The Great Open Source Unwisdom
NewsForge posted an article recently discussing what proprietary software can teach open source developers. Now the article had a somewhat faulty premise (that proprietary software is more popular than open source), it did have some valid points that us open source developers should at least think about. Sadly, the initial response was entirely predictable. To paraphrase, "We don't have anything to learn from your stinking proprietary garbage."
People, GROW UP! Besides being unhealthily arrogant, it's an extremely unwise thing to believe. We always have something to learn from everything we encounter. Now, it might be trivially small, or it might be earth-shakingly huge, but if you stop trying to learn from others, you might as well go home. Wisdom begins when we begin to comprehend our own ignorance.
I understand that I am likely talking to quite a number of very talented, and occasionally educated, people. However talent alone isn't enough to get you very far, and some education is only good for making you stop asking questions. In the case of open source software developers, our whole philosophy is based, in a large part, on learning from others. Sure, we can't see into the inner workings of proprietary software, but there is a reason that people willingly spend money on it, and it's not always because they don't know any better. Why? That's a good question, and worth pondering.
I am not presumptuous enough to think that popularity should be the primary concern of open source developers. I do think that we should be giving more thought to the people who will be using the software. What could we do to make it more appealing to them? I'm not speaking of adding endless features, as that way lies at least some amount of madness. I'm thinking more about presentation, integration, and documentation. That is, what will their first impression be, how well will it work with their existing tools, and how will they find out more information? Very few are going to care how well the software works if it's hard to find information, or hard to put it into place. Most open source packages are severly lacking in most if not all of these issues, and I cannot claim to have any shining beacons of my own.
Next time, before you shake your fist at the 800 pound gorilla proprietary software makers and blame them from stealing people away from your software, consider why the people are choosing what they are choosing. It might be vendor lock-in, but it might be the perception, correct or otherwise, that the open source alternatives are crap. Most people who use software don't care how well it was written, they just want to get something done with it. Help them.
Bruce on 04.14.05 @ 03:47 PM CST [link] [No Comments]
It's that time to debate DST again. (updated)
Yes, this is a rant.
The province I live in, Saskatchewan, has the dubious honour of being the only province in Canada not to have bought into the daylight saving time scam. It started as somewhat of a logistics issue. Saskatchewan is evenly split between two timezones, Central Standard Time on the east half, and Mountain Standard Time on the west, both of which do DST changes. Initially there were several differing time zones present in the province, with various municipalities making their own decisions, however the government eventually split the difference and standardized on CST with no DST.
Since we are "different" than our neighbours we have this debate, usually about once a year, if we should or shouldn't change our time standard. This year the government actually promised to investigate the issue and make some kind of decision. They proposed three possible outcomes:
- make no changes
- do a trial run change, or
- change to a DST zone
Doing a trial change of this magnitude is almost as difficult as making a permanent change, so that doesn't help much. Or, if they trial on only part of the province, then that part goes out of sync with the rest of the province, their closest neighbours, instead of other provinces. Doing a permanent change also means deciding which of our neighbours to go along with. Since the time zone line runs right down the middle, no matter which one is chosen half the province is going to be pissed off with the choice.
Yesterday I listed to a radio pundit who said we should change to be "like everybody else". Everybody else where? Strictly speaking, we are not unique. Arizona, Hawaii, parts of Indiana, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and American Samoa do not observe DST. Looking out further, different regions observe DST at different times. In particular, Europe observes DST on different dates than the USA and Canada. What does this simplify?
Certainly there are many people in industries where they simply must all coordinate their times together. By this I mean people who work in factories or offices where work simply cannot happen unless entire groups of people are there. They do benefit from observing DST by having their useable evenings lengthened. However, they would also benefit just the same from having the time they start pushed earlier by the same hour. Not only that, but they would have increased time to shop. Stores show the reverse trend, in that more and more stores are opening longer by closing later.
Apparently, farmers are in favour of observing DST so they have more daylight in the evening instead of the morning. Do they think their cows and chickens watch the clock to see when to get up, or the crops when to grow?
According to the California Energy Comission, observing DST
trims "the entire country's electricity usage by about one percent EACH DAY" (their emphasis not mine). The implication is that if we observe DST for a week, we have trimmed seven percent off of our energy usage. It doesn't work that way, however. Saving one percent each day for half a year means a sum total of one half of one percent of savings over the course of a year. This likely falls somewhere between "barely measurable" and "statistical noise" in the grand scheme of things.
Unless I'm missing something blindingly obvious, the same savings (and probably larger ones) could also be gained by simply setting the clocks forward year round. That is, after all, what the USA government did during World War II which, while not the birth of the DST idea, is most likely what propelled it into popularity there (as well as in England).
As somebody who has to deal with computer servers in time zones that do observe DST, I see this transition as at best a nuisance. Twice a year we have weirdness in all scheduled jobs. At one point there is an hour of time that no longer exists, at another time that same hour happens twice. Obviously, we have to make some kind of accomodation for jobs that are scheduled during that hour, but there are other implications as well. Among other things, the length of a day changes for those two days.
Thankfully, this time our government has decided not to make any changes.
Update: Thanks to Allan Bens for pointing out that all of the time zone illustrations I had seen so far were misleading, and that the "line" actually marks the center of the zone instead of the edge. It would appear that by picking CST with no daylight savings changes, Saskatchewan is actually using DST year round, just like I suggested.
Bruce on 04.14.05 @ 03:42 PM CST [
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