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Archive for the ‘Free Software’ Category

The Shadow of Microsoft

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, computers, corporatelife, Free Software, freesoftware, hightech, Microsoft, opensource, Personal, software, technology, Uncategorized on August 28, 2007| 4 Comments »

In Jungian psychology, the Shadow is a figure who is everything that you are not. Often, it is seen as evil. The Shadow can be helpful in establishing a sense of self, but a personal identity based only on the Shadow is dependent and reactive, and can easily become unhealthy.. In fact, if you define yourself only in terms of the Shadow, you risk taking on characteristics of the Shadow, partly because you are refusing to deal with the aspects of your personality that you have invested in the Shadow, and partly because anything seems justified in order to fend off the shadow.

When people in the free software community solemnly tell me that “Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom,” and draw obsessive diagrams of all the ways that Microsoft is undermining the community, that’s what I see: People on the brink of assuming some of the traits they claim to despite in their Shadow.

Fighting the Shadow can be dramatic and lend purpose to people’s lives, but it doesn’t make for sound thinking, even in their own terms. It lures them into thinking in dichotomies, believing that everyone must either be a vigilant soldier or else an optimist too full of naive to see a threat. With no middle ground, they can lose allies. Similarly, in focusing on one Shadowy figure, they risk overlooking other concerns.

And let’s say they’re right: Microsoft is the Great Satan, and an apocalyptic battle is just a matter of time. What happens once the Shadow is defeated? Inescapably, a good part of their purpose in life has gone, because they have lost all that they measured themselves against.
You can’t completely ignore Microsoft’s actions, even those that are not directly concerned with free software (In previous posts, I was exaggerating for rhetorical effect). Microsoft’s influence is simply too great. But I don’t want to ignore other things while keeping an eye out for possible concerns.

The free software community has a lot to be proud of. Collectively, its members have built an alternative that, overall, is comparable to its proprietary rivals. It’s done so by developing collaborative work methods, and principled stands that give ordinary people control over important parts of their lives, and helps the poor and those handicapped by a lack of national development meet the privileged on a more equal footing. It’s changed how business is done. It’s helped to preserve minority languages. It’s green. All these are important accomplishments.

That’s how you overcome the Shadow – by building a self-contained identity that robs it of its power over you.

I don’t know about anyone else, but, at the end of my life, I’d rather look back and remember that I played a small role in those accomplishments than admit I spent my life hating a corporation. It’s not as exciting as imagining yourself locked in adversity with a Dark Lord, but it’s certainly more constructive and longer lasting – to say nothing of more interesting.

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Why would I care about Microsoft? – Part 2

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, computers, corporatelife, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, laptop, Microsoft, opensource, Uncategorized on August 26, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Reading the comments left publicly and privately for “Why would I care about Microsoft?”, I realize that many people’s view of free software is outdated. To many, free software is a small, delicate idea that a juggernaut like Microsoft can overrun at will. In this circumstance – which may have existed ten years ago – fears, obsession, and paranoia are only natural. But having these emotions in 2007 may no longer be appropriate. Like parents who haven’t realized that their children are growing up, perhaps many of us in the community haven’t realized that free software isn’t as fragile as it used to be.

I’m not saying that Microsoft shouldn’t be watched or that its motives shouldn’t be questioned or guarded against. But I am saying that free software is in a much stronger position to defend itself than even a few years ago.

Consider, for example, the variety of responses that Microsoft has made to free software in the last year. It’s tried co-opting companies like Novell, Linspire, and Xandros. It’s made unsupported threats about patent violations in GNU/Linux. It’s talked about wanting to cooperate with the free software community. Just ask yourself: Are these the actions of the winning side? Or are they a sign that the company is desperately looking for a winning strategy in a losing fight, or divided internally?

The truth is, free software has come a long way from its days of vulnerability. In its early days, free software may have been vulnerable, but now it has strong defenders. For major corporations like IBM, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard, free software means billions. Why do you think they have surrendered some patents, or supported the anti-Tivoization and patent clauses in the third version of the GNU General Public License? Part of the reason may be altruism, depending on your view of human nature, but, on the whole, I doubt that many corporations like these provisions. Yet not one of these companies was willing to disagree with them in public. In the end, the price of dissent was more than the potential profit.

And that, in itself, is a prime reason why Microsoft is not much of a threat these days. These days, to take on free software means to take on the rest of the computer world. No single corporation, not even Microsoft, can afford that risk.

Just as importantly, free software has grown its own defenses. At the Software Freedom Law Center, Eben Moglen and Richard Fontana are educating the next generation of free software legal defenders. The Linux Foundation is working on patent pools. Peter Brown and Richard M. Stallman at the Free Software Foundation are linking with social activists, who are starting to add free software to their causes. So free software has a second line of defence as well, one not limited by budgets or the concerns of shareholders. And if you haven’t talked to these people, let me tell you: These are frighteningly intelligent and dedicated people. If I wasn’t on their side, I’d think twice about opposing them.

But there’s a third line of defence, even stronger than the first two: The community itself. It’s no longer just geeks. It’s educators, for whom free software is the only way they can function with their limited budgets. It’s government departments in both industrialized and developing nations. It’s groups like Free Geekers introducing free software to the general public. This, I suggest, is defence in depth. In the event of an attack, the community is like thousands of widely dispersed guerrillas, next to impossible to attack by conventional business or legal means, and needing, not to win any fight, but only to make the cost of fighting too high for its opponents to want to continue.

Maybe I’m in a privileged position as a journalist. As I research stories, I probably get to see more of the community than most people. That’s why I trust it to be able to defend itself. Against these defences, a company like Microsoft may gain a temporary or limited advantage. But the days when it could realistically be thought capable of destroying free software are long over.

That’s why I don’t spend a lot of time or emotional energy worrying about Microsoft. I keep an eye on them, certainly – just in case. But Microsoft’s days as a threat are gone, and so are free software’s as a helpless victim.

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Appearing tonight only

Posted in Bruce Byfield, corporatelife, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, hightech, opensource, Personal, television on August 23, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I never did write about my experience two weeks ago taking about GNU/ Linux in the TV studio. Partly, that’s because I was waiting until my article on the subject appeared on Linux.com. However, I also suspect that I did poorly, being out of practice with public speaking and flustered by the technical difficulties that emerged just before my spot. That’s not easy to admit, yet I have to admit that if I’m going to write about what happened.

Still, it was an interesting experience. The show was Lab with Leo, a tech program that appears in Canada and Australia. It’s shot on a permanent set designed for the purpose in an office building in one of the rougher areas in Vancouver. Strangely, the set isn’t totally sound-proofed, which occasionally causes trouble when people pass by in the hallway.

One thing that fascinates me about the experience is the way that film involves the creation of an artificial reality. Viewers only see certain parts of the set – they don’t see the area reserved for the cameras, or the technical crew in their glass walled offices on one side of the set. And, at one point, while the camera was focusing on the host of the show and a guest, besides the two or three members of the camera crew, another half dozen people were watching silently off-camera, not five meters from what was being filmed.

Everything — the makeup on people’s faces, the star’s bonhomie, the opening sequence in which the star walks down a hallway and stops to talk to a cast member who is seated where a receptionist might, the moving around the various pieces of the set to soften the fact that the show is mostly talking heads – is calculated to create the illusion of something that doesn’t quite exist, at least in the form that viewers might imagine.

I thought the whole process neatly symbolized by the contrast between the pristine set and the cluttered office and prop rooms from which you entered it. The office and prop rooms were what you might see in any office, especially in high-tech. By contrast, the set looks like a workshop, slightly rough around the edges, where the concerned star fields questions from viewers and wanders around from guest to guest and interacting with the cast.

I’m not a Puritan who wants to close the theaters. Still, I’m an academic by training, and a journalist by career choice, and both those professions are based on the assumption of objective truth and tghat the effort to find it is worthwhile. So, while I enjoyed the experience, even while feeling I didn’t hold up my own end as well as I might, I find that whether I only make one appearance or am asked back a matter of less importance than I thought.

Being asked back would be flattering, and I would probably do it. Yet, at the same time (and at the risk of sounding as though I’m indulging in sour grapes), if I’m not asked back, I won’t be unduly bothered, either. As a member of the audience, I’m perfectly happy accepting the illusion that the show – like any other – tries to create. I’m just not sure that, temperamentally, I’m suited to creating such illusions regularly. Illusions, in the end, don’t interest me nearly as much as ferreting out truths.

Besides, if I did do as badly as I think, I can’t complain. I’ve been doing so well lately that a failure to keep me humble may not be so bad an idea. I learned a lot, and got an article from the afternoon that might help others, so what more can I ask?

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Why would I care about Microsoft?

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, Microsoft, opensource, Personal, software, technology, Uncategorized on August 19, 2007| 18 Comments »

Whenever I mention in a crowd that I use free software, someone always seems to comment that I must hate Microsoft. When I add that I write about free software for a living, someone is apt to call me a Microsoft-basher. In either case, the implication seems to be that my identity is defined by Microsoft, and, perhaps, is composed of an unhealthy amount of envy. When I reply calmly that Microsoft is mostly irrelevant to me, the people who made these comments seem disbelieving, or at least disappointed. But why would I care about what Microsoft is doing, beyond a mild interest in news that doesn’t particularly concern me?

Oh, I know that some free software users seem fixated on denouncing Microsoft at every opportunity. You can find them on any forum with a free software slant, writing about “Micro$oft” and referring to Windoze, and seeing a deep conspiracy in every move that the company makes. Mostly, I suspect, these users are in their teens, and either passionately young or anxious to sound as though they belong.

Personally, though, my teen years are long gone. These days, I tend to hold my beliefs with a quieter but no less deep conviction.

Yet, even when I was younger, I could never rally more than an abstract dislike about Microsoft. Sure, I object to a monopoly. I’d have to be an idiot not to think that the constant anti-trust cases brought against the company world-wide are coincidences. And my personal sense of aesthetics and quality revolt against anything that is designed poorly and intended to keep the user ignorant.

But I’ve never felt much need to convert others to my beliefs, and I certainly wouldn’t be rude to Windows users. I’ve even chatted amiably with a number of Microsoft employees; some of them are pleasant people.

My move to free software was not a rejection of Microsoft so much as a discovery of a philosophy that was in sync with the rest of my social principles, and a decision to go with the superior software.

Since I made that decision, I’ve generally had a small partition with Windows on at least one machine. But it’s been kept mostly for games, and months sometimes passed between the times I booted it. For the last eight months, I didn’t have a copy of Windows running anywhere in the house, and that only changed because my new laptop came with one. I immediately minimized the partition and allocated four-fifths of the hard drive to Fedora 7. Probably, I’ll only boot into Windows when I’m doing comparison articles. I certainly don’t need it for anything else.

Under such circumstances, why would I care about Microsoft one way or the other?

The only time I’m interested at all is when a Microsoft executive makes some far-fetched statement about free software or makes a tentative attempts to interact with the free and open source software community. Yet, even then, the most I can muster is a mild professional interest. Mostly, Microsoft interacts with free software-based companies, while I prefer to use community GNU/Linux distributions, so on a personal level, I don’t care much.

I suppose that one reason people assume that I must spend my time conducting Three Minutes’ Hate sessions against Microsoft is that I earn a living from free software, so all the related issues must be of absorbing interest to me. But, the truth is, I usually leave writing about Microsoft-related issues to other people. It’s a beat that I prefer not to cover.

Anyway, even those who do write about Microsoft are rarely rabid about it. They’re professionals. They work eight hours or more a day with free software, and very few people are capable of sustaining a fierce hatred for forty hours a week. Nor are editors especially interested in paeans of hate, even if some of them have a fondness for stirring up controversy. For these reasons, if you are passionately anti-Microsoft going into free software journalism, you either don’t last long or mellow.

I could be wrong, but I suspect that the main reason people assume that I hate Microsoft is the poverty of their own imagination. For many people, Microsoft is such a large fixture in their world that — love or loathe it — the idea of not caring what the company does is almost inconceivable. They seem unable to comprehend that, among other things, the free and open source communities are refuges where – unlike the larger world – Microsoft’s latest doings or Windows’ new security patch are irrelevant.

Frankly, the obsession with Microsoft is theirs, not mine. There are days, even weeks sometimes, when I don’t think of Microsoft one way or the other. Believe it or not, mostly Microsoft just doesn’t enter into my life.

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Maybe I’m a geek

Posted in Bruce Byfield, computers, Free Software, freesoftware, laptop, officework, Personal on August 17, 2007| 9 Comments »

For the past couple of weeks, I have been setting up my new laptop. It’s a challenge, since a number of items – the wireless card, the LightScribe capacity on the DVD drive, the webcam and the modem – are not supported straight off the CD with GNU/Linux. I’m frustrated that I don’t have the time to sit down and focus on each of these puzzles. However, I find that after eight years of using GNU/Linux, my attitude to these puzzles has changed.

Understand, I am an English major by education, and my technical knowledge is what I’ve picked up as needed. Moreover, I get bored by puzzles for their own sake – one reason I’ve never applied to MENSA (another is that one of the first members I met died because his pride in his own intelligence made him careless, but that’s another story). So, by training and temperament, I should be disliking the slow setup of the laptop immensely, especially since it’s compounded by my decision to use the Fedora version of the operating system, rather than the Debian one with which I’m most familiar.

Instead, I find myself unusually patient. Strangely enough, I actually look forward to approaching each problem, trying out ideas on my own, then scanning the Internet for possible solutions and patiently trying them one at a time. And, when I solve a problem (I’m now working on the third one), I have a small sense of triumph.

What’s changed me, I’m convinced, is using GNU/Linux. Unlike Windows or OS X, GNU/Linux assumes that you want to do things your way, and provides dozens of options for you, even from the desktop. If you need help, many programs have detailed help pages in one format or the other. So, naturally, if you’re the least bit curious, you can’t help starting to poke around. For some one like me, who is in Pandora’s league when it comes to curiosity, the temptation is constant and irresistible.

Besides, what choice do I have when something goes wrong or isn’t to my liking? I don’t use a commercial version of GNU/Linux, so I have no technical support to step me through solutions. If I go to a computer store, I’m lucky to find a clerk who has even heard of something called Linux, let alone Debian or Fedora. I can ask advice on mail forums, or search for helpful lines of investigation, but, in the end, I am left to experiment methodically.

This sort of patient trial and error is what developers call hacking (and, no, it has nothing to do with breaking into other people’s computers – that’s called cracking, to the initiated). Since my programming skills are laughable and I’ve never identified as a developer, the realization that I’ve picked up the habit and even learned to like it is somewhat disconcerting.

For years, I have made a living interpreting geeks to other people – and sometimes the other way around. But now I have to reassess myself. Maybe I’m a geek after all.

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Relearning how to talk to the public

Posted in Bruce Byfield, environmentalism, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, Personal on July 8, 2007| 2 Comments »

I had my first chance in a long time to brush up my public speaking skills yesterday when I stopped by the Global Habitat Festival – Vancouver’s Live Earth event – to help with the Free Geek Vancouver booth. Considering how rusty my skills were, I question how much help I was, but I enjoyed the experience enough to stay a couple of hours later than I had planned.

In past episodes of my life, I’ve staffed all sorts of booths, including displays at open houses in university, a brass-rubbing demonstrations at a Renaissance fair, and exhibits at trade fairs for several different companies. In all of them, my teaching experience has helped me through. My between-degrees stint in a mall book store was even more to the point, since staffing a booth involves briefer, more one-on-one contact than even the most interactive teaching.

However, for the last few years, I’ve worked mostly from home, aside from teaching a few technology courses, so yesterday I had a hard time getting started. Observing just the right time to approach someone takes practice: you don’t want to pounce on them, but you don’t want to hold back so long that they walk away with unanswered questions, either. And at first I was diffident, not because talking in public or to strangers bothers me in the least, but because I could feel how awkward my skills were.

Fortunately, I and the other volunteers had the example of Ifny LaChance, one of the Free Geek coordinators to learn from – and, eventually, to shame us into action. I can only describe Ifny’s approach as putting her whole personality and attention behind talking to passersby, chatting and exchanging introductions in a friendly and unobtrusive way. Observing closely, I thought I could see the effort she expended, but her approach definitely drew people into conversation (despite the booth being directly behind the stage and the frequency with which bands made conversation impossible).

I was feeling more at ease, especially when I realized that I wasn’t the only first-time volunteer, but definitely still warming up when I and a couple of others were left alone at the booth. Necessity forced me to push myself more than I felt entirely ready for, but the choice was measuring up or fleeing in panic. For my own self-respect — to say nothing of my wish to live up to expectations, I stayed. I soon started feeling comfortable enough to enjoy what I was doing, and to find my own style of drawing people out, including a store of stock phrases for the most common questions I heard.

Probably because so much of my recent relevant experience centers on interviewing people, I found that the style that worked best for me was following the lead of those with whom I talked, drawing out what interested them until I saw what information or direction they wanted the most.

Unlike Ifny, I tended not to ask for names, although perhaps I might have encouraged more volunteers to sign up that way. But I felt obliged to be especially restrained in talking to female passersby, just to make sure that my approach wasn’t misinterpreted as a more personal interest. In the past, I don’t think I was so aware of that necessity. And I was pleased that I was using more eye contact and taking more care to draw in everyone in a group than I used to.

I was helped by the fact that the booth was design so that those staffing it had to stand in front it, rather than hiding behind the bulwark of a table, as so many of those at the festival did. Lacking such a defense, I had no choice but to engage people.

However, I’m still more comfortable on the free software and education questions than the recycling ones. Fortunately, the indignation that many people felt when they saw the photos of the unsafe conditions in which computers are broken down in China and Nigeria were more than enough for a conversation in most cases.

Still, despite my lack of practice, I think I managed to conjure up a ghost or two of my former ability. When I’ve dealt with the public in the past, there’s always been a sense of rightness flowing from me when I was connecting, and yesterday I was actually feeling an echo of that feeling by the end of the day. Even with my legs feeling the strain of standing on concrete for six hours, I was tempted to stay longer.

I didn’t show up for personal gratification, except that which comes from helping a good cause in a small way. Still, I was gratified to see that my old skills had merely been dormant, and not lost altogether. They’re a little lower key now than they were, but I think that, with practice, they should be just as effective as my former repetoire.

Next time, they may return more easily – provided, of course, that I don’t wait too long for the next time.

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Free Geek Vancouver

Posted in British Columbia, Bruce Byfield, environmentalism, Free Geek, Free Software, freesoftware, Personal, recycling, technology, Uncategorized, Vancouver on June 19, 2007| 2 Comments »

In part of my never ending efforts to get out of the house for more than my daily exercise, last night I went to a meeting of the local Linux Users Group at the new Free Geek warehouse just off Main Street in Vancouver. I went away more convinced than ever that Free Geek is one of the more innovating activist groups about town.

Free Geek Vancouver, whose origins I’ve written about professionally, is the first Canadian implementation of an idea that originated in Portland, Oregon. Basically, the idea is to combine the recycling of computer equipment with education and the promotion of free software. For a nominal fee, the group will recycle computer equipment, taking care that it is disposed of ethically – and not just dumped in landfill or shipped to a developing nation where recovery of the raw materials becomes a health hazard to those who undertake it. Higher end computers are refurbished and loaded with free software like Ubuntu and OpenOffice.org and sold or donated to charities and other needy groups. Volunteers can also work with Free Geek for a set number of hours in order to get a computer of their own.

Officially, the group is run by consensus. However, if David Repa and Ifny LaChance, the two Free Geekers to whom I’ve talked the most are typical – and they seem to be — I’d say that it’s equally fuelled by apparently limitless supplies of enthusiasm and energy – to say nothing of a talent for principled promotion. Recently, for example, the group turned down coverage in a national newspaper because the journalist wanted to do a stereotypical article focusing on poor people who had benefited from the group’s services. Believing the story would violate the confidentiality in which they pride themselves, the group refused. Of course, with the coverage they are getting in the local media, they hardly needed the exposure, but many groups wouldn’t have resisted the temptation to compromise for the sake of publicity.

And the group is resourceful, too. What other group would turn having one of their members stopped with a bicycle cart full of computers on the way back from a client into an opportunity to enlist the local police department as supporters?

At the same time, the group is far from humorless. So far as I’m concerned, a group that claims to prefer “catalyst” and “primordial ooze” instead “founder” is refreshing in its refusal to take itself too seriously. The same humor is found in the movement’s slogan, “Helping the needy get nerdy since the beginning of the third millennium.”

Besides the resourcefulness and outlook of the people involved, what I like best is the way that Free Geek combines two activist groups that traditionally have little contact. Too often, social activists never think to apply their convictions to the software they use, and geeks never think of applying their equally high ethical standards outside of computing.

For over a year, I’ve been writing about the Free Software Foundation’s efforts to bridge these gaps, and I’ve even made some attempts to help in this effort myself, notably in an article called “Free software!” for the New Internationalist. Now, in Free Geek, I’ve found another group interested in doing the same.

I’ll need to think about it, but I’m seriously thinking that one of the ways I’ll be getting out of the house more is as a volunteer. At the very least, I’ll be sending a cheque once I recover from the shock of paying taxes on my sole proprietorship.

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Printers then and now

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Free Software, freesoftware, hardware, laserjets, laserprinters, Personal, printers, technology, Uncategorized on June 3, 2007| 2 Comments »

Last week, my trusty Lexmark Optra R+ laser printer expired after eleven years of hard service. In a couple of days, I made myself an expert on alternatives, and bought a replacement. This effort at responsible consumerism emphasized to me how much and how little has changed in printers over the past decade.

Eleven years may seem like a long time to keep a printer, so I should explain that, while I’m a tech-journalist. I’m not a technophile. Nor am I a technophobe. I keep current on new technology, but, for personal use, I try to avoid the two extreme approaches by evaluating new hardware carefully according to its features and my needs before I introduce it into my life. By the time I accept a new piece of technology, I’ve researched it thoroughly and I’m prepared to pay for what I want.

That was the case with the old printer. Having installed it, I forgot about aside from occasionally cartridge replacements – until, years later, to my dismay and amazement , it commanded my attention again by failing to work.

What I bought was state-of-the-art for 1996: with true 1200 x 1200 dpi resolution and 16 megabytes of RAM. I might have topped it off with more RAM, but, today, it still compares favorably to new laser printers in its price range. In fact, many comparable laser printers still do only 600 x 600 dpi. Considering how much the clock speeds and caches of motherboards have increased in the last decade, this lack of change in something as basic as printer resolution is surprising. Apparently, 600 x 600 dpi is good enough for most people, and the industry has largely stagnated.

Most of the innovation in printers is in low end inkjets and color laser printers, both have which have dropped dramatically in price. There are even low end lasers for less than $100. But,on average, the main differences between today’s printers and those of a decade ago are that today’s printers carry more memory, and cost a quarter of their early counterparts. For example, I paid $1200 for my older printer, plus another couple of hundred for extra RAM. To buy the same functionality with four times the RAM cost me $320. Other differences, like built in support for more languages and perhaps a twenty percent reduction in size also exist, but these are relatively trivial differences.

Overall, things have changed so little in printer hardware that the largest innovation is probably the all-in-one machines that combine printing, scanning, copying, and faxing. But even these are a mixed blessing; because I have a color inkjet and a black and white laser printer, I now have three scanners, two of which are inferior to my dedicated scanner and that I never wanted.

That’s the difference, I suppose, between technology driven by the demands of the gaming industry and the demands of business. If video card development were driven by business’ needs, we’d probably still think that two megabyte cards were blazingly fast.

However, one area where great changes have occurred is in installing a printer under GNU/Linux. When I first installed GNU/Linux, printing support was via the lprng command and the painfully basic printtool, and I had to run dozens of tests before I found a driver that supported my printer. Had I been buying a printer for GNU/Linux, the only real advice would have been to get one that supported the postscript printing language.

By contrast, my first stop last week was LinuxPrinting.org, Till Kamppeter’s database that divides printers into four categories, based on how they work under GNU/Linux: Perfectly, Mostly, Partially, and Paperweight. My first stop was the Suggested Printers page to look for ideal models and manufacturers. Then, I went through the websites of half a dozen local hardware vendors, keeping an eye out for recommended manufacturers and checking the available models against the database and my requirements. After several hours’ work, I had produced a shopping list of half a dozen possible printers.

The next day, I located my first choice. Thanks to the foomatic database and the Common UNIX Printing System (CUPS), it was installed and running twenty minutes after I lugged it home. And most of that time was unpacking and assembling, and crawling around under the computer desk.

Clearly, then, some progress has been made in printers over the last decade – but it has been by the free software communities as much as the manufacturers or the marketplace. Admittedly, LinuxPrinting.org is part of The Linux Foundation, which many manufacturers support. Also, many of the advances in GNU/Linux printing are due directly to Hewlett-Packard’s free tools and drivers; because many of HP’s printers are postscript, they also run many of the printers made by other manufacturers. But the point is that, together, the community and the manufacturers have taken so much of the pain out of installing a printer under GNU/Linux that all I had to do was be a responsible consumer and shop around – and I would have done that regardless.

Still, I admit that I am disappointed to realize how little the basic specs have changed. A decade ago, I expected that 4800 dpi laser printers would be available by now – the equivalent quality of a fine book. So, while I’m pleased by the ugly but functional HP 3050 that I bought, I’m also a little disappointed that it is such a small improvement over my old printer.

Not for the first time, I’m left reflecting that, for an industry that once thought of itself as being composed of mavericks, the tech sector has grown awfully conservative.

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The interviewer between the mirrors and trial reporting

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, Free Software, freesoftware, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing on May 3, 2007| Leave a Comment »

I had a call earlier this week from ABC News. With the trial of Hans Reiser for the alleged murder of his wife scheduled to start next week, the reporter wanted background on the free software community and how Reiser is regarded. Since I wrote an article last summer about Reiser’s struggle to get his work accepted into the Linux kernel, and another one shortly after his arrest about how his company was going to carry on without him, I’m the person from whom the mainstream media is looking for answers. In the past six months, I’ve been interviewed by The Oakland Tribune, The Wall Street Journal, and People on the same subject. And, each time, it leaves me with a deep sense of ambiguity.

For one thing, I’ve never actually met Reiser. I only exchanged a few emails while doing my earlier story, and fielded some complaints from him about what I said. For the second story, I also corresponded with his father. But these contacts were brief, and hardly make me an expert. I suspect I’m being called for background mainly because these articles pop up in a Web search, but I hardly feel qualified to give the comments for which I’m asked.

For another, so far as I’m concerned, these stories were only minor parts of my working life. I had some small pride in the first story for its thoroughness and attempts at balance, but neither the Linux kernel nor Reiser’s work on his filesystem are beats that I cover regularly. The second story is especially minor, an update that helped me fill my monthly quota of articles. When I consider the comprehensive articles I’ve done that have been largely ignored, I’m irked that the second one should be the part of my output to receive so much attention.

Most importantly, I have no wish to join the chorus of speculations about the case. In the second article, I made a conscious choice to focus on the technical issues because I thought that to do otherwise would be in poor taste. I don’t even care for mysteries unless they are a facade for a historical novel, so covering or discussing a real life murder is profoundly distasteful to me.

Nor, for the record, do I have any predictions about the outcome. From what I’ve seen and heard about Reiser, I would be no more surprised to hear him declared innocent than to hear him found guilty. I simply don’t know enough about him to form a meaningful opinion. Either way, the case seems like a tragedy for everyone involved – and that’s as far as I care to go.

All the same, I found myself replying to each request for comments in some detail, and I’m still not altogether sure why.

Part of the reason, I suppose, is the implied compliment. Online journalists may have more readers than colleagues in the mainstream media, but we’re not nearly as well-regarded. So, to an extent, I feel that the requests lend legitimacy to my daily work.

Even more importantly, I feel that, if I don’t give a reply, my mainstream colleagues will simply move on to someone with less knowledge of the free and open source software community and less of a sense of responsibility. Since I have a detailed perspective of the community, I honestly feel that I can express the range of reactions better than most people. Hans Reiser is a person whose work is both admired and pilloried, and whose personality often interfers with sober judgment of his accomplishments, and I can point out this range of opinions because, unlike many people, both my job and my temperment keeps me interested yet distanced from the various issues.

But, mainly, I’m simply too damned polite to refuse despite my own ambiguity. So, I talk, but, not so deep down, I keep feeling that being party to the coverage of the case at all is enormously gauche. In fact, there are times I wish I’d never written about Reiser at all. Had I known the consequences, probably I wouldn’t have.

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The interviewer between the mirrors

Posted in Bruce Byfield, Business, Free Software, Personal, technical writing, Uncategorized, writing on April 18, 2007| 2 Comments »

I’m a journalist, so in an interview I’m usually the one asking the questions. Today, I experienced a role reversal when Samartha Vashishtha published an interview with me in Indus, the online magazine for the India Chapter of the Society for Technical Communication. I’ve been interviewed several times before, a couple of times for pod casts and a few more for mainstream publications needing some quick expertise about free software, but for some reason, this time I felt queasier than most.

It’s not that Vashishtha misrepresented me, or anything like that. He doesn’t make say anything I wouldn’t have said. He conducted the interview via email, and, so far as I can see without going to the trouble of a detailed comparison,his largest change was to add exclamations marks. I don’t use many exclamation marks myself – nor many initial capitals, being a lower case sort of person – but no great matter if he did.

On the whole, he did a very professional job, The sense is there, and I even got a plug in for free software, explaining how it would help the developing world in general and India in particular to meet the industrialized world on an equal footing.

I also mentioned that free software projects are also a great place for technical writers to gain experience, since most developers have little interest in documentation and generally welcome anyone willing to undertake the task.

Still, I was a little reluctant to do the interview at first. It’s been three years since I last did a technical writing assignment. In fact, it was the monotony of my last major contract that made me desperate enough to take the leap into journalism.

Besides, how could I be sure that anything I was saying was relevant? I occasionally drop by the Techwr-l mailing list to see what old acquaintances are saying, but I can’t pretend to know the trends in the industry anymore.

Even more importantly, I’ve moved a long way down my road since my last technical writing contract. A large part of the time I was a technical writer, I was facing some of the worst times of life, so on the whole it’s an era of my life that I’m not eager to revisit.

Maybe this uncertainty explains why I sound so stuffy and so full of opinions in the interview. I don’t normally sound that way. (or, if I do, my family and friends are polite enough to pretend otherwise) But, even talking in generalities, perhaps I was circling too close to the bad years, and knew it.

Most importantly, the whole time I was writing my responses, I kept feeling distinctly unsettled. Being a journalist yet being the one interviewed was disorienting, like standing between two mirrors and seeing one of the infinite reflections starting to move independently. I don’t feel important or proud to be interviewed — just dazed at the role reversal involved.

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