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Category: opensource
Cloud computing, from the frying pan into the fire
In a recent column (Dutch), Frank Benneker of Amsterdam University explored the consequences of the rapidly growing use of cloud computing. The shift of computer applications from PCs and servers to a single "service" provided through a worldwide network is probably as fundamental a shift as the earlier one from mainframe computing to PCs.
Given the objectives of the Dutch Open standards and interoperability policy plan, cloud computing seems the quick and easy-to-implement solution: I hear Web 2.0 enthusiasts say “put everything on Google Docs and we are all interoperable”. But just as in the case of the "liberation" of PCs from mainframe managers/suppliers, there are problems with cloud computing – potential snakes in the grass.
In December 2004 the Dutch government decided that the dependency on dominant software providers was a problem and had to be addressed. The Dutch action plan from 2007 was the first, tentative step in dealing with this.
The Dutch government wants to use open standards for interoperability, and open source to foster independence, lower costs and strengthen local development (services instead of licences). Open standards are fundamentally essential for interoperability. The Dutch ‘standard’ government desktop plan demonstrates to governments that interoperability can also be achieved with an imposed, top-down mono-culture. Give everyone the same software, and information can be conveniently exchanged.
However, the price of a mono-culture is high, both directly in money and in less quantifiable aspects such as security problems and an extreme dependence on a few foreign private companies. The latter is especially difficult to reconcile with the idea of a sovereign nation and a government that is democratically accountable. Surely our governments would wish to avoid relying on foreign companies to control the connectivity of our information databases in some nebulous “computer cloud”?
The crucial point is that even in this cloud, the hardware does not belong to the government nor is it possibly even on Dutch soil. The hardware can be located anywhere in the world, and therefore subject to multiple legal regimes beyond the Dutch government’s control (or indeed, accountability).
Much of the Web 2.0 knowledge for the Dutch government and discussions about this are held on ning.com servers, and the consensus is that it would be pretty difficult to migrate away from there. Even NOiV, the Dutch open standards and opensource implementation bureau also holds regular discussions on LinkedIn instead of its own XWiki environment. It is only natural that people use what they know. However, bearing in mind not only the objectives of the Policy Document, but also the various Parliamentary Motions on the subject and the earlier decisions of the government itself, cloud computing is a major IT problem. To expect cloud computing to rid us of the issue of “lock-in” that has been a problem for the last 20 years creates a classic example of ‘out of the frying pan; into the fire ‘.
Our current problems arise from not foreseeing the long-term consequences of our IT choices. We need a separate government IT programme to ensure the freedom of choice that we see as entirely natural in other markets. Unless the cloud computing servers are on Dutch soil and we have access to the code under an open source licence, we shall only go from bad to worse.
The Free Software Foundation has the solution for these problems, a distributed cloud that we can all access. Servers that provide free software designed to guarantee our digital freedom. After all, this is the original intention of the Internet: all equal players in their own cloud.
Article in Surgeon’s journal
The Dutch Journal for Surgeons, publishes an article written by my collegue Younass and myself. We wrote this article to further explain some of the points we made during our keynote at the natinal Convention of Surgeons last month. The entire article here in English and Dutch, the PDF of the journal here. Background links and articles here (mostly Dutch).
Ubuntu ‘protects’ against Microsoft claims
Dutch IT magazine ‘Webwereld’ (1, 2) asked me to comment on the news that Canonical, the makers of Ubuntu Linux, is offering legal protection against potential patent claims of Microsoft on Linux. Red Hat provides a comparable service and refers to it as a ‘necessary evil’
The vast majority of software patents are not legally recognized in Europe, making this one of those typical American problems mostly designed to make lawyers very rich. But leaving that aside, how solid are the claims anyway? 2003 Microsoft invested in the anemic software provider SCO to sue IBM on the basis of alleged ownership of crucial Unix/Linux components. The case lasted many years and achieved nothing. Except of course a lot of confusion in the marketplace amongst IT buyers who were considering moving to Linux, thereby sometimes delaying a firm decision. It would seem that this was the primary original objective.
Microsoft has been working for over a decade to undermine open source in general and Linux in particular – so far with limited success. Linux runs most webservers, all Tomtoms, most super computers and more phones than Windows mobile. Even on the desktop, Microsoft’s homebase, it is slowly gaining ground.
For a long time now Microsoft has been saying, about once a year, that ‘soon’ it will show its many patents that will make Linux unusable. Prof. Eben Moglen, chief council of the Free Software Foundation, explains this phenomenon in this video:
It would be both honourable and helpful if companies like Redhat and Canonical would extend the promise of legal protection not just to the users but also to the individual developers who work on Linux. It is these individuals who need the greatest protection, since they cannot afford to defend themselves legally against a company like Microsoft. As long as they don’t, the risk remains that Steve Balmer will continue his yearly ‘be very afraid tour‘, making some developers afraid to work on open source sofware. That is, of course, exactly what Balmer wants.
Meanwhile, EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes tells companies like Microsoft: put up or shut up. Wise words from someone who has some experience of dealing with the bullies from Redmond.
Kroes: vendor lock-in a waste of money
In a recent speech EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes stated that badly functioning IT markets and high vendor dependence have far-reaching consequences for the functioning of public bodies and companies in Europe. There is much to be gained, both economically and functionally, by focusing on open standards and open source software. ‘This is a waste of public funds no government can afford any longer.’
The Dutch IT magazine Computable.nl has a summary of the speech with my comments (original in Dutch – Google translation here). English commentary on the speech here, here and here.
Opensource policy needs a ‘Why’
In 2002 Peru had a coherent action plan for open standards and open source. That went way beyond the Dutch action plan of five years later and was probably far ahead of its time. Where the strengths of the Dutch plan lie in focusing on practical operational goals such as interoperability, market forces and strengthening the local economy, the Peruvian plan made no attempts to hide its political mission.
As Peruvian Senator Dr. Edgar Villanueva described in a famous response to a lobbying letter from a proprietary supplier, these are the fundamental IT considerations for any democratic government:
- Free access to public data for citizens
- Digital preservation of data
- Safety of the State and its citizens
The idea is that a democratic government must in the first place be accountable to its citizens concerning its actions. This makes control over, and insight into, the software that implements the law a political issue. Free access to public data and digital preservation are mainly the areas of open standards and it seems that this battle is pretty much won. The importance of open standards is generally accepted in 2010, even by the parties (you know who you are) that have actively blocked its implementation for many years.
Security of the state and its citizens is a lot harder. What security and against which threat? The state must protect itself from unwelcome outside influences. If it can be externally influenced outside the democratic will of its citizens, then there is not much point to democracy. Full access to the source code is a good guarantee of a high level of control and independence. This access means the right to view, modify and redistribute those changes. The government must have, if it wants, its own "gold master" to make critical pieces of software. With a certified, public checksum of the code so that a simple and transparent process exists for verification. This makes the government truly independent of foreign companies or countries that would like to exert influence through undocumented loopholes.
Citizens must be protected from both external and internal robber barons (this is why we have nation-states in the first place!), and against the government itself. Because we know that even democratic governments sometimes just lose their way when it comes to human rights etc. This is why access to source code is also crucial. With an open platform you, the citizen, can protect yourself with heavy encryption on your data(traffic). And that crypto can be checked by someone you trust not to have any back doors. Free software (also known as open source) is therefore just as natural as the use of open standards for any innovative, democratic and sovereign country that deserves the title. For a company this independence and freedom to innovate may also be a strategic matter. And more and more companies are discovering that.
Such a policy is not, as certain parties often state, discrimination against the business model or suppliers. The business model of a software supplier is not relevant to a government. But the term&conditions of product delivery are and those may be set by governments. It is then up to the supplier to decide whether he wants to meet those conditions. Or not. No one is forced to deliver against their will.
The lack of a political mandate in the current Dutch policy is a limiting factor. Without a clear political strategy detailing the ‘why’, IT discussions will always depend on migration plan details and total cost-of-ownership-for-3-years. It may be totally against the zeitgeist to discuss the principles of democracy, national sovereignty and civil rights. But if we do not continually make these points, we might just as well outsource the governing of the Netherlands to Blackwater/Xe and Halliburton.
Smarter working
Imagine that all the modern communication tools of today are not be available to you. No mail, no chat, no Twitter, Facebook or phone. Now imagine that you are a company with 50 employees who need to be in daily contact. How do you solve it? With them all working at the same location. Simple puzzle, right?
Now let us turn the question around: all these modern tools are available to you, so why are you going to the office every day? And as a bonus question: are you aware that a hundred years ago we were driving around with a horse and carriage?
Our computers remind us daily of old-fashioned working methods: we neatly arrange our files and folders in our digital filing cabinet every evening before we go home. To share information with colleagues we make a copy of the folder and forward it on. And if we make changes, there are suddenly two versions of the document. Colleagues can also modify the file, and then there are three.
In other words, although the resources we have at our disposal are dramatically improved and allow completely new ways of working, we still work as our grandparents did. Effectively, we are working on more efficient typewriters, but at the end of the day, few companies realise the full potential of the equipment and the people they have invested in.
The future we are anticipating is already here; in fact, many of us use it every day. Wikipedia is famously a prime example of a kind of hive mind, a collective brain that is fed by thousands of people around the world: people who do not know each other, have never spoken, and who are certainly not all congregating every day at 09:00 in an office building.
How that came about is due partly to smart technology and smart people:
- the knowledge is in a central location;
- modern communication tools are used; and
- meritocracy instead of bureaucracy.
The knowledge is in a central location
Instead of emailing versions of a document back and forth until everyone is happy, the document is placed on a wiki at a central location where it is edited. This not only prevents lost editions, but you ensure that everyone can see the latest version. In the case of software this principle is pretty much the same: the software is in a central "repository" and the documentation is online in a maintained and updated wiki. Everyone, from anywhere, can see it.
Modern communication tools are used
Instead of a meeting every Tuesday at 14:00 , people are continuously connected to each other, by mail, through the wiki, via telephone, Skype or Twitter. Time and space are of little importance as long as the flow of information and associated activities are not inhibited.
Meritocracy versus bureaucracy
In many online projects, you see that most people with professional knowledge take decisions in consultation with the rest of the team. "Rough consensus and running code" was once the slogan in the early days of the Internet: as long as we are roughly on the same page with each other and it works, fine.
We love the fact that people can travel easily. Many companies even allow you to take unpaid leave for a few months to go on a world tour – it’s a good way to develop broader horizons. Companies even allow you to take unpaid leave for a few months to go on a world tour – it’s a good way to develop broader horizons.
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| At work in Turkey, including this piece. |
But meanwhile, we continue to force people to work in offices day in, day out, uninspired and with their mental blinkers on. Why? It’s old-fashioned management, which is down to individual management style. I have met managers in their fifties who rally the troops, but also managers in their early thirties who are stuck in a time warp. One of the major concerns of such managers is the fear of losing control of the employee. "How can I see what someone is doing when he is not in the office?"
This is the typical mentality of people stuck in a certain mindset. It implies that when employees are in the office, the manager has the ability to continuously monitor what employees do. This is nonsense. Furthermore, a manager has better things to do than to nanny his staff. In addition, it also ignores the fact that new software tools give the manager more real insight into what the employee does.
At Gendo we work with different people at different locations. I often see my colleagues only two days a week. Yet we are continuously in touch and, via an internal Twitter channel, I can follow what colleagues are doing. We also have a wiki that gives me a great insight into what people are working on – much more than would be possible from ‘walking the floor’ to see if everyone is behind his desk. In other words, colleagues and management gain more, rather than less, insight into the activities of employees who "work smarter". Of course, personal contact is invaluable and we are happy to see each other. But we see each other for a purpose and not because we’re afraid the others are not doing their job.
These new tools also make it possible for the employee to work wherever and whenever they want. This is a problem for managers of the old school, as I have heard time and time again. If I buy a magazine and read it at my desk, I’m at work. If I read the same magazine sitting in the sunshine outside the office, I’m not working. I sit in the sun because that is fun, so it’s not working. This is such an embarrassing reasoning that it’s difficult to believe people actually still credit it. A friend told me that she needed to meet some colleagues, and suggested that they do it outside in the sun. Her colleagues felt that others might think that they were not working. Her proposal: we take a pen and paper with us then, if people see us, at least they will think we are working. It is kindergarten-level thinking and modern professionals in such an environment should make a run for it and escape to an organisation that treats them as adults.
In some companies the concept of ‘work smarter’ is to achieve 9 percentage point higher productivity than other firms, according to a study of EIM, commissioned by the InnovationPlatform among 650 SME companies with 2-250 employees. There is really no reason why you cannot work smarter – except you must let go of the idea that you own a factory. You are the director of an organisation with people. They will really start to blossom when you give them the time and space.
Carribean opensource
Last week I was visiting the Dutch Caribbean by invitation of the local government to do the opening keynote (ODF 1 2) on their conference on open standards and opensource. Curacao, one of the islands of the Dutch Antillies is about to become fully independent nation state and that means a lot of re-design of the local IT systems of the government and public sector. The government is determined to maximise the opportunities offered by open standards and opensource software to move the new governemnt, the local educational system and economy forward. For education an OLPC project is being considered because 3 PCs per school is not the way into the 21st century. Hopefully the new Internet Exchange (based on the Dutch one) will bring down the cost of bandwith so that all those OLPC’s will be able to go online.
All of this will not be easy to achieve. Curacao is a very small entity to function as an independent nation and do everything themselves. There is a great need for expert knowledge and training to bring local IT-staff and administrators up to speed and the available budgets for this are very limited.Curacao spends about 20 million pounds per year on proprietary software licenses (mostly in government and other public sector), this amounts to about half a month’s wages per citizen. If this can be reduced by 30-50% the budget required to make the desired changes is available (assuming the total IT-budgets can be kept at the same level for the time being).
Because this visit also included several meetings with local dignitaries and media appearances I was invited to stay for a whole week in a beautiful apartment west of Willemstad. Many thanks to Ace Suares who has been working for open-IT on his island for many years. He was the driving force behind the whole conference and a wonderful host.
