What Every Entrepreneur Should Know When Designing Their Future Business – Book Review

If you are an entrepreneur, innovator, and you believe you have the next new thing to revolutionize your industry, or change all that we are and all we have built, then I can recommend a very good book to you. This book will help you create an organization which thinks correctly and can participate in the information age, and create something that will flourish into what might be the next greatest company. The name of the book is;

“The Design of Business – Why Design Thinking Is the Next Competitive Advantage” by Roger Martin, Harvard press, Boston, Massachusetts, 2009. ISBN: 978-1-4221-7780-8.

Roger Martin does an excellent job in this book of explaining how to funnel knowledge to help your concepts take shape. He also helps innovators understand the relationship between knowledge and discovery. He shows the reader how to bring a concept to fruition, while getting through the barriers of bias. In fact, he explains the problems with the old way of doing things and the faults of the status quo; he’ll show you how to overcome that. If you are ever wondering how come technology and knowledge advances at such a slow pace, or why it is so hard to bring forth innovation, this book will explain it.

But better than that, this book also instructs the reader how to change their way of thinking and he explains the necessity of changing your mindset to propel your organization, inventions, or new ideas with; Design Thinking. I believe every entrepreneur with a new concept for their business ought to read this book before they start that future company.

Indeed, I believe after reading this book that you’ll begin to see why you need to think like a designer from the initial planning, creation of your business plan, all the way forward to the implementation and startup process; and how to keep it humming along creating as you go. The author explains how Americans are the Innovating exporters of the world, and if you wish to get involved in such a grand opportunity you need to change your thinking first, that is to say you need to change yourself, and your mindset into a design thinking format so you can catch the wave of innovation.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in smart business.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Make Your Business Letters Count – Book Review

Writing effective business letters seems to be a thing of the past, but it really shouldn’t be. After all, an effective business letter can also be an e-mail. And consider some of the problems that occur in business communication due to improperly created e-mails.

Many are far too informal to do the job and far too many people do not use proper capitalization, punctuation, decent grammar, and the spelling is atrocious. Similarly many of these e-mails do not even hold a cohesive thought. It’s hard to tell what the author of the e-mail was even thinking at the time. I see you are smiling while you are reading this, probably because you know it’s true.

If you care very much about the business letters you create, or the e-mails that you send out, I’d like to recommend a very good book to you which was actually written before widespread e-mail use was even available. It’s a book that has helped me in my business immensely, and the other day when I was going through all my business books trying to make more room on my shelves, I didn’t have the heart to throw it away, even though it was written in 1985. You can still get a copy and order one on the Internet, I saw one the other day. The name of the book is;

"Modern Business Letters," by Joan Harris, 1985

There are chapters on how to write an acknowledgement letter, a memo, and an announcement. All perfect for e-mail use. Each chapter has dozens of examples, and there are chapters on letters that you can write to vendors, banks, competitors, and even government agencies. There is a chapter on how to write a letter of intent for business contracts and agreements. Indeed, I’d like to recommend this book to you one more time, so you can go onto the Internet to buy it. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in smart business communication.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Learn How to Use Temporary Services in Your Business – Book Review

If you own a small business, you know how serious payroll taxes are, and how serious employment laws are if you make a mistake. You could be sued out of business if you do not have the proper workers compensation to protect you and your assets or if you get embroiled in a wrongful termination case, or find yourself in trouble with regulators.

There are many reasons why small businesses use temporary services, and I must admit, in my company we did this quite a bit in the past. Perhaps, you’d like to consider hiring a temporary employment service to help you with the myriad of laws that govern the employment realm.

If so, I’d like to recommend a very good book to you, one that I have in my own personal library, and one I believe will help you get acquainted with everything you need to know before you outsource your labor to a temporary agency. The name of the book is;

“How to choose and use temporary services” by William M. Lewis and Nancy H. Molloy

In the book the authors explain some of the most prevalent arguments for why small business owners choose to outsource their labor and employment. For instance; Flexibility of demand, quality of labor, seasonality, payroll taxes, simple jobs, trying out new employees, low unemployment (can’t find workers), it’s easier to fire them, college grads, illegal alien problem, they do employee proficiency tests, no-load on human resources, less liability, and the benefits of “at will employment.”

This book is full of great advice, and although it was written in 1991, I have not found a better book on the topic. In the book it states that there were 7000 temporary agencies in 1991, today, I imagine there are three times that number. Each chapter is book is filled with information, ideas, thoughts, and management considerations. The book explains the pros and cons – it also tells how many temporary agencies are industry specific, which could also set your mind at ease. Indeed, hope to please consider this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in smart business.

Popularity: 1% [?]

A Productive Company is a Profitable Company – A Book Review

There sure is a lot of talk about productivity factors and statistics in business, and you do not have to have Fredrick Winslow Taylor, the Grandfather of Business Management in your family tree as I do to see that. In fact, look at all the Six Sigma programs, consultants, and MBA schools focused on production and productivity. Still, if you’d like to learn more and have this help you in your own business then boy do I have a great book to recommend to you, and yes, I do own this book and it is in my personal business library;

“122 Minutes a Month to Greater Profits” by Harvey A. Goldstein, 1985.

Indeed, there is a link between productivity and profitability, and perhaps, I challenge anyone who denies it. And although there are some companies that get a lucky break now and again, over the long haul if you’re not productive you will not reap the benefits and rewards, and that’s a fact, says Goldstein.

In this book the author explains the difference between being productive versus just been busy, or spinning your wheels. He suggests ways to control expenses, budget the sales, and use computers in business to create a more productive workplace.

He goes deep into business planning, strategies, and competitive analysis. There are also chapters on developing a strong marketing plan, business plan, and there are several samples in the back of the book. This was quite a popular book in the 1980s, but surprisingly enough, you can pick up the same book today and page through it and find ideas to help you increase productivity in your own company; whether it is small or large. This is why I would recommend that you have this book in your personal business library, and perhaps, you will go out and buy it. Please consider all this.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in good business books.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Super Entrepreneurs of Our Time – A Book Review

As we read the history of great entrepreneurial capitalists, politicians, and leaders they appear 10 foot tall, when in reality they were just normal men, with the same concerns as you and I, perhaps with character flaws, that are far deeper than you and I, nevertheless, history is written by the victors and successful and the myths and legends live on.

Have you ever wondered what is true, how these great entrepreneurs came into existence, how they made their fortunes, and how they developed their creativity, eye for detail, and ability to his spot an opportunity and seize it? Perhaps, you are like me and you’ve always had these questions, maybe to understand yourself, to improve your entrepreneurial spirit, and to achieve success.

The reality is the super entrepreneurs of our time, and of past periods, have something in common, they had a hard work ethic, dedication, perseverance, and commitment to their cause whatever it was. If this topic interests you, I like to recommend a very good book, one that I actually have on my shelf in my business library. The name of the book is;

“The Mythical, The True, and The New Entrepreneurs; Creativity, Fortune and Hard Work,” by Thomas Jones, 1987.

There were some unique things in this book that I hadn’t encountered very often before in my business reading. One of the questions in the book was; should you have entrepreneurial employees? Indeed, I believe the answer is yes, and I’m glad the author agreed with that, because as a former franchisor, I enjoy having entrepreneurial franchisees, although our industry; the franchising industry, often advises against that. Nevertheless, I enjoyed working closely with the entrepreneurial spirit of our franchisees, and I believe it helped us dominate the market.

One of the great quotes in this book, and one I thoroughly enjoyed was; “Be prepared or be damned,” and it reminded me of the quote of the definition of luck being; “when preparedness meets opportunity.” Interestingly enough, I don’t believe there was anything in this book I didn’t like, so I’m going to recommend it to you. Please consider it.

Lance Winslow is a retired Founder of a Nationwide Franchise Chain, and now runs the Online Think Tank. Lance Winslow believes in entreprenuerial spirit.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Book Review – The Accidental Billionaires by Ben Mezrich

Upon examining the cover of The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal, one sees two martini glasses and a bra thrown carelessly on the floor. The cover gives a glimpse into the world of Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin, the founders of Facebook. The author, Ben Mezrich, tells the true story with help of Eduardo Saverin of how Facebook was started and how it has become a dorm-room experiment worth over fifteen billion dollars.

Mark Zuckerberg and Eduardo Saverin met at a fraternity related function while freshmen at Harvard. Mark Zuckerberg had the privilege of being extremely smart while Eduardo Saverin was very outgoing and likable. They stared at each other across the room as Eduardo was talking up a storm and Zuckerberg was being a wallflower. The two ended up talking and becoming unlikely friends. Saverin revealed that he was trying to become a member of the revered Pheonix, a social fraternity at Harvard that threw the best parties. Zuckerberg proved to have a unique personality and sense of humor, never really revealing his true thoughts or emotions.

Since Saverin was the social one and Zuckerberg was painfully introverted, Saverin found a pair of girls for them to go out with one night. Both college guys were interested in getting girls, but Zuckerberg did not know how to go about approaching them. The four people went on a double date, and Mark was shot down and left the date extremely angered. The girl had no interest in him at all. He decided he would use his computer science degree and overwhelming knowledge of the internet and programming to get back at the girls of Harvard.

Zuckerberg started by hacking into the university’s dorm rosters and loading pictures of every person on campus into his computer. He originally intended to place the pictures of all the girls next to a picture of a farm animal to really insult them. However, he decided against the idea and ended up making a system where people could rate guys and girls on their “hotness”. He called the site Facemash. The site was largely successful as people emailed the site to everyone they know and there were thousands of visitors in only one day. Mark never imagined this site would blow up as it had and knew that he may be facing some legal issues. Girls and guys all over Harvard’s campus were angry that people were rating them on how hot, or not, they were.

Harvard’s review board ended up talking to Zuckerberg in private where he told the board that he never intended any harm, and the website was quickly removed from the internet. He was let off the hook, but could not cause any more trouble. Now that he made such a successful website, everyone knew who he was. Many people hated him, but there were thousands of people who loved him. Two of the people who wanted to talk to him and get to know him better were two members of Harvard’s prestigious rowing team, the Winklevoss twins. These two men were dashingly handsome, all of the girls wanted them, and they would most likely represent the United States in the Olympics one day.

The Winklevoss twins started emailing and meeting with Mark to discuss their idea; they wanted to create a social networking site where people on Harvard’s campus could communicate and hook up. It was basically a way to meet guys and girls without having to go through the odd introductory period. Mark seemed excited about the idea and saw its potential and agreed to help the twins with the coding part of their project. However, all along the twins did not promise Mark payment or any type of reward, only the promise that he would be able to meet people. Zuckerberg quickly began working on the project, but realized that the website was not aesthetically pleasing and was lacking some key elements. He stopped working on the website and had to avoid the twins as they continually asked him about his progress, while starting a project of his own on the side.

Zuckerberg came up with an idea similar to that of the Winklevoss twins called thefacebook. This site would not only allow people to meet one another, but would allow them to create circles of friends, post pictures, talk about their interests, and even leave messages on their friends’ “walls”. The website was released and took off again. Everyone knew Zuckerberg and how he could create amazing websites, and they all wanted a piece of thefacebook. Mark’s website soon had most of Harvard’s campus registered. Other schools nearby joined in too and millions of people had joined thefacebook within a year.

While Zuckerberg enjoyed his success of thefacebook, his ties with Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins went sour. The Winklevoss twins knew that something was unfair about Zuckerberg’s new website which seemed nearly identical to theirs. They ended up threatening with a lawsuit and being rewarded with an estimated 65 million dollars once Facebook was a world wide phenomenon. Eduardo Saverin was in a similar boat when Zuckerberg realized that he was not really doing anything for the company. Saverin had only fronted several thousand dollars to set up the website and had played a backseat role ever since. He was eventually phased out of the company once it when public and he sued Zuckerberg as well. No one really knows what his compensation was when he won the lawsuit, but his name has mysteriously reappeared on Facebook’s ownership list.

Along with fame and money, one thing was for certain: girls would follow. Zuckerberg and Saverin had their share of girls once thefacebook became popular. Zuckerberg even found him involved with a Victoria’s Secret model at a California club thanks to his newfound friend, Sean Parker. Parker is a Silicon Valley celebrity since he founded Napster. His file sharing community took the world by storm before he was unfairly evicted from his own company and made nothing from it. He went on to found several other companies of note and seemed to have an eye for great talent.

Parker forced his way into thefacebook. He found out about the company after he woke up in some girl’s bedroom one day and found thefacebook open on her computer. He browsed the webpage for a few minutes and knew he had to contact Zuckerberg. Parker had the ability to take Mark’s company to the next level since he had already been to the top and knew a lot of very rich people in very high places. Zuckerberg took Parker along for the ride, thefacebook became Facebook, and the company went from pretty big to enormously popular. Every college and university became involved with Facebook and Zuckerberg’s worth went from nothing to billions of dollars in only a few years. Parker may have made some money off of his shares of Facebook, but was also kicked out of the company eventually due to legal issues.

Mark Zuckerberg is worth over 15 billion dollars today; he is the youngest billionaire ever. Companies and investors are dying to buy even small portions of his company, but Zuckerberg knows he is sitting on a goldmine which will only become more valuable. He did decide to sell a few percent of his company to his idol, Bill Gates of Microsoft, for over two billion dollars. He will comfortably live off this money and then some for the rest of his life and can keep building Facebook for the fun of it. Zuckerberg is an inspiring success story showing that the quiet, nerdy people can really create some waves in this world. This book is highly recommended and is rated 4.5 out of 5.

Daniel Breedlove is the owner and manager of Corner Office Books, the internet’s premier website on business book reviews and sales. For hundreds of reviews of the best business books available, visit the website at http://CornerOfficeBooks.com/

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Popularity: 1% [?]

Domain Names – First Level Strategy For Idea Protection

Protecting ideas and concepts is, without a doubt, one of the biggest concerns that must be addressed by businesses of all sizes and in every industry. As a result, this concern has spawned an army of attorneys that specialize in intellectual property, trademark and copyright law. And, not only can these attorneys be expensive, the process can be time intensive as well.

For entrepreneurs, this concern is especially challenging because they tend to have more ideas for products, services and projects than they have time or money to fully develop. As entrepreneurial CEOs, they want to protect their ideas, but they rarely want to go the expense of legally protecting every idea or concept they think of – many of which will be quickly forgotten or disregarded.

However, there is an initial, inexpensive step that every business owner – large or small – can take to protect ideas until they decide if or how they will use them in their business.

That is to buy a domain for the concept. While this strategy does not offer the level of protection that trademarks do, it does cast an anchor into the internet world and helps to protect the conceptual idea until further exploration can be conducted and decisions made about development. And, at less than $10 per domain and about 5 minutes time, it is an inexpensive layer of idea protection.

Once the decision is made to buy a domain, several other factors come into play when selecting the appropriate domain name.

The domain needs to be memorable if it is to anchor a branded product. To that end, every effort must be made to gain consumer mind-share. Generally, when prospects hear a domain name, they assume that it is followed by .com. Therefore, when buying a domain, buy the dot com version of the domain as the other dot whatevers are not as memorable. If the .com you initially want is not available, keep trying different domain names until you get a version that will work for your concept and, that you like.

The domain should be as concise as possible and easily understood when spoken. Avoid using numbers, hyphens, words that can be spelled in more that one way or words that can easily be misunderstood especially when spoken on the phone.

If you are developing a product, everything you do to package and promote it must be done to help build a memory anchor in the marketplace. As branded marketing is about owning consumer mind-share with a memorable anchor. And, that often begins with the right domain name.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Grandson Researches Grandfather’s WWII History

Review – Finding Granddad’s War

It is very fitting that Ancestry Publishing (Ancestry.com) was the publisher for Jeffrey Badger’s Finding Granddad’s War. As it’s title states, this book details the research methods and the travels of a young man in search of the history of a grandfather he never knew.

Jeffrey Badger was only two months old when his grandfather, Leo Kavanaugh, passed away in 1970. Twenty seven years later Jeffrey Badger began to piece together the life of his grandfather and learn where he had been, who he knew and what some of his experiences had been.

As part of the 9th Army’s 978th Engineer Maintenance Company, Leo Kavanaugh visited 9 countries, trailed almost 30,000 miles and was one man in a unit of 377. Finding Granddad’s War is not about a frontline soldier, action packed with combat stories, but is a deeply personal rebuilding of a war experience, tales and memories from those who were there, and filling in the memories for a grandson who never knew his grandfather.

Badger reached out to many people, finding a little information here and there, but also found and met many of the men his grandfather served with. They told him their stories, personal, funny and painful, which helped him to know what really happened in his grandfathers life. Badger ended up tracking to 17 states and Europe to meet 32 veterans and get their story.

What really is of value in this book is Jeffrey Badger describes how he went about researching this chronicling history, what you should do to research your own family. This is a great guide that shows just how much information is out there to find, where you can look, and how to go about getting official records.

This book is a good read for anyone looking to research their own family history. I found it to be very entertaining and insightful, getting to hear the histories of so many people that were involved in one man’s life. There are a lot of good resources contained and detailed that will assist in researching individuals histories. Finding Granddad’s War shows how even a beginner with little background knowledge can end up traveling the globe and filling a book with what he learned.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Daily Life in Ancient Egypt – Review

This article is a review of Red Land, Black Land: Daily Life in Ancient Egypt by Barbara Mertz (the audio version). I will give my thoughts on the author, a brief overview of the contents and an overall evaluation.

I had just finished listening to Temples, Tombs and Hieroglyphs by the same author and was impressed with Mertz’s writing. So, I decided to give Daily Life in Ancient Egypt a chance (anyone who has searched knows there are not a lot of audio books on Ancient Egypt available for download). It is easy to tell that she writes from experience and does so with a great deal of humor. She talks about her time at the Oriental Institute and of her many trips to Egypt. This certainly makes you feel that the author is competent to speak about her subject matter.

The contents of the book are not technical so this makes the book accessible to anyone. It covers topics ranging from geography to religion to love to clothing. One might think that something like Egyptian clothing would not be very interesting, but I think any reader/listener will be surprised at the depth of the subject. The book also contains a good number of extended stories from authentic Egyptian texts.

As an overall appraisal, this text is absolutely fantastic. I listen to a lot of audio books because I commute. And admittedly, I do not finish a number of them because either the material is boring or the reader is terrible. Neither of these is the case for this text. Mertz really makes Daily Life in Ancient Egypt come alive. Other texts on ancient history explain how remote and different people of the past were; however, one finishes this text feeling that the Ancient Egyptians were real people with many of the same concerns that we in the modern world have. Mertz uses an excellent illustration in that we view the Ancient Egyptians like the mummies that we see in museums. Yet she takes these mummies and puts the flesh and bones back on them. This really is an enjoyable book on Ancient Egypt.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Linux founder Linus Torvalds talks about open-source identity

Linus Torvalds is a regular visitor to Australia in January. He comes out for some sunshine and to attend the annual Linux.conf.au organized by Linux Australia. He took some time out to speak to Rodney Gedda about a host of topics, including point releases, file systems and what it’s like switching to GNOME. He also puts Windows 7 in perspective.

It's 2009 and Linux development is approaching 20 years. How do you look back at the past two decades? I feel like it’s very natural, and I don't think it will go away. I have a suspicion I will be doing this for a long time, and there is no feeling of "it is done".

I don't have a feeling to pass it on [maintenance of the Linux kernel], but I let the people I trust make the decisions. I can't second-guess them, as it wouldn't work and I would waste a lot of people's time. All the submaintainers sync their Git trees with the main code, and I check they haven't done something horrible, but that's rare.

In recent years, there have been more "point releases" than major version upgrades. How is this going? The point-release thing has worked well, and we have added new features to point releases. It's both worrying and gratifying.

We have point releases so as not to screw development up in a big way. That's why we have stable trees, but we have not gotten to the point where we are adding code so fast we are losing stability. The point releases are getting bigger, even though we are keeping the release time consistent at about two or three months. And now we do more changes in those two or three months than we were doing a few years ago. So we are scaling our development well.

There's always the worry are we going to lose it and have huge stability problems. Andrew Morton keeps on talking about this, that we have to make sure quality does not degrade. We have stats on regressions and how long it takes to fix them and how many have to wait for a stable kernel. And some regressions show odd behavior. It might be a hardware issue or an old bug that was hidden before.

I'm happy with the point-release model, and I don't see how we could have anything but 2.6, so for now we have done nothing. In the end it's just the numbering. What I don't want to go back to is a development tree that breaks things for a few years. There may be architectural rewrites in the future, but we have been getting good at that, even in point releases. So there is nothing that would cause an upheaval that would require a new major version number. We can do unstable development now and not let it impact users.

What about older code in the kernel? Do you want to remove this? Some people want us to remove old code more aggressively, but I think if some people are still using it, we should keep it, as maintaining the old code is usually almost free, so we will keep maintain old code as is humanly possible. Occasionally we remove old device drivers.

There has been a lot of buzz about file systems lately, including Sun's ZFS. What would you like to see Linux adopt here? File systems are easy to get excited about. They are easy to add to the kernel, so there is almost no risk. We have something like 35 file systems supported, and a lot are not realistically used much. They are candidates for removal, but people are still using them. We add file systems easily and let history take its course.

In the development community, there are two camps: people that want stability and people that want to release often. End users will do crazy things that no amount of testing infrastructure will get, so there are competing pressures. You want file systems to be stable, but you can't be in beta forever. Btrfs is developmental, but it was merged in the main kernel to help people test it.

To some degree, Btrfs does what ZFS does. Some uni ran ZFS as a module in Linux, so using it with Linux can be done. The biggest thing Sun did with ZFS is they were good with PR and marketing. There are other projects that wanted to do what ZFS does on Linux. Sun started finding the NetApp patents, as the NetApp patents kept people from doing things they wanted to do. I hope ZFS clears the patents issue.

A few years ago, you were forced to change revision control systems for Linux development and Git was born. Now Git has a groundswell of support, just like Linux. How is the Git project going? I want all my code to be open source, but I will use the best tool for the job, and BitKeeper was the best tool, and at the time the alternatives sucked so bad. When the alternatives are so bad, I will take proprietary code. Proprietary was a downside, but what choice did I have? Hey, I usually do my presentation slides in PowerPoint.

In the end, BitKeeper was causing too many issues so I said I'm not using a version control system until another was suitable. I have used CVS in the past, and I knew enough to know that I hated it. And I won't use Subversion, as it has the same fundamental problems as CVS. In the open-source world, there were some small projects. Mercurial came about the same time as Git. So they were parallel, and there were existing ones like Bazaar. The one I liked most is a project called Monotone. I looked at it, and there are things I really liked about it and many things I disliked, and performance was one of them.

I took me two weeks to get to a Git that was unusable for anyone else. The user interface was something only I could love, but after two weeks it did something that CVS and Subversion didn't do, and that was merge correctly with history and everything. Then I took two years after that to get it useful and have an interface that people could use.

If you have the right idea you can do that well, but it takes a long time to refine it.

It's not uncommon for a project to have an official model, like Subversion, but then people would use Git for merges and then export the end result back to the official project. Now, just in the last couple of months, projects have started switching to Git. Perl is one of the better-known ones, and Git uses Perl internally, so it was a positive feedback cycle.

To some degree, source control management is such a core technology, it's important to know how it works, and if you don't know it you are spending a lot on mental effort on knowing what it's doing. Just through the kernel, there were thousands of people who knew Git, and then it was viral where other projects started using it.

Git has always had a "Unixy" mind-set where you create commands. So we never did what other projects do, where they have an API and a scripting language built into it. It's partly a design issue and for other reasons. So it can be hard to write a program that accesses Git internally, as there are no libraries. It turns out the best way to interface with it is with Java.

One of the things I like about Git, and am quite proud of, is the data structures are simple and you can reimplement it if you wish. It's a well-defined data model. There are Git-related projects like GUI tools, for example, with the Eclipse IDE. And if you come from the Windows world, people are used to the TortoiseSVN, so there is TortoiseGit. Those people were saying, “We want Git, but we are Windows developers and don't want the command line.”

Also, the Git Web front end came from the developer ecosystem and into the main Git tree.

While there are hundreds of Linux distributions, in recent times Ubuntu, OpenSUSE and Fedora have captured most of the mind share. Do you think this will continue, and will the new netbook paradigm be how people end up getting Linux? It's a huge job to do a distribution. The reason there are hundreds is it is easy to start your own, but if you want to be a leader and introduce new code, the testing and Q&A involved is enormous. It depends on having enough users that you get coverage, and it is unreasonable to expect too many large distributions. Ubuntu grew surprisingly quickly, and maybe that can happen again.

I use Fedora for historical reasons. I have one of the Eee PC laptops and I reinstalled my own distribution, so I am the wrong the person to ask. However, most users don't want to do the installation and configuration.

We are in the first phase of netbooks, and there are some teething problems. The dumbed-down interface was a teething problem, and the first netbooks were underpowered.

I'm hoping the next generation will be more powerful and offer a better user experience. I was doing kernel development on a netbook and it was not at all horrible. The screen was too small, but we are getting to a stage where you can get a cheap good laptop.

A few years ago, you could get a small netbook but it would be twice the cost. The netbook market changed the game — they are not seen as an executive toy, but a low-end laptop, which is much healthier.

With netbooks, a lot of the desktops have trouble going to smaller screens. All of sudden, you can't press the OK button because it’s outside the screen. As screens go as small as phones, Google's Android could be a contender for netbooks, so you may see Android growing up instead of desktops growing down.

Linux on phones is hard, as there are so many regulations, but I was really happy about Nokia's decision to release Qt as LGPL.

What do you think of Windows 7 and Microsoft's operating system development cycle? Windows 7 being better than Vista is saying a lot. Microsoft may have a huge PR advantage, as people will compare it to Vista and think it is good so "angels will sing again" like they did with Windows 95 compared to Windows 3.1. So maybe Microsoft did this on purpose.

I think Microsoft has realized the Vista development cycle is way too long and it would be insane to do that again. They might aim for a two-year development cycle, and I think that is too long. They should decouple the operating system from the applications and release sooner.

For Linux, six months is quite tight. All the pieces you put together, you hope they are stable, but there will be surprises, and six months is a short cycle when you put together so many packages. An annual release cycle is a reasonable cycle for doing a whole distribution.

In the Linux space, once a year is reasonable, but then you have the incremental releases. It's hard for a commercial company like Microsoft that wants people to pay for releases, to do a yearly upgrade. Apple has done faster upgrades, but it has charged less for the releases. This is not a problem for open source, as it's free software, but this is one of the things Microsoft has to balance. They want people to rent the software, but users don't want to. If you do development over five years and make so many changes, it is more painful for the user. The cost of the pain is likely to be higher than the cost of the operating system, which is why people are slow to upgrade.

A lot of what made Microsoft successful in the ’90s is gone. There is a reason why people don't think they are successful anymore, but hey, I don't have a business model at all!

Another area where Linux is used extensively is in hosted software or "cloud computing," where users don't have access to the source code. Is this a good or bad thing? It is to some degree inevitable, as within certain classes of software it's the only model that makes sense. Look at Google Maps. It does not make sense to have it on a device. The whole idea is to have it on the cloud because the information is huge and "out there." If that means the user never sees the source code, it's not something you complain about. I'm happy with Linux being used for that.

Projects that are specifically designed for software as a service in the back end, and only the output of the project is what gets distributed, then use the Affero GPL. Linux is not that project.

One of the problems I had with GPL Version 3 was it was possible to add Affero-like extensions, and "license creep" happened, which can make future versions of software license incompatible with previous versions.

Another open-source project that underwent a big change was KDE with Version 4.0. They released a lot of fundamental architectural changes with 4.0, and it received some negative reviews. As a KDE user, how has this impacted you? I used to be a KDE user. I thought KDE 4.0 was such a disaster, I switched to GNOME. I hate the fact that my right button doesn't do what I want it to do. But the whole "break everything" model is painful for users, and they can choose to use something else.

I realize the reason for the 4.0 release, but I think they did it badly. They did so may changes, it was a half-baked release. It may turn out to be the right decision in the end, and I will retry KDE, but I suspect I'm not the only person they lost.

I got the update through Fedora, and there was a mismatch from KDE 3 to KDE 4.0. The desktop was not as functional, and it was just a bad experience for me. I'll revisit it when I reinstall the next machine, which tends to be every six to eight months.

The GNOME people are talking about doing major surgery, so it could also go the other way.

How is life at the moment? Are you enjoying work at the Linux Foundation in Portland, Ore.? I'm all happy with my life. The reason I come to Linux.conf.au is it is summer here and freezing in Portland. My job is the same, and I do the kernel and nobody tells me what to do and they pay me for it, which is just the way I like it.

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