Safe as Milk

Hello Neary Consulting

So, never let it be said that I am original when it comes to thinking up names.

I finally put the website for my company, Neary Consulting, online earlier this week. There’s not much there for the moment, but I have written before about what I expect my core activity to be: helping companies rock as community members.

Two situations come to mindimmediately.

• You have a free software product, and you’re having trouble building up a community around it. 95% of the contributions coming into the project are from your employees, and you’re spending a bunch of resources on community liaison people who don’t seem to be getting many new contributors in.
• You have a hacker working on some free software that you’re using in your products. Every change you ask him to make seems to take longer, since he has to maintain a separate branch for all the work that he’s doing. Once every few months, he comes to you and insists that you should update to the latest version of the upstream project, and every upgrade seems to introduce new interesting bugs, and causes a few regressions, as the merge always takes a few weeks to get right.

In both these situations, the problem is likely to be that you’re not interacting well with the people outside your company. Your hacker isn’t working on getting his work upstream, or doesn’t understand the changes which might conflict with his work. Or your free software project isn’t taking off because most of your team don’t understand this community stuff much, and anyway, didn’t you created the community liaison guy in the first place so that they wouldn’t have to?

I’m caricaturing, of course, but many organisations will recognise themselves in these two scenarios. And I think I can help make things better in both cases. Not perfect, but better. How? By helping engineers and managers understand community dynamics, and work to align their investments, expectations and development practices to get the most out of their interactions with free software communities.

Patents and the GPL

I was talking to someone yesterday (who will remain unnamed) about perhaps providing a modified version of some GPL software for them. Unfortunately, he told me that his hands were tied on the issue since a directive came from the head legal guys that the company was not to distribute any GPL software which might, eventually, be infringing on the company’s patents. Why? Because to do so is to make a promise, on behalf of the company, to provide a royaly-free worldwide irrevocable patent licence grant to users of the software. Once the Pandora’s box is opened, the patents are worthless.

At least one person has told me that the guy was probably just politely telling me that he didn’t want to pay for what I was offering, and that the whole patent thing was just an excuse. That’s certainly possible, but in this case, I don’t believe it to be so. I’ve heard “no thanks, we’re not interested” often enough that I know how to recognise it.

If this is true, I am sure that these guys are not alone - there are companies out there who are consciously not participating in free software projects for fear of losing the opportunity to monetise their patent portfolio.

Am I the only one who finds this state of affairs perverse?

OpenWengo not in limbo

I have seen a meme spread over the past few days which I’d like to correct, and hopefully nip in the bud.

The OpenWengo project did not die with the withdrawl of Wengo. Nor is it in limbo.

The torch has been passed. (PDF) Finally, in late January, the news was announced. The project has a new maintainer, Vadim Lebedev of MBDSys. Vadim has been involved in the project from the beginning - he was hired by Wengo to write the back-end code for the first prototype. His company has experience providing customisation services on top of the software. He’s absolutely the best person for the job.

I have known this for several weeks, but was asked not to announce it until an agreement had been reached between Wengo and MBDSys. I alluded to this, as Marco indicated in his blog entry, in my previous entries on the subject, as well as in email to the mailing list.

To repeat myself: this is the great thing about free software - the project can outlive the founder. Spencer Kimball and Peter Mathis lost interest in the GIMP - it took 6 months to get over that speedbump, but the project outlived them. If Alfresco goes out of business, there are enough individuals and companies invested in the project that it will live on.

Wengo has withdrawn from the OpenWengo project, and yet development continues, people are still investing in it, volunteers are still working on it. Life goes on.

Welcome to the new way of doing things.

Next up…

Following on from my previous post, I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what comes next professionally for me.

For the first time since I arrived in France, I have no full-time job. But this time, I know the lay of the land, I have 5 years experience extra, in varying roles (including the GNOME Foundation). I have never felt so free to explore projects that I want to work on, and think of different ways to make a living.

One thing is for sure… I don’t see myself going back to being an employee straight away. I would need to get a hell of an offer to consider it. Now that I have the freedom to work on the projects I feel are worth it, I will not be giving it up lightly.

First things first, the low-hanging fruit. Through Wengo, I have been in discussions with lots of people in VoIP, and I will continue to do work related to OpenWengo - in particular, I will be working with companies who can deliver customisation services and support on the WengoPhone getting them clients. Through the ground-work which I have been doing over the past year, I believe that there is a demand there which will not be drying up any time soon.

Following on from my cat-herding experience on the GIMP, and with OpenWengo, I will also be available for product management and project management on projects I believe in.

Finally, I will be Yet Another Free Software Community Consultant - following in the trail blazed by some of the stars of our community. Through long involvement in the free software world, and intimate knowledge of the dynamics of free software non-profits, I believe I can help companies interested in free software get the best for their investment dollars. You want to know how to have salaried employees work well with volunteers? You are sponsoring a project and wondering why you haven’t seen a snowball effect of patches yet? You’re wondering what governance model is appropriate for your pet project? You have a project you’d like to financially support, but you’re not sure how to do so effectively? I can help.

Beyond that, one thing I am sure of: the thing which drew me to free software is the “worth” of it. What we do is important. Not just a way to spend time, like a community drama society, or something where your work benefits only yourself, like running a marathon. What we do changes the world. At a first level, we change people’s expectations of software. We wipe out the assumptions people have about software production and distribution. We change the way programs get built.

But at another level, we allow people access to technology which they’ve never had before. We provide millions of lines of real-world code, helping to create a generation of software engineers better prepared for the world than ever before, and idealists to boot. We are helping bridge the digital divide.

After spending so much time on something so important, I will not be going back to work on any project where the only thing I get out of it is my paycheque, as important as that is. I have lots of thoughts rolling around in my head, but that sweet-spot where my skills, passions and desires meld into a clear idea has been evading me. I really don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m loooking forward to thinking about it.

Breaking my silence

For the past few weeks (actually, the past couple of months) I’ve been holding my tongue waiting for things to clear up a bit in relation to work. I now have a pretty good idea of where I’m at, and so the time has come to break silence and reveal all.

Along with a number of my ex-colleagues, I was laid off by Wengo last November. Recently, that was noticed by a journalist who follows the OpenWengo project and got announced on the community mailing list.

At the time of the lay-off, a number of us had planned to take over maintainership of the project, move the hosting somewhere else, redo a web-site, and create a company around the project (with the business model of providing customisation services and support). Unfortunately, for a number of reasons I won’t go into, after 5 weeks of work on the new company, that fell through. And so, at the beginning of last month, I started looking around for an alternative solution that I could announce to the OpenWengo community, and to companies building offerings on top of the software.

Unfortunately, there’s nothing explicit I can say yet - the people concerned are still in discussions - but it’s looking like the OpenWengo project will not remain without a maintainer for long. As well as a lot of interest from a number of different companies, there are a number of people in the community who have proposed to pull in the slack, if needs be. That is the great thing about free software - AbiWord didn’t die with Abisource, Mozilla didn’t die with AOL’s withdrawl, and OpenWengo will survive without Wengo.

And so what about me? Well, I still plan to be involved in OpenWengo, in some way. I’m waiting, in some sense, for the battle lines to be redrawn and for procedural questions to be worked out, but I am still interested in working with companies who want OpenWengo customisations, and I plan on helping the project towards its next stable release (2.2) and beyond, on helping the community overcome the tricky step of whether or not to move to the new data model and engine CoIP Manager.

Aside from that, I now have to make a living somehow. And I’ll tell you more about that in a little while.

Journées du Libre à Montpellier

I was going to blog about my demo/presentation of OpenWengo at the Journées du Libre à Montpellier, but it seems like I’m not on the agenda, in spite of having had a session accepted.

I don’t know whether I’ll still go or not - but I’m a bit annoyed about being forgotten.

Away for a few days in the sun

My bosses at Wengo have organised a few days away for everyone in the company to relax together, get to know each other outside work, announce some news and generally pamper us a little - I’m not one to complain about a little pampering.

For these few days, I will not be reading my email. I’ll be back in the normal world with internet access on Saturday.

In the meantime, I’ve packed swimming togs, sports gear, sandals, … all I need now is a good storm & I’ll be set.

Not in Berlin

For those who had planned to go to Berlin especially to catch the Openwengo workshop on Thursday, I am sorry to let you know that I will be in Paris for some important meetings, and won’t be attending LinuxTag this year.

Upcoming travel

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be hitting the road again.I’m eager to meet up with Openwengo and GNOME people when travelling - drop me a line if you’re available.

• LinuxDays.ch, 23 & 24 May, Geneva:
  I’ll be giving two presentations during LinuxDays.ch, one on contributing to free software projects (including a focus on marketing GNOME) and one on the OpenWengo project, and our recent 2.1.0 release.
• LinuxTag, 31 May - 1 June, Berlin:
  A flying visit, I’m arriving on Wednesday evening, and flying out again on Friday. I’ll be on the look-out for GNOME people, and I’ll be giving a workshop presentation of OpenWengo.
• Journées du Libre, 15 June, Montpellier:
  A flying visit, I’m arriving on Friday night and training out again on Saturday evening. Looking forward to meeting up with people on Friday evening, and I’ll be giving a presentation on OpenWengo on Saturday.
• COPU Summit, 21 & 22 June, Guangzhou, China:
  I was invited to this last year but couldn’t go, this year I’ll be going along to meet with Chinese distributions and spread the Free Software gostpel to a high-powered group of executives from free softwarte companies and from the Chinese government.
• LUG Radio Live, 7 July, Wolverhampton:
  After exotic travel, I’ll be in the Black Country, telling LRL fans about the joys of OpenWengo, a great free software project that’s only going to get better. On condition that Anne my wife doesn’t need a lift to the hospital in the middle of the night. This will be my last travelling until after the Summer.

So there we have it. Aside from that, the company has organised a “retreat” for a few days in the South of France (oh, the pain) and I’ll be going up to Paris every week, as I have been for the last 6 months.

Ho hum.

Solutions Linux update

I was contacted by a Belgian author of Ekiga who will remain unnamed to thank me for pointing out that he was not cool enough to make my list of cool people.

I met many people in Paris who didn’t get mentioned in my previous blog entry - including, but not limited to, the members of ALDIL, several members of Mozilla Europe, the guys from Silicon Sentier, several people from KDE France, OO.o France, Mandriva, RedHat, Novell, APRIL, Linux Auvergne, GNU/Linux Magazine France (hello Denis!), and many more. Oh, and a Belgian author of Ekiga.

Any implication of uncoolness was unintended, but being mentioned in this blog entry does not constitute proof of coolness. E&OE.