Things I thought I'd never see

If I hadn’t been present for these, I’d probably call myself a bullspit artist. But I swear on a stack of $documents I was there and my experiences are 100% true.

Firstly, I thought I’d never ever see a web framework’s object relationship model used as a database stress tester (cheers Django!). I don’t think it was intended as such but some of the queries it’s generating are just hideous and driving load averages to insane levels.

Secondly – I have two USB keys in front of me. Nothing really unusual about that, except they have “Windows + PHP: Platform of Choice” on them. Yes, I raised an eyebrow too, and I’ve actually done Windows on PHP before at an old workplace.

Choice, PHP and Windows Server from experience boils down to this, in my experience: a) Run as FastCGI or b) Endure a world of suffering (the ISAPI is awful and suphp doesn’t exist).

I’ll of course advocate c) Run it on a Linux box as a DSO / suphp / under mod_fcgid process as your needs dictate – at least they’ll all actually work as you’d expect. ?

I got the keys from a presentation / open session run by a good friend and former work colleague Jorke Odolphi, now working for Microsoft (but still genuinely interested in F/OSS, I’ve trained him fairly well) and “Professional Geek” Nick Hodge (also a pleasant and well versed chap).

Microsoft having an open session on OSS was not something my curiousity would let me miss, so off I went. I applaud Nick and Jorke for having a go – the turnout wasn’t huge but the session was very lively and definitely worthwhile.

Writing up an auto-installer for FOSS web apps under Win/IIS was a nice touch, and now you know how difficult it is to implement a depsolver ? IronPython / IronRuby are interesting ideas (the Parrot project / Perl6 peeps are doing almost the same thing and Java has been doing it for ages) but your usage case might be a bit of a corner one. We are all aware in the OSS world how charmingly limited the PHP database drivers can be (hence PECL alternatives and native drivers) so you’re part of a large-ish crowd there ?

But chaps you’re going to be pushing harder than Sisyphus to get some real FOSS cred for your bosses, if they genuinely want them.

I’m not going to delve deeply the licensing side of things (for good reason, there’s a post of it’s own) but a BSD-like license isn’t likely to get you the community you might want – it’s not really Free and there’s nary a nod to those making code / docs or other contributions (contributor doesn’t mean distributor by the way, if anyone from MS is reading)

The existing culture and mindset and that of Microsoft, it’s partners and some users is fatal to any “open source” initiative in my view (this doesn’t mean I’m unhappy to see an attempt, it shows the strength and relevance of communities like Fedora’s – or any other distribution’s for that matter)

They’re a cathedral; the faithful are handed tools and protocols blessed by the Powers That Be, with such tools/protocols invariably created because they help maintain the status quo (commercially advantageous to the “church”, closely coupled together to ensure/encourage adherence / lock in etc.) – many don’t know of or even see anything outside of the cathedral! Compare to the marketplace that’s Free Software – don’t like a tool/protocol? There’s other stalls with alternatives. Pick up a few and you’re building your own in no time and trying out ideas they may not even had considered before.

That’s the worrying part for the “high priests” – if the “faithful” are choosing their own tools for their own purposes (not just building using blessed tools for those protocols deemed desirable or “holy”) what’s to stop them straying from the rest of the flock? If the market allows you to build your own stall and offer your own wares, why go to the cathedral and be told how what to use?

I’m sure Microsoft’s upper management are happy (even if their outward demeanor may not show it) to see the projects around the Codeplex – still centred almost solely around their own technologies – .NET / IIS / Sharepoint / Windows Live Auth. Nothing really innovative and widely interoperable (and decoupled from other MS tech) like XMPP or memcached / OpenID / Laconica..

The real test will be projects that tie to *genuinely* open tech, a completely non-MS solution. I suspect the “high priests” may quietly sideline such “heresy”, even if the frontline preachers do not. ?

Lastly: To answer a question posed to me by James Morris via identi.ca: I asked about the IE8 and $10K giveaway: Technically it was mind bogglingly simple: IE8 has a little “feature” where it will display these “web slices” on certain pages like a favourite / bookmark. Find the “splice” with the winning content (on an MS partner site of course) and the 10K is yours.

The splice itself is just a boring standard DIV element with a “hslice” class.
But the hack worked for Microsoft Australia marketing, so I suppose it serves it’s purposes.

Of course there were Chrome and Firefox extensions to support this behaviour almost immediately ?

The post is bought to you by lekhonee v0.4