Ordinary fool

Brussels was a lot of fun. Believe it or not, DrupalCon 2005, part of FOSDEM (Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting), was my first ever conference. I've long neglected my inner geek. It was all there: scraggy beards, long flowing hair, pasty complexions... My favourite T-shirt read "There are 10 types people. Those who understand binary, and those who don't."

Once that was over we went out in Brussels itself, to celebrate our good news. At the Mannequin Pis (peeing boy), we bumped into a couple we had already met, first on the Eurostar, and then at the conference itself. Fate was clearly determined that the four of us should meet. We stayed out drinking Kwak, Kriek, Orvel and Duvel until 4:30am.

I was a bit taken aback to discover my Drupal-based Efurbishment website had been reviewed as part of some Drupal research. You can read about what I got right, and what I got wrong halfway through this entry on the Drupal site. I'm not quite sure about "This site has no goods to sell and is truly an open source site, offering a service free of charge." I'll have to work on correcting that slight misperception.

Another client sets off on the Drupal-paved road to online community happiness. This time it's my choir: [?external:http://www.prophono.com/ Prophono]. Concert coming up soon!

Three enriching months at Victoria Real/Endemol have come to an end and now I'm moving on. I've been working on a project called Teachers' TV, a website in support of a digital television channel aimed specifically at teachers here in the UK. Andy Smith (project manager) and Ian Wilkinson (technical manager and supposed cousin of Jonny) are great guys. The contractors and regular staff making up the rest of the team were a pleasure to work with. It was a great experience and I wish them all the best in the leadup to the launch early next year!

Drupal really is the bees knees. So much so that I've thrown up an [?external:http://www.efurbishment.com Efurbishment] web site. I think this means I'm in business.

Another of my clients—[?external:http://www.breath.net.nz Breath New Zealand]—made the jump to [?external:http://www.drupal.org Drupal] last weekend. If you are looking for a content management system (CMS), it's hard to go past Drupal's pluggable, skinable architecture. Polls, forums, blogs, collaborative story writing, you name it; the feature's either already available, or easy to build and plug in. Drupal is open source. I haven't been this excited about a tool for a long time. It won't be long before AtomicMaestro gets the treatment too.

The New Zealand Opera Society's blog is now online. May God bless her and all who sail in her.

When I've sung enough to ensure myself a supper, I get to spend time on the projects that I do more out of interest than for the money. One of these projects is the web site of the  New Zealand Opera Society.

The printed form of the New Zealand Opera News is fairly well established, published monthly since 1977. The magazine targets New Zealand's opera enthusiasts. The standard of writing in the magazine is high. It recounts readers' impressions of trips to the opera houses abroad. It features letters from foreign-based New Zealand singers describing their successes overseas. It contains interviews with creative teams behind new productions. A diary, running about four or five months into the future, outlines opera productions and other operatic activities such as concerts of opera excerpts and singing contests. Sometimes the magazine risks slightly more controversial subjects, such as government arts funding. Subscribers pay around $30 NZ per year.

The committee and editorial team are intelligent, literate and articulate volunteers with plenty of experience in the print medium. They are enthusiastic about opera and travel widely to follow their passion. A couple of years ago the society commissioned a web site but for various reasons, mostly technical, the web site became unmaintainable. Sharon is a friend of mine who is both an editor and a member of the National Opera chorus. She offered herself to the society as "web editor" in an effort to revive the web site. She called me for technical assistance.

We met with the committee to discuss the site. Not unreasonably, the society feels that an attractive web site should attract new members. Online teasers and a "subscribe now" button ought to encourage subscriptions. The diary and events page should be the most up-to-date opera diary around given that the list of subscribers includes the majority of the New Zealand opera community. The reality is that few people visit the web site, members rarely volunteer events information, and nobody is clicking the "subscribe now" button. So what can the web can offer an organisation like the New Zealand Opera Society?

More and more I am of the opinion that organisations will benefit from seeing their web site as a conversation, not as an advertisement. It's no surprise I'm sure, but I suggested the Opera Society try blogging. Imagine a travelling opera lover, stunned by an ex-pat's performance as Gilda in a small theatre on the Black Sea coast in Varna, Bulgaria. She drops into an Internet café, logs on to www.opera.net.nz, and submits a review which is instantly available for all to read. Imagine an opera chorus baritone blogging behind-the-scenes gossip during rehearsals for an upcoming season; the audience swells with people who want to see the vain, corsetted Don Giovanni. Some editorial control may prove necessary, but you get the idea!

I may even volunteer as contributor myself. I can just see it now: struggling conductor, living in a London garret, singing for his supper... and that's where we came in.

Two of my favourite blogs are LibrarianInBlack and Librarians' Index to the Internet. These blogs are perfect for eclectics—magpies—like me, who like to know a little bit about anything and everything. For example, today the LibrarianInBlack referred me to Lewis Caroll's Scrapbook Collection. The Librarians' Index to the Internet referred me to information about battlefield medicine at the time of the American Civil War. The other day I found a reference to Koha, the world's first "open source integrated library system", created by Katipo Communications Ltd. back in my home country of New Zealand.

I have had the good fortune to participate recently in some interesting conversations with a head librarian. We have talked a lot about the impact of the Internet on libraries. Koha is an open source system, and, because open source is a key component of my business rationale, I couldn't resist sending him the Koha link.

This was his response:

Hi Mark - thanks. I remain a bit cautious (instinctive, don't know why) about open source. But lateral thinking, eh. There are lots of commercial products in that Market [...] good added-value I feel sure.

I think this caution is completely understandable. It is a caution expressed by many people who are in the position of having to make significant Information Technology infrastructure spending decisions. What I want to show is that open source has already entered the mainstream, and that there are reasons, both obvious and subtle as to why open source is appropriate to an environment like a library.

Let's look at an example of an open source solution that has a huge market lead over its closed source counterparts. The web server market is huge, with over 50 million deployed web servers (as monitored by Netcraft). A web server must be reliable and it must be secure; businesses depend on it. As seen on this graph, nearly 70% of web servers run the open source Apache web server. Microsoft has made efforts to muscle into the market with its own offering, IIS, which comes bundled free with Windows Server. Despite this strategy, the proportion of IIS installations has dropped steadily since 2002. You can search the Internet to find plenty of opinions as to why this might be.

In the case of web servers, open source is free (as in "free beer"), is arguably more secure, and is arguably more reliable. These are desirable qualities in software chosen for any organisation, including a library. I think though, that there are other subtle reasons why open source solutions are worth investigating, particularly in a library situation.

Open source has gained a lot of mindshare in government circles. In Europe and China it appears there are political motivations to avoid lock-in to software developed in the United States. Perhaps the Microsoft anti-trust trials of the early part of this decade have had an influence. Open source, by its nature, is about the free exchange of information. Free, as in “free speech”. Commercial players tend to want to lock you in to their solution and make it difficult for you to export your information to a competitor's system. It's not in the self-interests of a commercial outfit to allow you to easily export your information to another system.

So why do we keep using closed source solutions? Open source is a new paradigm. It's hard to draw parallels between it and anything that has gone before. This provides commercial companies with a means to fight its adoption. When confronted with open source competitors, many commercial outfits employ a marketing strategy that spreads FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt). It's a clever strategy and an effective one in a world where we often buy products on branding alone. The Internet (blogging especially) provides a mechanism to get to the heart of a matter, find benchmarks, comparisons, support, help and advice from everyone, not just the corporations who are selling.

Gradually though, things are changing, perceptions are changing. My brother describes open source adoption as being a little like a house of cards. When one goes, the rest will follow: Munich, Bergen, and now the New Zealand Stock Exchange. What could once have been described as 'lateral thinking' looks more and more longitudinal.

Some of you have been asking about Efurbishment Ltd, and the rationale behind my venture into the world of IT consultancy. Here goes.

It is an exciting time for any of us doing business on the Internet. Business is conducted quickly and globally. We communicate using email. We investigate using Google. It doesn't cost us a thing. Now, many of us are also using free business software from the Internet, often in preference to purchased solutions such as Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office. Even Government organisations, motivated by both cost and political factors, are experimenting with free software to avoid locking themselves into solutions delivered by a single corporation. With free software we can run our computers, write our letters, and even build business applications for our customers. In many cases these free solutions are more secure and more flexible than solutions purchased off-the-shelf. You may have heard these free solutions being described as "open source".

Open source software is free to use, that is, at no monetary cost. Moreover, anyone can view, modify or redistribute the source code that was used to build the software in the first place. A legal licence protects its free status. Open source software is developed by open, committed Internet communities, often sponsored by commercial or professional organisations. Many open source projects are worked on by hundreds of developers, including me, all freely donating their time in the pursuit of better software.

So how can open source software help those of us who are running a business? The obvious advantage is that it doesn't cost anything. But there is more. Imagine your consultant has supplied you with a traditional "closed source" solution. What happens if you experience bugs, or you need further customisation work done? You must go back to your original supplier. This will cost you money. What happens if your supplier goes out of business? You are on your own. Your solution is no longer supported, and you may not even be able to retrieve your important business data from it. Open source software mitigates these risks. If you have the source code then you are in control. A consultant supplying you with an open source solution will be able to supply you the source code too. Possessing the source code is like possessing the negatives to your wedding photos. You may not be a photographer yourself, but if you have the negatives, and need reprints, you can always find another, perhaps cheaper photographer to do it for you. Open source may not suit everyone, but it does suit those of us who want to be in control of our IT investment. If this sounds like you, then Efurbishment is here to help.

Efurbishment is a consultancy. Efurbishment has the knowledge, experience and expertise to consult with you, make recommendations, and then assist you with implementing the software solutions your business needs. Efurbishment is different because its solutions are based on open source software. By reducing the cost of the software, Efurbishment gives you more value-added support and advice for your money. By supplying the source code, Efurbishment gives you control of your solution.

"To provide high-quality and ongoing consultancy services to clients that want to solve their business problems with Internet technologies and open source thinking."