Terracotta is licensed under the Terracotta Public License (TPL), a modification of the Mozilla Public License that includes an attribution requirement. The license is not officially sanctioned by the OSI, but Terracotta doesn’t restrict access to the code, and allows modifications and redistributions as long as the code continues to be licensed under the TPL.

Pandey doesn’t want to call Terracotta a database replacement. “We try not to position ourselves [that way], because it will take us a long time to get to the point of having all the features and functionality of a database. It might be enough, though, to be a way to offload the database.” Pandey says the reason he created Terracotta was because he believes traditional databases were developed “for a world when Web apps didn’t exist. Databases were great when the access numbers were fairly limited. Fast forward 15 years and suddenly the problem has become very large scale. Peak loads can happen at strange times; databases weren’t designed to handle that complexity. What you get is Oracle coming up with solutions like rack clusters, or the customer gets fed up and says, ‘I need to write some custom software to do things like caching and offloading the database.’”

Since many businesses cannot afford the costs associated with developing custom software, Pandey says, “they’re hostage to licenses. There was an opportunity here for us, where we could come in and provide essentially what people are trying to do with that custom software.”

Terracotta was on the market for several months as a proprietary product, with less than stellar sales results. “It’s a fairly disruptive technology,” Pandey says. “We’re out there saying, don’t use a database, use us. And that’s not the first thing that comes to people’s minds. They think, ‘let me add more databases.’ We’d have to send sales reps knocking down doors to get them to go to trial with Terracotta. We were trying to change a mindset, and we thought hard: what would be a lower-friction way of doing this? What we wanted was more of a pull mode, where people get excited about the product. If you have all these expensive licensing costs up front, people are not going to try new ideas.”

When Terracotta decided to start giving away the product and the source code, things started to change. “Before we went to open source, we used to have to engage people,” Pandey says. “We don’t do that anymore. Open source is a great place for new ideas. If we find a customer that wants to do a proof-of-concept, we point them to all the resources and links. If they need any help there’s a forum where we try to maintain excellent service levels. We give them the option of calling and talking to us, but we don’t push anything on them and there’s no pressure to buy. So people are more willing to experiment.”

If Web traffic is an indicator of interest, then Terracotta’s audience has exploded. “When we launched, we would get a few hundred visitors a month; now we get 50-60,000,” Pandey says. “It’s that wonderful word of mouth, and it’s a feedback loop. We have people out there doing the marketing for us that we would have had to spend millions on to achieve the same results.”

Because Terracotta is still selling a commercially supported identical version of the product, Pandey says his biggest challenge is reining in the salespeople. “We had to address keeping a very clear wall between the sales team and the community side of the business. The temptation is, let’s call up all these people on forums and try to sell something to them. But the reason open source works is people have to feel that they do not have to buy anything to make it work. We make sure the developers have access to all the features they need — no doing any bait and switch. The other thing is we do not let the salespeople approach someone unsolicited. They have to come to us first.”

Pandey says sometimes it is frustrating to see larger companies taking advantage of the free version. “You say, wow, they have tons of money. But it’s worth the tradeoff. I would not go back to the other model.” For one thing, he says, the honest feedback from users is invaluable. “In my experience with proprietary technology, when you do a customer forum and ask for feedback, there’s always that elephant in the room. They are thinking, ‘how honest can we be, because they’re going to try to sell me something.’ So you’re dancing around. They will say, ‘I want this,’ but they’re not going to reveal the true value they get from that feature. You’re always second-guessing that. That kind of thing goes away completely with open source. The customer will tell you exactly what they need and how important it is to them, because they know it’s not something they’re going to have to pay for. You’re getting unadulterated information and you can actually build and design things that people find useful.”

The faithful are more inclined to think that the function of the LUG is changing from that of an incubator for Linux newbies to a social gathering for like minds. Others say that even though fewer people attend LUG meetings, it doesn’t change the fact that the LUG is an indispensable help in an environment where traditional support is often hard to come by.

A few years ago, LUGs enjoyed a heady heyday. If you were lucky enough to have a LUG close enough to drive to, you probably attended meetings regularly. Enthusiasm, both for Linux and the ideals for which it stands, drove an agenda full of exciting presentations, nights dedicated to getting a new distribution installed on your desktop, and lots of free stuff from companies like Red Hat, Corel, and SUSE, who wanted us to catch the fever.

Today, many LUGs have seen a slowdown in attendance, and some Linux events typically sponsored by local user groups have ceased to exist, such as the Atlanta Linux Showcase (ALS). Chris Farris, one of the founders of ALS and a sponsor of the Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts group, says the quality of ALE has dropped “since the dot-com-bust period of 2001-2003. For me, part of the drop-off had to do with shutting down ALS, which was a driver for a lot of my participation in the Linux community.” Farris says that ALE has split into three groups to help members avoid Atlanta traffic jams: Central, Northeast, and Northwest. “Northwest has been on and off,” he says. “Northeast has a small group of people who attend — under 10. Central still gets decent turnout, but nothing like we saw back in 1995-1998 at Georgia Tech, where we could fill a 100-person room.”

Brad Spry, the contact person for the UNC Charlotte Linux Users Group, says attendance at that LUG is down, “but the reasons are not cut and dry.” He says that because the LUG is university-based, it’s hard to find a meeting time that works. Because of that, Spry says the most valuable asset for his group is the listserv. “Email isn’t burdened by time. People can participate whenever they have a chance. It’s a busy world.”

Vernard Martin of ALE agrees. “While [ALE] has broken into several groups, the overall mailing list hasn’t fragmented yet, and has many more people subscribed than actually attend all the meetings combined.” He says that the communication that mailing lists provide shows that the LUGs still are “quite useful.”

The Suncoast Area Linux User Group (SLUG), based in the Tampa Bay area of Florida, had splinter groups in at least three different counties in busier days. Now, SLUG is contracting. President Paul Foster says, “This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. I don’t know that you have to repair LUGs because their attendance is down. Times change, the market changes, conditions change.” But Foster doesn’t agree that attendees aren’t willing to drive miles to a meeting. “Gas isn’t that expensive yet,” he says. “If people don’t come, then there’s obviously nothing compelling enough to get them there.

“The height of SLUG was the Tampa meetings at Price Waterhouse Cooper [office building]. We had a large room, fast Internet access, and power at each table. Lots of tech talk, lots of questions answered. We had 35-40 per meeting.” When the group could no longer provide Internet access and power outlets, meeting attendance dropped, Foster says. “We dropped down to maybe 20, and I don’t know what it is now.

“I’ve lost a lot of my enthusiasm for Linux,” Foster says. “Here’s what I mean by that: when I first got involved, I was stoked. Windows sucked, and here was something I could tinker with. I could write programs with the free compiler, and everything was fairly transparent. At that time, Linux was not exactly the easiest thing to figure out, though. Installs required a lot of information I didn’t know and didn’t have to supply to Windows. Fast forward 10 years — I still use Linux almost exclusively and with no regrets. But now, I know most of what I need to know to do anything I need to do. Installs don’t require me to know much, the software mostly figures out my hardware. I love Linux. I’m just not excited about it. It’s like buying a new car. It’s cool-looking. It smells like a new car. A few months go by. You still like your car. But it’s now just your car. It’s what gets you from point A to point B. You don’t think much about it.”

Not dead yet

Though the trend may be down, some LUGs are still going strong. According to member Jeff Waugh, the monthly meetings of Sydney’s SLUG still pull in “60-100,” with an active mailing list and a strong presence in the business community. The Linux Users Group in Princeton, NJ, LUG/IP, is still growing, says member Brian Jones. “We’re seeing more people who are brand new to Linux, and also more people who are generally new computer users who are looking to buy a PC but want to know about Linux.”
Social networking

Foster says the conversation at LUG meetings doesn’t focus heavily on Linux anymore. “In general, the discussion ranges from home remodeling to wives, to Verizon and other evil corporations. I make sure we touch on Linux at least once a meeting, but that discussion usually lasts for about 10 minutes. The guys who come are not newbies. They are engineering types or networking types who work with computers daily. We don’t do presentations, but welcome anyone who wants to bring a box and have us hack away at it.”

For some long-time Linux people, a social gathering is the ideal scenario. “LUGs provide other things that don’t get obsolete, notably a social context,” says Chris Browne, a “troublemaker/shooter” for the GTALUG in Toronto. “To hobbyists or enthusiasts, much of the point is to get together with other enthusiasts. The point is to meet socially with a group of like-minded people.”

SLUG member Dylan Hardison says his sole interest in LUGs “has always been social. I don’t think presentations, the promise of new knowledge, or free stuff has ever been a consideration. All of my geographically close friends I have met via SLUG. I also met my fianc&eacture;e at a meeting. Pretty much every job I’ve ever had has been somehow related to SLUG or someone I’ve met through SLUG.”

Jeff Waugh, a member of the Sydney, Australia, SLUG, agrees that the social aspect is valuable. “[It] is still important to the organic, high-value growth of the userbase, mingling of ideas, and opportunity for business connections.” It’s possible that the “social LUG thing” ends up being the default mode once all the excitement has died down.

“Our LUG doesn’t do a whole lot,” says longtime Tampa SLUG member Russell Hires. “We don’t really have a cool Web site. We don’t have presentations that often, that I’m aware of. I did one or two myself, but I admit I didn’t do a great job. We’ve done a few things in the past, but nothing really lately. We seem to have expertise, but no one with energy and experience and ability invests a whole lot in our LUG. I feel like we all wait for someone else to do something.”

Spry says he’s trying to spur more interest. “One trial balloon I floated recently was a merger between Linux and Mac user groups. I feel they have a lot in common now, and would be a stronger group together. Both groups seemed to warm to the idea, but it has gone nowhere. Apathy reigns supreme. It seems as if advocacy has become cliché.”

Some see the decline in interest as more of a shift in focus from the operating system to the applications that run on it — “showing applications, showing concepts, planting the seed of an idea for what someone who has just recently installed Linux can do,” says Gareth Greenaway, president of Simi Conejo Linux Users Group. Greenaway says the Simi LUG has seen lower numbers over the last several years, “mostly due to the lack of interesting topics at the meetings.” Farris says that ALE’s topics have “almost always been about an application that runs on Linux: Asterisk, MythTV, dosemu, Exchange replacements, TiVo.”

“I’ve never seen a LUG that was kernel-centric, they were always application centric,” says Terry Collins, a computer hardware consultant based in Australia.

Whatever LUGs are for, and wherever they are headed, no one really wants them to go away. “We still need LUGs,” Farris says. “They provide a place for professionals, students, and hobbyists to meet, discuss and network.”

Foster sums it up. “You’ve got a group of people who are generally extraordinary. They’re fairly knowledgeable about a pretty technical field. They’re generally courteous and good-humored and willing to help, for free. While we don’t all attend barbecues at each other’s houses, and we may not agree on politics or religion, we still can count on each other more or less as friends. That’s not a bad reason to have a group together.”

Free software fans around the world are forming local teams that will work together to create events specific to their localities, including educational seminars, product giveaways, and free software demonstrations. “The day is completely free and there will be giveaways, prizes, and further information about how you can do your bit to help ensure technology doesn’t act to lock down our human rights,” says Pia Waugh, the newly elected president of Software Freedom International (SFI), the official support organization for Software Freedom Day. Nine board members from around the world chart the course for current and future Freedom Days, facilitating team requests for organizational help and giveaway items such as T-shirts.

This year, teams and individuals can compete in categories like “Best Event Photo,” “Best SFD Blog Coverage,” and “Best SFD Event.” IBM is giving away five POWER5 servers to the top-winning teams, and individuals will get free Software Freedom Day T-shirts signed by board members.

Matt Oquist, an SFI board member and one of the founders of Software Freedom Day, says that response to this year’s SFD has been good. “In 2004 and 2005 we contacted LUGs via email to encourage them to start SFD teams,” he says, “but this year we just contacted the team leaders from [last year] and we still grew by approximately the same percentage.” Oquist says SFD is so much fun that people are naturally drawn to it. “It really charges up everybody involved. Immediately afterward we always get a bunch of feedback, emails, and pictures. Each successive SFD draws in more people who would’ve been involved the year before if they’d just known about it.”

Waugh says this year there are more than 150 teams so far, with more entries coming in every day. Each team consists of anywhere from two to 30 volunteers. Waugh says each team can reach up to 3,000 people with the message of free software, which is important, she says, because our lives revolve around technology. “This means ultimately our basic human freedoms such as the freedom of association, or the freedom of speech, are only as free as the technology we use to exercise those freedoms.”

For Oquist, SFD is about changing minds. “One important step on the road to Software Freedom is for a majority of the world to recognize the availability and quality of free software. People have been talking for years about the ‘year of Linux on the desktop.’ There are a multitude of factors affecting the delay of Linux desktop adoption, but one of the primary ones seems to be this chicken-and-egg problem. Nobody wants to be first. I’m hoping to see 10 years during which a tidal force sweeps through the world, decimating beyond recovery the degree of the proprietary stranglehold on computing freedom.”

The official deadline for registering teams for SFD has passed, but you are welcome to make a late entry, says Waugh, or simply join a nearby existing team. “Check out the Web site or a team near you, or even start an event yourself. It could be a barbecue, a picnic, an installfest, talks, competitions, whatever you like.” She stresses, “Freedom isn’t just for geeks. Freedom is for everyone.”

Svoboda, in making it his goal to better understand and care for the street people of Toronto, is thinking outside the box. In 2003, he launched a ground-breaking, and eyebrow-raising, new program at Seaton House, in conjunction with nearby St. Michael’s hospital, that allows the homeless to enter the program with their bottles, which are stored. Seaton workers then distribute small glasses of wine to the men on an hourly basis. This seems counterintuitive, but Svoboda says it actually reduces alcohol consumption and trades hard liquor for a more benign substance in a controlled environment. Getting them in the doors is the important part. Then, as the doctors and staff gain the clients’ trust, a lot of them drink less. Some of them even take further steps to recover from their illnesses and resume a normal life.

The initiative was reaching some men, but Svoboda knew it wouldn’t be enough. The program at Seaton was temporary, and most of the men went back to the streets and the deadly environment they call home. Sooner or later, they ended up at Seaton or St. Michael’s, where they were treated for whatever immediate problem had surfaced, and then released. With a vicious cycle of “treat, release, treat, release,” no one was getting the kind of long-term care and followup so desperately needed. Svoboda decided that what the local organizations needed was a system of coordination that would keep track of the men while still respecting their privacy and allowing them to maintain some control in their care.

Svoboda says he’s not particularly technology-savvy, so at first the system was strictly a paper trail. “We were doing it through paper forms and meetings with staff,” he says. “It worked, in the sense that the individual personalities involved were very enthusiastic, but the information flow was problematic.” It was tedious and time-consuming to fill out the forms every time a client came in, and depending on the severity of the situation, paperwork was less important than saving a life.

But the paper-based system was better than no system at all. The project was deemed successful by the city of Toronto, which asked Svoboda to begin a city-wide integration of what would soon be called the Shelter Hospital Integration Fusion and Evaluation (SHIFE). With several more institutions to coordinate, Svoboda realized that he needed more than paper. “We knew a lot of the work could be done more efficiently if we developed an information system. All the various tasks that need to be done, like ordering medicines and transcribing doctors’ orders, have to be done with limited staff, and we wanted to make it all streamlined.” Svoboda and his team tried to create a software application from scratch, but that effort fell apart because management at Seaton and St. Michael’s didn’t consider it a high priority. “It went belly up,” he says. “It was on volunteer time and we had volunteer developers. We made some requests for quotes from software developers, and they were $300-400K with $40K licensing fees. That was beyond anything we could do.”

SHIFE went to the city and asked for $1.7 million in funding. It took a long time to go through, and the program received only $700K, but that was enough to get started on a computerized system. Still, Svoboda didn’t want to spend all of SHIFE’s money on software development. He consulted with the developer who had volunteered his time to begin building the original system, Johan Macedo, who had since gotten a job coding for the city of Toronto. “He did a bunch of research on what the best options would be, and decided that the software he’d originally worked on was outdated,” Svoboda says. “He came across OSCAR, and said, ‘Why don’t we take this and build on it?’”

The Open Source Clinical Application Resource (OSCAR) began in 1988 as a simple DOS medical records system written by Dr. David Chan while he was a student at McGill University in Montreal. When Macedo found OSCAR, it had matured into a complete client-server application designed for the Linux operating system, and licensed under the terms of the GPL. “We met with David Chan and he got very excited,” Svoboda says. “We all thought this was going to be really great.” Macedo set about creating enhancements and modules on top of OSCAR.

With a new foundation to build on, Client Access to Integrated Services and Information (CAISI) was born as a new phase of Macedo’s project. “We’re still sorting out the branding of everything,” Svoboda says. Though CAISI remains a development project separate from OSCAR, “It’s all very collegial -– we see it all as contributing to OSCAR.” CAISI has spurred new activity in a true open source development project that is inviting developers to share their talents with a cause that hopes to do some real good in Toronto.

And this coding project is one that isn’t like to go “belly up” anytime soon. The new modules and functionality are opening up new distribution avenues for OSCAR. “What we’ve found is that the functionality we thought was very specific [to CAISI] turns out is very applicable in a doctor’s office too. We have a need to have case management for different programs so a client can have a record of care,” he says. “In a doctor’s office, they have different programs of care as well, perhaps with a dietitian or a nurse practitioner, or social work programs, and they want to keep track.”

He stresses that the software development is a subset of CAISI, which is itself a system of procedures to coordinate efforts between care providers. The technology is merely a means to an end -– but it is still an important means. “We have about six agencies using the software now,” Svoboda says. “We’re about to launch an integrator,” which is code that will allow all the agencies to refer clients between them. “Our aim is to have full integration by November or December, and to get further funding to continue development. If that doesn’t happen, we hope to have at least three solid months of operations.” With funds coming from the ministry of health, Svoboda is trying to get other cities involved, and is exploring the idea of “pay what you can” with some agencies. A customized version of the software will cost other agencies $15,000, plus another $2,500 for necessary hardware.

Svoboda says he is glad he discovered open source software. He had only heard of Linux before getting involved with this development project. “I’m a physician, I don’t follow this kind of stuff,” he says. “When Johan told us about this and we all got excited, I read the book The Cathedral and the Bazaar , and got so impressed by the whole movement and how it works. Since then, I’ve changed my browser to Mozilla, and I’m trying to get OpenOffice.org on my computer.” About the CAISI development project, he says, “It’s been working out so well. We’re all crazy open source freaks now.”

The current PC Garage, which began in March at the Asian Americans for Equality Community Technology Center, is scheduled to end this month. Normally, the PC Garage sessions run three months, but this workshop is going so well that the Center decided to extend it for an extra month. Eighteen students between the ages of 14 and 18 gather each week to tinker with computers, watch videos, and discuss articles, while DaSilva and his cohorts at CFSG go to great lengths to find hardware donors, collect the equipment, transport it to the community centers, format disks, update BIOS, and make sure each system is in working order for the eager pupils.

Why go to all that trouble? “It’s information they don’t get from the typical Community Technology Center programs,” DaSilva says. “The kids seem to get a lot out of it. The kids in our workshops not only learn about good software, but they learn how to identify and put together hardware. With free software, there is never any impediment to making the equipment useful.”

DaSilva says it makes him happy when he hears from previous students who are still using the computers they received at PC Garage. “We had two sisters who took our program,” he says, “and one of them recently started coming back to the center. She told me she is taking a Cisco routing class that her high school offers. She said because of our program the hardware stuff she doing is easy, but she is having trouble with the Windows stuff.”

But with all the knowledge participants gain about software and computer systems, DaSilva says the bottom-line benefit of the PC Garage workshops is that “participants learn about technology that respects their freedom.” And the workshops help more than just the young people who attend them. “We’re trying to help out with computer recycling,” he says. “New York City has a lot of equipment that gets discarded as trash by residents or donated by large companies looking to upgrade their facilities.”

Since CFSG depends on donations to make its programs run, DaSilva says the group is always looking for spare computer systems and RAM. But it also takes manpower to keep CFSG going. “Though we occasionally solicit help from acquaintances, we haven’t formally made any public requests for participation,” DaSilva says. “CFSG is looking to build solid infrastructure; if someone volunteers their time and supports our mission we’d consider asking them to join our Board of Directors.”

The CFSG BoD has grown from the original four to a total of six, with assistance from the “non-profit world, like Elizabeth Wilson of AAFE and local businessmen, like Alex Pilosov of Pilosoft Colocation Services,” DaSilva says. “It seems like the idea of helping community service organization offer free software-based programs was just waiting to happen.”

CFSG is putting together a program that will help high school students learn programming concepts, and it currently offers a 3-D animation course using Blender3D. “We’re [also] putting together graphics workshops featuring the GIMP and Inkscape, as well as an audio editing course with Audacity.”

If you’re interested in helping CFSG bring free software to the communities of NYC, write to info@cfsg.org.