This post was sparked by something I read in Larry Lessig’s blog a week or so ago, on the economies of culture. In it, Larry discusses the challenges and issues involved in linking the “commercial” economy with the “sharing” economy, or what he terms the “second” economy. It’s worth a read; if you get the time, take a look at the comment stream as well.

Enterprise IT departments face this challenge of connecting two polarised extremes on a regular basis, whatever the terms du jour; be it open versus closed, proprietary versus opensource, hierarchical versus networked or even waterfall versus agile. Some months ago, Kathy Sierra had a great post on the difference between start-up and corporate mindsets, covering much the same thing, but from a different perspective.
When you speak to the extremists, the standard response is You Are Wrong I am Right, which gets us precisely nowhere. Which is why people resonated with what Tara had to say in Missing The Point a few months ago, where she spoke of the need to get the pendulum swinging right.

Debate can be polarised, but reality sticks firmly in the middle. And we need to learn how to live with that reality and create value from it.

I still think that it will all boil down to the Because Effect. Commercial economies are all about making money With. Gift or shared economies are all about making money Because Of. And the philosophical differences between the two will probably not converge. They are two different states in time. Enterprises will often have bits in both states. FLOSS is primarily about infrastructure, even if what we call infrastructure is crawling up the stack. FLOSS infrastructures will continue to live with proprietary applications further up the stack.
As exemplified in the Because Effect and Stewart Brand’s earlier writing, the real polarisation seems to be about something else. Scarcity versus abundance. People know how to make money out of scarcity, but are less comfortable with doing so with abundance. The problems we face with bad IPR and bad DRM and “unfair” vendor behaviours all seem to be connected with creating scarcity out of abundance.

Regular readers will know that (a) I liken bad DRM to bad EAI, paying to mine information that should not need to be mined and (b) I like apocryphal tales.

Many years ago, we had a bout of prohibition in India. These things happen. Sometime after the 1977 elections.

Some states went dry, some didn’t. And in my apocryphal story, one of the biggest states, Maharashtra, was one of the Dries. You could still consume alcohol there, but only in “permit rooms” and only if you had a “permit”. You could get a permit if you were (a) a foreign tourist spending hard currency or (b) certified as having a medical condition that needed regular intake of alcohol (!). And as the story goes, the permit-issuing agency in Maharashtra, the “richest” state, grew amazingly. Naturally. Many many medical conditions. Then, some time later, Maharashtra wanted to rescind prohibition. Problem. They couldn’t possibly shut down the permit agency, it employed too many people. What would the people do? So. It was decided. Wisdom of Solomon. No need to shut down the agency. Everyone could drink. But everyone needed permits. And the agency grew. And God was in His Heaven. And All was Well with the World.
Unintended consequence or apocryphal nonsense? You decide.

So it was with some amusement I read this story in GigaOM:  Someone has reverse-engineered FairPlay and used the learning to replicate an equivalent, and is now licensing the equivalent to third parties who have felt locked out of the lock-in.

I guess you could call it an unintended consequence. Continuing along this vein, albeit light-heartedly, I can imagine a time when regulators insist that DRM “facilities” (sic, I couldn’t find a better word) are kept distinct and separate from the OS, in order not to restrict consumer choice. Choose your OS. Choose your media player. Choose your DRMboat.
In Islington there was a man. The dog it was that died. Thanks to Oliver Goldsmith.

I was talking to my son Isaac this afternoon, the subject of gaming came up, and somewhere in the conversation he mentioned that the Sony PS3 was going to be free from region coding, and how good that was.
And I thought to myself, how odd. I grew up with 33 rpm albums and 45 rpm singles, and I could buy them anywhere and play them anywhere. We even had 78 rpm “lacquer” platters, and these played everywhere as well. So I can listen to William Booth talk to his troops on my 1905 mechanical gramophone, T.S. Eliot read his poems on a 33 rpm 12″ “LP” and the latest “vinyl” single from the Arctic Monkeys, all without worrying about region coding.

Why stop with records? I had no problem with reel-to-reel tapes and cassette tapes and even CDs. The first time I hit the oddness of region coding was with my son’s console games, on an early Nintendo I think, and soon after that we had the DVD debacle that continues.

DVD region encoding offers less than zero value to the consumer; allows for unnecessary price and time discrimination between markets; promotes piracy and illegal copying as a result of those discriminations; provides no incremental value to the artist(s).

DVD encoding was brought into existence pretty much by stealth, most of us found out about it after the event. Which was probably a good thing, since it woke me up to the dangers of bad DRM and bad IPR just at the right time.

Because of the stealth approach, many people have no idea what the regions are. I thought it would amuse you to see the actual regions. Looks like a political map of something in Second Life….

It is with some sadness that I note the death of Byron Nelson earlier this week. Everything I heard and saw and read about him spoke of his immense gentleness and humility.

Born on a farm. Worked as a caddy while still a teenager. Worked as an accounts clerk. Thrown out of work during the Great Depression, found himself working temporarily for a banker’s magazine some time later. Turned pro because he couldn’t find work. Rewrote the record books. Retired to all intents and purposes at the age of 34, to run his ranch. Which he did for sixty years.

Here are some of the things he said:

I don’t know very much. I know a little bit about golf. I know how to make a stew. And I know how to be a decent man.

When I was playing regularly, I had a goal. I could see the prize money going into the ranch, buying a tractor, or a cow. It gave me an incentive.

Shades of Peter Drucker and Making Shoes Not Money.

Byron Nelson was hewn from stones we rarely see today. He will be missed. My condolences to his family.

Ever since I read Leadership is an Art, maybe 20 years ago, I’ve had a lot of time for the management thoughts and writings of Max De Pree. That in turn led to a deeper interest in Herman Miller.
Max’s writings exemplified modern servant leadership to me, almost like a reinterpretation of New Testament teachings in a modern enterprise context. I had to learn more about the company. Which I did. They’re an admirable company with admirable people and admirable values. [If you’re even vaguely interested, take a look at this article as an introduction.]
And it is therefore with considerable regret that I note that Bill Stumpf died last month. I found his writings useful as well. Some of you may have read The Ice Palace That Melted Away, well worth it. Incidentally, it wasn’t until today that I realised that the subtitles change between the hardcover and paperback editions of Stumpf’s book. The hardback says “Restoring civility and other lost virtues to everyday life” and the paperback says “How good design enhances our lives”.

I’ve never really known or met Stumpf; what I know of him is through his designs and his writings. In a recent addendum to his obituary in the Times, the author adds:

Stumpf was a visionary who brought a passionate intensity to his work. The horror he felt when faced with something ugly or that did not function properly was described in his book, The Ice Palaces that Melted Away.

Or just look at the quotes and anecdotes related to Stumpf in his wikipedia entry:

Everything was about freeing up the body, designing away constraints

“I work best when I’m pushed to the edge,” he said, “when I’m at the point where my pride is subdued, where I’m an innocent again. Herman Miller knows how to push me that way, mainly because the company still believes — years after D.J. DePree first told me — that good design isn’t just good business, it’s a moral obligation. Now that’s pressure.”

Good design isn’t just good business, it’s a moral obligation. So good I had to say it twice. Thanks to the Duprees, to Bill Stumpf and to the Herman Miller company. And my condolences to the Stumpf family.