How Software is Built

Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Leon Shklar

In this interview we talk with Leon Shklar - EVP of Media Technology for Reuters. In specific, we talk about:

• Moving Reuters.com to an open source stack
• Choosing and supporting open source software
• Making code changes to open source packages
• Licenses and governance in open source projects
• The perception and reality of open source companies

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Jamie Thingelstad

In this interview we talk with Jamie Thingelstad - CTO of the Wall Street Journal’s Digital Network. In specific, we talk about:

• Open and closed-source technology stacks at WSJ
• The technology evaluation process
• Intersections between open source and commercial entities
• Security considerations with open and closed platforms
• The value and liability of owning code

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Marc Frons

In this second interview with Marc Frons, CTO for the New York Times digital operations, we discuss the Times use of open source in their infrastructure. In specific, we talk about:

• WordPress and blogging at the New York Times
• New York Times investment in open source
• Licensing issues and corporate citizenship
• How they address open-source application support and evolution
• The role of content management systems
• The future of corporate investment in open source

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In this interview, we talk to Scott Densmore about Microsoft’s CodePlex and the Patterns & Practice’s work on the Enterprise Library Version 4:

• Forking the Enterprise Library
• How Microsoft product teams are using the CodePlex repository for open-source code.
• How CodePlex is different from SourceForge
• Favorite CodePlex projects
• How CodePlex itself is community driven

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: David Campbell

In this interview with David Campbell we talked to him about:

• How the development methodology of SQL Server has changed.
• How the changes affect the ability of customers to give feedback.
• How virtualization makes it easier for users to test-drive SQL Server.
• As products and open-source projects grow, the developers have to realize that they are not the target user.
• David’s belief that the best product doesn’t necessarily have the most knobs.
• Building a community around a closed-source product like SQL Server.

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Justin Erenkrantz

In this second part of a two part interview with Justin Erenkrantz we talked to him about:

• How the Apache project ensures good collaboration.
• The Apache Foundation’s philosphy of having no single person as the leader.
• Apache’s security committee.
• The process of removing someone from a position of responsibility within the Apache Foundation.
• What would make someone want to be part of the Apache Foundation’s group of projects.

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Justin Erenkrantz

In this interview with Justin Erenkrantz we talked to him about:

• The Apache Foundation.
• Project Management Committees and the Apache Foundation.
• Some of the reasons Jason feels Apache has been so successful.
• What other open source projects might look to Apache for in terms of inspiration due to Apache’s longevity.
• The Apache Incubator and it’s role as part of the Apache Software Foundation.
• What is the on horizon for the Apache Web Server.

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Marc Frons

In this interview with Marc Frons we talked to him about:

• His background with the New York Times.
• Their focus on the LAMP stack and Solaris.
• What he likes about open source.
• The ethos of open source and the ethos of a news organization.
• How pervasive open source is in the New York Times business outside of the New York Times Digital properties.
• What the reporters use to get their job done.

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell.

Interviewees:Shawn Burke.

In this interview with Shawn Burke of Microsoft we asked him about:

• Shawn’s motivation for helping to make the framework source code available.
• Whether there are any limits on who gets access to the source code.
• Whether there was any internal resistance initially to providing the framework source.
• Why Microsoft doesn’t just provide a zip for the source.
• Whether Microsoft’s individual developers write code differently knowing that their actual source might be available for the world to see someday.
• Whether or not Microsoft is planning on making available other development artifacts such as test scripts, threat models, etc.
• Whether a closed source company or an open source company is better positioned to support external developers who need access to the source for a given project.

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart, Sean Campbell, and Richard Bowler.

Interviewee:Steve Morris

In this interview with Steve Morris the director of the Open Technology Center we asked him about:

• The role of the OTBC
• The original lean of the OTBC toward open source
• The dispersal of Open Source Tools in Large Organizations
• Licensing
• The percentage of companies at the OTBC that use open source technologies
• The business implications of Open Source

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In this interview, we talk with Doug Look, who’s a strategic designer for Autodesk Labs. The labs are interesting because they’ve built a strong, engaged, community around closed-source software. In this interview, we specifically cover:

· Using an online “Lab” to engage the community in closed-source development.

· Does open-source tackle interdisciplinary problems well?

· What does an interdisciplinary team in action look like?

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The OSI has approved the two Microsoft software licenses, the Microsoft Reciprocal License, and the Microsoft Public License.  This makes all the code on Microsoft’s CodePlex site (Microsoft’s equivalent of SourceForge) official open-source software, as much of it is licensed under the Microsoft Public License (formerly the Microsoft Permissive License).  It also means that things like Microsoft’s Ajax Control Toolkit is open-source (with the inherent ability to fork, etc.)

You would have to be living under a rock to not notice Apple’s ascendancy as of late.

And one of the clear elements of their ascendancy is that they have a clear vision for usability and peak customer experiences. Notice I didn’t say “peak corporate experiences” but that is a topic for another post I’ve got planned…

Most people seem to point to this focus on peak customer experiences as being driven and shaped by one person - Steve Jobs.

So here is the question.

Do you need a Benevolent Dictator to create great out of the box experiences that extend for the lifetime of the product’s use by an end user?

And is this true for both OpenSource and Closed Source projects.

The folks at the humanized blog had a great post up about this that motivated me in part to put up a post on our blog.

But in addition this is a question that has come up quite frequently in our interviews and is the highlight topic of an upcoming one soon to arrive on the blog.

So what are your thoughts?

I’ve got my own two cents on this which is that you do need one regardless of whether it’s an OpenSource project or Closed Source.

But I’m curious what other folks think as well…

There’s a good article on LinuxWorld about the security debate between open-source and Windows. My first question is, does it need to be a debate? In this day and age, isn’t it easy enough to quantify vulnerabilities?

If you are looking for subjective opinion, I recommend looking through the interviews we’ve done here. At the risk of sounding like a Microsoft fan-boy, the Microsoft interviews (in my opinion) demonstrate a company where secure coding is “in the water”. Code goes through threat modeling, risky function calls have simply been banned, code goes through automated and human inspection, and vulnerabilities that do slip through feedback into the process to determine how to prevent them in the future.

I simply don’t get the same feeling from the open-source people we’ve talked to. When we’ve brought the subject up, the response is almost universally “many eyeballs,” and faith (without data) that “many eyeballs” is effective.

Am I completely off base? Do things like the Linux kernel and Apache go through rigorous security reviews? Is there proof that “many eyeballs” in open source is at least as good as something like the Security Development Lifecycle in Microsoft? If you’re in a position to know, let’s chat!

According to Scott Guthrie, Microsoft will make the source for the upcoming .NET Framework 3.5 available under the Microsoft Reference License. This isn’t an open-source license (i.e. you couldn’t fork the code), but it is still a “good thing” in that developers can learn from the source and have an improved debugging experience with the ability to step-into the framework code.

Update: It seems that this isn’t seen as happy news by all. There’s an article on eWeek that’s just too irrational and frothing to pass up, claiming that this is all a ploy by Microsoft to kill Mono. As Microsoft is officially supporting Novell’s efforts in porting Silverlight to Linux (on top of Mono), the evidence would indicate that Microsoft is doing this to support .NET developers, and not as some clever conspiracy to kill off Mono.

Interviewers: Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Robert Bray

In this interview with Bob, Architect for Geospatial Products at Autodesk, we asked him about:

• Introduction of open source within Autodesk
• Role of project steering committees
• Decision to create an open source product
• Open source impact on closed source product
• Developer and engineer adjustments to open source process
• Differences between feature design in open and closed source
• Test and documentation for Autodesk open source
• Community contribution to open source projects
• Business reasons for creating open source products

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart

Interviewee: Rod Johnson

In this interview with Rod, CEO of Interface 21 and founder of the Spring framework, we asked him about:

• Development methodology of Spring framework
• Contributors to Spring
• Selection of code and features for the Spring framework
• Ways in which developers support open source
• Open source development cycle
• Importance of technical support
• Code aggregation in open source development
• Choosing open or closed source within small businesses

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Interviewers:
Scott Swigart and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: Josh Berkus

In this interview with Josh, PostgreSQL Core Team Lead at Sun Microsystems Inc., we asked him about:

• How PostgreSQL fits into the landscape of open source databases
• New uses of PostgreSQL
• How new code and features are selected for PostgreSQL
• Quality control and maintenance of code
• Core maintainers and code contributors
• How contributors participate in PostgreSQL development
• Differences between open and closed source database
• Variations between PostgreSQL products
• PostgreSQL Windows users and Microsoft support

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart, and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: John McCreesh - Open Office

John McCreesh

In this interview with John who is the Marketing Program Lead for Open Office we asked him about:

• What the process is for delegating work out to members of the OpenOffice team
• How OpenOffice handles end user requests for features
• The engineering steering committee for OpenOffice
• Large Company contributions to OpenOffice
• How the Q/A process is handled for OpenOffice
• How OpenOffice generates appropriate documentation for end users
• How much goes into keeping OpenOffice cross platform (Mac, Linux, Windows) vs. emphasis on creating new features.
• The Office 2007 Ribbon, innovation, and standards as it relates to OpenOffice

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Interviewers: Scott Swigart, and Sean Campbell

Interviewee: James Reinders - Intel

In this video interview at OSCON 2007 we talked to James Reinders - The Chief Evangelist for Intel’s Software Products Division.

We’ll talked to him about the following:

 

 James Role at Intel [0:58m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Some of the Software Products produced by Intel [1:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 How Intel integrates the community into the process of Q/A, etc [1:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 How does the development model differ when Intel builds a product for the open source community [1:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Intel's announcement at OSCON 2007 about a new open source release [2:53m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Impacts of Open Sourcing Threading Building Blocks [1:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 What are some rationales for not Open Sourcing a project? [3:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Parallelism and Open Source / Closed Source [2:06m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Building applications for Closed Source vs. Open Source ecosystems [1:26m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 VTune and the Development Process for it. [3:41m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Q/A Process Around VTune [2:12m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

 

 Full Interview [15:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download