The don’t make ‘em like they used to (thank goodness)

Back in the early 1950s, Gibson introduced a cheap, entry-level electric guitar called the Les Paul Junior. A study in simplicity, it had one pickup, two knobs, and not much else.

Rock guitarists loved it. The single P-90 pickup, when hooked up to a high-gain amp, added raw grit to the sound of rock and blues anthems. If you’re old enough to remember the roaring, over-amped guitar in “Mississippi Queen,” that was the Les Paul Junior.

Fast forward 54 years. Vintage LP Juniors — which originally sold for 50 bucks — now go for $6000 or more on Ebay. Why? Well, according to some people, no one, not even the wizards at Gibson, could reproduce the unique sound of the original models.

But has the rock world suffered? Hardly. There are now hundreds of electric (and electronic) guitar models out there, many of them capable of sound-bending tricks that 50s-era guitar designers could never have imagined. The original LP Junior is a thing of beauty (can you tell I’d really like one?), but modern guitar players need something more, well, modern.

The software world isn’t any different. At one time, most vendors had closed source code and closed development processes — a model that served customers perfectly well. But the market has moved on, embedded products have become more complex, and embedded software vendors need to keep pace. To do that, they can, among other things, open up their source code and allow customers to become active participants in the product development process.

Basically, vendors have a choice. They can continue to play solo, or they can work in concert with their customers and developer community to create a thing of beauty. Personally, I like door number 2.

Mother Nature’s Debugger

The Goldenrod crab spider is a nasty piece of goods. A master of camouflage, it can mimic the color of its surroundings, rendering itself invisible to prey. Basically, it catches bugs by means of obscurity.

Check out the accompanying photo, which I took in my front garden. It tells the whole story: a yellow flower, a yellow crab spider, and an unfortunate fly that couldn’t tell the difference.



Obscurity is good for the spider, but not so good for humans. In business and politics, for example, hidden practices often, if not always, lead to corruption. Transparency is usually the cure, which is why a global organization dedicated to fighting corrupt practices calls itself Transparency International.

Mind you, transparency isn’t just good for CEOs and politicians; it’s also good for software developers. Vendors who publish their source code and develop their software products out in the open benefit from having more eyes inspecting their code — and the more eyes you have, the easier it is to catch bugs. (Spiders figured this out long ago.) Customers, for their part, can study the code and learn how to make best use of it. They can also use it to improve their own debugging efforts — which means even fewer bugs.

Basically, transparency is good for both the vendor and the software user. And there’s nothing obscure about that.


Using more eyes to catch more bugs.

The Dragonflies of Eden

I don’t know about you, but dragonflies creep me out. They’re the hawks of the insect world: fast, voracious, and capable of catching their dinner on the fly — literally. In fact, long before birds showed up on this planet, giant dragonflies ruled the skies, with wingspans of two-and-a-half feet.

Imagine one of those suckers landing in your hair.

I found this dragonfly basking out in the open, just down the street from QNX headquarters. It’s much smaller than its Paleozoic ancestors, yet it performs a great service, by preying on mosquitos. Given that mosquitos in North America can spread West Nile virus, this is a good thing.



Moral: The thing that looks scary at first often turns out to be the best thing for you.

For example, at QNX Software Systems, we provided a closed source operating system for over 25 years. We could have taken the easy route and kept it closed. After all, why publish your source code or open up your development process when business is good? Better to play it safe, right?

We came to realize, however, that “opening the kimono” was nothing to fear. The more we thought about it, the more we understood that embracing a transparent and collaborative approach to software development was, in fact, healthy — both for QNX and for the people who use our technology. And the result was the hybrid software model.

As for me, I’m not ready to embrace dragonflies just yet. But I’m growing more open to the idea.

Tags: open source, QNX

The Ballad of Billy and Pat

In his poem, The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje tells us that Billy the Kid was a bad man with some good in him, and that Pat Garrett, Billy’s nemesis, was a good man with some bad in him.

Like many people, you may equate proprietary software with Billy the Kid (bad, but not completely), and open-source software with Pat Garrett (good, but with drawbacks). Unless, of course, you’re one of the many people who think the exact opposite.

The point is, almost no one believes that either proprietary or open source is the solution for everything. Both approaches have their merits — and tradeoffs.

All fine and good, but choosing between the two can be difficult. In the proprietary corner, you can leverage your vendor’s professional support services and quality management process. In most cases, you also get better development tools. In the open corner, on the other hand, you get faster bug fixes, greater self-sufficiency, and the power to bend and shape the software to your purposes.

It’s no wonder, then, that software vendors like QNX are moving to a middle ground that gives developers benefits of both approaches. At QNX, we call our approach the “hybrid software model,” and I recommend that you read Lawrence Rosen’s whitepaper on the topic. Rosen is the former legal counsel to the Open Source Initiative (INI) and he does a great job of explaining what the hybrid software model is and isn’t.

Billy the Kid on a bad hair day, and Pat Garrett on a good one.

Tags: open source, QNX