Increa Technology |Engineer |Aviator |Educator

The more I spend time on the government side of spending government dollars, the more I realize the government has its hand in most areas of technology advancement. However, I’ve been dabbling with some technical ideas, intellectual property, and patent concerns at the interface of Linux and Windows computing. I realized this representative of a certain weakness government research has.

Government organizations are bound up with rules and regulations. It’s problematic enough to bring a personal PDA into work and use it on the government computer. The thought of bringing a Linux computer or creating a dual-boot computer is abhorrent to the IT staff because it represents serious lack of standardization, control, and understanding. For this reason alone, I can be reasonably sure that the government will never find new breakthroughs if they involve simultaneously using Linux and Windows.

The January 2006 issue of InTech magazine (pg 17) indicates that the United States has very few people graduating with engineering degrees compared to other countries: US 6%, Europe 12%, Singapore 20%, China 40%. Our country isn’t engineering any more. We’re moving on to managing engineers, and letting others do the “grunt work”. I hope that’s wise. Some days it seems a good way to leverage the talent of many people. Other days, it seems we’re getting so disconnected from the details of innovation that any country is ripe to overtake us. ©

In the month of February, a friend upgraded my ability to have a web presence. Most interesting has been the multi-dimensional statistics of visitors to my web pages. What surprised me so far is something that should not have surprised me: the most popular pages discuss, well.. the most popular topics. They have something to do with another person’s life — dreaming of where they could go, or surviving where they’re at. Specifically, the two most popular pages are about becoming an astronaut and heating your house with shelled corn.

I put most of my energy into more specialty areas, things that appear esoteric to most of the population. This gives me something to think about. ©

I read John Marks’ comments on onlamp (pointer by slashdot today) about Open Source efforts. He claims it’s not so much a community as a reasonable business choice.

When taking stock of vertical software markets, I notice a decided lack of open source alternatives to commercial software. One could test assertions made in previous paragraphs by looking at vertical markets that have recently broadened in scope following an increase in the sheer number of inhabitants in that market. If the above assertions are true, there should be an emerging open source ecosystem in that market, albeit less mature and feature-complete than competing commercial products.

My experience in the aeronautics technical field is that there are high-dollar packages. But NASA also releases some fantastic tools as Open Source. Research TetrUSS as one example. It’s special among government circles because in that environment, it’s tremendously important for an office or organization to have self-value. NASA is going through this soul searching right now, and so are the Air Force Research Labs. Both of these organizations are examples where releasing Open Source serves legal commitments to tax payers (the reason), and organizational self-survival tactics (the motive).

With prices approaching zero, software developers have two choices when trying to win over users: (1) add features not available elsewhere, and (2) release the source code. There is no other currency of value that developers can extend to users.

I believe there are 3 orthogonal metrics for software: Functionality, Performance, and Usabilty. Performance is how quickly, efficiently the software accomplishes functions. Usability captures the relationship between the software and the user. If you include cost, there are really 4 instead of 3 value metrics, and the argument that low cost is the only parameter for a software provider to reach customers with weakens. Hence the business case for Open Source weakens.

If you think cost can be isolated as the primary driving factor, the Apple v. Wintel saga tends to support your opinion. However, if you believe low cost and ease of adoptability will lead to the economies of scale necessary to add things like functionality, better performance and usability, the Apple/Wintel considerations shows you incorrect. Althougth Wintel enjoys economies of scale, it’s actually Apple that generally exhibits better functionality and usability and performance. ©