LFNW: LinuxFest Northwest

At the end of the month I’ll be back in Bellingham for my 3rd time at LinuxFest Northwest. LFNW happens to be the last independent regional Linux event on the west coast, now that the guys from Socal Linux Expo have sold their event to IDG (which was announced happened on April 1, 2008, and I believed completely).

If you’ll be there, please come to my session:

“Freedom and the Cloud: Developer Platforms meet Software as a Service”
A new wave of software development is taking shape, allowing developers to create and deploy software entirely through the browser. In this talk, Ted Haeger explains platform-as-a-service and some of the issues it raises regarding software freedom. What is the GPL’s “SaaS loophole”? How do web service providers promote or discourage the ethics of Free Software? Why does the Affero GPL matter? How does free software enable invigorate startup innovation, and what are the ethical obligations to reciprocate of the companies that use free software to build their business?

I’m Presenting at LugRadio Live USA!!

Despite rumors that may have been previously propagated by certain people of a sullied character (me), I am now coming to LugRadio Live 2008. This weekend. At the Metreon. In San Francisco.

At noon on Saturday, April 12:

“Reverend Ted’s Noon Hour Extravaganza”
or
“Freedom and the Cloud: Developer Platforms meet Software as a Service”
A new wave of software development is taking shape, allowing developers to create and deploy software entirely through the browser. In this talk, Ted Haeger explains platform-as-a-service and some of the issues it raises regarding software freedom. What is the GPL’s “SaaS loophole”? How do web service providers promote or discourage the ethics of Free Software? Why does the Affero GPL matter? How does free software enable invigorate startup innovation, and what are the ethical obligations to reciprocate of the companies that use free software to build their business?

I believe that I might also be flagged as the back-up candidate to host the Gong-a-Thong should the Mighty Aaron Bockover chicken out. (Imagine my relief when I was informed that Aaron was chosen over me…because I’m not quite as pasty.)

Screencast of Socal Linux Expo Presentation

As services and software start to move more and more into the cloud–the emerging domain of service providers hosting not just storage or virtual machines, but the actual code for web applications–some very interesting question arise:

• How does sharing code become easier?
• How can you provide developers maximum control over their creations?
• How will source code licenses work?
• How will the next generation of platform providers balance between security and confidentiality of their developer/users on the one hand, and the increased value that many developers place on using open systems?

These are the kind of questions that my company Bungee Labs is wrestling with, and I recently took a stab at presenting some of our current, early thinking in this area in my presentation at Socal Linux Expo.

The presentation was received quite well by the audience of some 30 people, so I took the time to assemble the slides and audio, and stitch them together with some screencast videos

Since SCaLE is a Free Software-friendly event, the image is linked to a Theora (.ogg) video file.

Video Stats

Run time: 55:51

Theora: 114MB

QuickTime: 150MB

If the file sizes are inconvenient for you, my apologies. I don’t have the best of video editing/encoding facilities at my disposal.

Please let me know if you find any issues in getting or viewing the video. Also, I am very interested in feedback regarding our current thinking regarding licensing.

Related Links

• Bungee Connect Terms & Agreements
  • You own your code. (Bungee Connect Developer Agreement)
  • Software Sharing in the Cloud (Publishing Licenses)
• SaaS Loophole References & Relevant Reading:
  • “Open Source Licenses are Obsolete” , Tim O’Reilly, August 01, 2006
  • “The GPL Has No (Networked) Future”, Bryan Richard, March 29, 2007
  • “The GPL and Software as a Service”, Tim O’Reilly, July 12, 2007
  • “GPL v3 Not a Concern For Google”, Sean Michael Kerner, March 29, 2007
  • GNU General Public License 3 (GPLv3)
  • GNU Affero General Public License 3 (AGPLv3)
• Lock-in Considerations
  • “Free But Shackled: The Java Trap”, Richard Stallman, April 12, 2004
  • Bungee FAQ (see “Exporting or Leaving Bungee Connect”)

Interviewed at Socal Linux Expo

SCaLE6 conference organizer, Orv Beach, interviewed me at this weekend’s big event in Los Angeles.

I speak in the interview about the switch from a large Linux distributor to working for a small startup, and some of what I have been doing at Bungee Labs over the past year.

SCaLE6: Returning to Socal Linux Expo

Once again I will be presenting at Socal Linux Expo. Each SCaLE so far has been a great show, and this 6th year promises to be excellent. Ubuntu community manager Jono Bacon is keynote speaker this year (co-presenting with his beard), and his presentations are quite entertaining (even for denizens of Los Angeles, who are accustomed to seeing the occasional massive traffic accident). So if you’re in the Los Angeles area, come on down and check it out.

This year my presentation is about startups and open source, using case-in-point company, Bungee Labs. They booked me last in line on Sunday afternoon, so if you’re going, please hang out to the very end.

Drop me a line if you’d like to chew the fat, and whatnot.

Feature Updates in the SaaS World

The Catch-22 of Software Feature Releases
One of the most frustrating things with which product managers contend in the traditional software release model is the long wait between each new version. I faced this when I worked at Novell on products such as ZENworks, eDirectory, iManager, and SUSE Linux Enterprise. In managing these enterprise-focused products, it was agonizing to have researched requirements and documented specifications for a next version, and then have to languish while developers worked to create a complete, well-integrated and solid next version. But I highlight the long interim between software releases to address a common misconception and try to tear it down.

@ Mashup Camp

This week, I am in Silicon Valley at Mashup Camp/University. Details here.

BrainShare 2007 Friday General Session

If you would like to see the General Session that I hosted at BrainShare 2007, it is now online.

• Nat Friedman brought out several guests (including David Reveman!) and showed some killer Linux stuff
• Baber Amin showed an open source InfoCard implementation
• Ken Muir showed the upcoming GroupWise release, codenamed Bonsai
• Alan Murray showed some cool Data Center technologies

Next Mac-PC-Linux is now online…

…see the original post for the links.

Minor Blog Readership Spike

Seems that a few people recently visited this page.

Here’s the 30-day chart:

And, below are the hit counts for yesterday and today:

Mac vs. PC: How Would Linux Fit?

[Please Digg this]

Apple’s “Get a Mac” Campaign
Always a branding powerhouse, Apple is a company whose television advertisements are usually excellent. Their recent Get a Mac campaign (”Hi, I’m a Mac / And I’m a PC”) certainly does not disappoint. At this point, the television commercial are very well known.

The campaign exemplifies the artfully clever use of “framing,” the selective control of information used to shape a viewer’s perception. A simple example is the term “tax relief.” If you have an anti-taxation agenda, “tax relief” is a much more powerful term than “tax cut” because it frames taxes as a burden from which people need relief. The term assumes its own premise and thereby frames our perception.

In the “Get a Mac” campaign, Apple frames an artificial dualism, and then re-enforces the dualism with powerful metaphors. The dualism frames two options: either you use a PC (understood to mean Windows) or a Mac. Those are your options.

“Will it Blend” for Novell?: Now Online

[Please Digg this]

A couple weeks ago, I posted about the filming of the “Will it Blend?” video that we made for BrainShare. This morning, Ron Hovsepian unveiled the finished product during his BrainShare 2007 keynote address. You can check it out here:

• The Video is now in the Novell Videos queue.
  • (I just found out that theweb team forgot to post the Ogg versions. rest assured, they’re on the way.)
• For a short time, Novell.com home page has some fun Flash with Tom Dickson.
• And, you can get it on YouTube, too:

The finished product is what I find most appealing about the whole thing. Here is a high-def still shot I took during the filming.

(Yes, those are legs.)

Special bonus: Find the place in the video where Kel, Blendtec’s videographer, goofed. (Hint: Look for a minor discontinutity.)

BrainShare Backstage: Monday Demo Preparations

In Salt Lake City, the Novell demo monkeys are feverishly laying down the final touches on their demos for the Monday general session.

Your Host for BrainShare’s Friday General Session

It’s now official: I will be hosting the Friday General Session at BrainShare 2007!

So far, the Friday line-up is really solid. It looks like we will have some cool Linux stuff with Nat Friedman, a demo of some open source identity components with Baber Amin, a look at what is planned for the next GroupWise with Ken Muir, and some mind-bendingly cool data center automation stuff with Alan Murray.

And to top it off, we will be giving away ten–count ‘em! ten!–primo AMD-powered, custom painted laptops.

It’s going to be a lot fun. Hope to see you there!

“Will it Blend” for Novell?

They blended a bunch of mobile phones. They blended glow sticks. They even blended an iPod! So when Novell’s on-staff video producer Russ Dastrup said, “Let’s go to Blendtec and make a BrainShare video!” Erin Quill and I didn’t hesitate.

Here’s Russ basking in the warm glow of the Blendtec glitz. (Cheese is the name of the game at Blendtec world headquarters.)

Tom Dickson, CEO of Blentec, is an engineer at heart. He invented the blender, made it with a vacuum cleaner engine. Here’s Erin and Tom with the blender full of–

Hey! Why can’t we see what they were blending?!

And here’s me with my new engineer friend Tom.

So what, then, did three dudes from Novell take to Blendtec? Some things are not meant to be found out…until BrainShare.