Ben Galbraith's Blog

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Is an avalanche coming?

Computers have undoubtedly and dramatically raised the productivity of businesses world-wide. Yet for all the increased profits that technology can inject into the bottom line, it has a nasty habit of turning around and grabbing fist-fulls of cash back out of the balance sheet (witness Microsoft's massive cash hoard).

No one's debating whether or not IT delivers more value than it consumes (at least, no one writing this blog), but for some executives, the high cost of enterprise software (and the required consultants, and the forced upgrades, and the unkept promises of vendors) has them searching for alternatives to the modern-day software industry.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article on April 12, 2004 about a new software "co-op": Avalanche Corporate Technology. Its composed of a handful of large companies, including Best Buy, who have banded together to share each other's homegrown software assets -- for free. (There's a $30,000 annual membership fee).

Initially, the co-op's inventory of shared code isn't all that impressive (at least, from what I can see from the outside). But its the long-term vision of the group that grabbed my attention.

According to the WSJ, Avalanche sees a future where its members band together to write their own commercial-grade enterprise software (e.g., call center applications or even office suites) and giving the product to themselves for free.

I'm as skeptical as the next software engineer that a loosely organized band of hetergenous companies can effectively produce and support enterprise software, but I admit I'm intriguied by the Avalanche concept. I wonder -- is this the start of a significant (or at least notable) rebellion against the high margins, low quality, and upgrade tactics of the software industry? Or is it a naive and misguided attempt that will flame out sometime in 2005?

I also wonder why the companies involved don't just open-source their software. What controls/benefits/etc. does their co-op model give them over an open-source model? Or is the co-op and its up-front sign-up fee just a manifestation of Darl McBride's "nothing in this life should be free" attitude?

I'll be in Minnesota, Avalanche's turf, in a few weeks for the upcoming No Fluff Just Stuff software conference; I think I'll pay 'em a visit and see what these guys are up to.

Java in Your Stereo?

For the past few weeks, I've been playing with MacSense's new HomePod device. The HomePod is a compact MP3 player with WiFi built-in, a scroll-wheel interface not unlike that of Apple's iPod, and peer-to-peer media streaming software developed by Gloo Labs.

Unfortunately, the HomePod user interface does not work like the iPod. After playing with it for a few days, the differences between the iPod and the HomePod really began to bother me and my wife. If the HomePod were like any of the other consumer electronic devices in our home, we'd just live with it. But in this case, I can take matters into my own hands: the HomePod runs Java!

I downloaded the source code to the HomePod, tweaked the interface code in a few hours, FTP'd the new class files to the device, rebooted, and shazam! The HomePod user interface now behaves just as the iPod. Cool! This is one of the first times I could take my career skills and actually do something useful around the house.

The HomePod isn't the first consumer device I've owned that allowed me to run Java on it -- I'm still recovering from the pains of MIDP 1.0 -- but it is the first Java device that I've enjoyed playing with. I think that enjoyment is related to the following factors:

• The HomePod runs J2SE 1.3. I don't have to do HomePod development in a subset of the "real" Java that I'm used to working in (i.e., J2ME).
• The HomePod exposes everything to developers. The HomePod's user interface, its networking code, the application that streams music from my servers to the HomePod, it's all in Java! How refreshing this is compared to today's Java-enabled cell phones which continue to expose a subset of handset functionality to Java developers. I can tweak this thing in every way imaginable. There are some components written in C (device drivers, audio codecs), but even in those cases, the source is still made available.

The advantage of owning a device I can modify became especially apparent to me when the Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg recently reviewed another WiFi streaming home MP3 player. While he generally gave the product high ratings, at the end of his review, he had a stinging criticism:

[This] system doesn't let you just select "All Tracks" and then play them randomly, as you can on an iPod portable player... [This feature's] omission is a real loss.

After my glowing experience with the HomePod, you can bet I'll be shopping for more Java-powered open-source consumer devices in the future.

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