These two comments were posted on my blog - regarding Microsoft pulling back on their o-o file system - WinFS.  

This is important as WinFS implements triples - which will map nicely to rdf and support first order objects, such as media, messages and people/groups.

Crucial stuff for the future. 

Well it turns out that the reports were not accurate!

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Marc,

That's not entirely accurate. The media overblew the story. Longhorn will still have WInFS in the client, but some of it's capabilities will be scaled back from what they ultimately wanted. The functionality you want will still be in there.

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Do you believe the bullshit you read on the Internet?

It's bull.

WinFS is still here and is still mighty important. Check out interviews with the WinFS team on http://channel9.msdn.com

Oh, and Robert, tell me one thing that's gotten cut out. The WinFS team hasn't made any cuts to overall feature set. They've scoped down the internal customer set. That's all. That might change, but so far we're on track. See ya next year with beta1.

There will be lots of sensationalistic rumors about Longhorn. Becareful in what you believe.

Dan Gillmor: Ex-Dean aide gets new life in valley. Dan Gillmor wrote about CivicSpace Labs where Zack and I do our work on Drupal. It is a good summary of what we are doing organizationally. Drupal is even mentioned specifically towards the end. [drupal.org - community plumbing]

Congrats to Zack and Neil - they deserve it.  And Andy Rappaport - too.  It's not often that I'm nice to VCs - but Andy seems to be doing something good. I wish more VCs and rich people did that.

Jeff Jarvis: "You can't be a software company and a service company under one roof, for you will inevitably end up competing with your customers." [Scripting News]

This is a perfect post to followup my previous rant.

Earlier Ted Leung used the current Moveable Type pricing scandal as a launching pad for: "Community owned weblogging tools". I responded that the code is only part of the equation of the software.

And then BAM along comes this next post by Jeff, which I actually mainly agree with, asserting that you can't mix a software company and services company - as it generates an inherent conflict of interest with your software customers - and then I thought NO!

I don't agree with Jeff.

You can and we should be able to mix services and software - we MUST!  Over 50% of IBM snd Oracle's revenues are generated from service business.  There's plenty of good money out there, why shouldn't companies be opportunistic and jump on great ideas and run with it?

I think it was really smart of SixApart to put out TypePad and I'm proud of them for it.  I don't agree with their pricing model for TypePad - so it came as no surprise to me that they'd kind of stumble with the MT 3.0 pricing delimma.   But it looks like they're listening and are senstiive enough to criticism that they 'backed off' a bit on the onerous terms.  That was just stupid.

But they do have the right to do what they're doing.

But Jeff's POV brings up the REAL issue we face - as we all try and show how to 'make money' from open source.  There's such a thing as GOOD implementation, GREAT implementation and HITTING A HOME RUN!

Based upon what I've seen Ross Rader and Tucows produce with Blogware - I'd say the Trotts and SixApart are only doing a GOOD job at TypePad.  They're obviously being pulled in numerous directions (like who the hell thought up TypeKey? Can't they get that functionality from SourceID or other authentication systems?)

So I totally agree with Jeff Jarvis that combining services and software in one company creates inherent conflicts of interest - but that's the nature of the beast nowadays - Jeff - and it takes really GREAT, sometimes HOME RUN like execution to pull it off.

In my own life - I can tell you that when the VCs told us to stop doing production work - back in 1987-88 - we let $10,000,000s of reveneus escape us, while our mutlimedia develoipers chomped it down.  Our little company, which was doing less than $5M a year had enabled a $250M market - growing 100% a year.

But because we were relished to the 'tools ghetto', Kleiner Perkins then went on to invest in lots of other multmedia startups - taking their market knowledge we educated them in - and investing their money elsewhere. 

I vowed then, that I'd participate in ALL stages of the food chain - from the moment when the idea is created, to the pitch that gets the project going, to the designs and architecture of the project, the implementation and MOST importantly the iteration, refinement and testing required to evolve a really great digital lifestyle aggregator.  That's what I'm dong right now - and it's the only way to guarentee that your ideas come to actuality.

I've seen too many good ideas go to waste and I've been around the block enough to know how to make things happen.  Creating software is a multi-faceted, multi-discilplinary activity - sometimes stretching out over many years before you 'get it right'.

So Jeff's point is right on!

You DO create a conflict of interest with your open source brothers and sisters.  Who do you think is gonna best understand how to exploit the technology and take it to the next step?

Don't you think Mitch Kapor knows that - too?

Oh boy, something to write about on a beautiful Sunday afternoon.

Thanks Ted - 'cause this is exactly what I've been feeling - that the code (whether it's GPL or whatever) is only part of the equation of software.  Clearly the Moveable Type community is feeling riped off as they could have sworn that they had something to do with the success of Moveable Type.

The ultimate betrayl happens when the folks who control the code - actually think that the code is their intellectual property that gets milked on the proverbial tit of business model - to reap the rewards of life - called profit.

The Moveable Type community ate the red pill and actually expected to Trotts to eat their own dogfood as well.  Well guess what? Everyone has a different difinition of what 'open' is.......

Tim O'Reilly says that Google and Amazon are open source.  Macromedia thinks Flash is open.  Dave Winer thinks RSS 2.0 is open.  Lots of different defintions of the same word.

At the end of the day - it's not just the code that makes up the standard, but the people who use it.  That's a very simple statement, but so so so so so so so so true.

As Ted has learned through his life - and currently at the OSAF, building products, iterating features and refining the software - takes time, energy and dedication.  SixApart knows that only too well, and Joi too - so it was their time to charge and nobody likes that.  Oh well.

No - the code is only PART of the equation of what software is - and it's the company that controls or owns the software - that gets to call the shots. 

That's why Macromedia does the stupid things it does - as it's not controlled by me anymore.  All future moves by Friendster are not being driven by Jonathan Abrams anymore (which actually gives Friendster some hope!)

All this doesn't happen by coincidence - it's actually the state of the art of our software ecosystem.  This is what happens when a bunch of hackers get laid off and have nothing to do.  We change the rules.

So if Matt Mullenweg plays his cards right, he can lead the world of WordPress forward and become the next SixApart - at which point he'll meet the next Joi and eventually will have to charge for WordPress.

It's called technology gravity - driven by money (and the rent and food and health plans.)  More times than not - the developer of any open source software expects to make money off of the software - somewhere down the line....

I can guarentee you Mitch Kapor does!

But he's throwing in his $5M bucks and a few years of his time to get Chandler there.  So is Matt Mullenweg.

Here's Ted's post.... more response and inspiration from it - below.

Community owned weblogging tools. I've been trying to figure out what I think about the whole Movable Type situation, since Julie's blog is running on it.

For the record, I think that SixApart should be free to charge money for their product, and to price it as they see fit. That's how business works. SixApart is't a charity, and the rest of us have no business forcing them to be one if they don't want to be one.

Being an open source guy, I figured that the obvious angle to tackle was the open source one. So I thought about blogging, blogging as freedom of expression and what I perceive to be a good match between my personal goals/definition of blogging and open source software development. I read Mark Pilgrim's post about WordPress, and software freedom and open source. But as I thought about it some more, and tried to write a post about it, something didn't quite settle with me. Mark's post talked quite a bit about freedom, not being locked in and so forth, all the usual Free/Open Source stuff. But when I looked at the outcry over MT 3.0, I saw (among other things) that parts of the blogging community felt that their relationship with the Trotts/SixApart had been broken by the new licensing. I had wanted to write about the need for open source blogging software, of which there is plenty. However, I don't think that just being open source will be enough, or that matching or exceeding the feature set of MT 3.0 will be enough. My read on what made MT very special was that a sizable portion of the blogging community loved it, and felt that in some way MT was "their" package. Which of course, isn't true. It was (and is) SixApart's package. But I sensed in the outcry over MT 3.0 a yearning (at least in some parts of the blogging community) for a package that people "could call their own".

I think that some people believe that WordPress is that package, because the GPL will protect them from term changes such as SixApart's. Realistically, I expect to see more packages change terms as the blogging world expands. I don't think that just having a GPL'ed package is enoughl. The developers may still ignore the users. The developers may get tired and walk away. There are all kinds of problems that won't get fixed just because WordPress is under the GPL (or any other open source license). What WordPress (or any other suitable open source contender -- anytime you read WordPress here, insert your favorite open source contender) needs is a community. Normally, (from an Apache perspective) I'd say that WordPress needs to develop/enhance/diversify/grow its community. And that's probably true. But if the blogging community wants to have a blogging package "to call its own", then just switching blogs over to WordPress won't be enough. Folks should roll up their sleeves and get involved. I hear lots of people in the blogosphere talking about community. In real world communities like the Amish communities, when disasters happen, people chip in to help. When a barn burns down, people come together to put up a new one. It seems to me that some people view what happened with MT 3.0 as the blogging community's equivalent of a barn burning down.

So here's the punch line: If you are considering moving your blog to WordPress or some other open source blogging package as a result of what happened this week, don't drop in, switch your blog over, and drop out. Take your time, look around, and see if there's a way that you can help. [Ted Leung on the air]

Marc picks it up here again

So what is Broadband Mechanics gonna do about this?

What is my company doing in this world?

1.  All we want for people using our code - is credit.  We'll simply ask folks who use the PeopleAggregator, PeopleDNS or WebOutliner (or any other open projects we help make happen) to put our logo/emblem on the page and point to us.  It's up to us to make money after that.  But any code we open source - can be used however you want.  Breaking compatibility, forking or whatever is about a stupid as - as - as a young entreprenuer can make it.  That's not obviously what we want to see happen - but you have every right to be as stupud as you want.

2. Moveable Type maintained focus, compatibility and growth by balancing their own instincts with input from the community.  They then choose who they'd be friends with, as they can't possibly be friends with everyone!  Well guess what?  I disagree with that!  I think you CAN be friends with everyone - and you do it with a social network - like Tribe, 1UP.com or Orkut.  THIS is what I mean by applying a social network into a specific context.  What better way of establishing an open community blogging platform - then to build a socal newtork into it?

3.  So I'm gonna pitch Matt Mullenweg not only on supporting a basic FOAFnet import/export capability - but to have the entire PeopleAgrgegator built into WordPress as well.  For free - please take it - enjoy.  Just give us credit.

UPDATE: Doc suggested that I make it clear that the Ted I was referring to is Ted Leung - who works at the OSAF.