This is a re-post of an entry I wrote a few years ago after doing some consulting work in Cambridge, England. It's still pertinent, and still one of my favorite works:



A few years ago while on a consulting project at The Sanger Centre near Cambridge, England, I took this photograph of a beautiful wooden bridge that reaches across a portion of the river Cam in Cambridge. I have since used this photograph in my consulting projects, accompanied by the following story:

The bridge was designed and built by Sir Isaac Newton, the first holder of the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge (a position currently occupied by Stephen Hawking.) It was unique in that it was designed and constructed without the use of any mechanical fasteners - it was held together by counterbalance, much the same way a stone arch is centered by a capstone.

In the early 20th century, a physics professor at the University set his students the task of determining how this engineering feat had been accomplished, and in the course of their studies, they disassembled the bridge only to find, to their dismay, that they were unable to reassemble it correctly. As a result, the current structure has nuts, bolts, and other mechanical fasteners in place to hold it together.

The lesson I convey to my Fortune 100 / Fortune 500 senior IT staff audiences is simply this: if you don't fully understand a complex system, how can you maintain it properly? And the obvious corollary is: if it ain't broke.....

And now the coda to this wonderfully symmetrical little tale: the story is apocryphal. Not only was it not designed by Newton, who died twenty-two years before the first bridge was built, there was no mechanical magic associated with its construction. It has been rebuilt, twice, most recently in 1905, lending credence to that aspect of the story above. (If you're really interested, have a look at this site.) But there are still a couple of lessons to be gleaned from this experience.

First, don't believe everything you hear, no matter how credible or attractive the story (or how closely it suits your personal ideology.) Verify your data, and don't be reluctant to drop a beautiful theory in the face of a potentially much less attractive fact. I've always loved that Newton story, and I was taken aback when I discovered it was false. But I learned a lesson.

Second, and more important, don't reject the valid message buried in the fantasy. You can't properly maintain a complex system unless you fully understand it. Access to source code is a prerequisite to fully understanding complex IT systems (although I grant that most IT shops, even the largest, don't extend their understanding to this level.) Systems that are built on published standards are easier to build and maintain - at least from the perspective of getting access to all pertinent information -  than those based on single-vendor solutions.

But at the end of the day, it's the function, not the form, that's important. This is a beautiful bridge, regardless of who built it, and it has served its purpose through the centuries. If you - or your customers - have a solution that works for them, whether it's open source or not, the first prerequisite to being able to properly maintain it is to understand it as completely as you can before you start changing things.

If it ain't broke......

It feels like a long time since my last entry, and in all honesty I've missed the satisfaction that invariably comes with making the time to separate from my "day job" and post an entry here. It surely isn't always profound, but I hope on balance that it's readable and, ideally, thought-provoking. One of my goals as an Open Source and Linux advocate is to get people to realize that there are real, viable alternatives that not only work as well as the desktop environment they've come to accept as the standard, in many cases they work better.

It's both a strength and a weakness of languages in general that words can have multiple meanings. I inherited a love of linguistics, and in the elegance of a well-turned phrase, from my father, but sometimes I struggle with the task that is the bread and butter of most lawyers and diplomats, namely, using exactly the right terms to get the correct point across. In our technology space, this struggle has persisted since the inception of the concept of available versus proprietary software, at a time when Universities routinely included the source code along with the computers until software became a differentiator - and a potential source of revenue.

One of the first distinctions was to call unlicensed (unencumbered by license, not pirated) software 'free', and a whole family of 'freeware' and it's cousin 'shareware' (where people were encouraged but not required to send something to the author as compensation) sprang up. Almost immediately the confusion surrounding the terms was apparent, and it became necessary to have endless discussions on the differences between "free as in speech" and "free as in beer." With time, and not a little obfuscating from  commercial software vendors, 'freeware' became largely a pejorative term, with undertones of lesser quality or even security vulnerability.

A watershed moment in the industry came with Netscape's decision to make the source code for its popular browser available without cost. At this point, Eric Raymond and others (see www.catb.org/~esr/open-source.html) proposed substituting the term 'Open Source' in the place of 'Free Software'. At the time it was an improvement, and helped more clearly identify the underlying value to commercial businesses; having access to the source code made it easier to do business, and it didn't mean you had to give your products away. But the confusion didn't disappear entirely, it only lay dormant for a while, its' return fueled by the ambiguity inherent in the terms used, and in the persistent debate between the meaning of free as in readily available and free as in no payment required.

Some are now lobbying for yet another shift in the public lexicon, and although I haven't completely signed on to this one yet, I admit it has merits. Some years ago, the acronym addicts coined the terms FOSS (Free / Open Source Software) and its' variant, FLOSS (Free/Libre Open Source Software). The term libre became popular as a distinction from gratis; now you have two clearly different concepts, with tangible names, to help clarify the duality of meaning we've always had with free software.

So what do you think? Should we begin referring to Open Source software as Libre Software? Part of my concern with this nascent proposal is that continually changing what we call it only sets the movement back while people catch up and re-engage. Then there's the unfortunate but inevitable association of the term with radicals and revolutionaries, conjuring up images of government coups and power to the people. I can hear the sidebar conversations in Corporate purchasing meetings even now. We've only barely gotten past the negative connotations of 'freeware', do we really want to jump back into those shark-infested waters?

At the end of the day, by whatever label you identify it, access to source code is a key differentiator for businesses wanting to maximize their flexibility, minimize vendor lock-in, and optimize their IT operations. I also feel strongly that it's the inevitable future of our business. So let's continue this debate about what best to call it, but for now, my money remains on "Open Source Software".

I've come to the realization that over the years it has become harder for me to focus on tasks for long stretches, and while I've thought about it often I've never really attributed it to anything in particular. The dark side of my personality tries to convince me that it's some frightening pathology, but I know better, and I see that, like any other skill, if focus and concentration aren't exercised regularly they get out of shape.

The problem is simple: in the last twenty years we've been literally bombarded by an ever-accelerating array of informational inputs, each with its own sense of urgency that says "Stop what you're doing and pay attention!" The first was e-mail, that extraordinarily seductive ping with its implicit suggestion of self-importance. I mean, really: someone is communicating with you, why aren't you reading this now? And most of us did, in the same way that we used to stop whatever we were doing and pick up the phone when it rang. (Sidebar rant/ It really annoys me when a clerk checking me out in a store stops to answer the phone. Hey! I was here first! /Sidebar rant) But now thousands, possibly tens or hundreds of thousands of people (depending on your relative fame) have your email address, so the interrupt rate is much higher for email than it ever was for the telephone. Over time, we've learned to ignore a lot of it (there's an upside to everything, even spam,) or at least we did until the Blackberry and iPhone came along.

After email came the ubiquity of the cell phone. We're never out of reach now, unless we work really hard at it. I even called my wife from the northern terminus of the Appalachian Trail, the top of Mount Katahdin, a few years ago on a hiking trip with a buddy. An entire generation exists now that never knew a time when they didn't have this capability. But the limitations of voice-only conversations couldn't withstand the onslaught of technology for long, and soon there was SMS. Still not enough, but it introduced a pretty notable knee in the downward curve of attention deficit acceleration - people began to lose the ability to communicate in fully formed (and well thought out) sentences, because acronyms and emoticons were easier to use when all you had were your thumbs and a keypad designed for an infant's fingers. And more recently that's taken a particularly dark little side trip into traffic fatalities induced by morons who don't know better than to attempt to text and drive at the same time. Then there were blogs, originally intended to compress ideas previously expressed as essays into two, maybe three, paragraphs, because let's face it, nobody has time any more to read multiple screens. Still too much information, and Twitter was born. If you can't say it in 140 characters or less, don't waste any more of my time than you already have.

So with all these inputs, all clamoring for my attention, I've gotten out of the habit of concentrating for long periods of time. Ask yourself: when's the last time, other than reading a good book or watching a good movie, you focused on a task for at least two hours? (I'm being generous - four hours seems an eternity.) And I've found, to my dismay, that I'm falling behind on commitments I've made, simply because I jump from one thing to another without taking the time to focus on one task and see it through to completion. So here's a resolution: I'm going to devote time every day to focus on a single task for some period of time. I'm going to re-build the muscles I've let atrophy. And I suspect that, in so doing, I'll rediscover my ability to work hard for sustained periods and then relax.

Time to shut the phone off for the night.

One of the more familiar challenges we face as advocates of the Open Source model is building a compelling business case, whether for our external customers, or for our own internal decision makers. So it was with a combined sense of relief and excitement that I recently read Michael Tiemann's Open Source Whitepaper updated for 2010. Anyone engaged in scoping or selling solutions built around or including open source software should take ten minutes to read this concise comparison between open source and proprietary software. I found myself thinking of the quote often attributed to the late Senator Everett Dirkson along the lines of "...a billion here, a billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money."

Adjusted for inflation, the magnitudes discussed in Michael's paper start with a "T" these days.

I've just finished a two-week vacation, and it's proven to be a more relaxing experience than I've had in a long time. It's not just the change of scenery, (a couple of days exploring the old town in Zurich followed by a week in Bellagio, Italy, on the shores of Lake Como) although that certainly did relax me. I think what was different this time was that I made a conscious - and for the most part successful - effort to disconnect from work.

Oh, sure, I logged in just about every day, but this time all I did was scan my mail headers (a little more quickly with each passing day) and I can honestly say that the increasing backlog of mail I'll have to deal with when I return to the office tomorrow morning wasn't a pressing concern for me as I looked out our balcony window at the lake and the Alps beyond. And I kept my phone on 24x7, knowing that if something extraordinarily important came up at work, my manager would know he could contact me. But I really kept it on so that the trusted relative taking care of our pets at home could reach us in an emergency.

As a manager in a previous job role, I've often stressed the importance of maintaining a work / life balance with the people on my team; since I returned to a technical position, it's been harder for me to maintain that separation. But this recent experience has reminded me how really rejuvenating a real break from the routine can be, and while that may seem obvious or self-evident, it isn't always obvious or self-evident at all. (Common sense, someone said, isn't always common practice.) And ultimately, that relaxation, that re-energizing that happens, will make me more productive when I do return to work.

So the lesson I would pass along is simple: remember to stop occasionally and rest. Completely rest. It'll make the journey less hectic and ultimately more enjoyable.

In our profession (small 'p' now, I'm not referring to the Professions program) we're frequently faced with technology choices. There are usually a lot of variables involved in those choices, but all too often the financial impact is more heavily weighted than the others, and sometimes - not always, probably not even most of the time - that results in the wrong choice being made.

I propose a more fundamental question - two, really - be asked before any others when considering adopting a new technology, or changing an existing one. These questions should be asked by any rational decision maker, because they have a potentially significant impact on their business, their user base, their market. The questions are: Does this choice lock me in to a single vendor? and, Does this choice lock any of my users out?

I've come to think of this as a simple, two-sided coin type of mantra: no vendor lock-in, no user lock-out. I mean, think about it: no purchasing agent worth their paycheck would put their company at the risk of being held hostage by a sole-source vendor. It's a lesson most of us learn very early in our business careers. And why would you want to turn away business by preventing your customers from hearing your message? It's why the vast majority of web-based businesses support all the most popular web browsers, and use well-defined public standards when coding their public-facing web sites.

So think about these rules the next time you contemplate a change: No vendor lock-in, no user lock-out.

Regardless of which side of the healthcare reform debate you fall on, one thing everyone seems to agree on is the need to reduce the current runaway costs (and oh by the way, perhaps improve efficiency while we're at it.) One way to do both has been under examination for some time, and is one of the priorities of both the previous and current Washington administration: electronic health records, or EHRs..

A number of industry players, large and small, have submitted proposed solutions to this problem, many of them accompanied by "sticker shock" price tags, but the reality is there is already an established system with a proven record going back decades that "just works". And best of all? It's open source.

The U.S. Government's Veteran's Administration first developed the VistA system back in the 1980's. (Never at a loss for irony in their naming conventions, the original program was called DHCP, for Decentralized Hospital Computer Program. In fairness, they had rights to that before the Network folks did.) It was released as open source under the Freedom of Information Act (it was, after all, tax payer funded) and can now be downloaded for free here. (It's also available on CD / DVD for a nominal fee.)

One large hospital that has discovered the benefits of this approach is Midland Memorial Hospital in Midland, Texas. David Whiles, their CIO, was interviewed in this recent article in Forbes Magazine, and it's worth a read. (I liked the bit about them running Red Hat Enterprise Linux on HP servers.) One quote that captures one central value of EHRs came near the end of the article:

It certainly improves patient safety in a number of areas. Medication is a big one. It's certainly more foolproof than paper. Anything you do is kept permanently, and it has a lot of built-in protection from changing records. It's a complete record of the patient care.

I'm encouraged, but not especially surprised, to see open source making inroads in this policy. It's a no-brainer for a number of reasons, but two immediately come to mind: it's based on open standards, so life and death decisions aren't restricted to a particular vendor, and TCO is reduced by eliminating either up front or on-going licensing costs. Certainly there are challenges to overcome, security not the least of them. But at the end of the day, I'm convinced that the efficiencies and savings to be gained far outweigh the costs and risks of containing security vulnerabilities.

Say what you want about government programs; as a veteran myself, I haven't been all that impressed with the VA as a health care provider, but then again, I haven't had much recent experience with them. But don't overlook the advantages of taking a fully formed and proven EHR system irrespective of its heritage and making it work to our collective advantage.

We've already paid for it.

We are for the most an acquisitive species. We value collecting things, frequently things we don't need or don't even particularly (if we're honest with ourselves) want. More importantly, we place a value on ownership that more often than not exceeds the objects true value. I use the term 'object' intentionally, because our concept of ownership is most easily understood in terms of things that are tangible. You can hold a vase, you can enter and occupy a structure, you can see and touch a work of art.

But many, including with increasing frequency me, would argue that it is the intangibles that satisfy our truest inner nature. To use yet again a time honored aphorism, it is the journey and not the destination that is important. An algorithm, a subroutine, an application, or an operating system - these are not only intangible (and don't be distracted by their representation on paper or as digital bits on one of many various forms of media) they are limitless-ly reproduceable. Apart from the media, or the electrons, or the network bandwidth consumed in creating and/or transmitting them, a billion copies is the same as one in terms of the uniqueness - the true value.

In a very real sense, this value is derived from the creative abilities of individuals, some - probably even most - seeking to make a living through their creativity. But a portion, I suspect a very significant portion, of this group also obtain an intangible benefit by way of peer respect and approval. The open source development model has always been a true, sometimes bluntly harsh, meritocracy that rewards efficiency and beauty and rejects waste and incompetence. It began with one person's itch that needed scratching and grew from there, and that's where today's theme comes in. Open source contributors, whether they are coders, reviewers, beta testers, documenters, enthusiasts, or whatever, obtain something of value from their community (that's the take) and in return they provide something of value through their own contribution (that's the give.)

No one wants to go hungry (or thirsty) but once life's basic needs are met, my own experience tells me that all those tangibles I was once so consumed (interesting word) with are far less satisfying than the acknowledgment from the community of a meaningful contribution. Don't get me wrong - you can't live on praise or recognition alone. But I guess what I'm saying is that if the give doesn't more or less balance out with the take you're eventually going to notice, and wonder what's wrong.

There's a saying that having is not nearly as interesting as wanting. (Remember how you felt by around noon on Christmas Day when you were a kid, no matter how much swag you ended up with?) The most interesting parts of my life are now explorations of new technologies with no specific end point in mind. If it's interesting and it scratches a big enough itch, that's enough.

Well, that, and a steady paycheck.

As a fairly frequent traveller I recently found myself once again airborne, this time on a relatively rare domestic flight from Boston to Las Vegas, and I was impressed, as I invariably am, at the sight of a Boeing 747-400 taxiing for takeoff from Chicago's O'Hare airport. Approaching 40 years old, this venerable aircraft may soon be seeing the end of its productive life at the end of the runway, but it has always been my favorite plane on which to travel.

Flying in the upper deck of a 747 is like travelling in your living room; the ratio of flight attendants to passengers is an order of magnitude better than on the main deck, and the atmosphere is usually one of relaxed conviviality, at least on the long-haul Asian trips I've taken so often in recent years. I can easily remember when they were first introduced, and I thought to myself, "That thing is HUGE! It'll never get off the ground, and if it does, I wouldn't feel safe sitting in it." Two things changed my mind: the first was the classic study in physics that 'proved' that the bumblebee was aerodynamically incapable of flight (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1076/is-it-aerodynamically-impossible-for-bumblebees-to-fly), and the second was the sight of the space shuttle being transported from California to Florida bolted to the top of a 747 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shuttle_Carrier_Aircraft).

As a boy I recall watching television re-runs of movies from my parent's generation in which the glamorous way to travel in or out of Chicago was by train (sleeper, of course.) For a great example of this, watch any of the "Thin Man" movies from 1930s and enjoy the performances of William Powell and Myrna Loy. It was watching those movies that I became convinced travel was somehow inherently associated with glamor and excitement, and that anyplace in the world must be better in both those regards than my birthplace of Dayton, Ohio. Well, I learned as most who travel a lot learn that it can be tiring and boring and irritating at times. But I also learned that it's not where you are that makes a place interesting and exciting, it's in how you experience it. Dayton, for example, is home to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the phenomenal Air Force Museum - definitely worth a visit if you're anywhere nearby (or even if you're not.)

So every once in a while, take a moment to stop and look around, and really experience where you are for just a moment. It can be refreshing to see the familiar in a different, perhaps more appreciative way than you're accustomed. And you don't have to wait through those airport security lines.