Locality Switch

How hard can it be to give something away for free? Very, very, very hard – or so it would seem.

Jamie from the 37signals team did a great thing on Monday, and posted a blog entry with some free icons you could download. The intentions were explained pretty clearly: “They’re free for you to use and (hopefully) improve upon.”

“Not so fast!! You can’t just give something away without a formal license and some strings attached.” That was the cry from the comments.

The response from JF on the 37signals team was this:

What a perfect example of people making something more complicated than it needs to be.

…

This doesn’t have to involve the legal system at all. That’s the problem. Why do we assume that if someone wants to give something away for free, lawyers have to be part of it?

Break the chain. Lawyers don’t have to be involved in everything. This blog post can serve as the “license” or “proof” of his intention. And if you just asked Jamie to explain further, I’m sure he would. We don’t need complicated licenses or third parties. Simple statements, obvious intention, that’s plenty.

Obviously, it’s really hard to give stuff away for free. Jeff Atwood discovered this quite some time ago, and posted about it on Coding Horror.

Experienced developers won’t touch unlicensed code because they have no legal right to use it. That’s ironic, considering the whole reason I posted the code in the first place was so other developers could benefit from that code. I could have easily avoided this unfortunate situation if I had done the right thing and included a software license with my code.

[From: Pick a License, Any License, Jeff Atwood, April 3 2007]

He then provides a rather humorous comparison chart between the various licenses and even shows that the GLP is not the right license for capitalists.

Are we too caught up in the legal implications of using other people’s stuff without a proper license, even if they clearly state we can use it for free? It would seem so.

For now, it seems the simplest solution is to slap a Creative Commons Zero on stuff we want to release freely. It’s public domain, in an apparently acceptably formal and legalese manner.

I would hate to be a surgeon – there’s so much stuff to remember! Do one thing wrong, and you could kill somebody. That’s a field of work I could never pursue. The World Health Organization announced last year that they are introducing checklists to make sure surgeons don’t miss anything out:

A WHO initiative to encourage surgeons across the world to use checklists when they operate on patients was launched last month.

[From WHO: Checklists Save Lives]

Brilliant! It’s so simple, but so brilliant.

We could do with more checklists in every occupation, not just the medical profession. Mechanics, librarians, council planners, plumbers, electricians, programmers, etc.

Web-based software firm 37signals has demonstrated their checklist for deploying new updates. If it is good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

Checklists are great, but they only help when you use them.

Yesterday, I was debugging a WordPress plugin which wasn’t working with the Cutline theme. The plugin seemed to be configured fine, and worked perfectly on every other theme we tried, but not this particular one. Why? After some poking around in the plugins files, I discovered that the plugin was set to run when the template’s footer loaded. That’s nice – our footer was loading, wasn’t it?

Well, sort of. The footer was loading, but it was not telling the WordPress engine when it was loading. A simple addition of <?php wp_footer(); ?> to the footer file seemed to sort the issue out! Simple. How could this have been missed out of the theme? If there was a WordPress theme checklist, then this could have been avoided.

But wait – there IS a WordPress theme checklist! It’s a shame the Cutline theme developer didn’t follow the checklist. A small oversight, I’m sure. It’s an easy mistake to of made (hey, even I didn’t know this checklist existed until recently).

I’ve since emailed a fix to the developer, so let’s hope they get it and can release a fix – all in the name of good software.

This has got me thinking, how could I reduce errors at my radio station if I had checklists? Here’s a checklist I just made which could be run through every time I finish work on a studio:

• Do all mics work?
• Does the on air light activate and deactivate when the mics are in use?
• Does the console send an output to the DAs?
• Does the on-air switcher still activate the studio?
• Do the CD players load CDs, trigger from the console, and play through the correct fader?
• Do all computers log on to the network, load the correct software and play audio to the console?
• Do the telephones function?
• Are the studio monitors functioning?
• Is everything in phase?
• Do all headphones function?

This should be second nature to every technician, but it can’t hurt to have a checklist for this stuff. Here’s another place a checklist could save dramas: new sponsorships

• Does the sponsor have an agreement filled out?
• Has the agreement been approved by management?
• Has the money been received in the station’s bank account?
• Has the copy for the ad been approved by station management?
• Does finished recoding sound audible through studio monitors and cheap mono speakers?
• Does the finished track have the end date embedded in the ID3 tags for automatic deletion?
• Is the client happy with their track?
• Has the finished track been added to the correct folders?

This one is a bit more complex becasue it required multiple people to fill it out, but in essence it’s still simple and could save trouble later down the track.  If checklists are helping the medical profession, wouldn’t they help us?

Web-based software is magic. It all runs on a server in the sky, and we don’t generally have to worry about it. No upgrades, so patches to install, and no need to worry about installing it on every machine. It’s computer bliss.

One of my favourite developers of web-based software is 37signals, who have made products such as Basecamp, Backpack, Writeboard and Highrise.

My favourite product of theirs would have to be Highrise, which is a really easy to use Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution. I’ve recommended it to our community station, and they have started using it for managing sponsorship deals. There’s a few different plans you can subscribe to, but we have the free version.

I want to take the time to describe how we use it to keep track of sponsorships. Previously, our tracking of sponsorships was all contained within a few different people’s heads, and in our inboxes. It was fine with limited sponsors, but once we got more than a few, it became hard to track payments, renewals, etc.

Introducing Highrise.

As Highrise is a CRM, it’s important to understand the concept. In a nutshell, a CRM will track all of your customers, your dealings with them, upcoming tasks, etc. It keeps track of business for you.

For our sponsorship tracking, we have all of the contact details of our customers contained within the system. Then, we have ‘notes’ added to each one, which describe our dealings with them. Notes, by the way, are just small snippets of text which we can attach to a company. Here’s a few samples:

• Called Rob about upgrading his sponsorship package – is excited about the possibilities. Have to email new sponsorship agreement to him
• Julie sent through the cheque for $220.00, which will give XYZ Builders 3 spots per day until 27/8/09
• Acme Warehouse is changing new management – previous management has passed on their details so we can try and establish a relationship

As you can see, notes are used to keep the whole team up to date with our dealings with individual companies.

The next aspect of Highrise we use is Tasks.

We absolutely exploit this feature (in a good way!) – we currently have twenty two tasks set for the next few months. Tasks are simple. Here’s a few examples:

• Renewal Letter – Jul 23, 6pm (Re: Julie from XYZ Builders)
• Sponsorship Finishes – Aug 29, 8pm – (Re: Acme Warehouse)
• Thank-you letter – Aug 30, 2pm – (Re: Council involvement in OB)

The beauty of Tasks is that the appropriate person gets an email reminder when an item is due, so we never miss a beat. There is no excuse to miss some important task which is time critical.

Of course, the information we receive from Highrise is only as good as the information we put in. The computer can’t read our minds – that is one feature that 37signals has failed to implement.

We love Highrise. The software is simplistic, but gets the job done really well. Hats off to 37signals for producing such a marvelous bit of software – you really have helped us a great deal as a community radio station.