Category: Culture

Categories
Connecting

Open source and open choices

Yesterday, Matt Mullenweg posted a link to a weblog entry in the Ziff-Davis weblog Open Source. Matt and others, including myself, wrote some fairly critical material about the post because the writer seemed to confuse open source with syndication feed use:

One problem open source advocates seldom acknowledge is the disrespect many people have toward what’s held in common…Lately I’ve seen my RSS feeds becoming heavily polluted by RSS spam – entries that are just ads, or sets of links that all lead to purchases (on which the spammer gets a cut)…Question is, who polices what no one owns? How can we maintain the cleanliness of the commons against those who don’t share its ethics? It’s a question that has haunted the Internet for 10 years now. It’s a question that, frankly, haunts every open source technology.

The main criticism we had about the writing is that the author seemed to mix up the freedoms associated with open source technologies, with people abusing their RSS syndication feeds, and then pulled these disparate points together into a discussion of disrespect of that which is held in common.

I, like others, wrote a critical comment to the post and was somewhat surprised when the author, Dana Blankenhorn, responded in an email back. We ended up having a very cordial discussion, going back and forth about what each other meant with our writing.

Dana’s concern, and rightfully, is if open source is ‘open’ who controls it and keeps it from chaos? I wrote a long reply about open source and his analogy, and he asked if he could print a shortened version of it online, which he posted today. I said sure, but I’d probably print the full (though edited) writing in a post of my own, which follows at the end.

I did want to say, though, that Dana Blankenhorn responded with a great deal of patience and grace in the face of such overwhelming criticism. Hopefully he’ll be commended for this, as much as he was condemned yesterday for his original writing.

 

I don’t want to take your time, but I want to clarify the points I was trying to make, in addition to what others who work in open source are trying to make. And then I’ll leave you be.

First, let’s separate out discussions of the commons from open source, because the two are not the same. Your example of a commons is a city park that sounds like it’s poorly maintained, and in a community with a lot of homeless. Somewhere in San Francisco, then.

Anyone can access this park, and piss on the grass, sleep on the benches, and drop their garbage on the sidewalk. They can also let their dogs poop and not clean up. Now this all assumes of course that the common community doesn’t pay taxes to hire people to clean, and police to monitor the site, and doesn’t create rules and laws governing the use of the park.

Still, people can pretty much do what they want as long as no police are around.

Returning to the software: contrary to your assumption, open source code is not ‘owned’ by the commons. People can’t just jump into the code and start hacking away.

For instance, your site uses WordPress. This is a GPL licensed piece of code, and you can’t get much more ‘open source’ than GPL, which means anyone can copy the code and make modifications and do what they want with this code. The only stipulation is that you can’t apply a more restrictive license on any code derived from the source.

This sounds chaotic, doesn’t it? I mean anyone, just anyone can hack away at the code. Ohmigod! This is terrible. Quick! Tell ZD that they need to switch to Movable Type before your site gets contaminated with odd functionality!

Seriously, people can’t come in from the street and touch the original codebase much less do anything harmful to it. You see, and this is where your analogy really falls down flat, the code for WordPress is controlled by a small group of developers that can restrict, heavily, who is involved in development on WordPress, and what changes are incorporated into the tool’s codebase. In fact, if anything, this is a problem with some open source projects–too small a group, too much personal ego, can result in too heavy a restrictions on what does and does not happen with future revisions.

Now, what can happen is that if I decide I want to go a new direction with WordPress and it differs significantly enough from the WordPress development team, I can ‘fork’ the code. What this means is that I can grab a snapshot of the code and go my own direction, maintaining my own version of the code. In fact, this is something I am doing–creating a new version of weblogging software called Wordform that will be a fork of WordPress 1.3.

Sure I can copy the WordPress code and hack all I want – but I can’t modify the codebase for WordPress; not unless I can negotiate for the change with the WordPress team. Since my vision for the code differs so much, it’s easier just to fork the code (not something done trivially, believe me, which is why you don’t see this happening that frequently).

This is open source. This is how many open source efforts work. Apache’s a good example of a larger project, with a bigger team–but you still have to follow the rules and ‘prove’ yourself before you’re allowed in to hack the code. And there are Apache architects that strictly control future directions for this tool, which is why it rarely undergoes through major changes. Notice how people are still using Apache 1.3 for the most part? That’s because the Apache team has to move so carefully to maintain faith with their current installed customer base. Heck, Microsoft blew it’s customers away with Longhorn and .NET and did so with a massive amount of arrogance and indifference; that’s why I went from being an author of books about Microsoft technology to only writing about open source: open source maintains better faith with its users.

Now, the same constraints about WordPress are true for RSS 2.0, though it’s released under Creative Commons; you can’t modify the specification and still have it released as ‘RSS 2.0′. You can create a new syndication feed specification, but then you have to convince a million or so people to use it–not trivial, ask the Atom folks.

You’ve said that people can disrespect open source because it’s held in the commons. Rather than your park analogy, open source is more similar to the Zoo here in St. Louis: I have to go during open hours, and I have to follow certain fairly strict rules while I’m there. Yet the Zoo is part of the city’s public trust–that commons you reference.

As for the garbage you get in your syndication feed: the most open aspect of open source is that you have the right to ‘openly’ unsubscribe from the syndication feed that dumps the crap on you. In other words, if you don’t like the park you’re walking in, walk somewhere else. That’s your responsibility as the user in the open source equation.

Categories
Diversity

Expectations not met

Yesterday came and went and nothing from O’Reilly about my Emerging Technology Conference proposal, which signals that it wasn’t accepted. Yes, I am disappointed, as I thought the idea was interesting and even rather fresh–a variation on the all too common discussions on protocol and how one can market one’s new concept that seem to occur with growing frequency at tech conferences.

I had written something yesterday about this and pulled it because I thought afterwards that it was a bit too much feeling sorry for myself. I don’t want to indulge in a bout of ‘poor me’, but I do have to seriously reconsider the time that I devote to technology efforts, in particular those related to the semantic web and metadata, if the work I do continues to generate little interest.

In particular, I wonder at the level of respect I’ve earned within the technical circles, particularly those with ties into the weblogging community. Very few people have commented favorably on my Practical RDF book at Amazon and elsewhere, and I have to accept the fact that the book has been a disappointment to those who wanted something else. This was a lot of work to have little notice paid, other than the reviews, each of which finds some new area of the book to fault.

I should network, because this an enormous influence on acceptance of your work. I would like to travel to conferences to network with others of same interest, but I do not work for a company or university that would foot this bill. Another hinderance is where I live: Missouri colleges are very good, but not known for their semantic web efforts, and the location isn’t close to centers of such activity.

As for networking online, well, I’m not known for the number of people who would want to claim me as friend on their various networks. I can be critical and it doesn’t take an especially acute intelligence to notice that those who are not, particularly among the women, get more frequent opportunities in technology. Do I resent this? If the women have invested time in the technical field, or demonstrate skills related to their opportunities, no. If the women’s career shows they’ve invested little time in the field, or evidence no demonstrable skills in technology, yes.

The lack of acceptance of the ETech proposal follows closely on another opportunity that ended up not being an opportunity. As I wrote yesterday in the pulled post, when I answered a request for tech help on a project, only to find that another person was asked to head the metadata effort and my help was more in the line of ‘aiding communication between the project manager and the developers’, I begin to wonder: is there any faith in my technical abilities? After all these years and all this talk of metadata and technology and providing samples and tips and help and code, my role was seen more in the nature of helping to write up requirements.

This was really very discouraging. What’s worse is I don’t know if it was more in the nature of me being a woman, or in me being me.

In my many writings on women and tech, many people have responded that all it will take for more women entering technology is us making the decision to do so. However, these folk don’t understand what it’s like to sit on a Monday morning, disappointed at missing out on another technology opportunity, and not knowing if it was because your work wasn’t a fit; your proposal wasn’t good enough; the company doesn’t like you because you’ve bitched too much about them–or it was nothing more than an accident of genetics before you’re even born.

I do know one thing: rather than add to my confidence in my technical abilities, the interactions I’ve experienced in weblogging have undermined much of it, to the point where I am ready to drop over twenty years of training and experience and interest, in hopes I can pick up another career at the complicated age of 50.

Categories
Connecting

Comment spamming and ultimate solutions

The comment spammers now seem indifferent as to whether their comments show up or not. Their (or I should say ‘his’ since it’s one known person) behavior is more in the nature of a malicious act than anything else now.

Good comments are now ending up in my moderation queue solely because the spammers hit so much they trigger the throttle. At this time I’m putting in controls that close a post down for comments if it’s over ten days old. No more moderation queue, which disappoints me.

This is a high priority item in Wordform — to come up with a solution to the comment spam problem without closing out good comments, and without blacklists that can be fooled into blocking on good sites, and without registration. If I do come up with a solution, will you all crown me Queen for a Day?

In the meantime, I have to just shut the door on past posts.

Categories
Connecting

The culture of the cafe

I am finding that there’s a sub-culture that exists within coffee shops. There are those who rush in and grab a cup of coffee, and still others who stop by for sweets for work. Now the lunchtime crowd is starting to come in.

Amidst all of these people who scurry and scatter about are those like myself, who grab a roll and a cup of coffee, which we’ll nurse for the next hour or two, as we sit and read our papers or books; or like the newer generation of cafe society, open our computers and type away. But not all the time, because to not look up from time to time is to miss the magic of the moment.

We tend to congregate in one area of the cafe, and we chat quietly from time to time when one of us happens to catch the eyes of another. I’ve already shown my computer to a retired gentleman who is thinking of buying one to keep up with his grandkids. I expect to see him with an iBook one day.

Another gentleman sits and does crosswords, while a lady about my age, a former mainframe programmer, studies books on new technologies a couple of tables away. Across from me is a Nun having lunch with her friend, and every time I catch her eye, she smiles at me as if we’re sharing some kind of secret. Rather than be intrusive, it adds to the feeling that sitting here has somehow pulled us out of time and place, and given us a new space in which to explore — books, crosswords, something online, each other.

Years ago, philosophers and artists and writers and others mad with creativity and drunk on wine and discovery, would sit in cafes for hours and hours and from these times would come the works that astound us even now. Somehow, somewhere, we’ve lost this society, with our phones and our televisions and our computers, and we are both less and more because of it: less because of the loss of the mystic; more because we’re coming to understand that the mystic relies less on place than on person.

I doubt that I will pull a masterpiece from my time here, in this tiny shadow of society, but I’m sure that I’ll find both contentment and inspiration. And a good cup of coffee–not to be taken lightly, you understand.

I’ll probably leave soon; making room at my table, which I’ve occupied for two hours. It’s tough, though. to leave the smell of the baked goods and homemade soups, and to give up my seat by the window overlooking the outdoor seating. The weather is nice and a foursome with a dog and a small child is sitting outside. The child just came up to the window, all curly brown hair and toothy smile, patted at the glass and gave me a grin.

However, too much of anything and the magic begins to fade and wonderous become ordinary. Besides, it’s nice out and a walk sounds good.

Categories
Diversity Standards

Accessibility and Geegaws

A good rule of thumb for web design is that indulge your interests in nifty tools–DHTML*, Flash, whatever–but your navigation should never be made up of anything other than a hypertext link, and you should never make your critical content accessible primarily (or only) through a mouse.

Lately, I’m seeing more and more sites use technologies, Flash in particular that violate these rules. As nice as they look, I always wince when I see a dependency on a specific product, focused at a specific audience: internet hip, sighted, and attracted to bright, shiny things.

Learning from DHTML

I didn’t always resist the shiny geegaws myself. When we were studying DHTML after it first came out, we all started using it to create our navigation buttons, and felt pretty cool and very web savvy. Mouse over a top-level button and a small little box would slide out underneath with all your options to click. After static content, this was heady stuff.

Of course, mouseover wasn’t always reliable. Sometimes you’d have to move quickly from the top-level to the sub-topics because leaving the top-level would close the sub-topic box; it then became a game of who could move faster–you or the browser.

This was all until we started running into cross-browser differences and the nightmare that followed for a good 2 or 3 years until Mozilla came along and routed Internet Explorer.

(What do you mean someone is still using IE?)

Then someone came along and said, well, what about blind people or people who can’t use a mouse? After all, it’s pretty difficult to try and tab through a lot of nonsense that doesn’t do anything in order to get to a working link. And if the work is DHTML, well that just mucks with the page reader’s electronic mind, and it doesn’t know what it’s dealing with.

After Google made web search fashionable and especially after it added a thing called pagerank, we found that not using hypertext links to manage our site navigation was actually working counter to seeing our pages show up in the search results, and as highly placed as possible. Pretty geegaw lost its attraction really quick on this one.

Especially when you add in the costs. In the dot-com job I had before it became dot-gone, I was brought in to lead a re-design of an application after another firm had spent close to two million dollars and basically had very little to show for it; all except for a really cool DHTML navigation system. No backend development. Half the pages needed unfinished. No database. No database design. But there were some really cool DHTML and pretty graphics.

Well, we kept what we could and yanked the DHTML and put a system out on the street in about five weeks. With plain old hypertext links.

But still, designers say when showing their latest frufrah, look how cool this all is?

(When I as at that dot-com, I shared an office with the lead web page designer — an art school grad. He was a nice guy and did the Burning Man thing and was all that was hip among designers, and very talented, too. But I still felt like I was sharing the office with someone from another galaxy, especially when it came to priorities. I know he must have felt the same way. Companies should do that more often–house the backend developers with the front-end designers. If both survive the experience, they might learn something from it.)

Let’s see: on the one hand we have cool. On the other hand we have cross-browser compatible, easier to build and maintain, search engine friendly, and accessible.

Bottom line, we came to understand that using DHTML to manage navigation, or to display critical content, was very uncool.

Next Big Thing

Of course, now we have the Next Big Thing in website design, which is Flash and its various incarnations. And it’s true, Flash can help you do some nifty stuff — but it still brings in the same burdens and problems on a page. You have to install the plugin; you have to have special readers for the content; you have to provide an alternative link structure for webbots if you want your pages search engine friendly; and it costs a lot more to design and maintain a Flash navigation system then it does plain old hypertext links.

To work around the accessibility issues one can use page readers that can read Flash, and one can install the plugins to access the navigation buttons; still each of these methods require that the web page reader go through extra effort to access your webpage content; content that supposedly you really want them to access. Site purpose and accessibility, in this case, is sacrificed to site design.

But isn’t design meant to enhance a site, not obscure it? In other words, if Flash and JavaScript hinder access, never use Flash, or JavaScript, or any moving part other than a hypertext link for site navigation–in fact any content that is critical for the site. If you must, have a separate Flash site, but make sure it’s secondary.

The Payoffs in Accessibility and avoiding the Geegaws

I’m not a web designer and I don’t pretend to make the prettiest pages and or use the best CSS and hippest styles; but one thing I have learned over the years is, if you design for those with accessibility challenges in mind, you’ll find that you’ve also created the easiest to build, easiest to maintain, cleanest, most valid, less fragile, and more forward compatible site design. In other words — designing for accessibility ends up being the best approach to designing for style, validity, durability, and economy.

*DHTML is Dynamic HTML, or using scripting language, usually JavaScript to manipulate a page’s contents after it’s been downloaded to the browser.