Maison Fleury

Say say my playmate, Come out and play with me, And bring your dollies three, Climb up my apple tree, Slide down my rainbow, Into my cellar door, And we'll be jolly friends, Forever more (children's nursery rhyme) I once read a blog entry whose author waxed poetic on the fact that certain people (blogging or interacting on Internet forums) “just don’t get it,” it presumably being some unwritten rules for coolness on the Internet, understood by “those in the know"/the author’s particular clique of Internet acquaintances. I had assumed that most of us were automatically uncool, by virtue of spending any significant amount of time on the Internet, in the first place. Weren’t all the cool people too busy caught up living the breathless whirl of their exciting lives to read or write? Then it dawned on me. Was it possible to be such a loser that even the other losers looked down on you? This possibility first occurred to me in Mr. M’s grammar class in Junior High. I attended a...

So it had to happen one day, I couldn't stay at home all day long and play video games. I have decided to get out of the house and as much as I like taking care of the children, I have to say that when Nathalie said "why don't you get an office", I immediately understood what she was talking about. So I have decided to strut down the street, quite literally down the street, to see my friends over at Appcelerator . For those of you that know Ben Sabrin, JBoss' employee #1, Ben has also decided to come out of the retirement/professional gambling to work there as head of sales and business development. The company is headed by Jeff Haynie, someone I had got to know from the Atlanta entrepreneur community and who was an early contributor to JBoss in the 2001-2002 timeframe. Jeff and colleagues have been doing the consulting thing for a while and have realized that the state of the tools to build RIA on top of SOA is still in flux. To speed up their own developme...

Since I don't really have a life right now, I do spend some time on the games. I just finished Call of Duty (CoD4) about a week ago and found it to be very entertaining. I have played 2 and 3, that I can remember and the series seems to get better with time. The game makes the most of the PS3 graphics and it delivers a wicked experience. The gameplay is fun with tactics you have to learn by trial and error. The game will try you in parts, I particularly remember the ferris wheel scene where you develop that zombie movie outlook on your surroundings. There is only 2 of you here, there are hordes coming and chances are, you are not going to survive. I learned to spend my mines as a ring of defense around the hiding spot. These mines blow up as waves crash on it, making a "click" sound, you have 10 total, so you can count down as they click, giving you a rough idea of when your close range defenses are gone. From the beginning, you snipe like mad, long distance, as the w...

Now enjoying my status as a sage of the industry, which is to say I am older than 20, but alas, not a billionaire, God fuck-it; people are all the time asking me for nuggets of wisdom from my vast experience at the top. Quickies from marcf #4: More on hiring talent. K.D asks: "Marc, my company is growing and I need to hire people across the organization, how do I go about recruiting the right talent". Answer: "K.D. hiring the right people into your organization is important. Don't start hiring too early or you will lose money on a cash flow basis and you won't be able to sustain growth without more VC money and dilution. Don't hire too late, you will lose out on your opportunity. Employ pay-as-go if you have the luxury. But most important: HIRE "A" PLAYERS and tap their network. In the classic dictum of the industry: "A players attract A players, B players attract C players". At JBoss we had 3 cultures interwoven: 1- an historical JBos...

Academic politics are so vicious precisely because the stakes are so low. -- Henry Kissinger Since this is Thanksgiving Sunday and I have nothing better to do but relax by writing this blog entry, I will take the time to respond to Jim Jagielski's answer to my ApacheCon blog entry where I basically compared it to an aging Star Trek convention. Jim finds fault with the fact that I failed to notice the goings on of the Brotherhood. Jim thinks I oughta follow what the ASF does because I owe them for the success of JBoss. Jim asks me to consider a sponsorship of the ASF, now that I have got some moollah. Clearly, those that I feel I owe, I also feel I have already taken care of by way of the JBoss equity cap table, which included people who worked at JBoss, members of many OSS communities, as well as some members of the ASF. JBoss, and now RHT sponsor various Apache projects. We paid for coders; not politicians, or should I call them Aparachiks. The idea of funding aparachicks offend...

Now enjoying my status as a sage of the industry, which is to say I am older than 20, but alas, not a billionaire, God fuck-it; people are all the time asking me for nuggets of wisdom from my vast experience at the top. Quickies from marcf #3: What IP is there to protect in OSS? B.D asks: "marcf, my open source project is starting to enjoy a measure of success, I am thinking of going professional with it, I am thinking about business models. How much thought should I put in protecting my Intellectual Property?" Answer: B.D. protecting IP in OSS is extremelly important. The only "private" property that exists in OSS are 1- brand 2- URL. Both are obviously related but really you need to protect your brand name, in other words REGISTER your trademarks, use them, declare they are yours and enforce the trademark, meaning protect against infringement. Other products, specifically based on your product should not include your name. Consultancies will be able to say the...

My 2 month old iMac died on me earlier last week. It is a shame because I liked the machine ok and I always dread a visit to the mac store. Genius bar appointment must be made 2 days in advance. I like a machine when it doesn't get in the way. This hardware breakdown, something to do with a power supply, constitutes getting in the way. To add misery to hardship, my trusted VAIO decided to crap out on me at the same time. SONY has a whole new slew of laptops with solid state memory. They are pricey. The upside to all this is that I have forced myself to get into the iPod touch. I have no choice and this works surprisingly well. It is basically the iphone but slimmer and without the phone or camera. I like it. I use the landscape mode to type text (including this blog) and the real estate is tiny but functional. Sometimes i wish for 4 times the real estate for a touch enabled tablet. But then as i type this text i realize i actually enjoy the keychain feel like i did on the PSP, th...