Josef Assad

I see you're firing up to 6,000 people. Analysts say you're in more trouble than a pregnant cheerleader, and that you've been that way for a lot longer than nine months. Analysts think you should spin off your hardware business (but then, they thought you should spin off Java back in 2003...) And those are your small problems.

I just got back from day 1 of the Open Source Days 2008 conference where I gave a speech entitled "Free Software in the Enterprise: from Use to Community Membership". At this point, I have slept 4 hours in the last 72 so this won't be a long post. I'll just say that the conference organizers have done a brilliant job and I'm glad to have helped fill the speakers roster.

I am also very very happy with the content of my speech (presentation deck uploaded here in this post), but I dread seeing the uploaded video; my delivery was very far below standard. Still, I am happy not to have clogged the conference with yet another generic "business open source" rehash; I think the ideas in mine are solid and quite new.

Again, a pat on the back to the organizers and conference staff. Embedded slideshow after the jump.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been getting some attention here and there, mainly for the potential for file sharers to get disconnected. Turns out there's a lot more on the horizon; quite apart from the agreement's potential to ban fairly innocuous practises such as deep linking (boy Google, are you in trouble), the European Commission's Directorate-General for Trade has been soliciting. (pause) Ahem, that was worth the sentence fragmentation. To resume, the DG has been soliciting input and commentary from various stakeholders.

The Global Intellectual Property Center under the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the wold's largest lobbyist organization) has responded with this letter (that's a pdf link). It's a really good read, and I commiserate unequivocally. With the mothers who raised these slimeballs.

It's a bee-in-the-bonnet weekend again, and having left the draft petition text up for a week for comments it is now live right here.

Sign it, tell other people about it, if you're on facebook or other social media spread the word, make your voice heard.

You know I have a bee in my bonnet when I blog twice on the same topic in the space of a scant few hours after a blogging hiatus of several months (well it's either that or I'm scatterbrained; your pick).

I don't want to let this slide. e-voting is too important. I'm not the Welfare Minister, but we live in a country where that person should answer to the people and perhaps we just need to shout loudly enough. So I have decided to draft a petition, and I need your help.

I have been making myself scarce on my own website of late; when you move back to your homeland after 12 years and pick up a very exciting new position with a place as cool as Rambøll Informatik, you'll tend to drop off the radar for a bit.

Thanks to Pinse I now have a long(er) weekend, and there is one thing I wish to piss and moan about. I want to call out the Danish Welfare Ministry.

The story goes like this. Eight Danish municipal authorities are moving towards e-voting and the Welfare Ministry (for byzantine reasons which with any luck will be tackled in the comment section of this post) is stakeholder in requirements definition and tender formulation. And the Welfare Ministry has warned the municipalities against mandating open source.

I was listening to Josh Berkus speak to Laporte and Schwartz about PostgreSQL versus Oracle on FLOSS Weekly, and a real bona fide gem emerged.

Josh relates the difference in product offering between a Sun supported PostgreSQL and a typical Oracle offering, and it isn't the price difference (significant though it may be) which is the real issue, it is the difference in expectation between Sun and Oracle.

Oracle need to sell the database as it is their primary product. At Sun, if the PostgreSQL business breaks even that is well enough since it wasn't the primary business: the platform is. PostgreSQL is just part of a stack making the whole platform look more appealing.

So as a commercial database consumer, you have a choice there, and the choice goes to the heart of vendor relations quality (upon which most other cost and performance factors can be demonstrated to depend). One of the vendors will want you to use the product because it will create a direct revenue stream for them, and the other has no direct commercial interest in you using the system, though they wouldn't mind it if you ended up liking it and looking at their other products.

Of course, this is over-simplifying matters a little. But when you're talking vendor relations management strategy, you're talking long term and when you talk long term, it's the broad brush that paints the clearest target.

click to enlargeNow we've seen it all from the Microsoft marketing department: New Windows potato crisps. The puns almost write themselves.

"Them must be some hot chips!"

"Windows, crunchy as a pwned n00b's ego!"

Here I come. In one week from now, I'll have moved back to Denmark after living abroad for far too long. I'm still looking for a place and still attracting and evaluating professional options but my bags are packed and, there on the coffee table, see that? Yes, I have the ticket too.

Our two cats are also moving, but only to my in-laws' place in Italy as a temporary measure. Or until my mother in law gets tired of cat poo the placement of which approximates what you'd get piping /dev/urandom into gnuplot.

Chiara is taking a job in Rome. We fly back to Europe, and then our paths diverge. I fly on to Kastrup, she drives home with her cats from Malpensa. With a bit of luck, we'll manage to minimize the time till we are living in the same country together again (anyone got good suggestions for a human development/microfinance/udviklings/bistands arbejde type of gig in København for her?).

Pas på Danmark, jeg er på vejen tilbage!

I was very happy to see my article, The Free Software hardliner, the Corporation, and the Shotgun Wedding on linux.com a few days ago.

For one thing, it is obviously an honor to have articles you've written running there. For another, that article discusses some things I eeded to get off of my chest, and the comments section of the article indicate that there may be others who feel the same way.

And of course, it's nice to be paid for writing! (No, this little puppy isn't making anything other than €0.00 per copy yet...)