Stephane's thoughts corner…

Stephane Bailliez's thoughts on everything

With the abuse of the opensource model by most IT companies, the huge failure rate of software projects and the low rate of software engineers. It has been decided to create a new standard based on the Fair trade principles.

Software engineers employed by affiliated companies will have long-term minimum rate considerably above the long-run average market rate based on the incomes needed to support community projects such as opensource projects. Companies that are certified to meet the standard may for a fee display the appropriate Fairtrade and opensource symbols on their marketing and business documents. (The fee supports the work of the national monitoring body)

Although Fair trade software services are typically somewhat higher-priced than equivalent non-Fairtrade software services, for many services the difference is relatively small (as long as sufficient volumes are involved). This is because although a considerable premium may be paid to software engineers (often 50-100% above market rate), this forms only a small part of the final project price; The Standish Groups reports that most of the price is determined by invalid requirements, unclear business objectives, poor management decisions, unproper planning, lack of executive support and NIH/reinvent-the-wheel syndrom.

Fair trade is incentive-based and rely on consumer choice. Consumers are therefore given the opportunity to increase standard of living and quality of living and quality of life of software engineers working on opensource products through a sustainable market-oriented approach.

Considering the huge success of fair trade goods over the world[1], it is considered that this model could be financially viable. However we suspect that so-called ‘opensource IT companies’ that have been surfing on the opensource wave and indirectly lurring consumers into such a similar idea of fair trade and extorquing huge rates to consumers (including governments) without actually contributing back to community projects may have already doomed such model by losing the thrust and confidence of customers and making them believe that opensource does not work.

[1] See Communication of the European Commission on fair trade

A EUROBAROMETER survey, conducted on behalf the European commission in 1997 reported that 74% of the EU population say they would buy fair trade bananas if they were available in the shops alongside “standard” bananas. A total of 37% of EU consumers said they would be prepared to pay a premium of 10% above the price of normal bananas for bananas of equivalent quality produced according to fair trade standards.

Further analysis of the survey replies revealed that people with previous experience of fair trade products are much more likely to buy fair trade bananas, and would be willing to pay more for them. More than 9 out of 10 (93%) of consumers who had already bought fair trade goods would be prepared to buy fair trade bananas, and 7 out of 10 (70%) would pay a premium of at least 10% over the price of normal bananas.

PS: This stuff is a joke and was devised by myself after a few glasses of Champagne over lunch with a group of friends. Still I believe there is some truth in it.

That might not explained fully why Eurotunnel debt is worth $11.77 billion, but the following should give some insight of a serious business flaw, which could be summed up as “How to make customer life difficult and slow down marketshare adoption“:

• It is not possible to pay with a credit-card company or on behalf of someone else. To pickup your ticket at the train station, you need to give your ID (fair enough) AND the credit card used.
• They can send it via mail though… (no, NOT email and no fast-courrier, this is snail mail)
• If you want your company to handle it, you need to call the customer support, ask them to send you a form that you will need to fax so that they check the company credit card.
• You cannot buy 2 return tickets in Business Premier, the daily transaction on a credit card is limited to €860 and a Business Premier return ticket is €499-€580.
• You can buy one ticket every 24h though…

This is not even funny.

On thursday, the financial newspaper La Tribune published an interesting interview of Jack Welch. Jack Welch has been the CEO of General Electric for 20 years and named Manager of the Century in 1999. I will try to roughly translate and sum up what was written in the article because it is much much longer (3/4 of a 4-column page). I wish I could find the original interview though, this seems to be taken from the New York Times Syndicate.

He was in Paris during the recent car burning fest in the suburbs, and was later interviewed by a swedish journalist who asked him what should the french goverment do ? and what should other european governments do to avoid similar problems ?

His answer was along the line of: the government must work with private companies to create jobs. Not smoke-screen jobs in the public sector, but real jobs in new companies. This can be done with the help of a fiscal and social law that is encouraging and retributing risk and investment

Apparently the journalist replied that he was dead-wrong and that to solve this problem, the government should give more money to jobless people.

Jake Welch replied that no-one will probably ever know the reason why those people were burning cars, but what is
sure, is that people looking for career evolution and financial security rarely burn cars. Those riots expressed anger and frustration, and even though freedom and dignity play a major role in hope, meaningful work does too when it offers opportunities.

In France, 20% of employees work in the public sector and 76% of people aged 15-30 years are attracted to it.
During the last 35 years, from the Wall Street Journal, the US economy created 57 millions of new jobs while Europe created only 4 millions. Why ? Because laws make investment very costly, and in France or Germany there are very few fiscal incentives for risky investments. Social laws also make it difficult to lay out employees which is a reason why companies are very cautious when it comes to hiring. (and….are….so…slow…at….taking….decisions)

Jake Welch also makes a point that this situation leads to something that starts to spread everywhere: risk aversion.
The essence of business is to manage risks, not to run away from them.

What Europe needs, is a change in fiscal and social laws to allow more flexibility. Government and companies must work together to create jobs – real jobs – . Mentalities must also evolve so that they are able to take more risks. Entrepreneurs must come out and start building the future. Yes, some of them will fail. But a lot will succeed. And so will Europe.

What a breath of fresh air to read this, thank you Jake !

There is such a gap between Jake Welch analysis and our political leaders that it is shocking. Politics excel in rhetoric and in running away from responsabilities. What we miss is a (wo)man of actions.. but I’m afraid this is way too difficult. From what I can see, every political party just do his best to to slow down or cancel what another is doing.

All this reminds me of a private conversation I had with Stefan Bodewig during the same car burningfest, even though our two countries are so close and have similar social laws, there is already quite some difference already in their application and how we are so..risk averse, here in France.

Anyway, Jake Welch, I will vote for you !

IBM is now offering commercial support for a customized version of Apache Geronimo called WebSphere Application Server Community Edition. Ok, no big news, this won’t make it into CNN headlines.

IBM is offering 3 levels of support worlwide for respectively $900, $3250, $6000 per server (up to 4 CPUs). Details can be found here. For prices, you have to login and go to the catalog.

In addition, it is also offering support for Apache Geronimo directly. There are only 2 levels of support (Entry and Enhanced) and are also priced at $900 and $3250 as they are equivalent to the one on WebSphere CE. Details can be found here.

What do you think ? Is it expensive ?

I would have a tendency to think it is a pretty good price for companies, especially considering that IBM is actually ‘sponsoring’ Geronimo by paying some developers. It’s probably good value for money. But I’m wondering what will be their reactions.

Few seems educated to how opensource works (and especially how IBM has been involved over the years), and I know far too well that a couple of so-called OSS IT companies are selling such JBoss AS support to anyone willing to believe them that they can do so. Seems pathetic while they don’t know the community around or the source code.

Customers should look for companies or individuals with real track record in the community of the product they support, or at least request for proof of investment. If after a year of support there has not been a single patch submitted, this would clearly justifies cancelling support and penalties. I believe what’s missing is a directory of ‘certified’ professionals, the certification being the involvement into the community.

I’m now jobless. I resigned from my OSS company on August 16, so 3 months later, I’m done with it and I got my final check today, 2 days after leaving. Goodbye all..and best of luck.

As I have counted recently, I’m the 25th employee to leave in 2005. The company oscillated between 35 to 45 people. Which means that staff turn-over is, to be fair ~55%, to be harsh 70%..so the truth might be in between: 63%. It would take only massive money investment as a short term patch to avoid the company from collapsing entirely due to such negative spiral and keep it afloat.

I resigned, because I lost confidence in executives to do anything about quality of work, customer and employee relations, understanding of the software industry and opensource, and was really tired of not doing what I was good at and what was supposed to be my job: technical. I needed to learn more, and I could not get it here.

As I was the only employee with opensource experience within a community ( ie, The Apache Software Foundation, the best education you could get about collaboration, respect, trust, software and quality) and software development experience at a commercial publisher. I take that as a personal failure for not beeing able to educate people better. But, I would be more careful next time when I find that it is the first and only company for mostly everyone, including the executives who also have no experience in software but jumped in the OSS money train.

I’m leaving the company with an additional gift: A non-competition clause preventing me to work as an individual or for any company in France in any position in the field of Linux and/or free software for the next six months. Financial compensation which cannot be disclosed for legal matters is of course similar to the clause: ridiculous.

I’m guilty of having signed such non-sense which is part of every employee work contract and should have been more suspicious and less trusty in those business aspects. These non-competition clauses are usually not activated when an employee leaves because:

• it does not make any sense in most case
• it drains money out of the company unnecessarily
• there are constants lawsuits and precedents which makes it hard to write a valid clause
• it is against basic law articles related to freedom of work
• it gives bad publicity to the company: people talk !
• employees loose any trust they have with executives

Last but not least, if you are really working in the opensource industry and really understand it:

• it REALLY does NOT make ANY sense!

Anyone doing business and looking for a job with this company should be aware of this fact alone to decide whether or not this corporate way of thought match their ideas. Watch out for smoke screen and look for facts. This one is a fact.

Now, if you want to know the name of the company, it would be unfair to give it. So I suggest to simply google for it with my name and former position or look at my LinkedIn profile.

I believe in trust, and I believe that trust is essential to build good relationships and shape a cohesive, motivated and respected team. I also like my work, despite ranting a lot about it, and for some reason, even the next day, 24h after officially not being an employee, I stopped by to help a colleague to solve a problem.

Talk about being professional.

And see what you get.

Of course, this entry conforms to the following articles of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union:

• Article 10 – Freedom of thought, conscience and religion
• Article 11 – Freedom of expression and information.

and the non-competition clause breaks the following article:

• Article 15 – Freedom to choose an occupation and right to engage in work
• Article 16 – Freedom to conduct a business.

You are free to comment and show your support… I trust you guys.