

DACS: Open Source Issue in DoD

Very cool the DACS: SoftwareTech New issue is out:  DoD Software Tech News (June 2007 - Vol 10 No 2) which features "all things Open Source" within DoD.

Articles and case studies include:

COTR Warriors: Open Technologies and the Business of War
by J.C. Herz and John Scott

Open Source Software (OSS) in U.S. Government Acquisitions
by David Wheeler, Institute for Defense Analysis (IDA)

Keeping Software Secure in a Networked World
by Terry Bollinger, MITRE

Open Source Software and the Long Road to Sustainability within U.S. DoD IT Systems
by John M. Weathersby, Open Source Software Institute

Evaluating Open Source Products: The Open Source Maturity Model
by Bernard Golden, Navica

Case Study 1: Geospatial Open Source Software
by Mark Lucas, RadiantBlue Technologies

Case Study 2: Federally Funded Software Reuse Optimized Via Open Source Licensing
by Peter Gallagher, Development InfoStructure (DevIS)

Case Study 3: Open Source Enterprise Content Management (ECM) for Governments
by Matt Asay, Alfresco

Case Study 4: Low Barrier to Entry, No Upfront Costs, High Reliability
by Andrew Gordon, Unisys Federal Systems

The DoD Software Tech News is published quarterly by the Data & Analysis Center for Software (DACS). The DACS is a DoD sponsored Information Analysis Center (IAC), administratively managed by the Defense Technical Information Center (DTIC) under the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA). The DACS is technically managed by Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Rome, NY and operated by ITT Industries, Advanced Engineering and Sciences Division.

so where is the Linux or Apple standards desktop configuration?

so where is the Linux or Apple standards desktop configuration? Really if the government is going to standardize at least open the market up to new solutions. Also since everythign is going web-browser enabled, why not define a Linux or Mac desktop instead of handing more money over to Microsoft Consulting?

your tax dollars (not) at work

A path to a standard desktop
Microsoft offers a way to help agencies meet OMB mandate

DOD to define IT role in stability operations

we need to figure out how to help (re)build failed states as well, this is a step in the right direction:

DOD to define IT role in stability operations
The Pentagon will soon unveil a new policy for the role of information and communications technology in stabilization and reconstruction operations, a Defense Department official said today.

The document will likely be released by the end of the summer, said Al Johnson, director of integrated information and communications technology in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Networks and Information Integration.

'Open-sourcing' key to the high-tech war against terrorism

good article on open source intelligence a few notes on the open source software comments of Paul McNabb, chief security architect at Argus Systems:
"As opposed to Sun and Red Hat, both outspoken champions of the open source movement, McNabb was willing to point out its disadvantages. “It does dampen certain types of [software] development by eliminating the financial reward,” he said. “And it results in software with no clear ownership and responsibility, so you can’t hold a company’s feet to the fire the way you can with a proprietary company.”

1. Financial Reward: the real money in [government] software deployment is in integration, maintenance and support. Financial rewards and incentives are still there for proprietary vendors, just keep innovating and developing new ideas versus milking old IP and customer lock-in.

2. Ownership: ownership of open source is clear, it is in the copyright agreement and grants rights to users of that code. The copyright agreement gives any organization the right to use and modify code, in effect making it 'yours'. Only if you distribute that code (say Walmart giving it to IBM) then you must provide that code back to the code-community.

3. Yelling:  having a software vendor to yell at and complain might feel good and they may even listen to you. But unless it's a critical bug fix and they are setup to send them out, you'll be waiting a while for that fix or new feature. Also end of the day you've already paid for that software, you are just asking a proprietary to do more work uncompensated. At least with Open Source you as the owner of a system can see code and modify it, a good thing if your in the middle of a crisis. 

Responsibility for deploying systems is (as always) with the group that deployed it (all EULA's  deny any responsibility for their software malfunctioning - use at your own risk, you have no recourse beyond the cost of the license (no pain and suffering...))

At least with open source you have options and flexibility to reengineer code as required by a mission versus waiting for a bug fix or new version.

osbc: Hacking the Newspaper: How an Open-Source Nerd from Kansas is Revitalizing Journalism

Hacking the Newspaper: How an Open-Source Nerd from Kansas is Revitalizing Journalism
05/23/2007, 9:00 AM - 9:30 AM

Speaker:
Rob Curley, Vice President, Product Development, Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive.

- WashPost all open source sack
- amazing speaker, used to work at Kansas and Naples newpapers

China to Send Military Unit to Darfur

this should be interesting. Granted they are an engineering unit but, could soldiers be far behind.  What would the world look like if China decides to play a more active role beyond selling things?

.... China will send a military engineering unit to help strengthen the overtaxed African Union peacekeeping force in Darfur, the Foreign Ministry announced Tuesday.

A spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, did not say how many Chinese soldiers would be dispatched or what their duties would be, describing them as "multifunctional" military engineers. U.S. officials in Washington estimated the number at around 300, the Reuters news agency reported.

'Oh Shiny'

JC Herz - “For the most part, coverage of technology by journalists doesn’t get beyond ‘Oooh! Shiny!’”
from Ethan Zuckerman's blog

the end of the beginning

couldn't agree more, especially since silly people at DHS think it's something to get into.
from ValleyWag:
"Now one of Second Life's most gushing proponents concedes that access to the online world requires too much computing power for the general public. In the words of Winston Churchill, this is not the end of Second Life, nor even the beginning of the end; but it is the end of the beginning. The key passage, from Rubel's post, on the folly of crowds, after the jump.

    'There is definitely a problem in this Web 2.0, enthusiastically charged time we live in. Scott Donaton at AdAge calls it GMOOT - short for "get me one of those." That's the cry that marketers often hear from their executives. They get wind that their competitors have viral videos so then they want one too. It's the opposite of the Wisdom of Crowds. '"