Linux-Advocacy Digest #725, Volume #28 Tue, 29 Aug 00 03:13:07 EDT
Contents:
the Software View: High iQLinux.com (Mark Kuharich)
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Date: Tue, 29 Aug 2000 00:01:14 -0700
From: Mark Kuharich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: the Software View: High iQLinux.com
High iQLinux.com
"the Software View" is archived at:
http://www.softwareview.com
As we live in the world of today, we have the great good fortune of
being able to bear witness to a unique and special confluence of
long-term trends emerging from off in the distance. Please allow me to
inform you of a company that will enable you to take advantage of these
coming trends.
LINUX: OPEN SORCERY
>From the ether of the Internet, emerged a powerful operating system that
breathes fresh air into a desktop world populated with few
alternatives. It is free, yet is as robust as any Unix operating system
and more reliable than Microsoft's Windows. Linux is the fastest
growing software operating system environment in the world, is loved by
pony-tailed software developers world-wide, is free, and best of all,
it's open-source. No longer the rarefied operating system environment
of Unix developers, it is making its way onto numerous corporate
networks. Many aspiring developers and Unix systems administrators cut
their teeth on Linux, taking advantage of bundled software development
tools, numerous well-written books, and fully open-source software
code. It's fast becoming the darling of networking vendors and
enterprise users alike, with a very devoted and knowledgeable
following. Tux, the Linux penguin mascot, has finally waddled off its
isolated iceberg into the waters of enterprise network operating system
environment territory.
Although warmly embraced by its devotees, Linux has often gotten the
cold shoulder from the proprietary Microsoft Windows establishment. The
efforts of loyalists to get the word out about this versatile, flexible
- and undeniably economical - operating system environment were once
considered a Linux love fest thrown by fringe-element code junkies who
occasionally peered up from their workstations to flip through the
latest issue of "Pocket Protector Monthly". As this stereotype
persisted, it pushed Linux to the bottom of the pile when it came to
mind share among network managers and information technology
professionals who were becoming more aware of the link between
enterprise computing resources and business issues.
The open-source Unix look-alike was hatched a mere eight years ago by an
obscure, self-effacing twenty-one years old, native of Finland,
University of Helsinki graduate student named Linus Torvalds. The
thought that anything free could eventually have commercial value might
make skeptics smirk. We're so invested in the party lines of behemoths
like Microsoft, that many of us disregard Linux, at least where serious
work is concerned.
FREE AGENT WORLD
Dan Pink writes, "There's a new movement in the world. From country to
country, in communities large and small, people are declaring their
individual independence and drafting a bill of rights. An authentic
grassroots spirit has appeared and infused the world.
If you go look for it, as I did, you can't miss it. It's out there,
from country to country, and it's growing every day. The residents of
Free Agent, USA are legion: Start with the fourteen million
self-employed Americans. Consider the 8.3 million Americans who are
independent contractors. Factor in the 2.3 million people who find work
each day through temporary agencies. Note that in January, the IRS
expects to mail out more than seventy-four million copies of
Form1099-MISC - the pay stub of free agents.
So let's hazard a guess. If we add up the self-employed, the
independent contractors, the temps - a working definition of the
population of Free Agent Nation - we end up with more than sixteen
percent of the American work force: roughly twenty-five million free
agents in the United States of America, people who move from project to
project and who work on their own, sometimes for months, sometimes for
days.
Free Agents feel more invigorated than they ever did in traditional
jobs. No surprise there. But - and this is one of the many
counterintuitive truths of Free Agent World - they also feel more
secure. They pilot their work lives using an instrument panel similar
to the one they use for their investments: plenty of research, solid
fundamentals, and most of all, diversification. Just as sensible
investors would never sink all their financial capital into one stock,
free agents are questioning the wisdom of investing all their human
capital in a single employer. Not only is it more interesting to have
six clients instead of one boss; it also may be safer. This concept
eludes some.
Unless you're into self-abuse, or you're incredibly lucky and avoid
restructuring, being a lifer is no longer an option. As you take to the
highways found on the new map of work, you'll soon learn the foremost
rule of the road: freedom is the pathway to security, not a detour from
it. Free agency forces you to think about who you are and what you want
to do with your life. Previously, it was only those wonderful, flaky
artists who had to deal with this.
The old social contract didn't have a clause for introspection. It was
much simpler than that. You gave loyalty. You got security. But now
that the old contract has been repealed, people are examining both its
basic terms and its implicit conditions.
Free agents quickly realized that in the traditional world, they were
silently accepting an architecture of work customs and social mores that
should have crumbled long ago under the weight of its own absurdity.
>From infighting and office politics to bosses pitting employees against
one another to colleagues who don't pull their weight, most workplaces
are a study in dysfunction. Most people do want to work; they don't
want to put up with brain-dead distractions. Much of what happens
inside companies turns out to be about ... nothing. The international
workplace has become a country-to-country "Seinfeld" episode. It's
about nothing.
But work, free agents say, has to be about something. And so, instead
of accepting the old terms, they're demanding new ones. Thus the second
rule of the road for navigating Free Agent World: work is personal. You
can achieve a beautiful synchronicity between who you are and what you
do.
A large organization is about submerging your own identity for the good
of the company. People have their game faces on. In traditional
companies, people don't believe in themselves. How they act is so
frequently not who they are. They put on masks for eight hours and then
take them off when they're done. Free agents gladly swap the false
promise of security for the personal pledge of authenticity. In free
agency, people assume their own shape rather than fit into the shape of
some corporate box.
As free agents, they have become something altogether new: they have
become whole. They used to think that what they needed to do was
balance their lives, keep their personal and professional lives
separate. But they discovered that the real secret is integration.
They integrate their work into their lives. They don't see their work
as separate from their identities. The masks are gone. For free
agents, their work is who they are.
And just as the first rule of the road leads to the second, the second
yields to the third: Work is fun. For example, they can come up with
some of their best business ideas while taking the afternoon "off" to
attend a day game of their beloved Florida State University Seminoles.
They don't know if going to a college football game is business or fun.
But, they've stopped worrying about it. Because in Free Agent World,
work is supposed to be fun.
So, at the top of their careers, people leave to become free agents.
It's yet another way that free agents have reversed the organizing
premises of work in the World. Remember the Peter Principle? That old
chestnut held that people rise through the ranks until they reach the
level of their incompetence. The Free Agent principle: People rise
though an organization until they stop having fun. Then they leave to
become free agents. They are first-round draft picks who've opted to
play in a league of their own.
One of the most compelling sub-plots in the Free Agent World story is
unfolding at iQLinux.com. Throughout the world, small groups of free
agents are helping one another succeed professionally and survive
emotionally. These groups belie another of the central myths about free
agency: that without that office water cooler, free agents become
isolated and lonely. Working solo is not working alone. iQLinux.com
provides you a Linux community on the Internet.
This group - at once hard-headed and soft-hearted - is creating a new
community. One part board of directors, another part group therapy,
this small, self-organized cluster is part of the emerging free-agent
infrastructure. It is helping to form the new foundation of our
economic and social lives.
They believe in a talent-driven model. They have in mind something like
the film industry. In a temp agency, you test 'em and roll 'em out. In
their model, everyone is a star. The new realities of computers and
networking make several of the old structures obsolete. In the new
metaphor of work, the loyalty factor is still very high. In the new
metaphor of work, you have a smaller-team model and a greater sense of
loyalty to the team than to this archaic, quaint artifact known as
corporations. Companies do not exist. Countries do not exist.
Boundaries are an illusion. But the team exists.
A new economic infrastructure is being built, and few people seem to
notice." Include among those people in the know, the members of
iQLinux.com.
SILICON VINEYARD
This upstart company has offices in Burnaby, a remote Canadian city
drawing attention to a little-known area of British Columbia known as
the "Silicon Vineyard", an area that includes B.C.'s lush Okanagan
Valley. What you find is one of Canada's best-kept secrets: a thriving
high-tech community of some 500 companies in a stunning region blessed
with mountains, lakes and balmy weather. A lot of people jokingly
describe it as "the nicest neighborhood in Seattle, Washington."
A four-hour drive east of Vancouver, the vineyard boasts six daily
non-stop flights to Seattle, a high-tech sector expanding at a rate of
20-35 percent annually, and a GPD in 1997 estimated at $120 million, the
same as the local forestry sector's. It's also on the
telecommunications backbone running between Calgary and Vancouver,
making bandwidth cheaper than in Seattle.
Local high-technology companies include 360networks, Workfire
Technologies International (which was recently acquired by Packeteer),
Onvia.com; and of course, iQLinux.com
MISSION POSSIBLE
The mission of iQLinux.com is to become the leading Web destination that
connects customers, vendors, and a global supply of independent Linux
consultants. The Web site's features emphasize community empowerment,
relationship building, virtual development and support teams, fair
business practices, and dispute mediation by peers. It provides a
market place where open-source products and support services can be
negotiated and acquired.
BEGIN AGAIN
iQLinux.com's founder, Peter So, grew up as an Asian on an Indian
reservation in the Pacific Northwest. He started his career
implementing real-time computing and control systems relying upon Unix
platforms. He ventured out on his own after a decade of working for the
same forestry company.
While on his own, it turned out that he did a lot of software
development with Microsoft tools and platforms. Work was abundant and
demand for his skills was high, coupled with the joy of his family's
first child arriving. After more than four years of building solutions
in the so-called mainstream, and accepting daily personal computer
reboots as the norm, most of the world seemed to have been sold on
Microsoft marketing.
Although times were fine, he was always influenced by a dear friend, Jim
Pick. His friend challenged him to rethink the necessity of having to
reboot an operating system to load a device driver. Over the last two
and a half years, Peter So returned to his early computing roots and
began to explore Linux. In the early days, although Linux was amazing,
a Linux solution was a hard sale.
Although the situation has changed more recently, he still finds it a
challenge getting enough experienced Linux people to work with when a
project becomes available. With the birth of his third child and the
agreement of his wife, he worked up the courage to divest himself of all
his non-Linux clients and staff, and start over.
Last year, he started to design iQLinux.com. Helping to introduce Linux
to the mainstream, to small and medium-sized businesses, and to the
government market requires more than just hiring a bunch of Linux
experts and charging a high rate for their consulting. He saw the need
for a Web site that would bring Linux consultants together; a site that
would enable them to work together on projects or opportunities and set
their own price. Having been a long-time consultant and owner of a
company, he always found billing, account settlement, heckling over bad
debt, disputing with sometimes-unreasonable clients, and marketing a
chore. iQLinux.com was designed with those features in mind: to make
consulting in a global setting practical.
The project was initially developed using Zope, but they quickly ran
into challenges with a high transaction and heavy traffic Web site.
They actually have a number of Linux servers in place now for
production. In the future, they plan on rewriting the Web site using
PHP, an open-source scripting language. Most of the software
development and testing team have family and they all have a weakness
for Chinese food.
THE BAZAAR AS MARKETPLACE
iQLinux.com offers a unique vertical market portal for vital
relationship building and making contingent services available to the
open-source community; in particular, the Linux community. This Web
site provides great value to its members - both for customers acquiring
Linux products and services, as well as consultants offering them.
Consultants are able to collaborate and form virtual teams that will
most effectively meet the customer requirements.
The Web site can be thought of as both a meeting place and a market
place; it has been described as a combination of eBay and Onvia. It
brings members of the open-source Linux community together and helps
them to meet their business objectives with as little overhead costs as
possible. Customers are able to post their needs ("requests") and
consultants are able to post their available products and services. The
Web site supports the negotiation and establishment of contracts between
a customer and a consultant. Consultants are able to identify
sub-contractors and form teams collaboratively through the vertical
market portal. The Web site also facilitates the acceptance of
deliverables and closure of these agreements. Should discrepancies
arise in the course of delivery, dispute mechanisms are provided to
resolve them in a negotiated fashion.
iQLinux.com offers its members a powerful and flexible mechanism to join
and collaborate. Members may assume one or more roles, simultaneously,
if needed. When they first sign up, they are considered, by default, to
be customers who may avail themselves of any products or services
offered through the Web site. Once a member has defined for him or
herself a profile of products and services, the member may also take on
the role of consultant - forming teams, bidding on requests for
proposals posted by other customers, and accepting service requests made
directly to them by customers. Members may also make themselves
available as sub-contractors to other ("lead") consultants for the
purpose of forming teams.
The net effect of the iQLinux.com vertical market portal is that a
consultant is able to define a Web presence at a Web site associated
directly with the open-source Linux community and, thereby, market his
or her products and services to customers world-wide. By utilizing this
Web site, he or she can effectively publicize the experience and
capabilities of his or her team and describe the capabilities and
properties of his or her products. Furthermore, Linux customers
regularly visit this Web site to post their requests (project and
technical support requirements); thus, the consultant will be able to
browse the Web site at any time for work opportunities as they arise in
real-time.
THE LURE OF LINUX
So many analogies and metaphors have been used to explain the success of
Linux. The following quote is attributed to Mahatma Ghandi.
"First, they ignore you.
Then they laugh at you.
Then they fight you.
Then you win."
This Unix clone, a community product of software engineers, based upon
the work of Torvalds, has escaped its cage. Once prophesied by pundits
to be one more in the tragic line of superior technologies doomed to an
untimely demise (like AmigaDOS, the Next computer workstation line, and
IBM's OS/2), Linux has, instead, confounded its critics by establishing
a foothold on enterprise networks. While Linux was initially smuggled
in through the back door by rebellious engineers, it's now rapidly
gaining acceptance as an enterprise operating system environment.
According to DataPro Information Services (Delran, New Jersey), the
number of companies using Linux grew by twenty-seven percent from 1996
to 1997. More and more professionals plan on increasing the presence of
Linux in their enterprises.
Why? Because articles appeared in high-technology publications,
illuminating the attributes of Linux. It outperforms all other
operating system environments, including Microsoft's Windows, when
ranked by customers according to interoperability, cost of ownership,
price, and availability. Indeed, DataPro's customer satisfaction poll
of eight hundred twenty-nine information systems managers in large
organizations showed Linux trouncing the likes of Open Server, UnixWare,
AIX, NetWare, and, yes, Windows.
Why do professionals choose Linux for their enterprises? Because Linux
is freeware and can be easily downloaded from the Internet; it's easy to
manage and configure; it's a legendarily stable operating system
environment; and it is supported by a large user community; its
excellent performance, it's easy to work with, it runs on legacy
computer hardware, it has a large number of low-cost or free
applications that run on it, and because its source code is easily
available. One of the reasons Linux has become so popular is that no
single vendor controls it.
Eric S. Raymond's essay, "The Cathedral and the Bazaar," argues that
most commercial software is built like cathedrals by small groups of
artisans working in isolation. Open-source software, like Linux, is
developed collectively over the Internet, which serves as an electronic
bazaar for innovative ideas. "It's subversive," says Raymond of
open-source software, "because it takes all of the thirty-year verities
that we understand about software engineering and stands them upon their
head."
The first of the two programming styles is closed source - the
traditional factory-production model of proprietary software, in which
customers get a sealed block of computer binary bits that they cannot
examine, modify, or evolve. Microsoft is the most famous practitioner
of this approach. The other style is open-source, the Internet
engineering tradition in which software source code is generally
available for inspection, independent peer review, and rapid evolution.
The standard-bearer of this approach is the Linux operating environment.
The open-source model threatens to make closed-source software companies
obsolete. To understand why, we need to step back from the
particularities of Microsoft and Linux and consider that engineers and
some high-technology executives are attracted to open-source development
for three reasons: reliability, reduced total cost of ownership, and
improved strategic business risk.
Raymond says that open-source software, created in what anthropologists
call a "gift culture," is better at producing high quality software
because status is gained by giving ideas away. Companies that value
secrecy miss opportunities to get wealthier by sharing ideas and
creating information pools. "That's a pragmatic statement," says
Raymond. "Not an ideological one."
Traditional hacker culture traces its roots back to the early academic
Massachusetts Institute of Technology programmers who felt duty-bound to
give their solutions away so that their peers could move on to new
problems. Since good programmers are already well-paid, this mostly
Unix-based, online community is motivated by the satisfaction of
advancing a good idea, dispensing advice, or collectively building
something superior to what any one person or entity could create. This
is the community that created Unix, the Internet, Usenet, and the Web.
The promise of an open-source operating environment is the ability to
freely exchange ideas in a community based upon voluntary service. It's
like having an enthusiastic information technology Peace Corps standing
ready to solve the problems you've been paying vendors like Microsoft
thousands of dollars to resolve - if you can get Microsoft on the phone.
And after all this, we've come to see open-source development as only
the next in a series of incremental steps toward true open-standards
computing. It's a trend being propelled by the success of the Internet,
which itself grew out of a vibrant open-source tradition. And it's
contributing to a business environment in which services and other
extras are increasingly more valuable than software code. As Brian
Behlendorf, the co-founder of the Apache Group (which oversees the
open-source Apache HTTP Web server) suggests, in due time open-source
software will be a given for the infrastructure-level technologies like
platforms, programming languages, and servers that form the basis of the
open-standards marketplace. "You don't have to own a platform to make
money from it," says Behlendorf.
Linux advocate Raymond points out that unlike proprietary vendors, Linux
developers and distributors exchange ideas and information. As soon as
a particular approach demonstrates viability. Raymond says it gets
propagated across all the versions. "Techniques don't propagate across
corporate boundaries," he says. "But in the Linux world, you have this
powerful centrifugal force in which everyone wants to use the best of
what everyone else is doing."
Linux's open development model is appealing. Because the software
source code is freely available, anyone can create modules for Linux.
Such a model promotes innovation and the development of new Linux
features. Among Linux developers, a system of checks and balances is
observed to make sure that bad code doesn't find its way out onto the
Internet. Before a programmer posts code on the Internet, you can bet
he or she will have thoroughly tested it. Otherwise, if there's a
problem, that person risks his or her reputation. Also, once Linux code
is posted, others are invited to tweak it, either to improve it, or to
correct errors. Another advantage of the open development model is that
it enables programmers to rapidly fix any problems found within Linux
components.
FUTURE WORK
Michelle Conlin writes, "And now, the just-in-time employee! To cater
to the shifts of an ever contracting labor force; in the future, workers
will be auctioning their products and services.
A decade ago, directors of human resources never dreamed that the
employees they were axing from their rolls and "downsizing" in massive
layoffs would one day return as hot commodities, even earning a snappy
new name to go with their new status: free agents. The revenge scenario
couldn't have been scripted any better: The great economic boom takes
off, and once-dissed and dismissed working stiffs find themselves in
extra-ordinarily short supply. Flush with offers, their good fortune
forces worker-starved employers to play along. Need a new wardrobe?
We'll buy you one. Your stock options are underwater? Consider them
repriced!
The whatever-you-want attitude may seem like a seismic shift. But many
labor experts see it as a symptom of a deeper change shaking the
old-employer-employee paradigm. In the latter half of the twentieth
century, power flowed to corporations, where human bodies were as
replaceable as light bulbs. Today, with the transition to and the
emergence of a knowledge-based economy and global connectivity, the
power has shifted to those people with intellectual skills.
Supplies of the talent needed to fuel the Next New InterNetworked
Economy are expected to remain scarce for the next twenty years. At the
same time, corporations are finding it beneficial to have fluid and
nimble work forces that can shrink according to the demands of the
global market place. That's why, in the place of the twentieth century
labor model, something new is emerging.
Think of it as the Human Capital Exchange (HCE). Just as the NASDAQ and
the New York Stock Exchange were the locus of much of the last century's
wealth creation, a market for skills and talent will fill the bill
nicely in the twenty-first century. A market place like iQLinux.com
Here, the value of free agents is determined by the open market, rather
than by a hierarchical organization. For a talented free agent, the old
salary-plus-benefits structure just doesn't cut it anymore as a way to
realize one's true economic value. In an open exchange of human
capital, people are much more likely to get what they are worth - they
will be able to participate in the upside.
The legions who will keep their products and services permanently posted
on iQLinux.com represent only the first sign of the shift toward skilled
New Economy workers day-trading their careers. More and more companies
- from market place sites to bounty-paying referral services - will pop
up on the Web, creating a kind of labor auction where every consultant
from the United States of America to Finland can offer their products
and services.
Look at Andy Abramson. The forty-years-old consultant figures he makes
seventy-five percent more as a gun-for-hire ronin than he would
traditionally. The constant influx of new projects keeps work
interesting and offers equity stakes in a variety of companies - "like
having my own little venture capital fund." Free agency also offers
lifestyle perks, allowing for an annual month in Europe. "I just signed
up for wireless ISDN," Abramson gloats. "Now I get to go to work on the
beach."
In Silicon Valley as elsewhere, there exists an intense labor market
competition. The ranks of free agents are growing, from twenty-two
percent of the work force in 1998 to twenty-six percent this year,
according to a poll by Lansing, Michigan marketing research firm
EPIC/MRA. And by the year 2010, forty-one percent of the work force
will be working on a contract basis. Career experts believe that, like
actors or athletes, talented consultants will have agents. Groups of
workers will come together to tackle projects only to disband when the
task is finished, a model already common in Silicon Valley.
This model also tips its hat in reference to nearby Hollywood and Studio
City. This model is reminiscent of how motion picture studios create
movies and other forms of entertainment. Actors, directors, producers,
and other crew descend upon a studio lot; create the movie, then scatter
to the four winds; then appear again to start the whole process over
again. Actors, like future consultants, will not be known for what
studio they worked for (which is always changing; usually, the highest
bidder), but for their vitae of roles they starred in. Future
consultants will be known for their vitae of open-source projects they
contributed to.
Increasingly, companies will keep their most prized employees on site
and outsource everything else. When the United States of America-based
computer display unit of Nokia Corporation entered the U.S. market, it
did so with only five key employees. Sales, marketing, logistics, and
technical support were all farmed out.
And just because an employee is on staff doesn't mean he or she isn't
thinking like a free agent. A typical thirty-two-years-old, for
example, has already held nine jobs, according to the United States
Labor Department. Experts predict that these same workers will have as
many as twenty different positions in their lifetimes. These most
valuable players will constantly bargain for better deals within their
organizations (new projects, Thursdays off, an August sabbatical).
The only way employers can get the staffing crisis under control is to
abandon the old-fashioned and quaint notion of an employee. In some
ways, the free agent model hearkens back to the pre-industrial era. One
can liken the e-lance economy to the time when blacksmiths and other
tradesmen sold their skills in the village green. The difference is
that in the wired world, and thanks to iQLinux.com, customers and
consultants can purchase and offer their products and services from
around the globe.
We will bear witness to the evolution of organizations like the Screen
Actors Guild and the Writers Guild, only, say, for programmers and
marketers. Such groups will provide a sense of community and identity,
as well as health insurance and other benefits that were once the
purview of corporations' responsibilities.
Stephen Barley, co-director of the Center for Work, Technology and
Organization at Stanford University has been researching contract
employees who work as software engineers and programmers in Silicon
Valley.
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