I have Facebook Frankness

Friday, 7 August 2009

"Road rage" occurs in part because you are surrounded by a metal cage and separated from the drivers around you by glass. The feeling of invulnerability I get from a car sometimes makes me behave in a way which I would never normally do. I wondered if the same psychology applied when using social software?


I think I experienced a case of "Facebook Frankness" last week.

I was using the company social software Jive SBS (like Facebook but for the enterprise) when I came across a discussion about the iPod Touch. Now I think the iPod Touch is a pointless device bought only by Apple fan-boys and I said so. I got into a frank exchange of views with an individual who turned out to be the Chief Technical Architect of one of the company's major divisions. To put this in context this is someone way further up the pecking order than me. This is somebody who I would normally be much more respectful towards. On several levels I felt this person didn't know what they were talking about and I told them in a very public way. I had lunch with a colleague today who knows this person and told me that they thought the same about me.

So Facebook Frankness allowed me to make much more aggressive comments than I would if I was talking face to face. Have I burnt my bridges with this individual or strengthened his respect for my honesty? Definitely the former.

I felt protected. I was frustrated. I was honest. I was frank. I didn't know what I was doing, but I did it anyway. I couldn't help myself. I am sorry. No I am not. I am sorry. No I am not. I am sorry. No I am not.

Posted by Robin Yellow at 16:28 2 comments  

CentOS Forks Off Almost

Monday, 3 August 2009

The open source community are sometimes their own worse enemy.

Which distro should I use and what is the difference between them? Well the answer is complicated. One size doesn't always fit all even if Microsoft Windows is very popular. In the corporate world supported distros are king which is why Red Hat is such a bit hit (really?) And what about Fedora? It is Red Hat without the cost of support. And where does Ubuntu figure in all of this?

Well the problem is that all Linux distros are good. They are based on the rock sold Linus Torvalds kernel. However the perception is that Linux is a fragmented and therefore unreliable OS which does have the reliability and predictability which big business demands. This is also true. This article about the threat to CentOS being forked (aka destroyed) just because their founder went on holiday and was off grid for a few days (I exaggerate) is a great example of what open source communities are worse at: P.R.

"Let's stick with Windows because we know what we are getting".

Two days after a core group of developers posted an open letter to primary admin Lance Davis, threatening to fork the open source OS if he didn't discuss his apparent disappearance from the project, Davis has answered their call - and he seems to have quelled their complaints.

Posted by Robin Yellow at 11:30 0 comments  

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