For database development, I'd suggest two books which will have value even after the current technology has rolled over:
Database Design for Mere Mortals
Practical Issues In Database Design
Also, The Essence of Databases is pretty good and not expensive at all.
For the tech/management audience:
Software Project Survival Guide
I'd suggest that you stay away from the first edition of O'Reilly's SQL in a Nutshell, which needs a lot of editorial cleaning up. Actually, the O'Reilly books in general suffer from very poor bindings which could make them expensive for libraries to keep.
Skip anything version-specfic; by the time that you shelve it, it will be out of date.
-Josh Berkus
Actually, under OS trademark enforcement is even more important because all other IP rights have been released. Lemme give you an example:
I have a very useful business software product built on OS technology. I would like to relase it as OS -- however, I've invested a consderable amount of my own time and money in developing the product. As such, the only way for my investment to pay off (and for me to pay my office rent) is if users, having downloaded the OS version of my program, hire me at high hourly rates for customization, support, and training.
Thus, if another consulting company opened a domain as, say, nameofmyproject.co.uk without a prior relationship with me as an attempt to get users to come to them instead of me for support and consulting, I would be infuriated and take them to court. They would be profiting from my code by stealing my income. OS works precisely because it is possible for others to profit from my code without picking my pocket.
It's actually this sort of fear that has prevented my from launching the OS project.
All that being said, MySQL did have a prior relationship with NuSphere, and I think here we're witnessing a flamewar resulting from a breakdown in that relationship.
Heck, I had one of these on an ATARI 400 in 1983. No-one could type on it... in fact, ATARI had to ship all its 400 customers free keyboard replacements because their customers hated the membrane keyboards and were threatening to return the computers (I know, I was one).
"Magnetic therapy", now membrane keyboards... just goes to show that the old adage about history is true. Me, I'm headed to F*ckedCompany with FingerBoard, inc.
As a commercial developer, I have been interested in moving some of my projects to Python. However, I have been dissuaded by the lack of a full-featured Python IDE with an extensive widget/GUI class set.
I took a look at BlackAdder, but was quite dissapointed in the actual functionality (Python/Qt integration is buggy) and available database widget set. When do you think that BlackAdder will have the kind of high-powered RAD functionality offered by products like JBuilder, Forte and Visual Studio?
-Josh
Terrorism's place in Politics
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Eco-Terrorism
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· Score: 5
Regardless of how you feel ethically about what the Eco-Terrorists are doing, there are two *major* points to consider:
1. Terrorism has one, and only one effective place in revolutionary history. Terrorism is a very effective way to dissuade a colonial pover from maintaining its commercial operations in your country. However, all attempts to use terrorism against domestic authority result instead in a backlash against the terrorists; there has been no occasion, historically, where this has not been true. In fact, this principle is so effective that from 1970-72 the FBI's COINTELPRO branch used it to destroy the Black Panthers, simply by having undercover agents urge them on to more and more outrageous acts (more about this later).
Thus, whatever you feel about the goals of the "eco-terrorists", their methods will, if anything, cause the opposite of the desired reaction. Non-violence is not just ethical; it's essential for survival.
2. In all probablity, some of the "eco-terrorists" are CIA operatives *posing* as radical environmentalists in order to inspire a counter-reaction. Think about whose father remains the de-facto "old man" of the CIA, and which U.S. executive officer is currently have a lot of trouble with environmentalists in Congress.
You may be ready to dismiss this as "conspiracy theories", but it's not far-feteched at all. When I was a member of a certian radical environmental organization ('scuse the vagueness, this could still lead to legal trouble for me) we decided the best way to stop a certain factory operation was to unionize the factory workers. Two undercover FBI agents in our organization (as it turned out) used the organizing effort to sneak into the factory and sabotage the equipment, against organizational policy. The result nearly killed some of the workers and the unionization effort broke up... as did our organization.
Now hold on a cotton-pickin' minute here. I am a PostgreSQL expert and I use PostgreSQL in my projects. But that doesn't stop me from reccomending MySQL when it's appropriate.
When is it appropriate? An example: I was called in on an emergency basis to help a Silicon Valley company with their web database. Turns out they have a DB with over 6,000,000 records in the main tables backing an interactive web site *and not one singe DB tech on staff*!! Needless to say, MS SQL Server was malfunctioning a bit.
I got them running on MySQL. WHy? Not because it's a better performer, or because it supports SQL compliance (it doesn't) but because their web guy, with almost no DB expertise at all, can run it without it crashing or bogging down in out-of-date indexes.
So give the MySQL team a break. They've created the Honda CRX of databases -- fast, cheap, reliable, and easy to park -- and don't measure their product against standards it wasn't designed for.
If you don't mind, I'd like to tack on a few things to this good question:
- A small business release should be based on a SQL-compliant database such as PostgreSQL, inlcuding a client-server model. Is this in your plans?
- Have you considered adding simple invoicing to GnuCash (ala Quicken Home & Business) as an intermediate step?
- To add to the poster above, I could easily sell me & my clients 2-5 copies of a Gnu cash small business release, at $200 each, if it came up to the quality of Peachtree or better.
I made the leap from FT to full-time contracting 5 years ago. I don't regret it in any way, and have helped a number of my friends get started in freelancing. That being said, contracting is not for everyone.
If you have chronic, serious health issues... keep your FT job. If you get anxious about money easily, don't freelance. If your skills are not up-to-date (i.e. You're a PASCAL or VAX expert), reconsider. Make sure you're comfortable with a)working alone for long streteches from your home (it can get lonely) and b) schmoozing with potential clients. Consider that you will need to handle your own, potentialy complicated, billing, taxes, insurance (business AND health!) and legal issues.
Once you've thought about all that, here's your three easy steps:
STEP 1: Save up 3-6 months salary. Six months is ideal, but you need a minimum of three. You can expect that after you take the plunge, it'll be at least 30 days before you get a decent contract, and another 30 days (or more!) before you get paid.
STEP 2: Find a contractor in your area, in your discipline, who is successful and wants to hire you as a subcontractor. I've done this for a few others - I take 10-20%, and they get the benefit of my experieince with contracts, clients, project management, and setting up a business.
STEP 3: Start contracting on your own! form an LLC (don't consider incorporating until you're making at least $100,000), get business cards, a website, and an office, and go for it.
I reccomend against trying to "ease your way into contracting" by moonlighting. As an experienced master contractor, I don't hire moonlighters... whenever your contract interferes with their day job, you lose. As a result, the only projects you'll be offered as a moonlighter will the really awful ones no successful IC wants to take.
E-mail me for more useful advice: mailto:josh@agliodbs.com
What you describe is an industry-wide (the industry being business and accounting software) problem, and not in any way confined to open source software.
I develop business software for a living, and as a rule the state of business software technical development, security, and UI is abysmal. It's the reason why my business has grown 50% per year for 3 years -- there simply aren't good in-the-box solutions for most business operations problems.
Two examples: I did research for a temp agency, looking for temp placement software. Out of 20 packages my assistant reviewed, only 2 passed our "usability" test (some vendors threatened lawsuits if we published our reviews!) and those two each cost over $30,000 for 5 users. Second, one of my clients purchased a $150,000 legal billing system. They now pay me $25,000 per year for support and troubleshooting they can't get from the vendor, and are considering having me write them a custom program in 2003.
Further, because of programmer shortages and legacy compatibility issues, most proprietary solutions use out-of-date technology. Probably half of those bad Temp Placement apps were still using DOS/Btrieve.
The software situation for OS software is just as bad, in a different way. Fully debugging the UI, and writing the help files, are hard, boring work, and as a result seldom gets done unless some company pays a team of programmers to do it. Still, I'm pushing my clients towards OS because at least that way they're not dependant on the vendor to fix problems and write add-ons.
My advice for the ISP? Find an OS package with good architecture and technology, but bad UI, and pay some money to develop a good UI! Remember, "Free Software" means "Free Source" not "Free Beer," and you're expected to contribute out of your pockets to the development of OS software.
Sorry to comment twice, I know, "read twice, comment once."
However, I have to respond to this statement. When I started my business, I made the commitment that 50% of my clientele would be non-profits. Since then, I've cut that down to two low-maintennece non-profits.
Why? Simple: non-profits are as high-maintenece as the $150/hour for-profit clients, and they can only afford to pay 1/4 of that. Becuase the average non-profit has spent years without adequate tech support or training, most start phoning any friendly tech consultant morning, noon, and night. It's not harassment - they're just desperate.
Worse, Publically funded non-profits and the government are all too similar in their operation. I've had one grant-funded non-profit threaten to sue me for a database I created for them for 10% of standard rates because it wasn't as fast as they wanted. I've had grant-funded non-profits waste dozens of hours of my time on pointless meetings and specification drift, and then throw away the software once I completed it. As a result, I only do private non-proftis now, and only ones with 10 staff or less.
Still, I feel that every independant developer should help support one local non-profit. Stick to the small ones, and make sure they know the limits of your support.
I support a lot of non-profits in my business. The average has 5 functioning computers, and 1 out of 3 has no network to speak of (Win32 peer-to-peer or sneakernet).
As a computer consultant, user, and American four "worst case" scenarios for the anti-circumvention portions of the DCMA have occurred to me for your use:
1. As a database programmer, I am frequently called upon to rescue client's data trapped in legacy systems. Usually these legacy systems are software that is no longer supported, even if the manufacturers are still in business. Under the anti-circumvention restrictions of the DCMA, I would no longer be able to legally retrieve the client's data from an encrypted database, even if there was no other way to get the data! Two examples of data rescues that would now be illegal under the DCMA:
a. Shortly before Y2K, I needed to dump all of a client's bookkeeping data from ACCPAC for DOS into text files so that the data would not be lost when the application crashed at midnight, December 31st. The ACCPAC sales staff were quite uncooperative, claiming that I needed to purchase an "upgrade" for the unsupported product -- to the tune of $4000 -- before they would let me have the codes for export. However, information on the data storage scheme they used was available via the web, and a contractor I knew was able to piece something together that retrieved the relevant data (for about $700). This would now be illegal, and my client would be forced to pay $4000 to save their own data.
b. Frequently my clients lose their Microsoft Access database passwords, or mess up the security scheme so that they cannot get into their own database. I have a 3rd-party product which uses a disk sector read of the database in order to get the passwords, allowing the client to get their database back. Under the DCMA, this product, which could also be used for cracking, would become illegal and my clients would be helpless.
2. As a consultant, I often have to carry around CD media of software so that I can install and un-install certain components to my laptop and work with the client's software. The MSDN Library and the Windows 98 CD are good examples. However, dragging those CD's to every client's site puts them in some jepoardy of scratched and loss, so I make copies and leave the originals in a safe place.
a. Under the DCMA, if the software vendor put rudimentary copy protection or put the software on encrypted media (like DVD), it would be illegal to do this kind of back up. Thus I would be in constant danger of losing my only copy of some very expensive and vital software.
b. Even the most restrictive shrink-wrap agreements permit backup of licensed software for protection against loss. Why is Congress interested in enforcing more stringent copy portection rules than even the software companies want?
3. My fiancee' is a huge Highlander fan. She belongs to any number of online societies which circulate images and stories about the show.
a. Screen captures for this purpose are legal from VHS, but illegal from DVDs. What legal sense does this make?
b. Why does the MPAA want to illegalize the sampling of popular genre movies and TV shows by fans, when such fan groups are 75% of the audience for succeding movies and spin-offs?
Contact Novell, tell them what you think
on
Is Novell Doomed?
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· Score: 1
Actually, Novell is trying to answer that question themselves. Now is the time to contact Novell HQ and express your opinions.
I was recently the target of a Novell market research team, who wanted to talk to me specifically about my experience replacing Linux Servers with Novell servers. They wanted to know what services Novell could produce that I would be interested in purchasing, and why I was de-comissioning Novell servers in favor of Linux.
Of course, my answers were: 1) NDS for heterogenous (Linux/Novell/NT) server rooms with universal authentication managment; and 2) Money, because a Novell license is too expensive.
But you should e-mail them... they want to hear from you!
Check out FreeMARC: http://206.217.66.102/locmarc/
Also, BookCAT is a nice piece of shareware for personal libraries (
-Josh
It may be Natural, but it's not Radical.
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Natural Capitalism
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· Score: 1
Frankly, you can expect this book to create a biref stir amoung the stock-holding intellectual set... then drop out of sight. Because the book presents no new concepts.
Even in the review, all of the arguments presented are Reformist arguments - "Capitalism can be good for the environment with these tweaks." However, like a computer system built on a bad kernel (such as certain OS's), you can only do so much tweaking, and it's a losing battle - the inherent nature of the core system will keep swamping your tweaks (ask anyone who's tried to make "User-friendly" improvements to Windows 2000).
Fundamentally, the system of large corporate capitalism forces, by economic necessity, the valuation of short-term gains at the expense of everything else. You may observe this: even when a corporation itself (such as Pacific Bell) realises that they are wrecking their long-term goals, that corporation is patently unable to reform its internal organization to fix the problem. Thus it's unsurprising that our political system has come to mirror that process - politicians who think to the next election and no further.
Natural Capitlaism is indistinguishable from every "Liberal Solution" that has preceeded it - no different in its wishful thinking, no different in its ignorance of socio-economic history, no different in its oversimplification of political realities... and, in the end, no different in its ineffectiveness.
In the same vein, has anyone played with Rebel.com's netwinder? These little machines have some serious limitations (can't upgrade HDD, for example) but they're cheaper than the MicroServer, smaller, and Rebel.com is more involved with Linux - thuse they (theoretically) offer Kernel updates.
Anybody actually play with one of these?
e-mail me at josh@agliodbs.com; I might miss your replies.
Thank you for the thoughtful post on freedom. I have no nits to pick with you; in fact, I agree completely. Instead of an argument, I'd like to extend the point of view expressed by tackling current battles from a view of macro-economic development.
If you know your historical economic theory, you are familiar with the idea that human history, in abstract, has gone through phases of economic development. The simplest version is: Subsistence Tribal ==> Slave Society ==> Feudal Kingdom ==> Capitalist State. Each time a trasition has been thrust upon a region, country, or society, there has been considerable resistance from the old system. Witness, for example, the battles between traditional nobility (mostly Catholic) and industrialist nobility (mostly protestant) in the British Isles in the 18th century.
I assert that we are witnessing the beginning of another phase transition of socio-economic systems, from corporate-capitalism to something we can't yet define. As such, we can expect the machinery of corporate-capitalism to resist violently this transition, using legislation, copyright, lawsuits, and police. However, history cannot be frozen by legislation, no matter how much the King Canutes of AOL/TimeWarner/RIAA/NewsCorp would have it so.
A good example of this would be the battle of RIAA vs. Napster. Napster represents a newer, more anarchistic method of music distribution and reproduction. RIAA represents the old way. As such, they are using the old tools - intellectual property law and copyright - to smother the new technology. My prediction? Napster will be crushed legally. It will be replaced by something like FreeNet, which will be far harder to destroy in court because it has no legal entity.
Please don't think that I'm painting a rosy picture of the new revolution. Historically, transitions between socio-economic systems have been a very, very bad time for those caught up in them. We can expect, in the near future, laws making ownership of certain technologies (FreeNet, DeCSS) a felony; copyright violation witch-hunts; vilification of new technology mavericks; and violent retaliation by extremists of all kinds.
First, I'm quite concerned that this post will be missed in the horde of other comments. If readers personally know the article authors, please bring it to their attention.
I've addressed this issue myself, not a someone rolling in hordes of cash (no IPO for me) but as someone who has benefitted from the GPL and Open Source without being programmer enough to give anything back. My method has been through direct community service, namely installing Linux networks in non-profits. But I don't think that's right for you.
Your answer: Legal Defense. You see, in an economic sense, Open Source really *is* a revolution. OS, Internet, and GPL-based ventures are overturning conventional business models, and threaten to destroy the very-scarce-resource model that defines modern mega-corporate capitalism. And, as "revolutionaries", we can expect to come under attack by those (like AOL-Time-Warner) with a lot invested in the old economic model.
Since this is not a revolution of guns, that attack will come through courts, patent offices, and law enforcement. We've just seen the beginning of it through the DeCSS case and the Millenium Copyright Act. And our main defense is to get our own lawyers and tie the issues up in court long enough and often enough that none of us has to work in terror of being singled out as an example, or of having the free distribution of our OS code outlawed.
So give your money to legal defense. EFF is good; the ACLU and Amnesty could be persuaded to pitch in, especially by a $20,000 donor. Or put your money in a foundation, and make grants to cover the court costs of lawyers who defend OS programmers and companies.
I hope you get a chance to read this comment and find it persuasive. It's important to me, because the more laws and legal precedents we let pile up against OS, the harder we'll have to fight later to regain our right to give away our work to whom we please.
Certainly, I work 50-60 hours a week. But I'm an independant contractor - a business owner. And, as some of my clients are small business owners, I can tell you that 60 hours is, if anything, low for, say, a new restaurant owner.
I do think it's likely that the Dept. of Labor statistics are skewed the same ways they have always been. Tech jobs with long hours aren't singled out for misreporting:
1. Employers under-report their non-union employee's hours because if they didn't they'd be opening themselves up for a huge lawsuit in most states. Employees go along because they want to keep their jobs.
2. If a single worker has three 15-hour part-time jobs, the DoL counts him/her as if s/he was 3 different workers only working part time.
3. Independant contractors, and agency contract workers, usually aren't counted at all becaus they don't fit into the DoL's neat definitions of jobs. (In general, gov't statisticians throw out anything that doesn't fit expectations, even if it's 60% of the population. I know. I've provided statistical reports to local and federal government.)
Just remember, government statistics are PR, like everything that comes out of Washington, and not to be falsely associated with reality.
> Open Source needs a Legal Defense Fund of some kind...
Hey! That's a terrific idea!
Let's create one. I'm willing to contribute... after all, I make money off Linux, and not being a programmer don't have any opportunity to contribute. But I know fundraising and non-profits.
I can, at this time, donate:
1. Web hosting space and e-mail (on Pacbell.net)
2. Small amounts of cash after tax day.
3. 4 years of non-profit expertise.
But, of course, this requires Open Source community participation. Who else is interested?
This is serious. Please reply to agliodbs@pobox.com with "OSLDF" in the subject line.
While I agree with the critics that Java is probably not the programming language of a new machine architecture, I do think Just In Time, as an essential idea, is the future.
Eventually, either the nanotech or the re-programmable chip scientists will have the necessary break through. Both chip "architectures", the one being based on random molecule distribution, the other on re-programming the chip as it works, will require software conditioning and optimization - over a *long* period, when measured in nanoseconds. In either case, the theory behind Crusoe and JIT is likely what we'll be using - and developers will be "teaching" new computers rather than loading assembly programs on them.
I expect an intensifying and concerted attack on the open source movement and the hacker population using all the resources at the disposal of the courts. In fact, I would consider such an attack to be a validation of the reason I have been actively promoting Linux for the last year.
Now, before you jump on my "persecution complex," let me explain. Capitalism, as a socio-economic system, is just one stage in the evolution of human society. Marx thought the next stage was Communism, but history has proven him wrong. Thus, if a new system is on its way, one expects the existing leadership to vehemently oppose the change - and fail in the long run.
Now, consider Open Source. Thousands of geeks - the indispensable "priests" of the "information age" - voluntarily giving away their work for free. Just because the work needed doing. It is a revolutionary idea, and one that the existing powers cannot effectively counter. Thus it is unsurprising that the leaders of Corporate Multinationalism should focus their energies on crushing this movement. I'd be shocked if they didn't.
My apologies if I've offended any of the Libretarians on Slashdot, but taking the broad historical view, that's what I see.
Which means you should prepare to face a barrage of court orders, attacks on individual freedom, attempts to bottleneck the Internet, and arrests of prominent Open Source gurus. As well as the more insidious attempts to recruit those gurus into high-paying mega-corporation jobs that use all of their available time.
One of the popular Linux slogans has been "Welcome to the Revolution." So welcome - and welcome to the front lines. Prepare to duck!
What's this about Methanol's toxicity? One of the things that thrilled me about Motorola's announcement is that finally we have a workable portable power source that doesn't require using highly toxic minerals.
Methanol is toxic if taken internally, sure. But Lithium is absorbable through the skin in toxic doses - and, like other mineral poisonings, you *don't* recover. Further, all current battery technologies require the production of significant quantites of liquid chemical waste which, unlike Methanol, is *not* biodegradable.
Before you start harping on the environmental effects of Methanol batteries, consider what's in the machine you're typing your message on.
Slashdot Mirror
For database development, I'd suggest two books which will have value even after the current technology has rolled over: Database Design for Mere Mortals Practical Issues In Database Design Also, The Essence of Databases is pretty good and not expensive at all. For the tech/management audience: Software Project Survival Guide I'd suggest that you stay away from the first edition of O'Reilly's SQL in a Nutshell, which needs a lot of editorial cleaning up. Actually, the O'Reilly books in general suffer from very poor bindings which could make them expensive for libraries to keep. Skip anything version-specfic; by the time that you shelve it, it will be out of date. -Josh Berkus
I have a very useful business software product built on OS technology. I would like to relase it as OS -- however, I've invested a consderable amount of my own time and money in developing the product. As such, the only way for my investment to pay off (and for me to pay my office rent) is if users, having downloaded the OS version of my program, hire me at high hourly rates for customization, support, and training.
Thus, if another consulting company opened a domain as, say, nameofmyproject.co.uk without a prior relationship with me as an attempt to get users to come to them instead of me for support and consulting, I would be infuriated and take them to court. They would be profiting from my code by stealing my income. OS works precisely because it is possible for others to profit from my code without picking my pocket.
It's actually this sort of fear that has prevented my from launching the OS project.
All that being said, MySQL did have a prior relationship with NuSphere, and I think here we're witnessing a flamewar resulting from a breakdown in that relationship.
Josh Berkus
Heck, I had one of these on an ATARI 400 in 1983. No-one could type on it ... in fact, ATARI had to ship all its 400 customers free keyboard replacements because their customers hated the membrane keyboards and were threatening to return the computers (I know, I was one).
... just goes to show that the old adage about history is true. Me, I'm headed to F*ckedCompany with FingerBoard, inc.
"Magnetic therapy", now membrane keyboards
-Josh
As a commercial developer, I have been interested in moving some of my projects to Python. However, I have been dissuaded by the lack of a full-featured Python IDE with an extensive widget/GUI class set.
I took a look at BlackAdder, but was quite dissapointed in the actual functionality (Python/Qt integration is buggy) and available database widget set. When do you think that BlackAdder will have the kind of high-powered RAD functionality offered by products like JBuilder, Forte and Visual Studio?
-Josh
Regardless of how you feel ethically about what the Eco-Terrorists are doing, there are two *major* points to consider:
... as did our organization.
1. Terrorism has one, and only one effective place in revolutionary history. Terrorism is a very effective way to dissuade a colonial pover from maintaining its commercial operations in your country. However, all attempts to use terrorism against domestic authority result instead in a backlash against the terrorists; there has been no occasion, historically, where this has not been true. In fact, this principle is so effective that from 1970-72 the FBI's COINTELPRO branch used it to destroy the Black Panthers, simply by having undercover agents urge them on to more and more outrageous acts (more about this later).
Thus, whatever you feel about the goals of the "eco-terrorists", their methods will, if anything, cause the opposite of the desired reaction. Non-violence is not just ethical; it's essential for survival.
2. In all probablity, some of the "eco-terrorists" are CIA operatives *posing* as radical environmentalists in order to inspire a counter-reaction. Think about whose father remains the de-facto "old man" of the CIA, and which U.S. executive officer is currently have a lot of trouble with environmentalists in Congress.
You may be ready to dismiss this as "conspiracy theories", but it's not far-feteched at all. When I was a member of a certian radical environmental organization ('scuse the vagueness, this could still lead to legal trouble for me) we decided the best way to stop a certain factory operation was to unionize the factory workers. Two undercover FBI agents in our organization (as it turned out) used the organizing effort to sneak into the factory and sabotage the equipment, against organizational policy. The result nearly killed some of the workers and the unionization effort broke up
-Josh
Now hold on a cotton-pickin' minute here. I am a PostgreSQL expert and I use PostgreSQL in my projects. But that doesn't stop me from reccomending MySQL when it's appropriate.
When is it appropriate? An example: I was called in on an emergency basis to help a Silicon Valley company with their web database. Turns out they have a DB with over 6,000,000 records in the main tables backing an interactive web site *and not one singe DB tech on staff*!! Needless to say, MS SQL Server was malfunctioning a bit.
I got them running on MySQL. WHy? Not because it's a better performer, or because it supports SQL compliance (it doesn't) but because their web guy, with almost no DB expertise at all, can run it without it crashing or bogging down in out-of-date indexes.
So give the MySQL team a break. They've created the Honda CRX of databases -- fast, cheap, reliable, and easy to park -- and don't measure their product against standards it wasn't designed for.
-Josh Berkus
If you don't mind, I'd like to tack on a few things to this good question:
- A small business release should be based on a SQL-compliant database such as PostgreSQL, inlcuding a client-server model. Is this in your plans?
- Have you considered adding simple invoicing to GnuCash (ala Quicken Home & Business) as an intermediate step?
- To add to the poster above, I could easily sell me & my clients 2-5 copies of a Gnu cash small business release, at $200 each, if it came up to the quality of Peachtree or better.
-Josh
I made the leap from FT to full-time contracting 5 years ago. I don't regret it in any way, and have helped a number of my friends get started in freelancing. That being said, contracting is not for everyone.
If you have chronic, serious health issues ... keep your FT job. If you get anxious about money easily, don't freelance. If your skills are not up-to-date (i.e. You're a PASCAL or VAX expert), reconsider. Make sure you're comfortable with a)working alone for long streteches from your home (it can get lonely) and b) schmoozing with potential clients. Consider that you will need to handle your own, potentialy complicated, billing, taxes, insurance (business AND health!) and legal issues.
Once you've thought about all that, here's your three easy steps:
STEP 1: Save up 3-6 months salary. Six months is ideal, but you need a minimum of three. You can expect that after you take the plunge, it'll be at least 30 days before you get a decent contract, and another 30 days (or more!) before you get paid.
STEP 2: Find a contractor in your area, in your discipline, who is successful and wants to hire you as a subcontractor. I've done this for a few others - I take 10-20%, and they get the benefit of my experieince with contracts, clients, project management, and setting up a business.
STEP 3: Start contracting on your own! form an LLC (don't consider incorporating until you're making at least $100,000), get business cards, a website, and an office, and go for it.
I reccomend against trying to "ease your way into contracting" by moonlighting. As an experienced master contractor, I don't hire moonlighters ... whenever your contract interferes with their day job, you lose. As a result, the only projects you'll be offered as a moonlighter will the really awful ones no successful IC wants to take.
E-mail me for more useful advice: mailto:josh@agliodbs.com
Josh Berkus, Aglio Database Solutions
What you describe is an industry-wide (the industry being business and accounting software) problem, and not in any way confined to open source software.
I develop business software for a living, and as a rule the state of business software technical development, security, and UI is abysmal. It's the reason why my business has grown 50% per year for 3 years -- there simply aren't good in-the-box solutions for most business operations problems.
Two examples: I did research for a temp agency, looking for temp placement software. Out of 20 packages my assistant reviewed, only 2 passed our "usability" test (some vendors threatened lawsuits if we published our reviews!) and those two each cost over $30,000 for 5 users. Second, one of my clients purchased a $150,000 legal billing system. They now pay me $25,000 per year for support and troubleshooting they can't get from the vendor, and are considering having me write them a custom program in 2003.
Further, because of programmer shortages and legacy compatibility issues, most proprietary solutions use out-of-date technology. Probably half of those bad Temp Placement apps were still using DOS/Btrieve.
The software situation for OS software is just as bad, in a different way. Fully debugging the UI, and writing the help files, are hard, boring work, and as a result seldom gets done unless some company pays a team of programmers to do it. Still, I'm pushing my clients towards OS because at least that way they're not dependant on the vendor to fix problems and write add-ons.
My advice for the ISP? Find an OS package with good architecture and technology, but bad UI, and pay some money to develop a good UI! Remember, "Free Software" means "Free Source" not "Free Beer," and you're expected to contribute out of your pockets to the development of OS software.
Josh Berkus, Aglio Database Solutions
However, I have to respond to this statement. When I started my business, I made the commitment that 50% of my clientele would be non-profits. Since then, I've cut that down to two low-maintennece non-profits.
Why? Simple: non-profits are as high-maintenece as the $150/hour for-profit clients, and they can only afford to pay 1/4 of that. Becuase the average non-profit has spent years without adequate tech support or training, most start phoning any friendly tech consultant morning, noon, and night. It's not harassment - they're just desperate.
Worse, Publically funded non-profits and the government are all too similar in their operation. I've had one grant-funded non-profit threaten to sue me for a database I created for them for 10% of standard rates because it wasn't as fast as they wanted. I've had grant-funded non-profits waste dozens of hours of my time on pointless meetings and specification drift, and then throw away the software once I completed it. As a result, I only do private non-proftis now, and only ones with 10 staff or less.
Still, I feel that every independant developer should help support one local non-profit. Stick to the small ones, and make sure they know the limits of your support.
I support a lot of non-profits in my business. The average has 5 functioning computers, and 1 out of 3 has no network to speak of (Win32 peer-to-peer or sneakernet).
As a computer consultant, user, and American four "worst case" scenarios for the anti-circumvention portions of the DCMA have occurred to me for your use:
1. As a database programmer, I am frequently called upon to rescue client's data trapped in legacy systems. Usually these legacy systems are software that is no longer supported, even if the manufacturers are still in business. Under the anti-circumvention restrictions of the DCMA, I would no longer be able to legally retrieve the client's data from an encrypted database, even if there was no other way to get the data! Two examples of data rescues that would now be illegal under the DCMA:
a. Shortly before Y2K, I needed to dump all of a client's bookkeeping data from ACCPAC for DOS into text files so that the data would not be lost when the application crashed at midnight, December 31st. The ACCPAC sales staff were quite uncooperative, claiming that I needed to purchase an "upgrade" for the unsupported product -- to the tune of $4000 -- before they would let me have the codes for export. However, information on the data storage scheme they used was available via the web, and a contractor I knew was able to piece something together that retrieved the relevant data (for about $700). This would now be illegal, and my client would be forced to pay $4000 to save their own data.
b. Frequently my clients lose their Microsoft Access database passwords, or mess up the security scheme so that they cannot get into their own database. I have a 3rd-party product which uses a disk sector read of the database in order to get the passwords, allowing the client to get their database back. Under the DCMA, this product, which could also be used for cracking, would become illegal and my clients would be helpless.
2. As a consultant, I often have to carry around CD media of software so that I can install and un-install certain components to my laptop and work with the client's software. The MSDN Library and the Windows 98 CD are good examples. However, dragging those CD's to every client's site puts them in some jepoardy of scratched and loss, so I make copies and leave the originals in a safe place.
a. Under the DCMA, if the software vendor put rudimentary copy protection or put the software on encrypted media (like DVD), it would be illegal to do this kind of back up. Thus I would be in constant danger of losing my only copy of some very expensive and vital software.
b. Even the most restrictive shrink-wrap agreements permit backup of licensed software for protection against loss. Why is Congress interested in enforcing more stringent copy portection rules than even the software companies want?
3. My fiancee' is a huge Highlander fan. She belongs to any number of online societies which circulate images and stories about the show.
a. Screen captures for this purpose are legal from VHS, but illegal from DVDs. What legal sense does this make?
b. Why does the MPAA want to illegalize the sampling of popular genre movies and TV shows by fans, when such fan groups are 75% of the audience for succeding movies and spin-offs?
I was recently the target of a Novell market research team, who wanted to talk to me specifically about my experience replacing Linux Servers with Novell servers. They wanted to know what services Novell could produce that I would be interested in purchasing, and why I was de-comissioning Novell servers in favor of Linux.
Of course, my answers were: 1) NDS for heterogenous (Linux/Novell/NT) server rooms with universal authentication managment; and 2) Money, because a Novell license is too expensive.
But you should e-mail them ... they want to hear from you!
-TheFuzzy
Also, BookCAT is a nice piece of shareware for personal libraries ( -Josh
Frankly, you can expect this book to create a biref stir amoung the stock-holding intellectual set ... then drop out of sight. Because the book presents no new concepts.
Even in the review, all of the arguments presented are Reformist arguments - "Capitalism can be good for the environment with these tweaks." However, like a computer system built on a bad kernel (such as certain OS's), you can only do so much tweaking, and it's a losing battle - the inherent nature of the core system will keep swamping your tweaks (ask anyone who's tried to make "User-friendly" improvements to Windows 2000).
Fundamentally, the system of large corporate capitalism forces, by economic necessity, the valuation of short-term gains at the expense of everything else. You may observe this: even when a corporation itself (such as Pacific Bell) realises that they are wrecking their long-term goals, that corporation is patently unable to reform its internal organization to fix the problem. Thus it's unsurprising that our political system has come to mirror that process - politicians who think to the next election and no further.
Natural Capitlaism is indistinguishable from every "Liberal Solution" that has preceeded it - no different in its wishful thinking, no different in its ignorance of socio-economic history, no different in its oversimplification of political realities ... and, in the end, no different in its ineffectiveness.
-JoshIn the same vein, has anyone played with Rebel.com's netwinder? These little machines have some serious limitations (can't upgrade HDD, for example) but they're cheaper than the MicroServer, smaller, and Rebel.com is more involved with Linux - thuse they (theoretically) offer Kernel updates.
Anybody actually play with one of these?
e-mail me at josh@agliodbs.com; I might miss your replies.
If you know your historical economic theory, you are familiar with the idea that human history, in abstract, has gone through phases of economic development. The simplest version is: Subsistence Tribal ==> Slave Society ==> Feudal Kingdom ==> Capitalist State. Each time a trasition has been thrust upon a region, country, or society, there has been considerable resistance from the old system. Witness, for example, the battles between traditional nobility (mostly Catholic) and industrialist nobility (mostly protestant) in the British Isles in the 18th century.
I assert that we are witnessing the beginning of another phase transition of socio-economic systems, from corporate-capitalism to something we can't yet define. As such, we can expect the machinery of corporate-capitalism to resist violently this transition, using legislation, copyright, lawsuits, and police. However, history cannot be frozen by legislation, no matter how much the King Canutes of AOL/TimeWarner/RIAA/NewsCorp would have it so.
A good example of this would be the battle of RIAA vs. Napster. Napster represents a newer, more anarchistic method of music distribution and reproduction. RIAA represents the old way. As such, they are using the old tools - intellectual property law and copyright - to smother the new technology. My prediction? Napster will be crushed legally. It will be replaced by something like FreeNet, which will be far harder to destroy in court because it has no legal entity.
Please don't think that I'm painting a rosy picture of the new revolution. Historically, transitions between socio-economic systems have been a very, very bad time for those caught up in them. We can expect, in the near future, laws making ownership of certain technologies (FreeNet, DeCSS) a felony; copyright violation witch-hunts; vilification of new technology mavericks; and violent retaliation by extremists of all kinds.
-Josh
I've addressed this issue myself, not a someone rolling in hordes of cash (no IPO for me) but as someone who has benefitted from the GPL and Open Source without being programmer enough to give anything back. My method has been through direct community service, namely installing Linux networks in non-profits. But I don't think that's right for you.
Your answer: Legal Defense. You see, in an economic sense, Open Source really *is* a revolution. OS, Internet, and GPL-based ventures are overturning conventional business models, and threaten to destroy the very-scarce-resource model that defines modern mega-corporate capitalism. And, as "revolutionaries", we can expect to come under attack by those (like AOL-Time-Warner) with a lot invested in the old economic model.
Since this is not a revolution of guns, that attack will come through courts, patent offices, and law enforcement. We've just seen the beginning of it through the DeCSS case and the Millenium Copyright Act. And our main defense is to get our own lawyers and tie the issues up in court long enough and often enough that none of us has to work in terror of being singled out as an example, or of having the free distribution of our OS code outlawed.
So give your money to legal defense. EFF is good; the ACLU and Amnesty could be persuaded to pitch in, especially by a $20,000 donor. Or put your money in a foundation, and make grants to cover the court costs of lawyers who defend OS programmers and companies.
I hope you get a chance to read this comment and find it persuasive. It's important to me, because the more laws and legal precedents we let pile up against OS, the harder we'll have to fight later to regain our right to give away our work to whom we please.
Sincerely, fuzzy@agliodbs.com
I do think it's likely that the Dept. of Labor statistics are skewed the same ways they have always been. Tech jobs with long hours aren't singled out for misreporting:
1. Employers under-report their non-union employee's hours because if they didn't they'd be opening themselves up for a huge lawsuit in most states. Employees go along because they want to keep their jobs.
2. If a single worker has three 15-hour part-time jobs, the DoL counts him/her as if s/he was 3 different workers only working part time.
3. Independant contractors, and agency contract workers, usually aren't counted at all becaus they don't fit into the DoL's neat definitions of jobs. (In general, gov't statisticians throw out anything that doesn't fit expectations, even if it's 60% of the population. I know. I've provided statistical reports to local and federal government.)
Just remember, government statistics are PR, like everything that comes out of Washington, and not to be falsely associated with reality.
-The Fuzzy
Hey! That's a terrific idea!
Let's create one. I'm willing to contribute ... after all, I make money off Linux, and not being a programmer don't have any opportunity to contribute. But I know fundraising and non-profits.
I can, at this time, donate:
1. Web hosting space and e-mail (on Pacbell.net)
2. Small amounts of cash after tax day.
3. 4 years of non-profit expertise.
But, of course, this requires Open Source community participation. Who else is interested?
This is serious. Please reply to agliodbs@pobox.com with "OSLDF" in the subject line.
-TheFuzzy (Josh Berkus)
While I agree with the critics that Java is probably not the programming language of a new machine architecture, I do think Just In Time, as an essential idea, is the future.
Eventually, either the nanotech or the re-programmable chip scientists will have the necessary break through. Both chip "architectures", the one being based on random molecule distribution, the other on re-programming the chip as it works, will require software conditioning and optimization - over a *long* period, when measured in nanoseconds. In either case, the theory behind Crusoe and JIT is likely what we'll be using - and developers will be "teaching" new computers rather than loading assembly programs on them.
Me, I'm looking forward to it.
-The Fuzzy
I expect an intensifying and concerted attack on the open source movement and the hacker population using all the resources at the disposal of the courts. In fact, I would consider such an attack to be a validation of the reason I have been actively promoting Linux for the last year.
Now, before you jump on my "persecution complex," let me explain. Capitalism, as a socio-economic system, is just one stage in the evolution of human society. Marx thought the next stage was Communism, but history has proven him wrong. Thus, if a new system is on its way, one expects the existing leadership to vehemently oppose the change - and fail in the long run.
Now, consider Open Source. Thousands of geeks - the indispensable "priests" of the "information age" - voluntarily giving away their work for free. Just because the work needed doing. It is a revolutionary idea, and one that the existing powers cannot effectively counter. Thus it is unsurprising that the leaders of Corporate Multinationalism should focus their energies on crushing this movement. I'd be shocked if they didn't.
My apologies if I've offended any of the Libretarians on Slashdot, but taking the broad historical view, that's what I see.
Which means you should prepare to face a barrage of court orders, attacks on individual freedom, attempts to bottleneck the Internet, and arrests of prominent Open Source gurus. As well as the more insidious attempts to recruit those gurus into high-paying mega-corporation jobs that use all of their available time.
One of the popular Linux slogans has been "Welcome to the Revolution." So welcome - and welcome to the front lines. Prepare to duck!
-Josh
Methanol is toxic if taken internally, sure. But Lithium is absorbable through the skin in toxic doses - and, like other mineral poisonings, you *don't* recover. Further, all current battery technologies require the production of significant quantites of liquid chemical waste which, unlike Methanol, is *not* biodegradable.
Before you start harping on the environmental effects of Methanol batteries, consider what's in the machine you're typing your message on.