Tag Archives: Open Source

Please think twice before leaving a flippant negative review

Last week I launched a new WordPress plugin, No Nonsense, and much to my surprise, it started to pick up steam after just a couple of days. It turns out, it got featured with a nice review on WP Tavern, and people took notice.

Unfortunately, almost immediately, it got a couple of really negative reviews, both of which were clearly dashed off with very little thought, or apparently even the slightest bit of effort on the part of the reviewers to try to determine the cause of their issues before leaving a negative review — rather than submitting a support ticket, which would be the correct channel for addressing a problem… if they actually wanted to solve it.

I take pride in the quality of my work, and I try hard to make sure it performs flawlessly. I respond quickly to any issues — even for a free plugin like this — because I want to make things right. So it is really painful to have the product of my efforts permanently stained with a negative review by someone who can’t be bothered to take the time to write a single cohesive sentence detailing the issues they had with it.

I understand the temptation to rip on something you think is garbage, and I’ve left a few one-star plugin reviews myself. But I feel it’s important to at least explain in detailed and objective terms why I think something is bad. And maybe if it’s clearly something brand new, I’d wait a while to see if the creators take the time to work out the kinks first.

So, no matter what you do, no matter where you are, if you are in a position to criticize someone else’s work, I implore you to take a second and think about the impact you might be having on that person and on what they’re trying to accomplish, and whether or not your criticism is truly valid and warranted. Perhaps it is not, in which case, I would respectfully suggest you stay quiet. But maybe it is. In that case, think about whether a terse and flippant negative review is really the best way you can contribute to improving the situation, or if there’s a more effective, more constructive way to share your input.

How are open source CMSes like Microsoft enterprise software?

Aside from the fact that both topics would put the average blog reader to sleep before the end of the first…

OK, now that they’re asleep, let’s talk. Throughout most of my career, open source software and Microsoft’s (or, really, any software behemoth’s) enterprise “solutions” have seemed diametrically opposed. But the more I think about the situation, I begin to find some startling similarities, at least in their implementation (and reasons for said implementation), if not in their actual structure and licensing.

If you’re the one person (besides me) who’s spent any significant amount of time reading this blog, you probably know two things: 1) I don’t like Microsoft, and 2) I don’t like Drupal. So these are the objects of my scorn in today’s post as well, although the problems I’m describing can be generalized, I think, to the broader sectors of the software industry that they represent.

When I worked in the corporate world, I resented Microsoft’s dominance across the board from operating systems to desktop software to enterprise systems. It just seemed that most of their tools weren’t really that good, and eventually I began to realize that the reason they were successful was that Microsoft’s customers were not the end users, but rather the IT managers who made purchasing decisions. These decisions were largely based on their own knowledge and experience with Microsoft’s software (to the detriment of other, possibly superior options), but also (I believe cynically) to preserve their own jobs and those of their staffs. Microsoft’s systems require(d?) constant maintenance and support. Not only did this mean bigger IT staffs on the corporate payroll, but it meant lots of highly paid “consulting” firms whose sole job was to promote and then support the sales and implementation of Microsoft products.

In the indie developer world, where I now reside, the culture and software platforms are different, but perhaps not as different as they seem. Apple’s computers dominate the desktops in small studios, and the tabletops in coffeehouses where freelancers can frequently be spotted hunched over their MacBooks hard at work while sipping lattes and meeting (usually a little too loudly) with clients. And open source software dominates at the server level.

But just like Microsoft’s platforms, I think most open source software just isn’t really very good. And the problem, once again, is the customer (or… well… whatever you call the person who makes the decisions when selecting a free product). It seems that the end user experience is rarely given much priority when most open source software is being designed and developed. Part of the problem is a lack of direct contact between the development teams and those end users (or, to be honest, even between the geographically scattered members of the development teams themselves). Devs don’t really know what end users want or need. They only know what they want or need, along with what’s been submitted to their bug trackers.

It’s not that these devs are bad people, or bad at what they do. There’s just a disconnect between coder and user, and as a result the goal of building good software isn’t met.

So, why do independent developers still use tools that are not really the best for their clients? Again, cynically, I wonder sometimes if job security isn’t a factor. It’s a lot easier to build something that works, but that requires indefinite, ongoing attention and support, than to build something that is flawless, that you can hand off to your client and never touch again. It’s easier… and it provides built-in job security.

Now, I’m not perfect, and I’m not above all of this. There is no such thing as flawless software, and I have ongoing support contracts with some of my bigger clients. But I’m proud to say that’s mostly because I’m constantly building new sites for them, or building functional enhancements onto the sites they already have, rather than doing endless bug fixes and technical support because the tools I’ve sold them are too confusing or simply don’t work right. Sure, the bug fixes and tech support do happen. But the tools — primarily WordPress and cms34, my own CMS — are built much more with the end user in mind, and have managed to avoid the pitfalls that mean a guaranteed job for me at the expense of a mediocre user experience for my clients.

That’s harder, and riskier. But it’s better. I’m delivering a higher quality product to the clients, and I’m keeping my own work interesting and moving forward.

Barack Obama: the open-source candidate?

Now we’re speaking close to my heart. Granted, I’m a freeloader in the open source world. I have yet to contribute a single line of code to an open source project. (OK, I guess that’s not entirely true: I did write a WordPress plugin. Sweet. I’m in the club! Sort of.) But I have wholly embraced open source software in my work. PHP FTW, baby! (Uh yeah… whatever.)

These days the only thing I’m a more enthusiastic and outspoken proponent of than open source software is Barack Obama. So I’m surprised it took me so long to research what he’s running his website on.

Linux PWS/1.3.28

*Whew* Glad to see it’s Linux. But what the heck is PWS? I was at a loss. Then I found this blog talking about the very same issue. And suddenly it made sense why I didn’t recognize the acronym. I never would have considered Microsoft’s Personal Web Server to be the web server of choice running on a Linux server. I am still scratching my head at it. The whole VM thing seems the only logical explanation, except that there’s no logic to explain it. At least it’s not so transparently ass-backwards as John McCain’s configuration:

Linux Microsoft-IIS/6.0

And the inexplicable:

Linux ECAcc (lhr)

Interestingly, though, a Google search for “ECAcc (lhr)” reveals a link to a Digg post entitled John McCain Owns VoteForTheMILF.com. Stay classy, San Diego.

Let’s be clear: I think the idea of running a web site under Windows in a virtual machine on a Linux box is the most incomprehensible, mind-bogglingly stupid arrangement you’d ever bother with. I’d have to guess that the sites were developed to run in a Windows environment, but when it came time to deal with practical server and network capacity issues, load balancing and whatnot, some sysadmin made the (probably prudent) decision to load balance on Linux boxes instead of Windows, but since the site was tied to some feeble Windows technology, they couldn’t just move it over to Linux wholesale.

But let’s take this a step further. Back in late spring I received an email from Barack Obama’s IT director soliciting applicants for web developer positions with the campaign. Even though the job was in Boston, I figured it would be insane not to apply, so I submitted my resume. (I never heard back, for what it’s worth.) And it’s from this that I happen to know that the campaign was specifically seeking PHP developers. Rock on.

With that in mind, the whole Windows-on-Linux-through-VM arrangement made even less sense. Why would they develop the site in PHP, run it on a Windows server (definitely not the optimal arrangement for a PHP-based app, though it certainly will work), and then VM that Windows environment on a Linux box, instead of just gearing the PHP app for a Linux server in the first place? And that’s when I remembered that just earlier in the day I had been looking at taxcut.barackobama.com. Of course! Separate third-level domains are all over Obama’s site. Let’s check the configuration on that domain. Now that’s much better:

Linux Apache/1.3.34 (Debian) mod_gzip/1.3.26.1a AuthMySQL/4.3.9-2 PHP/5.2.0-8+etch10

And I think it explains a lot. Campaigns start off small. Obama had to register barackobama.com and put something up there ages ago, long before he was the Democratic nominee and the hugely successful fundraiser he became along the way. So that original site, www.barackobama.com, was probably developed on a Windows box in someone’s proverbial basement, probably when was running for the U.S. Senate or maybe even the Illinois Senate. But as the campaign has grown, its websites (plural) have grown as well, and in a decidedly open-source direction. There’s some good stuff in there. Debian (which could mean Ubuntu, too… I haven’t checked the signature on Ubuntu’s Apache package to see if it’s split from its Debian roots), PHP (and a reasonably up-to-date version at that), MySQL, etc.

It’s kind of fun to do this kind of research, as long as you don’t mind being distracted along the way, because there are plenty of weird sources of distraction.

Aside from the aforementioned MILF site (classy), and the somewhat interesting fact that searching on “PWS/1.3.28” brings back as its first result a reference to Obama’s hosting, I discovered that for some reason the page title on John McCain’s official store is “Independent Online Stores.” OK. No one looks at title bars. And even fewer web developers look at <title> tags. I know that from experience. But of course that’s just a transitional landing page, announcing that McCain wares are not actually sold by the campaign, but by independent, for-profit companies, and buying these items doesn’t translate into money going back into the campaign. Huh. I can’t quite wrap my brain around that, but I’m a lifelong, union-loving Democrat, so I guess I wasn’t meant to. The only thing that comes to mind is that maybe it has to be that way, legally, now that he’s accepted public campaign financing. Anyway, the first McCain store link I found, which as they state is apparently an independent operation not affiliated with the campaign, is, not surprisingly, running:

Windows Server 2008 Microsoft-IIS/7.0

I also found that the company that hosts some of Obama’s pages also hosts a site for the American Model Yachting Association. Really? Model yachting? That exists?