[Sussex] Giving something back

[Geoff Teale]

Chaps,

Going to try and keep this v. breif.


Steve wrote:
------------
>I've work for a company that took a long, long
> look at their development process and changed.  
<snip>

That's encouraging to hear.  Most companies change their development process
to reflect management functions not the real process of development.  

I have to say that what I have heard from you about Manhatten has been
generally good.  

<snip>
> However the big leason is to know how to fight you battles.  
> Pick your fights, don't talk geek, but talk in their language.

Agreed.  I'm sure Nik agrees also.  I don't always make these points in the
workplace - Rentokil knocked that out of me.  I do stand firm where I think
there is a chance for change.

<snip>
> It is a basic problem that people resit change.  I've been on courses
> about this.  Isn't this the root of your rant?

It's certainly one root of it (it was a pretty unfocused rant).  I agree
that this is a major problem.  I really think that as a nation we are very
bad at adapting to change and investing in new ideas.  We miss opportunities
because of it.

> I will agree if you mean that "following the hurd" get a job done.
> If the task is to "get e-mail to every nurse & doctor in the NHS" 
> then rolling out Outlook in the time frame set looks like a job
> well done to those higher up with even less technical knowledge.

In that case it was a cabinet level decision which effectively allowed the
government to throw millions of pounds of tax payers money to two of the
labour parties biggest sponsors.  It had nothing to do with what the NHS
actually wanted or what was a good technilogical decision. 

That said I take your point.

<snip> 
> Alleged surl?

No, not alleged.  

IANAL(BMWI) (been waiting ages to use that).

Hoover fought and lost an action bought against them by Dyson for patent
infringement.  Dyson made a tidy sum out of it (£4,000,000.00).

> If we take Nik at his word (and I do) he
>   Want's to promot Linux and has found a way to make a living 
> doing that.
>   Sun/IBM... are purly profit driven (Nasdac) OSS is a 
> vechele to that.
> This are not the same.

As I said, the motive is different but the result is the same.  Big business
wants to use the community - the community should learn to use them.  We can
have a symbiotic relationship with big business.  Part of that relationship
is business sponsoring open source development.  This goes beyond major
structural projects (like the kernel, XFree86, Gnome etc..) and should
extend to industry specific tools.  In the USA the CAAUSA (The Confederation
of Accredited Architects in the USA) is sponsoring a team of 8 developers to
work on a open source architectutal CAD package in order that they can get a
tool more suited to their industry than current commercial offerings - the
realise that they can do this at a lower cost than going to software houses
to get changes made to AutoCAD.  In New Zealand the "Lord of the Rings"
production company (forget their name) have open sourced their LINUX based
grpahics technology in order that it can be enhanced easily - they plan to
sell it still along with support and expertease - but they see the benefit
to them and their customers of providing the right to change source and
redistribute it.  There are literally hundreds of companies involved in
similar activites in Europe (particularly in Scandinavia) and the rest of
the world.  I still cannot name one UK firm, who are not LINUX vendors, who
would get involved in such a project.
  
<snip>
> And I wish I'd had the balls to do it.  That is why Nik gets my
> admiration.

Indeed.  It takes guts.
 
> My cynicism chip is on overdriver.  I think government will increase
> the retairment age until a balance is reached that the workforce 
> can support the non-workers.

Agreed.  Private pensions are currently worthless as well - you have to pray
that you retire on a good market day!  We have moved to a society where
companies are required to show less and less respect to their employees -
which is fair because employees are more and more mobile.  What we need is
the abolition of company run pensions and the requirement for companys to
pay a percentage into privately held pension schemes - a responsibility that
the cannot shirk.

Right now we have large companies, who took money out of pensions schemes
(and stopped paying into pension schemes) when the stock exchange was
booming, but will not pay back the cost now the market is depressed and as
such are closing down their final salary pension schemes because they will
not reach the legal minimum fund value. 

Does someone want to explain to me how that is different from what a certain
Mr. Maxwell did?
  
-- 
GJT
geoff.teale at claybrook.co.uk




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