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Rolling your own Linux event



Saturday January 19, 2002 - [ 12:51 PM GMT ]
- By Steve Litt -

Creating a Linux event isn't easy. But it isn't rocket science either, especially if you can "piggy back" your Linux event on an existing exposition or show. This article contains a proposed method of doing just that, and is divided into three sets of tasks: Before the show; During the show; and After the show.

This article combines the great ideas from the LEAP, SLUG and JaxLUG and also profits from their mistakes. I also tried to learn from their mistakes. And I added some ideas of my own.

BEFORE THE SHOW

1.. Attach to an Ongoing Local Computer Show
2.. Get Volunteers
3.. Get Adhesive LUG Labels
4.. Call for Speakers
5.. Get Freebies
6.. Procure Demo Machines
7.. Publicize
8.. Plan for Show Day

Attach to an Ongoing Local Computer Show
By far the easiest and cheapest way to display a regional presence is to attach yourself to a generalized computer show, in the form of a booth. As mentioned throughout this issue of Troubleshooting Professional, show promoters are well aware of the drawing power of Linux, so they often give away the booth to a Linux group willing to pay for the electricity and put on a good display. At CTS Orlando, CTS Clearwater and ITEC Jacksonville the promoter also offered an auditorium for the Linux group's speakers.
To attach yourself to a show, the promoter must have heard of you, and you must appear credible to the promoter. Perhaps the easiest way is SLUG's method. They gave presentations at the local Computer User Group, who already had a booth at CTS. The local CUG made the introductions, and SLUG got their booth.
Another way is to just ask. Don't assume you'll be turned down, especially if you can prove your LUG's Linux credentials. You might want to invite the promoter or his or her representatives to a LUG meeting.
Depending on where you are, there may be multiple shows you can participate. Contact them all. List the benefits of having a LUG presence. The top three benefits are traffic, traffic and traffic. At CTS Orlando and Clearwater and ITEC Jacksonville, the LUG booths drew exceptional traffic, and brought many additional attendees to the show. Refer the promoter to online descriptions of such shows (for instance, this issue of Troubleshooting Professional would make a great reference).
Last but not least, have someone in charge of relations with the show promoter. The promoter is a business person. Some geeks interface well with business people, and some don't.

Get Volunteers
Get volunteers very early in the process. Putting on a show, even piggybacking on an existing show, is much too much work for one or two individuals. You need a small committee to pull it off. You need volunteers. Here's a likely list:

a.. Show promoter liaison
b.. Speaker liaison
c.. Freebie supplier liaison
d.. Booth planner
e.. Publicity person
f.. Booth volunteers
g.. Team leader

The show promoter liaison works hand in hand with the show promoter to make sure everything works out to the promoter's satisfaction and to the LUG's.
The speaker liaison contacts and recruits speakers: Locally, regionally and worldwide. The speaker liaison then makes sure the speakers' needs are cared for. You want a reputation for taking care of your speakers. The speaker liaison also creates the presentation schedule, and then keeps it updated when last minute scheduling changes occur. If the speaker liaison is himself a good speaker, he is an excellent choice as a master of ceremonies in the Linux auditorium.
The freebie supplier liaison contacts Linux companies and persuasively asks for needed freebies, including (hopefully) modern distros, T shirts, penguins, computer tiles, mousepads and even pens. The freebie supplier liaison has the difficult job of letting suppliers know that brochures are not of interest to the booths visitors, but of course if the supplier gives a substantial supply of distros you'll be glad to pass out their brochures.
The booth planner is charged with procuring tables, tablecloths, table skirts (the cloth or paper that obscures the stuff under the table), the carpet, the computers, and other booth necessities. Table skirts can be expensive, so a friend of a JaxLUGger bough the proper material at a fabric shop and sewed the table skirts. The results were great. Because most of these things are obtained by request (OK, begging), the booth planner must have the utmost support of the LUG's membership and top administration.
To a large extent, the publicity person determines the success of the event. The event must be publicized long in advance to generate credibility with potential speakers. Additionally, potential attendees need plenty of advanced notice to schedule their trip to your event. DON'T ASSUME ALL ATTENDEES WILL COME FROM YOUR LUG OR EVEN YOUR CITY! As JaxLUG proved so convincingly, you can draw regionally. And as far as I know, JaxLUG gave only a week's notice. If there was one flaw in the strategies of LEAP, SLUG and JaxLUG, it was too little advance publicity.
The publicity person should also do his utmost to get the media to send reporters. The reason for the heavy publication of SLUG's victory at Clearwater CTS was that SLUG had the foresight to invite NewsForge's Tina Gasperson. Tina is an accomplished journalist who can get the story, tell it persuasively, and get it published almost instantly in heavily read venues. Try to have someone like Tina Gasperson onsite at your event.
When the event starts, the publicity person's work is nowhere near finished. He needs to commission photos and articles, and submit them to the media as the show is ending, acting as a liaison to the media. The publicity garnered after the show determines the likelihood of being invited back, or even getting a larger booth, next year.
The booth volunteers populate the booth, handing out freebies, answering questions, and greeting anyone remotely interested with "are there any questions I can answer for you?". There's no such thing as too many booth volunteers. The more there are, the more popular your booth looks, and the more traffic you get. Not only that, a surplus of booth volunteers allows other booth volunteers to use the rest room, have lunch, and look at the offerings of other booths.
Last but not least is the team leader, who coordinates the activities of all the other volunteers so that everything runs smoothly. LEAP's Phil Barnett, SLUG's Bill Preece, and JaxLUG's Art Wildman are great examples. The team leader typically is also the person who finds the volunteers in the first place.
Getting volunteers isn't easy. Most shows are on weekdays, and most LUGsters work 55 hours per week. Start by announcing volunteer opportunities at meetings and on your LUG's list. But that's just the start. You may be able to get volunteers from other LUGs, especially as booth volunteers. Art Wildman of JaxLUG raised such recruitment to an artform.

How do you sell a LUGster, with too little time, on the idea of volunteering? What's his motivation?

Everyone's different, but I'd imagine going down in history might be an excellent motivation. I'm certain for years to come folks will speak of what they saw at SLUG's Clearwater victory over Microsoft. And although the LEAP and JaxLUG offerings didn't generate the same level of publicity, it's likely next year they will. And those who were at this year's events will have really been on the ground floor of history. I remember how impressive it was sitting next to two ALS guys at the last Atlanta ALS, when they told me it started out as a simple installfest, and they were there.

Depending on the event, another motivation might be the ability to chat with the top personalities in Linux. At SLUG two other guys and I chatted with maddog for about 10 minutes. You can chat with maddog at a megashow, but I doubt it will be 10 minutes. At JaxLUG we all got to chat with Jeremy Allison, even though Jeremy was on an incredibly tight schedule.

For idealistic LUGsters the motivation might be that they'll be furthering the goals of open source. I think the last three months have reaffirmed the unique value of Grassroots Linux efforts.

Last but not least, volunteerism is the road to the "in crowd". When someone volunteers, he works hand in hand with the central people in his LUG and others, and just maybe with nationally recognized Linux figures. For the person who takes Linux seriously in their career, this is a must.

Get Adhesive LUG Labels
You can get a roll of sticky labels (like return address labels) for less than $10.00. Have the name of your LUG and your LUG website's URL on the label. These labels will be affixed to every freebie given out, so that every freebie becomes a brochure or business card. When someone asks for contact info, give em a freebie.

The labels can be affixed either before the event or during the event, but be sure every freebie given out has your LUG label.

Call for Speakers
Once there's a speaker liaison, it's essential to quickly recruit speakers. There's a chicken and egg relationship between speakers and attendees. Great speakers draw attendees, and great speakers are most likely to speak where there's a credible likelihood of a sizeable audience. Speakers are often scheduled months in advance, so it's vital to begin your recruiting efforts as soon as possible.

Local and regional hotshots are best recruited through the mailing lists of local and regional LUGs. The email should tell the 6 W's -- Who, what, where, when, why and how. Let the prospective speakers know what types of talks will be helpful but remember, the more selective you get, the less offers you'll get.

I asked Bill Preece how he managed to bring Jon "maddog" Hall to CTS Clearwater. His answer -- "I asked". He sent the email, maddog wasn't booked those days, maddog saw the value in an appearance, and he went.

With big name speakers from out of town you'll usually need to pay for their airfare, and on long flights some speakers require first class seats. Anyone who's been on a coast to coast flight wedged in between two large people understands the motivation. So start saving those dues or raffle ticket money.

Get Freebies
Good freebies are the lifeblood of a great show, the best of breed freebies are distros, and the king of distros are the modern ones. That being said, almost anything but gratuitously advertisorial brochures serve to attract visitors. Tshirts are premium, as are cute little rubber penguins. Computer tiles (those little 1 inch square things that stick in the recessed square in a computer case) attract visitors. Mousepads are valued. Anything wearable will go quickly. And of course, distros, distros, distros.

As soon as possible, the freebie liaison should write all the distro makers asking for CDs. How many? It seems like you can give away several thousand distros during the show, so I'd recommend asking for 1000. Ask Red Hat, Mandrake, Caldera, Progeny, and SuSe. SuSE has a record of sending numerous distros, but unfortunately those distros are marked as "trial version" or something like that, which of course doesn't give Open Source people a warm and fuzzy feeling. Don't forget LinuxCentral and CheapBytes. You might be able to get distros very cheap from them, or even free for older versions. A six month old distro is still a valuable resource for your booth visitors.

If you have enough volunteers, it might be a good idea to affix the LUG labels to the freebies before the show.

Procure demo machines
Your visitors will be very curious about Linux, so they need to see and touch your demo machines. Demo machines are best procured from the membership. SLUG's booth was very impressive, with several laptops running different Linux distros. But your membership might not be able to cough up 6 laptops, so you might need to make do with desktops. Place the CPU under the table, with only the monitor, keyboard and mouse exposed. If the computer is old and slow, place a paper label on the monitor showing the CPU speed and RAM so the visitors understand that it's not Linux that's slow -- it's the computer.

Ideally, each computer should run a different distro. At LEAP we've found out that visitors are impressed by demo installations. Repeatedly do a small "take over the disk" install on a fairly fast computer, and ideally narrate the install steps.

Have something kewl running on each box. Games, video, a movie, songs (don't violate copyright) are examples. If possible, have a refrigerator sized rack. For some reason that really impresses people. Have the rack play music.

And do what LEAP did -- run ethereal to show the traffic on your lan. That will impress the geeky network types to no end.

Publicize
Publicize early and often. You want lots of attendees. A large number of Linux attributed attendees pretty much guarantees you an invitation to next year's show, and makes it likely that your event will get good press. When publicizing, round up the usual suspects -- Slashdot, Newsforge, Linux Weekly News and the like. You'll want to announce it and ask for volunteers as soon as you have a few speakers to brag about. Then publicize again a few days before the event.

Your LUG website is a vital publicity component. It should list the 6 W's (who what where when why how). Be sure to include driving directions, and very clear instructions on how to register and get a free attendee pass. Often the show's website isn't too clear on this. Be sure to include driving directions for both in and out of towners.

Perhaps your best publicity comes from announcements on LUG mailing lists throughout your region. The publicity person should cultivate contacts in the LUGs in the region so the announcements go smoothly into the lists. I'd recommend the following schedule for such emails:

a.. 2 months prior
b.. 1 month prior
c.. 2 weeks prior
d.. 1 week prior
e.. 3 days prior
f.. 1 day prior

Don't forget your own LUG's list.
Plan for Show Day
Show day will be a REAL challenge. A crucial volunteer won't be able to make it. Scheduling changes will rear their ugly heads. Something will have been forgotten. Murphy is always the first guy to show up at a show.
Your best defense against Murphy is planning. Not only does it smooth over glitches, but the existence of a published plan reduces the intimidation factor, gains you more volunteers, and reduces the number of volunteers who have to cancel out.
The booth planner should draw a diagram of the booth so everyone knows where to put things. Use software like dia to draw the diagram. I'd recommend using an open booth, where the tables are at the back, with both exhibitors and attendees in front of the table. JaxLUG did this, and it worked out wonderfully. IMHO you don't want a table separating you from your booth visitors, and if you're giving a demo, you want to be watching the same screen as the attendee.
Reaffirm volunteer times and who does what. Who needs to show up for setup? Who will be there for teardown? Who is the master of ceremonies for the Linux Auditorium? The booth setup must happen fast and requires the coordination of many. Plan it the way you would the game winning football play. Choreograph it the way you would a dance troop. Make sure to get the order right. The carpets go down first, then the tables (in the right places), then the tablecloths and skirts, and then the machines and freebies. Plan a reliable way for the carpets, tables, table cloths and skirts to get there first, so you don't end up having to work around machines and freebies.
Determine how you'll keep up with changing speakers, presentation times and titles. There's no way you'll be able to absolutely stick to a schedule, so be sure you can change whatever sign or marquis you display at the Linux Auditorium.
Reaffirm the rules. Do you tweak M$'s nose like SLUG did, or play it more conservatively? How aggressive should you be in drawing visitors into your booth? What is the desired level of decorum?

Plan the teardown, which must be done quickly (or else you'll be slowing the paid-by-the-hour workmen tearing down the whole hall). Pick the teardown team, and make sure they know to tear down in reverse order of how they set up. I'd recommend teardown begin 1/2 hour before the end of the show. First remove the computers and freebies, then the tablecloths and skirts, then fold the tables and bring them out to the truck, and finally roll up the carpet and take it to the truck. Make sure everyone knows their teardown task, and what order to do it. Those not involved in the teardown should probably not be in the booth during teardown.

DURING THE SHOW

If your pre-show preparations were done well, the show shouldn't be rocket science.

1.. Coordinate with and Rebrief Volunteers
2.. Set Up the Booth
3.. Make Sure Everything Goes Perfectly for the Speakers
4.. Have Fun With the Visitors
5.. Shmooze with the Press
6.. Stay in Touch with the Show Promoters
7.. Tear down the booth

Coordinate with and Rebrief Volunteers
Hopefully everyone already knows their part in the game plan, but sometimes Murphy steps in. Rebrief and re-plan accordingly.

Set Up the Booth
The booth needs to go up fast. Hopefully everyone knows what they're going to do, and what order to do it.

Make Sure Everything Goes Perfectly for the Speakers
As a frequent speaker let me tell you that before a talk I've got better things to worry about than my AV equipment, or filling the auditorium.
Make sure the speaker liaison smooths the path for the speakers. Help them with the AV. Make sure they have a computer suitable for giving their presentation (a browser, StarOffice and KPresenter). If they have their own notebook, help them hook it up. Test the microphone ahead of time.
The speaker liaison should take care of announcing the presentation. He should then call for attention and stop the chatter, after which he should announce the speaker. That way the speaker begins with a packed hall of quiet people ready to hear his talk.
Take care of your speakers, and they'll give you much better presentation.

Have Fun with the Visitors
Visitors should be greeted, but not hard-sold. The method I used at JaxLUG was that I waited for either eye contact or a prolonged (more than 1 second) stare at something in our booth. I then walked up and asked "are there any questions I can answer for you?". I then shut up and listened. A minority said "no", at which time I moved on. Many more hesitated, then asked questions about Linux. I answered what I could and called other booth volunteers to answer what I couldn't. Instead of asking a question, many visitors tell their own Linux story, usually leading to a large discussion.

Let the visitors know the freebies are free. No need to scan badges. No need to sign up for anything. Those freebies are for them. Naturally, don't let a visitor grab 10 copies of a distro, but anything reasonable is fine. Have a couple of copies of your favorite distro in hand so you can hand them to a visitor who shows interest.

Try to attract visitors to and into your booth. People have a herd mentality. Nobody visits an empty booth, but everyone wants to visit the full one. As I said earlier, have the booth completely open, with the tables at the back and sides, but never the front. If a person has a question, invite them over to a machine to answer the question. That way they're in the booth.

When the booth is particularly full, have someone take a picture.

Shmooze with the Press
The press (especially the Grassroots Linux Press) is our best friend. Keep them informed of everything. Make their lives easier. Grant them interviews with your most eloquent spokesmen. Any press people at your show should be treated like royalty.

Stay in Touch with the Show Promoters
You're at the show at the discretion of the promoter. It's absolutely imperative that you fulfill the promoter's goals. Draw tons of traffic, but never at the expense of your neighbors. Ask the promoter for feedback on how much you're helping the show, and what you can do to help it more. The promoter might have info on your booth's stats -- try to find out those figures.
Tear down quickly and efficiently in the last half hour of the show
Faster than rats deserting a sinking ship. That's how the show's workmen tear down after the show. One minute the show is a beautifully carpeted place, and the next it's a concrete warehouse. These workmen are paid by the hour, so you never want to be the one to slow them down. The last half hour, pack up the freebies and computers and take them out. Then the last 10 minutes remove the tablecloths and skirts, fold the tables and take them out to the trucks, then roll up your carpet and carry it out.
Make sure you have PLENTY of volunteers on hand for the last half hour to get all this done.

AFTER THE SHOW

What is the sound of a tree falling in a forest where there's nobody to hear? The greatest LUG victory is meaningless unless the world knows about it. Post-show publicity is a must.

1.. Write an Article Describing the Victory
2.. Distribute the Article
3.. Plan for Next Year
4.. Celebrate

Write an Article Describing the Victory
The publicity person or someone appointed by him should write an article on the show. That article must be done within a day of the show's completion. It's best done during the show. Let the person write the article on one of the demo computers. Not only will the article be done contemporaneously, but it will raise the curiosity level of the booth's passers by. Naturally, the article must be backed up to floppy, because there's little control over a demo machine.

Distribute the Article
The article should go on your LUG website an hour before the end of the show. That night the publicity person and any on the publicity committee should write the Linux news organizations describing the article and asking for links. Slashdot, Linux Weekly News (and their Linux Daily News), NewsForge and the like. Also write all the regional LUG mailing lists with the link to the article. This is especially effective if there are pictures containing some of their members.

Plan for Next Year
Within a couple days of the end of the show (even better, at the show), talk with the show promoter. How did he like it? How does he want it changed next year? Try to get a commitment for a booth next year.

Within a couple of weeks, talk with your LUG for ideas on how to do it even better next year. Absolutely, positively write down all ideas so that next year you'll have a head start.

Celebrate
You just went down in history. Maybe you pulled off a supercoup like SLUG, or maybe it was just a solid victory like LEAP and JaxLUG. Whatever it was, your team did a great job and now it's time to celebrate.

Summary

Putting on a Linux exhibition at a computer show is hard work, but it's not rocket science. Plan solidly before the event, execute solidly during the event, and publicize and reiterate solidly after the event, and your LUG will join the list of hotshot LUGs doing regional outreach.

Steve Litt is the documenter of the Universal Troubleshooting Process. He can be reached at slitt@troubleshooters.com. This article originally appeared at www.troubleshooters.com and is Copyright (c) 2001 by Steve Litt. This material may be distributed only subject to the terms and conditions set forth in the Open Publication License, version Draft v1.0, 8 June 1999 (available at http://www.troubleshooters.com/openpub04.txt)
- posted by sankarshan @ 3/22/2003 04:21:00 AM 0 comments

 
The Business of Free Software: does a model exist?

A recent article on ZDNet titled �The commoditization of software� By John Carroll [URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-992824.html] opines that:

�Commoditization is a powerful force for consumer benefit. In hardware, however, there was never any risk of free hardware pulling the economic rug from under the industry. Commoditization, taken to the point where software is practically free, would run contrary to the interests of software developers who have an interest in earning a living from their craft. In short, a market where the price of software plummets too low will rapidly drain the value of programmers, and hence cost many programmers their jobs and drain the industry of investment as investors chase more lucrative places to put their money.�

In view of a thematically similar posting of the AsiaOSC site [URL: http://www.asiaosc.org] about how cost should not be used as a bargaining chip in the promotion of Free and OpenSource software, the media focus has shifted to the inherent economic model or lack thereof of the movement. I had earlier on, at the AsiaOSC site posted a reply to the effect that when FLOSS proposals for academic institutions are carried out, TCO is one of the major factors for consideration. If more stability, industry standard solutions are available at a lesser investment, then in the end cost does play a major role in the decision making process. The content and the reply is available at the AsiaOSC site as well as my personal weblog Random Thoughts [URL: http://sankarshan.blogspot.com]

It is a sad fact of the economy driven by FMCG media spends that �free� as a literal meaning has come to be associated with something obtained without paying currency. Notwithstanding the rallying cry of the Free Software Foundation [www.fsf.org] �free as in speech, not as in beer�. Free means gratis. End of story. FLOSS activists have repeatedly run into such obstacles at project proposal stages, review and implementation stages. And thus, a business model needs to be visualized for the effort. While the quote attributed to RMS has not being made available in the form of an entire quote, given RMS�s current vision to shift the end goal of programmers to a utilitarian level by changing their needs axis, it is not quite difficult to guess what he was talking about.

John states that �. . . . the vast majority of open source software is, in fact, available at no cost.� � very true. And this is perhaps been one of the driving and enabling forces of adoption of technologies and toolsets provided under the umbrella of FLOSS. The community model of development has ensured that successive contributions to FLOSS projects can be made available globally from a single point of reference � the repository. But what good are these products by themselves? The products taken in conjunction with solution sets and solution implementations are the main driving engines of growth. He further compares Adobe�s bottomline and Photoshop�s piggybacking on the Adobe engine based on price. Good point, but are we not comparing apples and peaches? In both the cases, the software houses are competing with price differential and a value addition second. And to take on one of his examples, in India, Oracle, which has a huge database penetration, is promoting the GNU/Linux version of its current DB suite as the stable and industry standard platform. IBM cannot be clubbed in this group simply because being the earliest of the behemoths it has diversified into so many areas that one corporate policy identification is probably difficult.

Profit earnings in the software segment are not like the consumer durables industry where in case topline growth remains stagnant, business process restructuring can ensure some amount of bottomline ego boost. Case in point being the FMCG giant HLL. Sales and extraneous factors directly affect revenue stream. Thus, a revenue model must factor in periods of sluggish sales as well as ramp up costs for investing in new technology. However, what is most important is that a revenue model must also realize the value-addition that software should provide to a business. �Free software movement� is not about preaching/propagating that �software should not be worth any monetary value�. Free software is about giving the users and the technicians a choice. Freedom to choose is one of the major drivers in any technology oriented society. To compare the freedom and the breadth of such freedom, let us for a moment sidestep and analyze the effects of the Shared Source Initiative by MSFT. Considering that the customer is a partner in the initiative [as it has signed the agreement], hypothetically let us assume that a mission critical application is proving to be troublesome. Burning the midnight oil, the team finds out the cause of the problem, patches through a solution [thoroughly cost effective] that involves some little modification to the Windows code. Can you implement it? Most certainly not!! The Shared Source license permits the partner to look and not modify. Consider the same under GNU/GPL and imagine is the mission critical application were to be the revenue bulwark of the company. Free software allows changing the code with respect to the hardware; proprietary software makes it mandatory to change the hardware to fit the code.

Software valuation is 2 fold � first what the developer perceives as the worth of his/her coding effort and second what the market perceives it to be. In the Indian context, with the artificially hiked prices of software suites, the market value of any software is skewed. Consider this fact, the Borland Turbo C++ suite, required in most educational institutions, is available for INR 8800 for a single user license. While compiler environments like Bloodshed DevC++ [released under GNU/GPL exist], rampant usage and proliferation of unlicensed software has ensured that innumerable copies of such environments are used in schools and colleges not to mention student desktops. Price rationalization is one of the biggest factors that creates divide in �developing countries�. It is absurd for such economic models to pay what is the price for the piece of software in other �developed� nations. This is just one of the many examples that can be put forth to justify the free software model. John�s hypothesis that pricing it low and/or promoting it as free might just make the pricing structure head south is, I feel, unfounded. Enough business case studies have been carried out to identify Free Software business models. The earliest and path breaking work being Eric Raymond�s �The Magic Cauldron�. Models exist that make money from free software usage and providing solution sets, and companies exist that are doing nicely in a sluggish economy based on these models. Moreover, market economics has an aversion to anything being priced too low. What however is the fear is that a �low price� might just be equated with �inferior quality� of software. Taking the example of Redhat itself, it is absolutely based on a service provider model. Even though the GNU/Linux ISOs can always be downloaded from any of the ftp sites, the money that the company charges for the box packs is about the value addition it brings to the client end in terms of support and service. The companies and individuals will not pay more for customization, but will pay for widgets and toolkits that add value. Value addition and estimation of such value using conventional toolsets will lead to more implementation. Free software offers the advantage of providing a veritable array of off-the-shelf toolkits that could be mixed and matched to provide a working solution in the least possible time. Sort of like the �Lego� of our earlier years.

The software segment is akin to the service industry with value addition and ROI being brandished at each stage as the main plank of IT spend. And Redhat managed a �thin� profit while selling the product, so why should investors [potential and current] shy away from the company? Mandrake�s predicaments were of its own making. With corporate giants like Sun, IBM, HP gunning for GNU/Linux, sometimes at the cost of their own product chains, it is very much possible that the market would be looking at a shakeout in the number of competitors involved. Certainly it might resemble a gunfight as in the old westerns, or then it might also lead to consolidation efforts like that of UnitedLinux. But a failed business model? Never !!

Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay is a Free software enthusiast and a member of the iLUG-Kolkata chapter URL: www.ilug-cal.org He can be reached at sankarshanm@softhome.net


- posted by sankarshan @ 3/21/2003 06:22:00 AM 0 comments

 
Basic Principles of Software Source Code Licensing
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Articles/LicensingBasics.mspx

This document is designed to provide a fundamental understanding of current methods of software source code licensing. A few definitions of terms are necessary to begin this discussion.
"Software" is a program or set of programs that instructs computer equipment (or "hardware") to operate in a desired manner. "Source code" is the portion of a program's language that is written and read by humans, specifically, computer programmers (the other portion of the language, "object code," is read only by the hardware).
"Intellectual property (IP) rights" are ownership rights to property that is intangible (lacking any physical form), such as ideas, artistic concepts, and inventions. IP rights include such things as patents, copyrights, trademarks, and trade secrets. Other than the fact that it has no tangible form, IP is much like any other property. The author of source code owns the original ideas expressed in that code, just like a book author owns the original ideas expressed in that book, and can sell that ownership to someone else.
Owners of IP rights in source code, however, often choose to retain those rights, while allowing other parties to view and use the ideas expressed in that code by "licensing" the code. Licensing gives programmers incentive to develop new ideas by leaving them with ownership of the most valuable aspect of their labors�the IP. Licensing also makes programmers' ideas useful and practical, by allowing others to improve, modify, and combine those ideas in ways programmers, by themselves, cannot�such as by turning the ideas into products that businesses and consumers can use and afford. In this manner, licensing helps fuel the vigorous innovation and growth that has characterized the software industry for the past quarter-century.
There are several software development models, each with distinct benefits and drawbacks. Within each model, moreover, there are many types of licenses, also bearing specific advantages and disadvantages.
Commercial Software Development (CSD) Model
In this traditional model, the developer bears virtually all burdens and risks of converting original ideas into practical solutions, often investing heavily in research and development in hope of realizing a profit through sales of resulting software products and related support services. Source code access usually is limited (often to customers, partners, and academia), because the value for the developer lies in having unique knowledge of the source code. The CSD model has produced the lion's share of outstanding software over the years, particularly for most business and individual consumers who do not care to understand source code and who will pay modest premiums to leave such technical concerns to the developer.
The main benefit of the CSD model is that software users can rely on the expertise of a single entity which, driven by profit motive, has powerful incentive to make the software useful, cost-effective, reliable, legal, and compatible with other software and hardware. Users also can depend on the developer for support, service, and updates. For this reason, there are thousands of viable CSD companies employing millions of workers. The principal drawback of CSD is limited opportunity for outside programmers to advance the developer's innovations in new directions. In addition, if the developer decides that a project is no longer commercially viable or abandons it for other reasons, it is less likely that someone else will have the expertise to pick up the project and run with it. Finally, commercial software costs money to acquire.



Open Source Software (OSS) Model
In this model, the developer licenses the ideas embodied in its source code, at little or no cost, to anyone who cares to use them. Some OSS developers are programming enthusiasts driven by a desire for peer recognition or personal accomplishment rather than profit. Commercial OSS distributors, who cannot derive significant revenue from selling the software itself, seek to profit by selling things associated with OSS software: hardware that runs the software, non-OSS software that uses or works with the OSS software, support services and reference manuals for the software, and so forth. The OSS model also has produced outstanding software over the years, appealing more to programmers and companies that maintain their own programming departments, but less to ordinary users.
The main benefit of the OSS model is that it allows any programmer to advance the ideas of the original developer, and global "communities" of programmers do emerge to contribute to major OSS projects. Another obvious benefit is that there is little or no cost in obtaining OSS software, although training, service, and support costs may be higher over the life of the software. The principal drawback of OSS is that no single entity can be held responsible for individual contributions of a far-flung army of unrelated programmers. There also is the possibility that one version of an OSS program will not work properly, or at all, with other versions. In addition, it is not clear that the OSS model can sustain software companies over the long term.



'Free' Software and the GPL
A faction within the OSS community believes that commercial software is immoral and that nobody should hold IP rights in source code. This faction espouses the use of the GNU General Public License (GPL) to discriminate against all CSD. The GPL permits free use, modification, and redistribution of software and its source code by anyone, but also imposes three key restrictions on every licensee:

If the licensee distributes code licensed under the GPL, it must guarantee availability of the source code for the entire work for unlimited replication to anyone who wants it.

When the licensee distributes GPL code, it may not charge a licensing fee or royalty for the software, but may charge only for the cost of distribution.

If the licensee includes any amount of GPL code in another program, that entire program becomes subject to the terms of the GPL.

This third restriction often is called a "viral" clause, because it causes the GPL to "infect" any future software that incorporates GPL code, whether or not the developer intended that result. This even applies to software not in existence at the time the license was drafted. It should be pointed out that there are many OSS licenses, most of which do not include GPL-style restrictions and do not tell licensees how they must license their own innovations. This anti-commercial philosophy is rejected by much of the OSS community.



Shared Source Initiative (SSI)
In May 2001, seeking to garner the best aspects of both CSD and OSS, Microsoft launched its Shared Source Initiative, enabling it to make source code more broadly available to customers, partners, independent developers, researchers, students, and other interested individuals, while retaining the IP rights that are vital to sustain innovation within the software industry. The SSI is an evolving framework that supports a variety of licensing programs, each tailored to meet the source-code access needs of a specific constituent community.
Like the OSS model, the SSI uses broad-based licensing to foster the growth of global communities of software developers who, armed with Microsoft source code, are free to devise new solutions and implement their own innovations. By placing source code in the hands of universities throughout the world as a research and teaching tool, moreover, the SSI nurtures the vibrant software industry of the future.
Like the CSD model, the SSI rewards innovators for their research and development efforts by protecting their valuable IP rights in the source code they produce. By preserving this free-market incentive to labor for future rewards, programs like the SSI ensure that the software industry can sustain its unparalleled level of innovation and continue to fuel the global economy, while providing users access to source code.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 07:21:00 PM 0 comments

 
Software Development Models Overview
Posted: March 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Articles/SoftwareDevelopmentModelsOverview.mspx

The Software Ecosystem
Microsoft's Shared Source Initiative derives from the company's standing as a commercial participant in the greater software ecosystem�a continuous cycle of critical interactions among the various organizations and individuals that develop and work with software. The success of the information economy over the past several decades is due, in large part, to this essential cycle, which has enabled the governmental, academic, and commercial sectors to collaborate in the advance of technology and innovation. The actions that fuel the software ecosystem can be grouped into five fundamental categories:

Governments and universities undertake basic research and dispense the findings both into the societal base of technical knowledge and to private enterprises and individuals capable of developing these innovations commercially.
Governments also establish and enforce legal regimes that recognize intellectual property rights, creating powerful incentives for private enterprises and individuals to develop products that build upon the basic research.

Commercial enterprises undertake applied research to develop products that advance the state of technology, generating jobs, profits and tax revenues that boost the global, national and local economies.

Commercial enterprises and their employees contribute tax revenues and philanthropic donations that help fund additional governmental and academic research.

Commercial enterprises and individual developers contribute directly to the technical knowledge base by participating in the efforts of various organizations that establish open, public standards.

Open Source Software
The term "open source software" is broadly applied to any (or a combination) of four interrelated concepts: the OSS development model; OSS philosophies; OSS licensing regimes; and OSS business models. The development model is the "core" component of all OSS-the other three concepts, and the debates surrounding them, lend further definition to the OSS movement or "culture."

There is no unified OSS philosophy. In fact, there is a great deal of disagreement within the community itself. The two most fundamental and often rival OSS schools of thought can be characterized loosely as

Ideological: �
Believes that all software (both source and object code) should be available at no cost to anyone, because no one should hold intellectual property (IP) rights in software.

Pragmatic: �
Supports ownership of source and object code but believes that the OSS is a superior development model that can serve as the basis of a healthy software industry.

Microsoft is not opposed to the OSS development model. Indeed, both commercial software and OSS have demonstrated benefits for sectors of the software market, which has determined that multiple licensing and distribution models should coexist in healthy competition. In particular, OSS offers the significant benefits of community-building, customer feedback, code transparency and custom application development. The Shared Source Initiative seeks to afford these benefits while preserving valuable intellectual property rights in software.
The OSS development model has the potential to support services and hardware businesses, but has yet to demonstrate the ability to support profitable software businesses, particularly in the long term. In the software industry, intellectual property is a company's most valuable asset. The OSS model requires a company to compromise the exclusivity of its IP to support communal development. It is extremely difficult to generate revenue streams from software to which everyone has no-cost access.
Commercial Software
As a commercial enterprise participating in the software ecosystem, Microsoft believes in sharing its source code without sacrificing its intellectual property rights. The Shared Source Initiative framework supports an array of licenses and programs that make source code more broadly available to customers, partners, developers, researchers and other interested individuals.
The commercial software development model fosters innovation; it meets the needs of the customers, and has greatly empowered hundreds of millions of computer users. It is the basis for over 200,000 software companies employing greater than 2 million people and generates hundreds of billions in revenues (source: BSA). The commercial software model best serves customers' needs because software producers modify the characteristics of their products based on user feedback. The commercial model fosters reliability as developers subject programs to rigorous quality control prior to release. Furthermore, the commercial model promotes interoperability among software programs through the disclosure of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) that enable programs to work together. Control over source-code availability by software companies permits technology innovators to prevent others from using their developments without compensation.
Today, the debate between commercial development and open-source models centers around three broad topics:
(1) total cost of ownership, (2) business models, and (3) security. The cost of software includes an initial purchase cost, as well as costs associated with installation, management, support and training. Studies show commercial software often has a lead over open source when it comes to total cost of ownership. The open-source model uses software as a "loss-leader" to drive sales of proprietary hardware, proprietary software or services. After years of some software companies experimenting with open-source business models, few have achieved profitability. Limited intellectual property protection for open-source products discourages investors and is driving many open-source products into the hands of large hardware companies that increase hardware costs to offset software-development costs.
Virus and hacker attacks are facts of life for both commercial and open-source software products. Open source faces a unique challenge because the availability of source code makes it possible for developers who want to find and fix security vulnerabilities to do so. At first blush, that may sound like an advantage, but there are two accompanying problems: (1) a great deal of expertise is required to identify security flaws and to fix them without creating new vulnerabilities, and (2) readily available source code also empowers malicious hackers who use the transparency of the open-source model to exploit weaknesses in the product's code base.
Innovation and Intellectual Property
The free exchange of ideas is an important ingredient in creating and fostering an innovative environment, but not the only ingredient. Motivation and incentive also are critical to innovation, especially in the context of large, complex systems that software programs often must implement. Many innovative ideas have been developed and brought to market only through major corporate research and development investments, venture-capital funding or combined public/private research initiatives. Intellectual property laws protect the creative works of authors and inventors to promote innovation and differentiation-both of which ultimately benefit the public.
Many in the OSS community have shifted to hybrid business models. They are making the same business decisions as any commercial software company in terms of what products and services to give away, what intellectual property to protect, how to generate revenue and how to participate in the community. Market forces are driving both commercial and OSS developers toward this hybrid middle ground.
The optimal environment for innovation is the coexistence of OSS and commercial software within the greater software ecosystem. This ecosystem has sustained innovation for decades through an ongoing cycle of interactions among organizations and individuals working with software. The governmental and academic research communities conduct fundamental research under an open-source model; private-sector developers build upon this research to develop viable commercial products; and then the private sector provides tax revenue and philanthropic contributions that fund additional research by the government and academia.
The competition that open source is brining to the commercial software industry is healthy and will continue to spur debate. Because software develops and changes so rapidly, however, governments should not favor one development model over another in either procurement or economic development. Governments should purchase software programs that offer optimum combinations of cost and features for their needs. They should take a technology-neutral approach to promoting software development; otherwise, they risk undermining the economic contributions made by local and international software companies.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 07:19:00 PM 0 comments

 
Microsoft Research Source Licensing Program
Last Updated: March 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/Licensing/Research.mspx

Overview
The Microsoft Research Source Licensing Program (MRSLP) authorizes faculty, staff, and students in the licensed institution to use, reproduce, and modify source code and related confidential information provided by Microsoft for educational purposes and sponsored government and commercial research.
Benefits
Access to Microsoft source code through the MRSLP benefits academic institutions, researchers, students, and the larger software ecosystem by:

Maximizing educational access to technology.
Facilitating specific research projects funded both by governments and commercial enterprises throughout the world.
Encouraging broad-based research and development that ultimately spawns improved software solutions and tools for the future, as well as the next generation of innovators.
Allowing source licensees to share source or other source-based work with other Microsoft Research Source Licensees.
Allowing the University, depending on the policies of the licensing institution, to own the intellectual property created by the user of the Microsoft source code.

Program Details
The MRSLP provides a mechanism for delivering source code for the most current versions, beta releases, and service packs of Microsoft Windows� 2000, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003, and Windows CE .NET.
Products Included
Personal, Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter versions.
Both x86 and IA64 builds for Windows XP.
Service packs and beta releases.
Use and Restrictions
Licensees may not use the source code for curriculum building, textbook publishing, or general classroom use.
Organizations not affiliated with a university lab are generally not eligible for this license.
Eligibility Requirements
Have the sponsoring government official, dean, or other University officer sign the Microsoft Research Academic Source License Agreement on behalf of the academic institution; and
Reside in an eligible country.

Fulfillment
Source code is shipped via CD.
Customer Commitment
In exchange for obtaining access to one of Microsoft's most valuable assets, Microsoft requests that customers respect our intellectual property and treat that intellectual property confidentially.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 07:18:00 PM 0 comments

 
Government Source Licensing Program
Last Updated: March 2003
http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/licensing/government.mspx

Overview
The Government Source Licensing Program (GSLP) provides a government organization access to Microsoft� Windows� source code for the purposes of development and support of internally deployed applications and products that run on Windows. This program is based upon the Enterprise Source Licensing program (ESLP) but is designed to deal with the licensing differences between private and public organizations.
Benefits
Access to Microsoft source code through the GSLP benefits government organizations by:

Providing insight and a deeper understanding of Windows.

Facilitating security and privacy audits and maintenance of customer's computing environment.

Enhancing performance tuning that allows customers to adjust and optimize their own systems and related applications.

Enhancing the pre-deployment engineering process for enterprise environments.

Improving internal support and troubleshooting capabilities of deployed Windows systems.

Improving the feedback mechanisms that ultimately contribute to the development of better Microsoft customer solutions and tools for the future.

Program Details
The GSLP provides a mechanism for delivering source code for the most current versions, beta releases, and service packs of Windows 2000, Windows XP, and Windows Server 2003.
Products Included:
Personal, Professional, Server, Advanced Server, and Datacenter versions.

Both x86 and IA64 builds for Windows XP.

Service packs and beta releases.

Use and Restrictions:
Licensees may read and reference the source code but may not modify it.

Licensees may debug their internal applications that run on top of Windows, using Windows debugging tools to make calls into the Windows source code.

The license term is one year.

Eligibility Requirements:
Access the source code in an eligible country, subject to United States Government Export Restrictions.

Demonstrate the existence of an internal IT environment with policies and procedures to protect the confidentiality of the source code.

Sign the Master Source Code Agreement and License Form.

Fulfillment:
Once both parties sign a licensing agreement, the licensee will gain access to the code through the MSDN� Code Center Premium secure Web site.

All source code updates are provided by Microsoft through MSDN Code Center Premium.

MSDN Code Center Premium offers secure search, view and just-in-time (JIT) debugging functionality to augment the efficiency and value of source access.

Customer Commitment
In exchange for obtaining access to one of Microsoft's most valuable assets, Microsoft requests that enterprise customers respect our intellectual property and treat that intellectual property confidentially.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 07:17:00 PM 0 comments

 
Title
�
Why Shared Source is not Open Source
Date
�
2003.03.18 3:21
Author
�
roblimo
Topic
�
Closed Source
http://newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=03/03/12/1330253
- By Robin 'Roblimo' Miller -
This topic has been written about at least 1000 times. But hardly anyone seems to have highlighted the biggest practical difference between Open Source and Shared Source: That you can modify Open Source software to fit your device (and other software), while Shared Source only lets you modify your device (and other software) to fit the Shared Source software.
Let's imagine for a moment that you build computers for a living. You have a chance to get your hands on 100,000 UnSuper(tm) CPUs and motherboards at a price so low that it'll let you turn out $149 PCs and still make a profit. The only problem is, every operating system you try running on the UnSupers crashes after 15 minutes of use.

You are eligible for Microsoft's OEM Source Licensing Program, so you sign up for it. And Lo! One of your very smart employees soon figures out a one-line change to Windows that stops the UnSupers from crashing. Then you remember Microsoft's Shared Source licensing terms, among which is this fatal clause:


Licensees may read and reference the source code but may not modify it.
Suddenly your dreams -- of increasing your market share by a factor of ten and making lots of money not only on the $149 PCs but on the monitors and other options that go along with them -- are dashed.

Or are they? Your smart hacker finds a couple of lines of code he can modify in GPL-licensed Linux to solve the crash problem, and since Linux is Open Source you modify those lines and sell those UnSupers -- running Linux -- like they're going out of style, and use your additional profits to give all your employees a raise and buy a 60' yacht for yourself. And since your company's visibility is now lots higher than it used to be, and your sales are going up, up, up as a result, you hire 300 additional people to help you keep up with the demand, and start looking at mansions across the lake from Bill Gates's place.

All that because you were allowed to modify a few lines of code instead of just looking at it. Amazing!

Closer to reality, what if you are a federal IT manager whose agency is eligible for Microsoft's Government Source Licensing Program? You find a (proprietary) COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf Software) program that costs $10 per copy per year and can replace a highly-customized (proprietary) app you're currently licensing at a cost of $10,000 per user per year -- for 5,000 users.

"Hmmmm," you say to yourself, "I can cut our software licensing costs on that application from $50 million per year down to $50,000!"

Except there's this one annoying glitch that causes another important program to freeze every time both are run at the same time, at least in Windows. And this second important application was sold to your agency (which had someone who wasn't as smart as you running the IT department at the time) by a company that has since been bought out by a huge conglomerate that wants $10 million for a code fix -- and since it's proprietary software, this company is the only one that can help you.

Meanwhile, the company that sells the $10 program you have your eye on -- that's really somewhat better than the $10,000 one for your agency's purposes -- refuses to change its product's code for you, and won't even let you decompile the code to see what the problem might be.

So you and a couple of your people spend some nights tromping through Windows, and you come up with a possible solution at the operating system level, a way to load two DLLs differently so the two programs you need don't have any conflicts.

But you're dealing with Shared Source, not Open Source, so you're not even allowed to try the modification!
It's not as if you want to redistribute your modification or sell a forked version of Windows, but you still can't make those changes, at least if you want to follow the terms of the Shared Source agreement.

Oh, well. You opt for the least evil solution, and pay $10 million for a code fix on program #2. No big deal. It's only tax money, right?

Well... maybe the taxpayers don't like to see that "only" in there. Indeed, if they find out about this whole deal, they're probably going to be a little steamed, aren't they?

Maybe those taxpayers will feel a little better about getting ripped off if you tell them how vital the software industry is by using the following information (culled from this Microsoft.com page):


The commercial software industry has shown that it spurs more innovation generating product improvements while driving down the cost of software. It has resulted in the following:
More than 2 million employed worldwide (source: BSA)

More than $149 billion revenue annually worldwide (source: BSA)

Annual growth rate > 13 percent (source: BSA)

Productivity grew 200 percent in U.S. in last five years; half attributable to IT (Source: Digital Economy 2000, Department of Commerce)

Here's another fine quote from the same Microsoft.com page, which (I forgot to mention earlier) is titled, The Microsoft Shared Source Philosophy:


The Shared Source initiative is a balanced approach that allows Microsoft to share source code with various communities while maintaining the intellectual property rights needed to support a strong software business.
Tariffs on imported rolled metal products were once supposed to be the key to a strong U.S. steel industry, but keeping the price of steel high ran up autmakers' raw material costs and, hence, the price of cars. Steel import duties also increased the cost of refrigerators, power tools, and many other important products. In the end, it proved better for the country as a whole to let most steel tariffs disappear the way purely proprietary software licenses -- even those that hide behind buzz phrases like "Shared Source" -- are gradually disappearing today.

Keeping one industry strong at the expense of other industries is usually not sound economic policy, even though people whose incomes depend on the industry that is losing its strength will always come up with reasons why their industry is an exception to this rule.

Warning: I did not say 'GPL Great! Proprietary evil!'
Software licensing is going through a period of rapid evolution. The idea of "intellectual property" as something that has value just like land, cotton, wheat or a factory is rather new. Software licensing is even newer. And the idea of formalized Free and Open Source software licensing (as opposed to public domain) is newer yet.

Software licensing and the concept of intellectual property are changing so rapidly, and so many people of so many different philosophical persuasions are so busily talking out of so many sides of their collective mouths about it all, that discussions and debates about software licensing and intellectual property often seem to become arguments about personal belief systems that have nothing to do with facts or figures. Or software.

Meanwhile, those of us who try to stay at least semi-rational about all this need to keep several things in mind:

There are many different Open Source and Free Software licenses, each with its own set of protections, disclaimers, and obligations. And new ones are being written all the time. Obviously, the "perfect" Open Source software license has not been written yet.

Many software developers prefer to use proprietary licenses for their products, and they have a perfect right to do so.

If you dislike a particular kind of software license, don't buy software with that kind of license attached to it. That's your right.

If you feel a particular kind of software license is the only morally justifiable one, don't use software that carries a different kind of license. This, too, is your right.

No matter what we think about software licensing today, changes in technology and society will almost certainly make our current licensing methods obsolete within the lifetime of the average person reading this article.
But even as we consider all these factors, we must keep one thing in mind whenever we discuss software licensing with people who make a living from proprietary software but want to pay lip service to Open Source: Shared Source cannot legitimately be compared to Open Source.
Indeed, Shared Source is not even related to Open Source in any substantive way, because it gives its users none of the advantages they get from using real Open Source.
Links
"Robin 'Roblimo' Miller" - http://roblimo.com/
"OEM Source Licensing Program" - http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sharedsource/oem.asp
"Government Source Licensing Program" - http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sharedsource/government.asp
"this Microsoft.com page" - http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/sharedsource/philosophy.asp
"real Open Source" - http://opensource.org/
- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 07:15:00 PM 0 comments

 
OpenSource@SarsunaCollege : a bold initiative
By Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay

Sarsuna, Kolkata: On 13th March, 2003, the reporter along with Co-ordinator iLUG-Kolkata, Indranil Das Gupta visited Sarsuna College to take a sneak preview of the slow but steady migration of the College administrative systems to OpenSource Technologies.

With the prices of network cards falling through the floor, the project developer Nirmalya Lahiri has utilized one of the interesting concepts offered by GNU/Linux involving network cards. He has taken the route of Linux Terminal Server Project or LTSP or diskless PCs aka �thin clients� to reduce the cost of computing as well as design a scaleable and stable system.

When asked about why he chose such a design, Nirmalya had these reasons to offer:

� Clients do not have to be kept in non-dust, temperature controlled environments
� Data is more secure as it resides on the server and thus the backups are also centralized
� The clients, or �thin clients� are free from virus attacks. The risk, if any, is only at the server end
� Overall system administration cost is reduced as there is only one machine to worry about
� Clients are not required to be upgraded and thus the working life is extended
� Academic institutions work on limited IT spends in the budget, thus effective utilization of resources means certain areas can also be covered within one financial year.

As a concept, LTSP is not new. CUI-LTSP has long been used ever since the project really took off. In Sarsuna College, both iLUG-Kolkata members had an experience with GUI-LTSP. The server OS is running PCQLinux7.1 and the chosen desktop is KDE (Nirmalya states that he is more comfortable using and teaching people to use KDE). This report has a few accompanying screenshots that give a feel of the setup, available on request from the author.

LTSP is just one of the facilitating or enabling technologies that Nirmalya is using in his Office Automation Project. We also had a look at the prototype of the project (using PCQLinux7.1 as NetworkOS) in action. Aimed at an institution-wide IT setup, that eases administrative tasks by helping effective decision-making, the project is ambitious in nature. As of now, in the prototype stage, it works on the age-old design of a Client/Server application. The server database being the industry standard PostgreSQL. The Office Automation Project covers the entire range of functionalities from admission and fees collection modules to financial accounting, library information system as well as laboratory information system. Capable of robust performance and designed to produce exhaustive time-snapshot reports, the system when fully functional is designed to make IS a crux of College administration.

In any OS/application migration, end-user training forms a major bottleneck. As part of end-user orientation, Nirmalya has found an able user in Prabir RayChaudhuri. Prabir (or Nandan as he is affectionately called) says that �I was not one of the regular �yes sayers�, I bugged him to no end to incorporate features that the end users would find useful� and so it seems, as throughout our presence at Sarsuna College he was found to be utilizing the system as well as suggesting more of �tweaks�. The Head Clerk, Mr Sankar Bose was all praise for the system and how it has helped in point-of-time calculation of the fees collected. The other users of the system, Sadhan Roy, Siddharta Mukherjee, Mukul Sarkar were all praise for the ease of operations as well as the intuitive design of the interface. It seems that although they all took some time to get familiar with the workings of the system, as of now they cannot seem to do without it.

The Principal of the College, Dr Hrishikesh Chattopadhyay, graciously made time for us from his busy schedule. He stated that the Principals Training Session at IISWBM had made him aware of the need to integrate IS/IT with College Administration, and was keenly following the project. While the system is still at the prototype stage, Nirmalya assured us that within October, 2003, he will be able to let us check out a fully functional, stable, scaleable and cost effective OpenSource migration at Sarsuna College.

Till then we will be following the progress of his project and wishing him all success.




Necessary details:

Sarsuna College: 4/HB/A Ho Chi Minh Sarani, Sarsuna Upanagari, Kolkata-61


Nirmalya Lahiri: nirmala_bhaban@vsnl.net


iLUG-Kolkata chapter: www.ilug-cal.org


LTSP: www.ltsp.org


LinuxForYou: www.linuxforu.com [Vol 1. Issue 1 February, 2003]



The last 2 links are provided to understand the fundamentals behind LTSP. We do not intend to re-invent the wheel by copying what is already there on the net and these sites.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 06:34:00 AM 0 comments

 
Cost is not an issue
Posted by: Khuzaima on Tuesday, March 11, 2003 - 10:40 AM
Some of those in the Free Software community are of the opinion that we
should emphasise the low-cost aspect of free software rather than deliberately sidetracking it. This is dangerous and potentially harmful to our movement. This article tries to explain why cost should not be an issue in the advocacy of free software which should focus entirely on software freedom.
The deliberate sidetracking of the low-cost aspect of free software is extremely important. Please consider the following:
A large proprietary software corporation like say, Microsoft, if and when sufficiently threatened by free software, could flood the Indian market with low- or no-cost versions of its proprietary software without seriously affecting its bottom-line in the short term. It could even turn a blind eye to so-called "piracy" of its products (for a while!). Why? To achieve what is called in the industry as "product lock-in." This is a classic technique used widely in the proprietary computer industry (hardware and software) and Microsoft in particular excels at it. Once locked-in, many customers find it more difficult and costly to switch to alternatives (free or non-free) rather than just purchase the next "upgrade" from the earlier benevolent Microsoft.
By stressing on cost rather than software freedom, we fall into the above trap. When a user is not even aware of software freedom it can be very easily denied to him or taken away from him. It is of paramount importance to make him see that this is not an issue of cost. That in fact it is not unthinkable that may be, just may be, at some point in the future he might actually have to pay a higher monetary cost to guard (or achieve) this freedom.
Next comes the issue of service and support. By stressing on the low- or no-cost aspect of free software products, we would be completely disregarding the service and support of these products. We would be really kidding ourselves if we thought that the free software movement can be permanently sustained by voluntary service and support. Service, support and customization would in fact be the main revenue sources of future free software business models. By saying that free software is gratis we make it very difficult for people to make money from it.
Let's face it, (free software) programmers have to make a living too (yeah, surprise!) And there's no such thing as a free lunch. By stressing on the low- or no-cost aspect of free software, we would be doing a great disservice to great programmers and putting hurdles in their path to making a living. This in itself may prove suicidal for our movement.
Government procurement: This is actually a non-issue. We all know that procurement decisions of our governments are based on several complex criteria (many of them _extraneous_) which have very little to do with *COST*. The less said about this the better.
I urge fellow free software advocates to please sideline the issue of cost in the course of advocacy. To bring up the low- or no-cost issue is to tread a dangerous path strewn with potential minefields.

Re: Cost is not an issue(Score: 1)
by sankarshan on Mar 14, 2003 - 02:57 PM
(User info | Send a message) http://sankarshan.blogspot.com

The article clearly states a roadmap for Free Software activism and i daresay the future course advocates of FLOSS should be taking. However let us be clear on some points.
It is agreed by everybody that average John Doe needs a working machine that serves his *limited* skill sets and even specific demands. For a discussion of the demands, i am always willing to go offlist, but suffice to say that these are not much different from the SOHO demands. An article in the Economic Times of India around a month back opined, that with hardware prices crashing through the floor the only barrier to a system purchase remains to be software. Lets face it, for a completely licensed SOHO system, besides shelling out ~ INR 25000/- for the base system an equivalent is required to get software. In such a scenario how does freedom matter.
Freedom as a philosophical and historical concept has long been the enabling force of civilisations. Each man wants to be free and wars have been fought over cases where freedom has been curbed. The four bases of freedom as espoused by FSF appeal to the haves in the society. If ICT is aimed at being an enabling force, capable enough of breaking down barriers between social strata by making knowledge available to all, then price matters. Cost matters as does ROI.
For an idea of how TCO can affect schools investing in e-education, i would like to point you to an article on the iLUG-Kolkata site "TCO - a case for Linux in Schools". A project run by NIIT outside their Delhi HO, using Internet access as a means to study self-learning paradigm showed that given the toolsets, children all always eager to learn. The differential is in having access or not having access to affordable technology. Is it a surprising conclusion, that developing countries and their economies (eg Namibia etc) are all the more eager to embrace Free Software culture solely because of the economic metrics involved ?
For cash rich proprietary closed source giants like the one from Redmond, it is very easy to give away programs at 'no-cost'. Shutting out competition by bundling software and/or application utilities (eg Internet Explorer) with the OS it ships is a long prevailing monopolistic strategy. And it has been roundly thrashed in courts of law. But it also does not make marketing sense for the company to start offering programs for gratis, not even lower end support withdrawn programs. The only reason is that it establishes a precedent and ups the ante. And from then on it is a different ball game.
Application or need migration to Free Software rests on the bulwark of proving shorter time for the investment to be recouped, greater stability, proven ability to withstand stress, and the concept of 'freedom'.
'Product lock-in' is an accepted marketing tool. But take a look at the indian market scenario. Courses in the so called institutes teach 'MS Word, MS Excel' etc mind you not generic terms of wordprocessing or spreadsheets. Such a scenario even when alternatives of OpenOffice and/or StarOffice being present lends credence to the fact that marketing and awareness go hand in hand. Microsoft will not tolerate piracy, not even for its short term product inroad gains. Along with BSA it has stringent anti-piracy measures in place. Local colleges in West Bengal, where i live have received punitive actions or threats thereof so as to prevent unlicensed software suites being used.
It is a marketing campaign fallacy or the unfortunate fallout of FMCG marketing that 'free' as a word is associated with something obtained for gratis. Freedom and free are not related at least not first up. It is a responsibility of the groups involved in the movement to stress on that. But concluding that cost does not matter is something i would emphatically disagree with.
regards
sankarshanm@softhome.net
- posted by sankarshan @ 3/20/2003 06:14:00 AM 0 comments

 
The wrong reasons: an imminent war

'Saddam has been carrying on a reign of terror', 'He .. has to leave Iraq within 48 hours or face the consequences'. And so on and so forth spoke George W Bush. Now tell me we haven't heard this before. Or utterances similar some half a century ago.
GWB likens the war on terrorism in its latest form the fight for democracy, to the Crusades of the early ages. History teaches us that those Crusades were one of the bloodiest and most self-serving war campaigns ever to be fought. Rampant looting and brigandage characterized what was to be the battle of Christianity over the infidels. Cloaking ambitious aims using tokens like religion and or national security has long been the methods of politicians. But this time, the brazenness and the willful disregard to global movements seem to know no bounds. Massive rallies around the world, candlelight vigils tell a sign that people are aware of the potentially crippling costs of war. And what war is that? With what aims?
9/11 brought into focus with gory and ghastly reality, the aftermath of a consistent arm-disarm policy of the US. The fact that the hand that fed the child would be severely bitten, was a foregone conclusion. Yet, after the scenes of heroism died down, a severely somber GWB administration promised to smoke out the leader of the terrorist outfit. An expensive and a sapping campaign produced little or no results. Osama still manages to deliver dire warnings on video, and the war still goes on. Iraq is the latest casualty of the US's goal to redeem its battered ego and boost the self pride. It is another fact that while Clinton rule was characterized by moral decadence, the country had prospered on the wave of an economic recovery. Republican governments have been notorious for involving US in war campaigns that serve no end. And GWB is no exception. Iraq may possess WMD, but then these were part of the US's campaign in the proxy war against Iran. And just 'cause GB Sr faced a defeat at Saddam's hands in the Gulf War, does not make a solid case for creating another theatre of war. Till date there has been no consistent reason offered for the threat of war that is looming large over Iraq. And suspiciously, there have been no denials as to the comments and remarks that the entire campaign is geared not towards getting a 'democratic regime' in place but towards oil. Iraq sits on the richest oil fields, and Saddam seems in no mood to oblige.
The horse-trading that went on at the UNSC and is still in progress concerning the resolution might just have taken leaf out of the books of Indian political leadership. Such blatant offers of aid, arm-twisting and coaxing cajoling of the fence sitters has not been witnessed for quite a long time. While prominent members have repeatedly stated their intentions to use veto powers, the 'us or them' policy of the GWB administration led by the hawks reeks of national jingoism at its worst. A recent interview on CNBC with a Jane's Intelligence Digest specialist led to the revelation that Jane's predicts a short swift war. However, campaigns where the US has gotten itself in a bind by failing to identify the cause usually lasts for long and leaves festering wounds.
The economic costs of war have been discussed threadbare. The human costs need to be factored in. However, what is more required is to understand the shift in global realpolitik that has been the side issue. After the end of the Cold War years, it is again that the world has been sharply divided into them and us camps. Equally vocal and increasingly progressing far apart hawks and peace activists. Are we prepared to re-live the era and accept the costs?

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/18/2003 10:58:00 PM 0 comments

 
The commoditization of software
By John Carroll

Special to ZDNet
March 17, 2003, 6:06 AM PT
URL: http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1107-992824.html

COMMENTARY--For years, hardware companies struggled under pressure
from the forces of commoditization, as widespread
popularity of standardized operating systems forced them into withering competition, the end result of
which was a phenomenal reduction in hardware prices.
Today, the shoe is on the other foot, as software is commoditized by the appearance of free (as in cost) open-source software. Constructed through the joint effort of thousands of programmers around the world, its low cost serves as a strong challenge to proprietary software companies' business models.
Commoditization is a powerful force for consumer
benefit. In hardware, however, there was never any risk of free hardware pulling the economic rug from
under the industry. Commoditization, taken to the point where software is practically free, would run
contrary to the interests of software developers who have an interest in earning a living from their craft.
In short, a market where the price of software plummets too low will rapidly drain the value of
programmers, and hence cost many programmers their
jobs and drain the industry of investment as investors
chase more lucrative places to put their money.
The "de facto" free nature of open source
The last time I poked my nose into the open source
debate, a lot of people pointed out that open source
does NOT imply no cost. They noted that licenses can
be written in such a way as to require fees which are
paid back to the copyright holder. This theoretical possibility, however, does not change the fact that the vast majority of open source software is, in fact, available at no cost.
There are a number of likely reasons for this.
Whenever you have access to the source code, cloning is facilitated. AT&T once owned the Unix operating
system, yet that didn't stop the rapid propagation of
Unix clones once AT&T showed willingness to license
the full source to universities. Programming ideas
are universal, and there are an unlimited number of
ways to represent an idea in code. Thus, with careful attention to detail, developers can clone an entire program without directly copying a single line of code. Such cloning makes it hard to maintain a baseline price, particularly when certain segments of the development community dance to the tune of the free (as in cost) software movement.
Second, open source culture is suffused with a belief
in the merits of free, as in cost, software. As I noted last June, Richard
Stallman is on record as saying that programmers
needed their expectations of compensation readjusted
in order to return, Rousseau-like, to some lost state
wherein programming Van Goghs do their work for the
sheer love of programming. At the time, some
responded that I shouldn't pay any attention to the
man behind the red curtain as he isn't representative
of the open source community at large. Yet,
commoditization driven by free software is a growing
reality, and every day freer, open source software
becomes available on the internet.
It's easy to disagree with specific statements made by Stallman. Yet, it is hard to avoid the fact that these statements, in the aggregate, have shaped the open source culture in such a way to create an emphasis on free, as in cost, software.
The nature of valuation
Value, or the price of a product, is not an inherent
attribute of that product. It is the result of the
interplay between supply and demand, and is completely
divorced from any inherent characteristics of the product in question. Oil costs much the same to
extract whether the price is elevated by war fears or low from oversupply. Similarly, the fact that steel
prices go up because of a rapid increase in the demand
for steel doesn't change much the raw cost of
producing that steel.
Expectation, however, also plays a large part in the determination of value. If people expect to pay a high price, they tend not to question it. Any American who has seen the price of Levi Strauss jeans in Europe ($90-$100) has wondered in quieter moments whether they couldn't finance a future trip with a suitcase full of jeans at an entrance to Rome's Termini station. In Switzerland, the price of mixed drinks is astronomical ($10 is typical). A Swiss friend told me that this was a historical anomaly due to former high taxes on hard liquor in Switzerland.
The tax today is more reasonable, but the price of
mixed drinks in bars remained because the Swiss were
used to paying those prices, and so bars were happy to
continue charging them.
The same expectation principle applies in the market
for software. Tales abound of companies that moved
from a revenue model based on advertisements (hence,
free access) to one based on end-user fees, only to
find that no one was interested in their product
anymore. Adobe Photoshop is very expensive (currently
$586.99 on Amazon), which is about $300 less than
it used to cost) yet it continues to be the
best-selling graphics editor on the market. Even
Adobe competitors benefit from the price. Paintshop
Pro is a relative bargain at $109, but even that price
is higher than the software average and is only
sustainable due to expectations cultivated by Adobe.
Living in a commodity market
If expectations are created that software isn't
something upon which consumers, business or otherwise,
should spend much money, then that lowers the value of software, which by extension lowers the value of the programmers who make it. This isn't exclusive to makers of shrink-wrapped software, but applies up and down the supply chain, including even makers of tailor-made software (read: contractors and consultants). If you bought a coat for a buck, would you consider paying $20 to have it let out after too many fried chimichangas dipped in Cheez Whiz added
a few inches to your girth, or would you walk out and
buy a new one? On the other hand, if you paid $200
for the coat, you might consider paying $20 to have it
taken out.
Consider SAP. Major consulting companies earned
billions helping large companies customize the SAP
product. SAP skills were at the top of the list on
any jobs board during the 1990s. SAP was also eye-popping expensive, which justified customization expenditures that often ran into multiple millions.
The operating theory among many open source
programmers is that the market for their services will persist because people will want to pay for
customization, something that will be easier to afford
given cost savings in the base product. I'll grant
that customizing software isn't as simple as buying a
wider coat, but I reject the notion that companies
will spend MORE on customization (or even maintain
former budgets) simply because they paid less for the
base cost of software. More likely, expectations of software cost will be adjusted downwards, resulting in
downward pressure on developer salaries (which is
happening) and a greater incentive to sublet
customization to the lowest-cost location.
The market for development outsourced to foreign
locations is getting a lot of press these days. Certainly the slow economy has a lot to do with the
demand. Furthermore, programming skills are more
generally available than in the past, which was bound
to happen given that nations such as India and China
aren't standing still. However, I think the role that
software commoditization and its driving force, open
source software, is given too little attention. A
large component of America's economy is information
technology, and free software undermines demand for
such products, thus hampering recovery and increasing
the attractiveness of outsourced development.
Furthermore, given the general lowering of software
price expectations initiated by the popularity of free alternatives, interest in outsourced development only rises.
Lastly, high profits attract high levels of
investment. RedHat managed a thin
profit selling open source software in a fast
growing market for Linux, but how does that stack up
against Adobe, IBM's software division, Oracle, or
even Microsoft? That sort of profitability attracts
investment by the bucketful, whereas RedHat's sort
won't attract the same levels. Less investment means
fewer software jobs, and lower valuation of programmer
skills.
Conclusion
As I've noted in the past, software is a
strange market. Doctors don't roam the countryside
offering free medical services and spewing invective
against the evils of the for-profit medical industry.
Carpenters aren't forced to contend with a free-carpentry movement, and financial analysts at Merrill
Lynch aren't pilloried at "free financial analysis" conventions. For whatever reason, a surprising number of people whose aim is to make a living from programming endeavor to provide free alternatives to product sold by others within the industry.
Free software has the same effect free TVs would have
in the market for televisions. The question on the
minds of people involved in the production of software
(or TVs) should be whether that effect is desirable.
As investment
in software shrinks, so will the value of
developers. That's a reality that even open source
developers must face.
John Carroll is a software engineer living in Ireland. He specializes in the design and development of distributed systems using Java and .Net. He is also the founder of Turtleneck Software. We wish to give John a special thanks for his 25th contribution to our forums.
- posted by sankarshan @ 3/18/2003 07:50:00 AM 0 comments

 
Cult Brands : how consumers sell the brands
by Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay[sankarshanm@softhome.net]


Matthew Ragas, of Matthew Ragas and Associates, makes an interesting observation in respect of cult brands: it is all about how the consumers or end-users sell the brands. Nowhere is this phenomenon more uniquely expressed than in the rising sales of Harley Davidson bikes across the US. Priced at a premium well over the going rate, the fanatical fan following that Harley commands as well as the notion of freedom provided by it ensures that it remains one of the best selling brands. The same notion of a 'cult' fan following helping the sales and marketing along is evident in the case of Linux (or GNU/Linux � this is what will be meant hereinafter) and Mac OS. Given their strategic positioning as 'rebels', the brands appeal to a distinct cross-section of consumers. In this case, 'consumers' is used as opposed to the more commonly used 'end-users' so as to allow the perspective of the marketing side to be visible.

Ever since James Dean popularised the concept of a 'rebel without a cause', business brands have tried to sell themselves as such. Sometimes with a cause and sometimes without a justifiable one. Naomi Klein, in her now famous 'No Logo' traces the route of global corporatisation of the society. What is however not said in so many words is that more often than not, public relations exercises are created with exactly that aim in mind.

Cult brands are in general, when they appear on the scene, 'disruptive technologies or ideas'. Having gotten used to doing things in one way, the emergence of such brands challenges the existing pecking order. In the initial stages of the Linux movement, it derived its core strength from the antipathy towards the established social order which was represented by Microsoft. And the consequent strategic blunders committed by the Redmond giant ensured that a fan following was already trying out the new OS. Enthused by its claims of stability, security as well as the emotional gratification offered by being in the other camp, Linux OS on desktops and servers were soon de rigeur.

The brand is not simply the logo or the policies espoused by the organisation in relation to that product. The brand represents an emotional umbilical cord between the consumers and the company. As such 'cult brands' need to be re-invented and re-positioned on a regular basis.

The views and opinions expressed in the above article are those of the author. It does not in any way reflect those of the organisations with which he is in contact, neither is it a part of their public relations effort.
Copyrights to the above content belong to the author. Reprinting and/or republishing the same in any form using any media will require permission from the author as well as due acknowledgment.

- posted by sankarshan @ 3/17/2003 06:00:00 AM 0 comments