svn commit: samba-web r931 - in trunk/news: articles/low_point team
deryck at samba.org
deryck at samba.org
Fri Mar 17 20:06:19 GMT 2006
Author: deryck
Date: 2006-03-17 20:06:18 +0000 (Fri, 17 Mar 2006)
New Revision: 931
WebSVN: http://websvn.samba.org/cgi-bin/viewcvs.cgi?view=rev&root=samba-web&rev=931
Log:
Add 2 columns to Jeremy's Low Point archives.
Run a news story announecing the new material.
deryck
Added:
trunk/news/articles/low_point/column10.html
trunk/news/articles/low_point/column11.html
trunk/news/team/low_point_update_17Mar06.html
Modified:
trunk/news/articles/low_point/index.html
Changeset:
Added: trunk/news/articles/low_point/column10.html
===================================================================
--- trunk/news/articles/low_point/column10.html 2006-03-15 22:22:58 UTC (rev 930)
+++ trunk/news/articles/low_point/column10.html 2006-03-17 20:06:18 UTC (rev 931)
@@ -0,0 +1,121 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/samba/news/header.html" -->
+ <title>The Low Point -- Jeremy Allison Column Archive -- Column 10</title>
+<!--#include virtual="jra_header2.html" -->
+
+<h3>Jeremy Allison Column Archives</h3>
+
+<h2>The Low Point — a View from the Valley — Column 10</h2>
+
+<h3>Macho Geek Madness</h3>
+
+<p>My father worked for thirty years in a wire making factory in Sheffield.
+He worked on the shop floor doing the most brutal and demanding physical
+work. After he'd retired I visited the factory on a tour and was horrified
+at how noisy, dirty and downright dangerous it was. "Yes, it got a
+lot better towards the end" was his comment when I told him what it
+was like now.</p>
+
+<p>I work sitting at home in my office in Silicon Valley, typing this
+on one of the many computers scattered about. There's no physically
+demanding tasks in my job other than carrying my daily cups of coffee
+around the house. In almost every way they can be our jobs are different,
+except one important way in which they are identical. There were no
+women working with my father in his workplace, and there are no women
+working with me on the Open Source/Free Software I create.
+</p>
+
+<p>Why is this ? In the Sheffield wire making factory it was considered
+a job "not suitable for a woman". The amazing thing in the twenty-first
+century is that some people seem to have the same feeling about writing
+software. It's true that there are few women in software in general,
+but if you compare the presence of women in Open Source/Free Software
+with the number of women working in proprietary software I think you'll
+find that there were fewer working in the Open Source/Free Software
+community on coding tasks than in the proprietary world. I've worked
+with some amazingly talented women programmers when I was working in
+proprietary software (my mis-spent youth), but with none in the Open
+Source/Free Software world.</p>
+
+<p>I have a theory as to why this is so, I call it my "men are animals"
+theory. Quite simply, we as a programming community are <em>incredibly</em> unfriendly
+to any women that might want to contribute their valuable time and effort
+in writing code for an Open Source/Free Software project. Women are
+much more represented in the artistic (for a GUI-based system), documentation
+and testing parts of a project than in the coding.</p>
+
+<p>My observation is that "alpha male geeks" working on the code
+of a software project are extremely arrogant (or we can be polite and
+call it <em>assertive</em>), unpleasant and confrontational with each other.
+Most women find this kind of childishness so unpleasant that they leave
+us in our playpen rather than have to deal with it as part of their
+daily work. It doesn't help that most Open Source/Free Software code
+discussions are done over email. Unfortunately email is a medium that
+lends itself to anonymous hostility (after all you don't have to see
+the face of the person you're attempting to humiliate) and the male-dominated
+programmer community takes ample advantage of this. Just look at the
+way some of the primary Linux kernel maintainers address people on the
+Linux kernel mailing list to see examples of this behavior. Such people
+are <em>admired</em> in our community. This behavior is not merely tolerated,
+it's almost encouraged as a badge of showing you're <b>somebody</b>, that you
+can get away with it.</p>
+
+<p>So why is this more endemic to the Open Source/Free Software communities
+than proprietary software projects ? I have an answer to that too, it's
+fairly simple. Human Resources departments (at least here in the USA,
+in the UK they used to be called "Personnel Departments" which to
+my mind sounds much better, less like a Soylent-Green style warehouse).
+To be brutally honest, if people behaved in proprietary software environments
+to others the way they behave in Open Source/Free Software mailing lists
+they would be <b>fired</b>, terminated (to use the Americanism) with extreme
+prejudice by the HR department of the company. People tell jokes about
+"political correctness" and how "sensitive" such rules are,
+but they <b>work</b>. I think the USA is ahead of the UK in this area. I recall
+meeting a recent transferee from the UK who was blustering and appalled
+at being threatened with termination for what he termed "extreme political
+correctness". His crime ? He had been audibly rating his female colleagues
+on a one to ten scale at a company party. How dumb do you have to be
+to think this is acceptable ? Yet look at the follow-up comments on
+Slashdot (considered a "friendly" web site in the Open Source/Free
+Software communities) when a rare openly female poster makes a comment.
+Ratings out of ten are the least of her worries.</p>
+<p>Because our mailing lists are open to all, usually unmoderated, and
+the people running them are rightly concerned about censorship it's
+really difficult to be as strict about such things in the Open Source/Free
+Software world as it is in the proprietary business world. But it's
+worth a try in my opinion. For people who pride themselves on our own
+intelligence we seem to be awfully comfortable in excluding fifty percent
+of our potential colleagues and collaborators. If you want to be calculating
+about it, this is millions of lines of potential code we're throwing
+away here guys !</p>
+<p>It's interesting to note that once a critical mass of women are in
+an area, they seem to have a civilizing effect on the men, and the mailing
+lists I'm on with more female participants on them than the Open Source/Free
+Software ones have a decidedly different tone. We need the same thing
+to happen in our community. It can be done. In my world travels I've
+been to conferences where the numbers of women attendees approach the
+male, most notably in Malaysia where IT is seen as a much more female
+friendly occupation than in the USA or UK.</p>
+<p>So how can we get to where we need to be ? I'm not normally a fan
+of segregation, but until they can get to that unknown critical mass
+it's much more comfortable for women to work together with women. In
+the Science community there is the AWIS (Association of Women in Science)
+group: <a href="http://www.awis.org">http://www.awis.org</a>. I was introduced
+to them by a female Math
+researcher, they were her lifeline in a community just as hostile to
+women as the Open Source/Free Software one. We have LinuxChix (<a href="http://www.linuxchix.org">http://www.linuxchix.org</a>)
+which attempts to do something similar for our field. I just hope that
+within my career lifetime these groups can become part of our mainstream,
+and our community can look forward to everyone who wants to joining
+in fully. After all, programming is <b>fun</b>. Why shouldn't everyone have
+a chance to do it !</p>
+
+
+<ul style="list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0">
+<li>Jeremy Allison,</li>
+<li>Samba Team.</li>
+<li>San Jose, California.</li>
+<li>29th October 2005.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<!--#include virtual="/samba/news/footer.html" -->
Added: trunk/news/articles/low_point/column11.html
===================================================================
--- trunk/news/articles/low_point/column11.html 2006-03-15 22:22:58 UTC (rev 930)
+++ trunk/news/articles/low_point/column11.html 2006-03-17 20:06:18 UTC (rev 931)
@@ -0,0 +1,130 @@
+<!--#include virtual="/samba/news/header.html" -->
+ <title>The Low Point -- Jeremy Allison Column Archive -- Column 11</title>
+<!--#include virtual="jra_header2.html" -->
+
+<h3>Jeremy Allison Column Archives</h3>
+
+<h2>The Low Point — a View from the Valley — Column 11</h2>
+
+<h3>The Land of "Nothing for free"</h3>
+
+<p>On the map, Laguna Niguel looks like a beautiful Pacific coastal
+area south of Los Angeles, a little like one of my favorite spots Monterey,
+south of San Francisco. But I forgot; this is Los Angeles, where the
+brown haze of the air lies like a thick blanket over the insane sprawl
+of "Generica". It's an endless landscape of McDonalds, strip-malls
+and gas stations familiar to anyone who has seen the movie "Ghost
+World". Nothing is free here. You pay for parking (nothing but valet
+available), driving on toll roads, access to much of the beach (private).
+If they could figure out how to charge for the air I'm sure there'd
+be meters every block or so. It's a fitting home for the entertainment
+industry.</p>
+<p>I was down there to give a talk on "Open Source Business Models"
+for a conference. Also represented were entertainment industry lawyers,
+"Big Telecom" management, and a smattering of software people. Microsoft
+was there of course. You can't hold a church fete with "Open Source"
+on the banner these days without Microsoft turning up and requesting
+representation. At least we also had Bruce Perens on our side to help
+make up the balance. The venue was an unbelievably expensive hotel.
+Even though I was on expenses I balked at asking the company to pay
+for a room there and found something cheaper (not by much) a few miles
+down the road.</p>
+
+<p>Along with the collection of apologists for the "ultimate evils"
+(tm) of Hollywood and Telephone companies there were some very interesting
+presentations. A Japanese telecoms researcher made all the software
+people jealous by describing the idyllic state of broadband in Japan,
+where providers vie to sell gigabit fiber-optic pipes to the home. Yes,
+you read that right, <em>Gigabit</em>. The obvious question was asked; "what
+do people use all that bandwidth for" and the less than obvious answer
+was that they use it for all the same things people in less bandwidth-friendly
+countries do, they just do more of it. I could see a collective shudder
+pass through the entertainment industry people. They knew what that
+meant.</p>
+<p>A keynote by Lawrence Lessig made the point even further. He showed
+a series of "mash-ups" of copyrighted material which were incredibly
+creative and funny. All completely illegal and currently being hunted
+off the Internet by entertainment industry lawyers. One of the most
+amusing asides was from a Walt Disney legal reply to a parent requesting
+"fair use" rights to use some clips from a Disney movie to put in
+his home video. He pleadingly promised them it was meant only for family
+viewing. "We currently deny all requests to use our material....".
+Even if you are impudent enough to ask, the answer is always no. At
+least one of the other studios replied that the current commercial rate
+was $700 to use a 30 second clip. I can see that being popular amongst
+parents making home movies. He also covered the current patent quagmire.
+A very interesting fact from his talk was that the total unit cost for
+a Chinese manufacturer to build a DVD player was around $26. However
+the total royalty fees they have to pay to western companies for the
+patent rights to build a player is $21 per unit, thus completely eliminating
+any profit they might make. No wonder the Chinese are currently creating
+their own digital video standard, completely incompatible with Western
+ones. It's the only thing that makes economic sense for them. This is
+almost certainly behind the Chinese refusal to use the new WiFi standards
+for wireless devices also.</p>
+<p>I ended up making myself unpopular by publicly attacking the Washington-based
+economist who'd advised the Clinton Administration on "Intellectual
+Property" issues. It's a very personal issue for me as it affects
+my everyday life and work, so when he made the statement that "strengthening
+the patent system leads to more innovation for everyone" I saw red.
+He doesn't write software of course. I tried to explain later in private
+that it would be like people being able to patent economic theories
+in his line of work. That began to hit home, but he explained that the
+problem in Washington is that patents are heavily pushed to the politicians
+by the Pharmaceutical Industry. "These guys say they're going to cure
+cancer, what are <em>you</em> going to do for us ?" is the request that anti-software
+patent lobbyists have to learn to counter. </p>
+<p>My panel was rather uncontroversial, Microsoft, Bruce Perens and
+myself being on our best behavior. The only sparks that flew where when
+Microsoft made it abundantly clear that they would use their patent
+portfolio to prevent the spread of GPL software. Section seven of the
+GPL (the implicit patent grant of the license) now looks like the most
+prescient writing Richard Stallman has ever done. If you're not familiar
+with it I'd suggest you read it and understand why using the GPL to
+protect your Free Software is so important.</p>
+<p>Fireworks only exploded in the session on business models in the
+Internet age for entertainment industry products (music CD's mainly).
+This was even before the horrendous vandalism perpetrated by Sony on
+Windows users by propagating a <em>rootkit</em> as part of a digital rights management
+product on Sony CD's. Let's be clear, these people <em>hate</em> the Internet.
+If they had a single-use time machine they'd rather use it to go back
+in time and kill everyone responsible for creating TCP/IP than prevent
+the Second World War. The movie industry sees what has happened with
+CD's, looks at the gigabit bandwidth available in Japan and they know
+they're next. They will do <em>anything</em> to prevent it, pass any law, remove
+any civil right or fair use provision that gets in their way. I began
+to understood this when I had a discussion with a lawyer who was arguing
+that "we just need stiffer penalties, we need to make an <em>example</em> of
+people swapping files on the Internet". To which I responded, "why
+don't we just execute people who break the speed limit ?". Does anyone
+remember the slogan that used to be printed on vinyl records, "Home
+taping is illegal and is killing music" ?</p>
+<p>When enough people decide that an activity is legal, in a democracy
+such a thing eventually becomes legal. Look at the way the drug laws
+have changed in Europe. It's a sign of how damaged American democracy
+has become that the same thing hasn't happened here. The Internet is
+a massive threat to some people, and if we don't fight to keep it, we
+deserve to lose it. I'll end with a "fair use" quote from one of
+my favorite 70's bands, Hawkwind which seems appropriate somehow, and
+append one line of my own :</p>
+
+<ul style="list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0" class="credit">
+ <li>Welcome to the oceans in a labeled can,</li>
+ <li>Welcome to the dehydrated lands,</li>
+ <li>Welcome to the self police parade,</li>
+ <li>Welcome to the neo-golden age,</li>
+ <li>Welcome to the days you've made</li>
+</ul>
+
+<p>Welcome to the land of "Nothing for free".</p>
+
+
+<ul style="list-style-type:none;margin:0;padding:0">
+<li>Jeremy Allison,</li>
+<li>Samba Team.</li>
+<li>San Jose, California.</li>
+<li>20th November 2005.</li>
+</ul>
+
+
+<!--#include virtual="/samba/news/footer.html" -->
Modified: trunk/news/articles/low_point/index.html
===================================================================
--- trunk/news/articles/low_point/index.html 2006-03-15 22:22:58 UTC (rev 930)
+++ trunk/news/articles/low_point/index.html 2006-03-17 20:06:18 UTC (rev 931)
@@ -19,6 +19,8 @@
<li><a href="column07.html">Column 7 — The start-up bicycle</a></li>
<li><a href="column08.html">Column 8 — Black is White</a></li>
<li><a href="column09.html">Column 9 — Freedom Fighters</a></li>
+ <li><a href="column10.html">Column 10 — Macho Geek Madness</a></li>
+ <li><a href="column11.html">Column 11 — The Land of Nothing for Free</a></li>
</ul>
<p>The following article was rewritten for publication in
Added: trunk/news/team/low_point_update_17Mar06.html
===================================================================
--- trunk/news/team/low_point_update_17Mar06.html 2006-03-15 22:22:58 UTC (rev 930)
+++ trunk/news/team/low_point_update_17Mar06.html 2006-03-17 20:06:18 UTC (rev 931)
@@ -0,0 +1,16 @@
+ <h3><a name="low_point_update_17Mar06">Low Point Archive Update</a></h3>
+
+ <div class="article">
+ <p>The <a href="/samba/news/articles/low_point/">Low Point Archives</a>,
+ a listing of Jeremy Allison's columns from
+ <a href="http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/">Linux User & Developer</a>,
+ have been updated with two new columns. Jeremy writes about women in
+ Open Source development in column 10,
+ <a href="/samba/news/articles/low_point/column10.html">Macho Geek Madness</a>.
+ And for an interesting read on bumping into the Entertainment industry at
+ a conference, see column 11,
+ <a href="/samba/news/articles/low_point/column11.html">The Land of "Nothing
+ for Free"</a>.</p>
+
+ <p>An entertaining and insightful read as always.</p>
+ </div>
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