Open Source vs Proprietary Software

I attended a debate last night organised by Scotland IS on the above topic, with the sub title "Is Open Source a Viable Business Alternative ?". It was chaired by Euan Robertson of Spektra and had two speakers, one from IBM and one from Microsoft speaking respectively for and against Open Source as a viable business model. There was a little vote at the end which was declared a diplomatic draw.

The event was pretty well-attended, must have been close on 100 people there, and there were free drinks sponsored by Melville Craig Recruitment. Each of the speakers was given 20 minutes to argue their case then there was a Q&A session.

There wasn't much new news there for people who follow the topic anyway but for my money the Microsoft speaker actually made the better argument in relation to the topic. Unsurprisingly, most of the people knew which way they would vote before they even entered the room, so it wouldn't have made much difference what the speakers said. The religious wars show no sign of abating. Nobody came forth with the classic definition of Open Source or Free Software being "free" as in free speech rather than free beer.

About the most interesting remark of the evening came in response to a very pertinent question about the upgrade treadmill on which Microsoft has put its customers with its Software Assurance licensing scheme. When asked how this benefited the customer, the Microsoft representative was candid enough to say that if he was working in the open source world he would recommend raising a statue in honour of the person who devised Microsoft's License 6.0 scheme as it was about the best thing which had happened to boost the open source movement in a long time. He was also thoroughly frank about the fact that Microsoft believes it creates things of value, that they therefore expect people to pay for them and that he recommended anyone who didn't agree simply not to buy it. Seems fair enough.

Stepping back from the fundamentalist views, as far as business solutions go, the simple truth remains that it matters less what technology you use than how well you use it. You can build great applications on Linux and on Windows, in the same way that you can build dreadful ones on either. There was an outbreak of brotherly love and tree hugging when both sides pledged allegiance to the one true God of Web Services, then everyone repaired to the bar for more of Melville Craig's free drinks.

The Guru Red Manifesto

You've probably heard of the Cluetrain Manifesto, but I came across another thing in a similar vein today, the Guru Red Manifesto. 52 rules for doing business :

1. Do not IPO
2. Do not take money from a stranger
3. ...
and so on.

I don't know that I agree with everything they say but it makes an interesting read.

Check in from the comfort of your desk

I got an email this morning from British Airways telling me that I can check in to a flight from Edinburgh this week from the comfort of my desk. I haven't done it yet because I may end up not taking the flight but it seems like a great idea to me !

I have always liked the self-service check-in machines at the airport for three reasons :

1. You get to see all the free seats on the plane and pick the one you want
2. The queues are often shorter
3. It's easier to get away with bulky or slightly heavy hand luggage than if you check in at the desk !

This sounds even better - You can check in the night before you go and print your boarding pass then just breeze through (with your photo id !) once they scan your barcode at the security search area. Even if I don't get to do it this week I'll certainly want to try it out soon - have to be quick as it's only a 3 month trial until May.

Now that BA fares are quite competitive as well (£58 return including the taxes, in fact mostly the taxes, for this Edinburgh-London ticket) they do seem to be getting their act together.

There's a link to online check-in on the main BA homepage.

Organising web research material

I came across a product called Onfolio last week and am trying it out at the moment. It is intended to help you collate and organise all the material you find on the web. I do a lot of research on the Internet and have always found it a pain to store information for later recall, especially if you want to group things together and be able to search your collection. I did find a thing called iHarvest about 4 years ago but it somehow never quite worked for me and it was subsequently swallowed up by acquisition and doesn't seem to exist in its current form any more.

Ever eager for something for nothing I have tried various free tools for this purpose but none of them have really been up to the job. You can save copies of web pages using Internet Explorer into so-called web archives (.mht files) but it's a bit clumsy and doesn't always work too well. So, now it's Onfolio that's getting a trial.

The company was founded by Jeremy Allaire one of the brothers who founded Allaire Corporation, subsequently acquired by Macromedia, so the software quality should be good.

Even although it's not free, it's only $30 to register, so if it does the job it is worth that much at least. More comments as I use the product.

Starting the weblog

This is the start of the EIT Consulting weblog. The intention is that this will be used to provide information which is of interest to users and implementors of technology in business. There are various categories which will, over time, become useful as a way of filtering the information in the weblog.
The information in the weblog can also be accessed using an RSS reader program. If that means nothing to you, then there will be another entry in future which talks a bit about that.