First of all, some feedback on where we are with that TUANZ innovation award idea.
Answer, due to a comedy of errors, I just plain missed the deadline for this year. So I thought with.. * all the Don related the heat on the list, * and since I have put my head up and said Don's doing Good Stuff (purely on the basis of his emails and web site) I thought I had better get off my butt and go see who Don is and what he is doing and more importantly why he is doing it. So I did that last night, ventured forth into Darkest MeatSpace and met the guy in his own habitat. Answer. Relax folks, this guy is doing Good, he is having fun, he is increasing the fun to be had around him. Spammers and Scammers of the world have made us hyper sensitive to anyone who asks for money. So one of the "off scents" I think some detected about Don's web sites was, Schlock, Horror, he asks for Money! He has, Gasp, Google Ads!? Well I think the difference is Don is doing stuff with real chunks of Hardware. That, unlike Open Source Software, has a bad habit of forcing you to give largish chunks of Real Money to Dick Smith and the like.. And no, I don't think, and he doesn't think, he is going to rich out of this game. It's for fun folks. It for cocking a snoot at the Telco's and saying to them, "You _can_ do better" It's for sitting back and looking at something and saying, "Wow! That actually works! Cool!" The other "off scent" some have reacted to is, "If he is asking for money, why isn't his site super-slick, spell checked to the Nth degree? How can anybody take him seriously? Just compare his site with xtra.co.nz?" Well the answer is no. He is not setting up as a commercial entity to compete with XTRA. He is having Fun, and his idea of having Fun (a _very_ Good idea of having fun mind you) is to make things that work and perhaps have some benefit to the community. Do I think he'll change the world? He is worth investing in? He's the next Richard Branson? Nah! But it will be fun. It may have some really Good spin offs. It's worth giving him a helping hand every now and again. Give good answers do any dumb questions. Be nice to the guy, be patient, he is human so give him room to screw up on a technical and personal level occasionally. Remember email is a medium where simple misunderstandings brew into flame wars with the greatest of ease. The worst that can happen is... * Don wastes a largish chunk of his own time and money. * Don wastes a smallish chunk of someone elses time and money. * Don pisses a few people off. He also may end up making some Telco feel a little silly, but I'm sure they will roll around in their piles of dough for awhile and the feeling will soon pass... I see the following possible really Good outcomes from this... * Don and Company having some Good Clean Fun and learning lots. * A recipe emerging for isolated and disregarded (by telcos) communities to "roll their own" broadband. * Don perhaps works out a Good business model and creates a small enterprise doing this or, more likely, some spin off from this. Free Software is about Freedom, not price labels. So all strength and luck to him on that front. * A Telco feels Don is taking money from their mouths, and creates their own competing offering for the niche of underserviced communities. ...or getting wilder... (and this is where I'm really interested) * Creating new forms of network, with possibilities and values that didn't exist before. (I have this little algorithm on the back burner for routing in a completely random and decentralized unreliable P2P mesh of communicating devices.) So give the guy a break, give him a hand or see if you can do better! John Carter Phone : (64)(3) 358 6639 Tait Electronics Fax : (64)(3) 359 4632 PO Box 1645 Christchurch Email : [EMAIL PROTECTED] New Zealand "If you not having Fun, you are doing it Wrong!"
