Friday, May 26, 2000

"The jokes can be funny up to a point, but soon one starts to realize that the problem most people have is not Microsoft. It's that they are not Microsoft."

Even the "nice" open source advocates scare me this way.

I just spent an hour reading this piece. I am in total agreement. You will find many of the points he made in back issues of DaveNet. My open invitation to Brian Behlendorf last month to embrace all kinds of software still stands. It's the creation that matters, the creativity, and delivery and follow-through. The zealots' "analysis" is totally crude. Meyer gets it right. Few commercial developers get rich, and that's not the reason most of us work so hard. The open source "revolution" is not a revolution at all, it's not new, and it couldn't exist without lots of contributions from commercial developers. The only message with credibility is respect.

Further, the open source message is a distraction from the Web, where the real revolution is happening. Whether the software is open source or not is not the issue. The issue is what does it do, and does it open the medium for thoughtful expression by huge numbers of people.

IMHO, of course.

***Microsoft postpones announcement

News.Com: Appeals court may be next stop for Microsoft. "The prospect of an imminent ruling casts an even darker cloud over the company's future and the hope that it might win on appeal what it couldn't get before Jackson. The timing is also potentially problematic as Microsoft plans its Next Generation Windows Services (NGWS) announcement next Thursday. If Jackson is to rule immediately, it could be the same day."

Today's news. Microsoft rescheduled its June 1 event to June 22.

Comment: A welcome move. Microsoft has been defiant of the legal process in Washington, until now. To announce a comprehensive integrated strategy simultaneously with a judgment that would result in the breakup of the company would be the ultimate in defiance.

***Today's pointers

David Mason is looking for a new outliner.

peterme has a longish but interesting account of his trip to Copenhagen to speak at the Reboot conference.

Joel Spolsky: Chicken and Egg Problems.

Dale Doughterty's pictures from Holland.

I have a lot of catching up to do on UserLand's development process, but I see that we're getting close to the first builds of Frontier 6.2. This is going to be the easiest-ever Frontier to install, just plop it on a hard disk and start it up and let people create sites just like you do on EditThisPage.Com.

***Opening remarks

Welcome to London!

I'm editing this page.

My name is Dave.

It's totally raining here.

Returning to SF tomorrow.

Had a great time in Trieste and Venezia with Paolo and Company.

I'm connecting via FreeServe. One of the things I learned on this European trip is that ISPs are free here because the cost of using the phone is so incredibly high. Tell me about it. I was shocked when I received my phone bill in Amsterdam. My net access cost as much as my hotel room. No wonder people in Europe complain so much. (I'm in Europe right now.)

FreeServe works great for everything but sending email. I have to use a proxy server to access the Web, I guess they're doing some profiling on me, that's OK with me. But it can't find my mail server when I send mail, receiving mail works great. (Every hotel concierge in Europe should know about FreeServe.)

I have a few messages pending, one to my brother about speaking Italian with a Rumanian accent, a message to my friend Chala in SF who liked the Negotiating picture (she thinks it should be in National Geographic) and one to Michael Condry at Sun expressing pleasure that he is in favor of SOAP and that Sun plans to participate in the standardization process. I'm sorry I misunderstood! (These emails will go out as soon as I figure out how to do it with FreeServe or when I return to the US, tomorrow.)

Ooops, I just started getting redirected to this page after clicking on Post Changes when editing this page. What does it mean? I have no idea. But the changes are getting through.

BTW, Pike does not work with this caching arrangement. Not happy about that!

Remind me to tell you about my idea for a programming commune.