A Plea for New Orleans

I was a guest on Voluntourism.org today, and we talked about having ApacheCon in New Orleans, why we had it there, and how we incorporated Voluntourism into the conference. ApacheCon chose New Orleans this year for a number of reasons, but one of them was an email that I wrote to the Apache Members almost two years ago in an attempt to help them understand why New Orleans needed (and still needs) all the economic stimulation she can get. I read this mail on the show today and agreed to post it on my blog, so here it is:


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From: Brian W. Fitzpatrick
Date: Wed, Dec 27, 2006 at 1:16 AM
Subject: A plea for New Orleans for ApacheCon 2008
To: Members of the Apache Software Foundation

As a native New Orleanian who just returned from New Orleans (~3
hours ago), I'd like to strongly advocate that we have ApacheCon
2008 in New Orleans, and for the following reasons:

1. New Orleans provides plenty of entertaining things to do in the
evenings for you and your friends. Things don't close at 2AM. or 3
for that matter.
2. It's within walking distance of the French Quarter (about 2 blocks
to Bourbon Street).
3. It's next to Harrah's casino (I didn't go in this time, but
pre-hurricane, I found it kind of dumpy).
4. The food. It's amazing. Red beans and rice anyone? Gumbo? Po-boys?
5. Coffee and beignets, mmm mmm mmm.
6. Other cool trips you can make over the weekend: River plantations
tour, the zoo is amazing, the aquarium is awesome, take a streetcar
ride down St. Charles and see some of the beautiful French and Spanish
architecture of the Garden District. Take a riverboat cruise on the
Natchez.

I could go on and on and on, but the main reason that I want us to
have AC 2008 in New Orleans is this:

While the French Quarter (and most other neighborhoods along the river
which are actually above sea level and didn't flood) is still a pretty
hopping place with food and drink aplenty, New Orleans is still
suffering greatly from hurricane Katrina and the levee breach that
filled the city with water. While I was down for Christmas visiting
my family in Metairie (a suburb), I took a drive through the city
proper, and I was devastated.

For 16 months now I've been watching video footage of New Orleans with
suitably awed newscasters repeating over and over that "you can't
possibly understand the devastation that this city underwent without
coming here to see for yourself."

Well, let me say it once again: You can't possibly understand the
devastation that this city underwent without coming here to see
for yourself.

I drove through the Lakeview neighborhood (closest to the floodwall
breach), and SIXTEEN months later, it still looks like Beirut
on a bad day. I'd guess that about one house in 50 is inhabited.
City streets are so bad that you can barely manage 15mph in a rental
car. Street signs are mostly non-existent. Houses are gutted,
abandoned, and falling in on themselves. What used to be a grand old
neighborhood is now so much bulldozer fodder.

Mid-City, where I went to high school, is better, but not by much.
The closer you get to the river, the better things get, but they're
still not great. In the Central Business District, the Hyatt by the
Superdome is still abandoned. The New Orleans Center next to it, a
shopping mall/office building, stands decrepit with broken windows a
daily reminder of the hell that happened here [Remember, I wrote this
in December of 2006 -Fitz].

Metairie, where I grew up, is better, but it's still crippled--FEMA
trailers still litter each city block. To get a feeling for what it's
like, take the neighborhood you grew up in and rip out every 3rd tree.
Park a trailer on the front lawn of every 7th house. Leave 1 house in
20 abandoned. Leave 1 house in 35 gutted and abandoned. Now burn
down and remove 1 house in 40. Demolish 1 house in 50. Lean fences
over precariously, buckle sidewalks, and board up storefronts. It's
truly heartbreaking to see, and this is SIXTEEN months later
(and believe me, my family lucked out big time with minimal
damage to their homes).

So what's the point of this long rambling email? New Orleans needs
economic help. They need you, me, or anyone to show up and spend
money. They need anything and everything that they can get. Sure
they've got their problems with selfishness, greed, and corruption
(every city does--New Orleans is just famous for it :-). It will
never be the same, but I think it would be nice for the ASF to help
out "The City that Care Forgot" and have a good time in the process.

Laissez les bon temps roullez!

-Fitz

Apache, Open Source, and the Small Software Company

[This was first published on 05/30/2005. I'm putting all of the articles I've published on here so that I'll have one place I can look for all of them.]

The Apache Software Foundation is one of many open source software organizations shaking the business world all the way down to its proprietary software toes. Along with Linux, the Apache HTTP Server has long been the consummate example of the power and quality of open source software. Its runaway success against Microsoft IIS illustrates that the better product can triumph over both monopoly and marketing dollars.

Today, most small software development companies are acutely aware of the advantages of collaborating on open source software; at the very least, they're aware of the high costs of writing and maintaining closed-source software. With so little to be gained by writing and maintaining commodity software components (e.g., a Web server, a relational database, or an operating system), many companies are finding it cheaper to use and contribute bugfixes to an existing open source product than to start from scratch.

While the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) started as a group of Webmasters who just wanted a decent Web server to help them do their job, it has since become home to dozens of successful software projects with thousands of contributors and millions of lines of code. In fact, the ASF currently has the largest collection of active open source Java projects owned by a single organization.

The ASF accepts only individuals - not companies - as members and committers; however, many companies pay developers to work on ASF projects part- or full-time. This isn't because these companies are inherently altruistic, but because they've realized that it's cheaper to pay one or two developers to maintain and fix bugs on an open source project than to pay a team to maintain a closed-source equivalent in-house.

Large and small companies alike ignore open source software at their own peril. Years ago, "Not Invented Here" described a corporate state of mind that dutifully avoided using any solution not developed "in-house" - you had to either build it or buy it. Today, using "Not Invented Here" software is practically a requirement. Who wants to reinvent a Web server? Or an XML parser? Or a servlet container? But with open source, there's another choice in addition to "build it or buy it": get it for free.

Amidst all of this upheaval, the role of the developer has changed as well. Gone are the days when a development team can lock themselves in a closed room and knock out an application written from scratch over the course of a year. Companies need developers who are more archaeologist and assembler than fabricator. The smart, small company needs people with the ability to wade through the thousands of open source projects, find the gem with a stable codebase and an active community, and build on it.

The ASF understands that the long-term viability of an open source project is directly tied to the community that develops and maintains it. As a result, ASF projects are organized around communities and not only codebases. Sourceforge.net is a great example of why it's not all about the code - a bit of research reveals that close to 80% of the projects that reside there lie dormant. It's a testament to the number of open source software projects that go by the wayside every year. Many projects that exist are attempting to solve the same problem in a slightly different way, and software is subject to the process of natural selection. The strongest projects survive, the weaker ones combine or die out, and you're left with a better piece of software in the end.

Even though open source software has its idiosyncrasies, small development shops are gaining more power from it than ever. By building applications out of premade components, a modicum of glue code, and as little of their own code as possible, software companies are saving money and bringing products to market faster than ever. Developers spend less time reinventing wheels and more time concentrating on solving business needs. Leveraging open source saves licensing money at the outset, but the true win comes further down the road from the savings on maintainability.

As the ASF grows, it continues to work to ensure the long-term viability of its projects. And open source software continues to change the way that companies think about software solutions as well as the way they build their software. Leveraging open source drives the cost of development down, shortens the time-to market, and improves the quality of the software built on it. Gone are the days of having to choose between good, fast, and cheap - with open source software, companies can have all three.