Microsoft vs The Nerds

Lately, I have run across an opinion that amazes me. Somebody I know called open source advocates greasy-haired, bearded nerds. My acquaintance said that she would be more inclined to trust her future to nice clean cut people from Microsoft, who know her business, and are familiar with the requirements of the enterprise. How the world turns!

In the good old days, IBM was the Goliath, and Microsoft was David. If you have seen some of the early pictures, you know that Microsoft was swimming in greasy hair and beards. Ties were verboten and suits were not popular with the Microsoft crowd. Microsoft did well in the enterprise not because they understood business – well they did, but IBM had the reputation for understanding business. Microsoft did well because they equipped nerds like me with the tools to sell Microsoft to their employers.

I worked for a market research firm in the late ’80s. I used Quick Basic, and Quick C to write zippy little applications to groom data, or perform other tasks. I even used a product called DBase, and another called PCFile.

Later, I introduced the spreadsheet, PageMaker, and then Windows. I championed the move for Wordperfect running under DOS to Microsoft Word running under Windows, and I headed the charge when we moved from Lotus 123 to Excel. I introduced MS Access, or participated in the first projects to use Access. Under Windows, I wrote macros to automate common tasks. Borland may have had the best C compiler, but I needed a cheap one that worked. Those were the days.

My employer was not required to buy licenses to use the software I wrote, nor did they buy development tools. Most of the time, I used my own development tools, and I drove the development process by building prototypes to sell my ideas. Often I wrote code just to help me do a job faster. The nerds were key. We provided the vision to executives who still did not get it. Microsoft supported us very well with a BSS we could use to download white papers, and with the Microsoft Press.

I have earning a living using Microsoft tools for almost two decades. But, in recent years, I have come to realize that I can deliver the same or greater value using open source tools. I am drafting a manifesto of sorts for myself to state my position clearly. My only agenda is to provide value to my clients, and to do a good job. I did not participate in initiating open source. Believe it or not, and I like good software even when I have to pay for it. If a product works, I rarely feel compelled to see the code. Watch for the manifesto on this site – perhaps it will be more of a position paper. Manifesto is a bigger word than I would want to use.

I you have opinions of your own, chime in!

Virtual Appliances

I have been playing with VMWare for about a month, exploring the possibilities. As long as four years ago, I began to think that there was a way to use open source to provide service to my client. For example, I imagined providing a client with a CRM package on a server that would be installed in their offices, or located offsite with an ISP. The idea was that my client could continue using Windows based software, including a browser like Internet Explorer, and it would not matter to them that the CRM package was running on Linux and used the Apache web server.

I can see all sorts of uses for Virtualization, and I am very attracted to the idea of virtual appliances. The latest one that has caught my attention is the Zimbra appliance, a collaboration suite. Check it out at Zimbra.