The Giant at the Gate

No this is not about the giant installed at Tokyo-bay. Rather it is about the the friendly neighborhood giant, entering the hallowed gardens, where the Gnu roams and FOSS grows...

Err... Sorry for the rather long and cheesy intro (sometimes I feel like those Aaj Tak reporters). I am talking about giants like Google entering the open source domains and what it means for open source.

First a disclaimer. I am not an expert in SW industry, not an activist fighting for open source, neither one of those extremely talented volunteers by whose code the juggernaut runs... My perspective is purely from an interested user point of view. You know, neither novice ("will it explode if I press enter?"), nor geek ("let's hack the kernel"), somewhere in-between ("registry edit to re-enable pen-drive in office computer") kinda user.

Let's talk about the open source software first. For a long time the open source community has raged a war against the big money corporations (read Microsoft), criticizing their monopolistic and unethical (read greedy and evil) practices. They have argued how software should be free (free as in free speech, not free beer).

Along the way, they have managed to create some really great products. Projects like Linux and Firefox are two most well known examples out of numerous ones. It is now possible to do almost anything (personal use or business use) using only free/open-source SW.

They have changed the mindset of lots and lots people. Being open source has become cool, something like going green. Heck, even MS has announced release of an online version of Office 2010 for free. Free! From Microsoft!! The community may not have been able to change the world as much as they wanted, but they have a made a big and tangible difference. And we are the beneficiaries of that change.

It would be wrong to assume these people as like-minded members some club of geeks coding for the progress of mankind. They have their differences. Disagreements and sometimes heated arguments are common. The topics can be anything: naming (Linux vs GNU/Linux), proposed feature (remove the menu bar in Firefox or not), implementations (move xyz from security framework and put it in memory management), exact licensing policy (GPL vs Creative Commons), and above everything the actual philosophy of the project (powerful and flexible vs lean and simple). You might have seen and/or experienced the problems in projects tightly managed by PMs and leads etc. Imagine the chaos in a project run by hundreds of volunteers across the globe with a handful of administrators. But amazingly still targets are achieved, products are released, bugs are fixed.

One of the major philosophy here is "where's the patch?". Which means if you think something is not to your liking then change it. Do it yourself and show how it should be done. But along with the obvious benefits, it causes indirect problems. Fragmentation. Nobody knows exactly how many flavors of UNIX (or Unix?) are available right now... BSD, HP-UX, AIX, Solaris and of course Linux with its children.

Well, Linux was a boon actually. Despite of its various distributions and packages, it slowly emerged as the flag-bearer of UNIX. Red Hat became the dominant player in the server side. For desktop we had to wait a bit longer. And then came Ubuntu, which is taking over the Linux-PC market. Maybe, just maybe, the time has come, when at least the home desktop market will embrace Linux, slowly but steadily.

Things are almost same in the browser market. Netscape may have been killed by IE. But its offspring Firefox started growing. Now Firefox commands some 20-25% market share, which was once 100% IE.

So good so far good.

The garden is blossoming. People are taking notice of it. More gardeners and also more visitors.

And then Google happened. And kept happening. Now we have a new giant in the field other than MS. But a different one. This once is friendly. The smiling kind. Kids like it. It even watered some of the trees (see Mozilla-Google partnership).

But enough of supporting and cheering. "Let's play" it said. So within a very short time we have the Chrome browser and Chrome OS (will be released next year). Both open source. Chrome OS is Linux-based and targeted to the desktop market.

Is it good? Now that Google is a competitor of Mozilla how long will it continue the funding? Do we really need another browser and another OS, when strong alternatives are already available. Of course they can be made stronger. And Google could help in that. Open source community will do a lot well with the full strength (financial and technical) of the giant behind it.

The criticism is louder for the OS. Many feel the best thing Google could have done is embracing Ubuntu wholeheartedly. Lots of people who never heard of UNIX or bothered about Linux will readily accept a Google promoted Ubuntu (Gubuntu anyone?).

There is also one more thought. How much mainstream (mass-market) you want to become? Let's face it. An Anurag Kashyap movie will never be as big as Karan Johar, so why try. Let's keep the niche market, get the film festival awards and imdb rating, along with a small amount of profit to keep everybody happy. But becoming big has its rewards. Everybody likes fame. Like Bollywood stars 'number one' is a medal all of us craves, irrespective of how many times you say "I don't believe in the number game".

Firefox is facing these choices. The original thought was FF will be lean, fast and secure browser. You want bells and whistles and the blinking lights? Install an extension (add-on in FF lingo). But the average user does not want to search for add-on. They don't know what an add-on is and they are not bothered. For them if the feature is there... good. Otherwise it sucks. You have to maintain a balance. And it's difficult. I have been crawling the Mozilla forums and threads for sometime, and you will be amazed to see the intense debate and conflicting opinions for almost every single topic ("If you do this, I will never use Firefox again" is very common).

What about Ubuntu? I have started using it. Just one week or so. It's good. Really good. And it's legally free. But it has usability issues (some of them just because we are too used to Windows). But installing new SW sometimes caues problems where you have enter some string in repository, update packege list, type some commands in terminal or worse you will get tar file which you need to unzip and compile and then install. I am still getting used to it.

And usability is one area where Google can really contribute. There is the fear that, in the long run Google will not adhere to the open source guidelines, they will try to favor their own products and services. In one word they will become the Big Brother where your life starts and ends with Google.

Nobody knows what the future will be. But I think if Google becomes too big to be comfortable we will see some new start up to come and dislodge the incumbent. That's how it has happened and that's the way the industry (I think others industries too) work. Today you buy any laptop and it will be with Vista, which means you are paying 3.5-5K (maybe more) for the price of OS. Getting one with free DOS is rare and while you do get pirated XP/Vista easily, using them in long run will cause more and more problems (updating, getting security patches, installing SW is becoming difficult). If five years down the line we see more and more computers with easy-to-use nominally-priced/free OS, where most of the SW works in open standards, where the user can pick and choose SW from a bunch of free and premium offerings it will be great.

I know it sounds too Utopian or idealistic. But definitely the Web has changed our lives. And it will continue to do so. At the end it is us who are building it, who are participating and who are getting the benefit. Who would have thought about it five years back? And this can happen everywhere.

I will wait and see if things get better. And till that time i have Firefox and Ubuntu. :) Anyway, I think this post is already too long. Thanks a lot if you have come so far reading this junk. Comments are welcome. I am sure you have something to say about browsers or OS or Google or anything you feel like. Just type it here.

Whose Song is This?

A few months back, one Sunday morning, I was channel-surfing, and caught this documentary showing in NDTV (they have this Documentary@24X7 program aired every Sunday around 11 or so). The original name of the film was "Cia e tazi pesen ?" which means "Whose is this song ?" made by one Bulgarian lady named Adela Peeva. The documentary was in Bulgarian, subtitle was on.

Adela once heard one song being sung in some restaurant in Sophia, and her friends, who were all from different but neighboring countries, claimed the original song is from their country. Original song here means the original tune, because, in different versions the song has completely different lyrics, ranging from romantic to patriotic, of course in the language of that country. So our director became very interested and started her journey across the region to find out what is the actual origin of this song.

Now the region we are talking about is known as the Balkans, comprising countries like Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, parts of Turkey, some not-so-known names like Macedonia, Albania and some known-for-wrong-reasons names like Bosnia and Kosovo. All these countries have shared histories, ethnic groups like Serbs, Slavs and Turks spread around the region, dominated by religions like Eastern Orthodox Christianity, Roman Catholic Christianity and Islam. At some point of time or other all were ruled by Greeks and some other point they were part of the Turkish empire.

Unfortunately, people do not see this as some kind of beautiful cultural harmony among themselves. The recent history is full of wars, ethnic violence, genocide and border tensions. All of us heard about Bosnia and Kosovo.

All this made the documentary rather interesting. Which was just a song, became some kind of national pride especially when confronted with the claim that the neighbors say it is their song.

How can they!! We have heard this song in our childhood.

My great-great-grandmother knew this song.

Don't listen to those people. They are nothing but thieves. After looting our country, now they want to steal our culture too!!!

These were some of the reactions which Adela heard when she went to people with her tape-recorder. At times, the situation became really heated as you can imagine.

I found this trailer in youtube which gives you an idea what I am talking about. Have a look (or click here to view in youtube).



You can also see the full movie in Google Video (here).

In the end, the search remained inconclusive. There is no definite answer. But as you can guess, that was not the point. The point is people are much more closer to each other than they would like to believe.

As much as we hate some people or denounce their contribution, the fact remains, our culture, tradition, art, all are product of a collective effort and that makes it so rich. We fight endlessly on who created this and that, overlooking the beauty of the creation in the first place and how can we share it better among ourselves.

Now, the most interesting part (at least from my point of view). What really got me hooked to film, is that I have heard this tune before. In a Bengali song!! A very well-known at that. So now... it is my chance to claim this song...

If you are a bong and seen the trailer above, you must have guessed which song I'm talking about. It is "Shukno Patar Nupur Paye" by Kazi Nazrul Islam. Check out the song at youtube in this link. I had an mp3 from nazrul.org but the site is not opening anymore.

Although for bengalis, the name Nazrul does not need any introduction, others will do well to click the link. Nazrul can be termed as the most popular Bengali poet/song-writer after Tagore. Having a very large body of work (poetry, song, essay, novels), it is mainly his songs (known as Nazrul-Geeti) which have endured the test of time. Nazrul is known for introducing Arabic and Persian influence in his poetry and music. He is considered the pioneer in this regard.

We can guess, he picked up the tune for this particular song, during his posting in Karachi for the British-Indian Army, where he studied Persian (Farsi), met people from various countries, especially middle-east. Maybe some Turkish soldier sang this song one night at the camp-fire and Nazrul was hooked to the beautiful rhythm. We can only imagine.

So, along with Adela Peeva, I had my tiny part in this journey, which started in the mountains of Balkans and via Karachi, ended up in my doorstep. Who would've thought!! "Yeh duniya badi gol hai", that's what I can say at the end... :)

As usual, comments are welcome. And there is a new five-star-rating system below. So, if you are lazy to type a few words at least click some stars!

Crisis of credit

Recession, recession, recession...Yes, we all know the world economy has gone belly up. MBA-types are calling up kirana stores and dhabas for "Work-for-food" schemes (Walmarts and Pizza Huts if you are in the 'Land of Opportunities'... boy, talk about misnomer!). And even that is not available. Sigh.


We also know the full story. How it happened. You know, all those Wall Street guys (MBA-type again!) lending money to people who should not get money and playing diwali-bumber-super-lotto with your and my money. And related crap. Lots and lots of jargons. Sub-prime, CDO, hedge fund, treasury bills, global-warming... wait not global-warming. Let's not bring Al Gore's into this now. Anyway, you get the idea.

Errr... Hmmm... Do we really know what those words mean? Nah. No chance. We can just throw them at regular intervals when appropriate opportunities arise. Something like company-goals-meetings and project-status-meetings! Effort variance and productivity curves and defect-density-in-sub-critical-tasks done in weekend late-nights. Nobody knows what those means (except the last one, which is suppsed to be very low, compared to normal tasks). But who cares. (Note to self: Too many jokes on MBA/managements).

Well, today I found a really wonderful video/infographics explaining the whole phenomena of how it started. Very cool animations. Great commentry. Makes you wonder at the grand complexity and at the same time the underlying simplicity of root cause. (Link courtsey the O'Reilly blog)


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Try this link in case the video doesn't show up.

So enjoy the video and crack some more jokes on Wall Street.

Will come back soon. Lots of things to write about but no time.

Till then, ciao.

Don't Mess with Barkha Dutt

And what if you do? You might ask "What are you gonna do? Charge me with libel?" as Ms. Catherine Tramell did ask in Basic Instinct, when told not to smoke in the interrogation room, albeit with a puff of white smoke. What follows this is history, as they say. If you don't know this part of the story, I advise you rent the CD/DVD from the friendly neighborhood video store and get ready for some unexpected insights (pun intended). Whatever, leave Sharon Stone now and come back to our heroine here. Yes, I am talking about Ms. Dutt.

If you are not aware of the ongoing extreme anti-Barkha storm raging in Indian blogosphere, just give a search in Google blog search (or better click here).

What did she do to earn the wrath of the bloggers? Bloggers, as we know are rather harmless souls. Well, one poor soul named Chyetanya Kunte, gave his opinion about Barkha Dutt's coverage of 26/11 in his blog. Barkha and NDTV threatened him with legal action and made him withdraw his post (Google cache, scroll to very bottom) and publish an unconditional apology.

Desipundit is an aggregator of interesting indian blogs (it's great!) and they have two marathon posts linking all the major blogs commenting on this issue. Here and here.

Ms. Dutt was mainly enraged because, Kunte mentioned the allegation that she crossed the line while covering Kargil war and gave away Indian artillery positions (Kunte quoted it from in her wiki-article, which has now changed a little bit by now).

Funny thing is, our Navy chief Admiral Suresh Mehta shares the same opinion about her. Wonder why she has not threatened him with legal action so far!

It's funny when our media claims the right to criticize each and everybody and becomes so defensive while someone else do it to them. They cry about less government control, denies the necessity of censor and when blamed for irresponsible behavior during 26/11, they tell govt. hasn't made any rules. Like small children caught stealing sweet... "Nobody told me not to steal".

Also, this is not the first Barkha vs. Blogger clash. Last year (or in 2007) she did an episode of "We the People" on "Blogging in India". To quote GB,

In a 45 minute program that I felt squeezed in every journalistic no-no possible (sensationalism, poor research, blatant bias and lack of objectivity), the presenter, motivated no doubt by her antagonism towards blogs which she said had spread malicious rumors about her, presented “English language” blogs as exclusively frivolous “web graffiti” that are created to spread gossip, discuss people’s personal lives and to make confessions of a prurient kind.

Naturally, bloggers didn't take it well. And there were posts criticizing the show and how she conducted the show. Maybe it started at that time... Man she keeps grudges for long!

I wish she does an episode of her show based on this very topic and see what the people think about her. I know it's just a wish, still I would love to see her face. Will it show 'genuine' concern like always and "Oh my God.. I'm so sorry, aren't you angry/worried/grieved!!!" comments.

More than that I am apalled at the apathy and lack of understanding from NDTV, in a topic like this. A channel where they have a show called "Newsnet 2.0", and the website which is one of the most popular news sites among Indians, they should understand internet in general and blogs in particular is here to stay. It is a platform where people can talk freely, where nobody is spared, where people of any kind of background/interests can have a conversation (not chat shows with talking heads). And that's what make it so great. And mainstream media must learn how to live with that. The sooner the better for them.

Update : This post found a place in Blogbharti. Blogbharti is another aggregator of indian blogs like Desipundit. :D

The Loser

When does a character becomes a metaphor? A 'tag', which you can put on people you know and say he has become 'so-on-so'. They become such an identifiable but at the same time larger-than-life persona, they create a category of their own. Take for an instance James Bond. Do we need to ever attempt to describe what a 007 is. No. Never. And that's why he is so popular. Year after year they'll make films starring Bond and people will run to the theater. Another example is superman.

There is one thing common among these guys. They are heroes. Heroes with generous amount of out-of-the-world power, be it simply raw strength or deadly gadgets. With that you add charisma and cool quotient. You know... tall, fair, handsome... etc etc. And most importantly, they have been a long lasting character on paper before coming to the screen. Their charm is not created in one day.

But, what about being similar long-lasting, memorable character just by being the biggest loser... A character who has become another tag, another adjective, being used in everyday language, with abandon.

Yes I'm talking about Devdas. Sounds familiar? Yes. We all know Devdas. He is one character created for the eponymous novel back in 1917. Novel was a success (but then, everything from the pen of Sharat Chatujjey was a success). After nine films in Bengali, Hindi, Assamese and Tamil, most of us know what are the characteristics to label one as Devdas. And none of them can be termed as heroic or ideal or anything similar. He is one guy who is famous for losing it. Losing it all. Albeit losing it in style. You know that dialog? "Haar ke jeetnewalo ko..." Yeah that one. No wonder SRK was the latest avatar of Devdas!

And guess what. He is back. No, not SRK (come on, he is always there, if not in this, then the next channel). As you may have guessed I am talking about the coming-soon Dev.D (statutory warning: link not for minors). Lets start with a quote from the director himself.

Abhay told me he had an idea, a story. I said ,”OK tell me”. He narrated me a story of a stripper in a LA strip club and a guy who is attracted to her. The guy had a back story, an unrealized love story. After he narrated the whole story, he asked me guess what is it. I couldn’t. He then told me it is Devdas. I looked at him. I never thought before that moment, that Devdas could be retold like that. That was where Dev.D was born.

Read the full thing here. And you can catch the trailer in youtube. Man, I love the term "emosanal atyachaar". :)

Whatever, this post is not 'bout the film, but the character. What is there which has made him so memorable and popular. Whenever I think 'loser' is the word comes to my mind.

Is it the romanticism, killing yourself for that 'one luv' idea which attracts us.

I don't know. Maybe its not just pyaar-ishq-mohabbat. It is the self-destruction. We love fools. Fools for a cause. Any damn cause. Because we all are fools.

Fools who make mistakes, take the wrong turn, get hit by the truck of fate when they were looking at the opposite direction. It hurts. And for a moment it feels nothing is worth anymore. So what's the point of trying. Let it slide.

Off course being the sensible and wise types we come back to our senses. For sometime things look only black and white. After some time (which can be very long) things start falling into places.

Think about those soldiers you saw in the WWII film. End of battle, no ammunition, completely surrounded by enemy forces. Surrender is the only option. And there will be one guy who'll take a knife and run into the bullet-rain, shouting "Hail Hitler" or "God save the queen" depending on the film. In a second there will be so many holes in his body it is almost semi-transparent.

What about the guy next to him. He also takes the knife. Take a step ahead. And then he stops. He knows it is worthless. He can't die like fool. He puts it down and surrenders. He knows he has done the right thing. But there will be that feeling biting inside him.

"I wish I could do that..."

And that's why we love Devdas. He did it. What we could not think of doing. People talk about the one love and life is worthless if they don't get it. But we know that's bullshit. Only a fool will do that. Well, Devdas was a fool and he died a fool. He had the guts to show the finger to the world. Of course being son of a zamindar helps. Having great actors portraying you on screen helps.

And that is my friend is the ever-lasting charm of being 'The Loser'. You have to be the biggest of all. And the masses will adore you, making you the Martyr-of-Mohabbat. And lots of broken hearted young souls will stop shaving and run to the pub to contribute for Vijay Mallya's next sportscar or IPL team!

So cheers to Devdas (he will like that). He showed being a loser is cool sometimes if you can do it right.

May his soul rest in peace.

Amen.