2016 Sep 8

The Problem with Serverless Is Packaging

Serverless. Framework-as-a-Service. Function-as-a-Service. Lambda. Compute Functions. Whatever you call it, serverless is, to some degree, a natural evolution of application management. In the 90s, we had our own server rooms, managed our own servers and power and cooling and security, and deployed our software to them. In the 2000s, we used colocation providers like Equinix (many still do) to deploy our servers in our own cages or, at best, managed server providers like Rackspace.

2016 Sep 6

Pilots In Habitats: Basic Unit of Application Deployment

What is the basic unit of application deployment? Two related trends have changed the answer to this question: DevOps Containers For many years, the tasks between engineer and operator were cleanly, if painfully, split: Engineer builds and delivers a package of files to deploy and run Operator deploys and runs those files in a production operating environment In the early years, the package of files consisted of a directory with a ream of paper and instructions.

2016 Aug 16

When Your Workers Love Their Job

How do you know when your workers really love their jobs? Of course, not all will, and plenty will leave over time no matter how great a working environment, but how do you know when workers really enjoy working for you? A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the Hallertau Brewery, just north of Auckland, New Zealand, on a Saturday night. It is in New Zealand wine country, a rural area, so they close at 10:00pm on a Saturday night.

2016 Jul 22

SSL Is Broken, Time to Fix It

For a long time, I have felt that SSL/TLS - the protocol that secures your communications with Web sites, mail servers and most everything across the Internet - is broken. It is broken to the point that it is fundamentally insecure, except for the most technically-aware and security-alert individuals, who also have the time to check the certificate for each and every Web site. SSL is supposed to provide three guarantees:

2016 Jul 13

Does Open-Source Increase the Value of Talent?

For the last few weeks, I have been trying to unravel the connection between the value of talent and open-source. Inevitably, some products have a high level of importance but few people who truly understand it. This creates high demand with low supply, increasing the value of those people. But that isn't special to open-source; it is true for any product with high demand + low supply. These just happen to be open-source.

2016 Jul 12

Why Customers Agree to Open-Source

Why do customers agree to open-source work I do? In the past, we have discussed the benefits of open-sourcing your own software: Reputation Recruiting Contributions Recently, I had the pleasure of walking half an hour from a Tokyo train station with Matthew Garrett, who does some impressive work on core operating systems (pun intended; Mathew works at CoreOS). One of the thing I asked him is why a company open-sources its entire stack?

2016 Jul 6

Continuous Everything

Earlier this week, a really smart architect and I were evaluating various methods for managing software code changes, bug fixes, releases and major features. We both were in agreement with the primary direction, a popular one in nimble companies. Have a primary "trunk" or "master" branch; Any commits to "master" automatically get built and tested and ready for production (and possibly deployed); Any changes occur on "feature branches", temporary parallels streams of development that eventually - hopefully sooner rather than later - merge into "

2016 Jul 4

The Blessings of Liberty for All Mankind

On this day, 240 years ago, the visionary gentlemen of the 13 colonies pledged their fortunes and their very lives to the cause of liberty. Given the incredible forces arrayed against them - the British Navy was the dominant sea force of the time, and the British Army dwarfed the ragtag militia forces which combined to make the Continental Army - their audacity and vision were unbelievable. Those 56 delegates to the Continental Congress were the co-founders of the greatest and riskiest startup of all time, one in which the battles were drawn not with marketing, product and engineering but with artillery and infantry and navies, in which loss meant not bankruptcy and "

2016 Jul 1

When Robots Replace Burger-Flippers and Lawyers

Can robots replace burger-flippers? How about lawyers? Tools have been around for thousands of years, making a human job faster and easier; try banging a nail in without a hammer. Machines, complex combinations of parts that are either human-operated or human-started, have existed for far less than that. With a Gutenberg press, you can print hundreds of copies of printing with just 1-2 people operating the machine. A washing machine will wash your clothes after you just press the right buttons.

2016 Jun 15

Open Source Business Models

Sometimes I am amazed by open source software... even as I contribute to it. The largest repository of public open-source projects, GitHub, has over 35MM repositories in it. Granted, some large percentage of those are private, and therefore closed-source, but even if only half of those are public, and by all accounts it is much more heavily weighted towards open, the numbers are in the tens of millions. Add in other source hosting locations like BitBucket and sourceforge, as well as privately hosted sites like GNU Labs' git.