Matt Asay wrote a blog post “Cash, code, or free-riding in open source communities?“, which was a good post on a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about myself. He used the term “free-rider” which caused a well documented uproar.
I’m saddened by the sense of entitlement inherent in the uproar. What’s wrong with asking members of a software community to do more than just use the software? Personally, I feel that if I can endure the twice-a-year NPR pledge drive banter (which centers around making “free-riders” feel bad), I can deal with being asked to throw a little something back to the authors of the software I use. In the end, just like NPR, no one is obligated to donate, but no one should fault them for asking, because it’d suck if no one did donate.
Some of the negative responses to this article exhibit a behavior that is gets under my skin as someone who is in a similar boat as Matt. It seems fashionable these days to bash on the vendors associated with single-vendor open source projects. Do we really not want to see more vendors release their source code, or do we instead want the investment dollars to go toward the creation of more proprietary software? Don’t we think that skeptical proprietary software purveyors look at that kind of thing, and think “wow, glad that’s not me!”? I realize that most community members are aware of the nuance and hard problems, and its often the blowhards that are the most vocal, but often, the blowhards go unchallenged. Why should we let them feel cool about doing trashing those people making an honest effort? Like Savio Rodrigues, I want to see open source software production get a larger percentage of the overall investment in software than we’re seeing today.
Dave Neary has a great blog post about Sun trying to do the right thing. It was refreshing to read this, and quite insightful. I’ve been watching the naming debate with some interest, if for no other reason than this is a conversation I’m quite interested in pushing my view in, and it helps to have a shared vocabulary.
I can’t help but think that the Linux vs OpenSolaris debate is like if two candidates for the Green Party got into an Obama vs Clinton style fight over the Green Party nomination. The free software community is going to have a tough enough time winning in November, so to speak, without scaring off the newcomers.
A little bit of work talk. I’m going to be speaking tonight (January 31) at the Seattle Social Media Club about Second Life, along with my co-worker Greg Tomko-Pavia (aka Periapse Linden)
Jeff Barr at Amazon, who has been doing really innovative work promoting Amazon Web Services using Second Life, and Brian White, the author of Second Life - A Guide to Your Virtual World.
If you’d like to show up, please RSVP for the event. It’s happening in downtown Seattle at Text100
The writers strike has temporarily saved me from staring zombie-like from my slouched position on the couch, and instead has me typing zombie-like from a differently-slouched position on my couch. After seeing a couple of mildly amusing clips from on-strike writers (from The Daily Show and The Colbert Report), I was curious enough to poke around the writers’ website and see them make their case. Regardless of the merits of the strike, the writers are in a much better position to make their case than they were the last time they did this.
But I think it’s a lot worse than writers with extra YouTube posting time on their hands. There’s a piece in the L.A. Times about how non-Hollywood money is starting to find good writers (via pmarca)
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I like reading Paul Kedrosky’s Infectuous Greed blog, even if I think he occasionally says some things that are completely moronic. One reason I do, though, is the occasonal food for thought, like this post on inflated house prices.
Yale economist Bob Shiller says in the weekend issue of Barron’s that he’s still looking for 20-30% housing price declines over the next 5-10 years — including in untouchable cities like San Francisco and New York (and I’ll include Vancouver)
He goes on to quote the article, talking about the relocation that’s occurring. Some folks left comments that pointed out that there are always going to be people drawn to jobs in hot markets like New York or San Francisco, but I know of at least one San Francisco-based company that’s looking to hire outside of the city.
For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing at Linden Lab, now I can tell you.
Hazel has reached the developmental milestone Rob and I are calling “Spookyfish”. For those of you who don’t watch South Park - one of the characters, Stan, gets this pet goldfish which turns out to be evil and kills people. No - that’s not Hazel’s new trick 
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Google’s social networking site Orkut was the coolest thing since sliced bread back in early 2004. It was a social network that actually had interesting people on it. It had a fun user interface. And then, the reliability problems kicked in, and then the Brazilians invaded every corner of it. So just about everyone I know pretty much abandoned it. I never had the heart to take it out of my bookmarks, so I would still check it every so often, confirming its still pretty much dead.
Flash forward to late 2006…
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The Weekend - Sept 9th and 10th
We rented a car for the weekend to see some things we couldn’t get to easily by walking or public transportation. Saturday we went north and crossed the Golden Gate bridge into Sausasilto before heading south to check out west San Francisco. On the way over to the bridge we drove by Ghiradelli square where the annual chocolate festival was going on but had to miss out on the party. Oh rats! (more…)
Monday Sept 4th
So we made it down here uneventfully and even lucked out and were able to take Hazel’s car seat on the plane even tho’ we didn’t pay for an extra seat - it wasn’t a full flight! She slept until right before landing and Rob was able to calm her down enough that she fell asleep again before we were on the ground. The only bad part of the flight was the kid in front of me spilling his sippy cup of apple juice into our diaper bag that was under his seat. Thankfully I’d tried something new this trip and packed things in ziplock bags to make it easier to organize and the only thing that got soaked was a bill I’d tucked in there last minute. (more…)
As of this week, I’m no longer a freelance developer. Who wants to run their own billing department? Certainly not me. I had a hard enough time filling out expense reports…doing my IRS Form 2210 again this last quarter kinda sealed the deal for me.
I have a new full-time job, working for Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life. My job will be some parts developer relations, and some parts program management (at first, working with the development team on security-related stuff). I really liked working for Philip Rosedale (Linden’s CEO) back when he was at Real, so it was cool to get the opportunity to do that again. Now that he’s got his own company, he’s implemented a pretty radical style of management which he recently published on the Second Life blog as “The Tao of Linden“.
So, the whole family is down here in San Francisco while I meet everyone at the office, and get enough of a Kool-Aid(tm) injection to last me for a while as I work remotely from Seattle. Margaret has been eager for me to get this posted so that she can post some of the family-related stuff, so I’ll let her explain tomorrow what she and Hazel have been doing while I’ve been at work.
Early (waaaaay too early) this morning Hazel rolled over on her own for the first time. She was in her crib, fussing, hungry and kicking and managed to lever herself over to her stomach. I put her on her back and she did it again. We haven’t tried it with a happy, non-fussy baby but I’m sure that’s going to happen soon.
I find this definition of Rolly Polly very amusing.
I’ve recently become a big fan of the West Seattle Blog, not just because I live in West Seattle. The author is very purposefully anonymous, but is clearly from around here. Why do I know? Well, because we seem to all share this small city obsession with new retail that comes to the area. I say “small city” because it takes a place large enough to attract retail, but small enough that the residents think its a big deal.
Lewiston, Idaho (where I went to high school) was and apparently is still this way. A few years ago, I was talking to a friend who I hadn’t seen in a while, and asked him how things were going in Lewiston. He said “we have a new Home Depot now”. Around that same time, my dad (who also left the area) asked one of his friends how it was going, and he said the same thing. The coming of Home Depot is apparently a very important thing.
These are my people, and I’m not so hip and metropolitan that I can’t totally relate. The source of great speculation and bated breath here in West Seattle for most of this past decade came with the remodel of the Westwood Village shopping center. For years, the rumor was that there would be a movie theater (oooo…ahhhh) going in, and speculation would run amok any time the foundation was poured on any building that looked remotely like a movie theater. This was long after the point at which it was announced that there would be no movie theater; the chain that promised one pulled out years ago. Nonetheless, the movie theater speculation soon subsided as the new excitement was around the Barnes and Noble that went in last year. Unfortunately, the remodel is mostly complete, so there’s not much left to get really excited about.
With that painfully long and rambling introduction out of the way, it’s with great glee that I announce that I’m scooping the West Seattle Blog. According to the Westwood Village website, there is a Taco Del Mar and a Gionnoni’s Pizza (whatever that is) opening there in “Fall 2006″. It’s no movie theater, but hey, you heard it here first.
Tags:
Seattle,
West Seattle
Hazel continues to gain weight tho’ at a slightly slower pace since we stopped the butter injection treatments. Last week was her 2 month checkup and a round of shots. Oh that was fun - 2 shots in each leg. Good thing she didn’t see the size of the needles before she got stuck or she probably would have screamed more.
Hazel has also discovered television!
Our friend, Duane Nakamura, gave us a copy of Baby Einstein’s Baby Mozart DVD which is basically synthesized music with what Rob calls “Toy Porn” - shots of wind up and motorized toys and puppets and the “mysterious lady hand” playing with stacking toys. Amazingly it just captivated Hazel’s attention! So despite the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics I set the Tivo up to record a few other shows to see what interests her. So far Zoboomafoo is on the top of the list. We’ve also watched some Sesame Street but Mr. Rogers is a bit slow for her taste.
Hazel is also getting really good at the “pout and scream” routine. I think she was born knowing how to make the ‘pouty face’ - the one face I don’t think we have a picture of yet. I think she’s testing Mom to see how long it takes to get picked up - not long at all.
We went out on a walk around Alki point and to the library the other day - our first outing without Daddy - who’s off in Boston. We may have to go for a walk today around the neighborhood while the weather isn’t freakishly hot as it is everywhere else.
Daddy gets back tomorrow evening YAY!
I’m off to Boston, to be among fellow nerds at Wikimania, where I’m hosting a discussion about enterprise use of MediaWiki, as well as hanging around beforehand for Hacking Days. We’ll see what sort of attendance there is for my session; there’s a lot of parallel tracks at this thing. I’m hoping to figure out if it’s viable for me to make a living doing MediaWiki development. I haven’t been very good about getting fired up for work since Hazel was born, but I’m hoping this will help jar me into gear.
