WebMink

Scoring Points

Dare Obasanjo (a Microsoft employee, who I doubt is trying to score points and who I have actually met despite the appearance otherwise) tries to change the subject into competitive rivalry in response to my posting below, which is admittedly robust (I'm in that sort of mood after being abused by Rod Smith lately...) Dare says:
When Microsoft folks weren't blogging and directly interacting with our developer community people railed because they felt the company was aloof and distant from its developers. Now we try to participate more and it is a sign that “it's a closed-source dictatorship - no amount of pushing up-hill will fix that”. I guess you can't win them all. :)
The appearance of Microsoft employees commenting in public is laudable and refreshing and working wonders for their employer. But it doesn't change the fact that the biggest problem Microsoft has is that it thinks all the smart people work for it, to paraphrase Bill Joy - all the technology and architecture decisions are made behind closed doors and the community gets no vote. The appearance of listening is all well and good, but the fact that anything could change unaccountably at any time in the technology will get less and less acceptable as the connected society takes hold.

That's why I think open source is at its heart a societal trend and not a free-stuff or an anti-Microsoft movement, which ultimately we all must face or fail. It's why I think at its heart the JCP has got it right and is getting better all the time. And it's why I continue to be bemused by the automatic hostility Java faces from the open source community.

posted at 8:03 PM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Expectation management

Ted Leung takes me to task for making him expect the list of Sun bloggers would be full of incisive Java commentary (or, indeed, full of commentary). I plead undocumented tongue-in-cheekness and apologise a little, although I'd point out that Sun actually comprises more than just Java people - who can fault Norm Walsh's blog for example? And there are plenty of MIAs on the Microsoft side as well I think.

More interesting, though, is his observation about where the richness lays in the Java community. Whereas Microsoft's community essentially has only Microsoft thought-leaders (after all, it's a closed-source dictatorship - no amount of pushing up-hill will fix that), the Java thought leaders are all over the wide community as you'd expect from the openness of the JCP (now in new, more transparent 2.6 flavour). This gets reflected in the blogs - some percentage of the thought-leaders maintain them in each case, and the distribution is in the same ratios. Ted concludes:
In the end, the two companies have to decide not only that they want to foster communities, but what kind of community they want.
I think they already have, and I think the distribution of blogs is an accurate reflection of that choice.

posted at 5:53 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Tuesday, March 9

RSS-lovers shoot new supporter?

Personally I was really pleased to see an interview with my boss talking about RSS and how Sun intends to implement it in future offerings. So I was kinda surprised to see some of the boosters of RSS taking pot-shots. Dave Winer, for example, could have been a little more positive (and, all credit to him, says so in Scoble's comments), and Robert Scoble admits to being 'snarky' (because of the weather).

So some comments:
those Microsoft bloggers are killing us and we need some of our own!
We're already here. Not in the legions Microsoft has, admittedly, but it's the quality that matters not the quantity (or, indeed the volume of postings!)
Also, MSDN had RSS Feeds almost a year ago. Welcome to the RSS party. I agree, it is a fun one!
Actually, most Sun web properties (including java.sun.com) have had RSS for quite some time, as has the Java community site. And the Java community itself has been up there for ages with RSS support - just look at Java.Blogs for example, maybe that was actually inspiration for the PDC blogs?
Schwartz: "Those communities early on in the company's existence were probably nowhere near as well connected as they are today, certainly in nowhere near the same real-time mechanism as they are today. And RSS is increasingly becoming the principal means of real-time communication."
Translation: "Will someone please offer Scobleizer a ton of money to leave Microsoft? He's killing us." ;-)
Wrong! Schwartz was thinking of something else! But I can't tell you what just yet. Watch this space :-)
RSS wasn't done in the "open source community." It was done by Dave Winer. At least the RSS I use and like best (RSS 2.0).
Maybe he was thinking of Atom? And there is a ton of RSS implementation being done in open source.
By the way, is there a client-side RSS News Aggregator that was built in Java?
Interesting question. There's Friday and JPluck for mobile users, HotSheet (which installs using WebStart so you can just give it a try from here even on Windows, Newscrollet, NewsMonster of course (hybrid, I agree), nntprss which lets you use your newsreader to read RSS too, RSSView, RSSOwl, and doubtless others (credit to the Weblogs Compendium for helping with that list). In fact, I am struck by the diversity that Java has encouraged, even on mobile devices. Has life at Microsoft stopped you seeing the rest of the world, Robert?

Personally I am very excited by the fact that Jonathan Schwartz feels the need to promote Sun's use of RSS and I'm looking forward to ways we can apply the old mantra here, "co-operate on standards, compete on implementation".

posted at 2:56 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |

Correction needed

Darryl Taft implies negative things about my honesty in this interview with Eric Raymond:
Well, if it's the incident I think you're referring to, I am that reporter and I can assure you he was not misquoted. We have a transcript of his keynote and he said everything I reported, just the way I reported it.
Actually the thing Eric is referring to is the article by PC Pro which got Eric upset by focussing on the marginalia of a conversation instead of its meat and I doubt you have a transcript of the conversation, Darryl. Maybe you're a tad nervous about some other article, which the thoughtful are now considering?
Update: Suitable corrective text applied.

posted at 12:20 AM (UK) | Comment? (0 so far) | links to this post | |