Writings

This section collects some early blog posts and forum postings, as well as other material published in other contexts.

Physics

• “Computation of Differential Inverse Mean Free Paths, Inverse Mean Free Paths and Stopping Powers for Electrons in Liquid Water” (1977). This is the earliest thing I wrote that still survives, a final paper written for a college semester I spent working at the Health Physics Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Internet, community networks, and miscellany

These documents date from the early 1990s, when I became seriously interested in and involved with the Internet (pre-Web).

• “Advice for Community Network System Designers” (1994). This outlines some general principles to follow in designing community networks, based on my experience as the administrator of the CapAccess system.
• “Community Network Services” (1994). An uncompleted draft attempt at a classification of the various types of services a community network might offer.
• “Personal Internet Access Using SLIP or PPP” (1995). An early non-technical overview of how you can use SLIP or PPP to access the Internet from your home PC or Mac (also available in an HTML version). A somewhat modified version of this paper was included as a chapter in the book Internet Secrets from IDG.
• “Info-Won’ts, or Success for (Computer) Dummies (1995). This piece was originally written as a post to the Hotwired forums in response to a post on the topic of whether inequal access to technology (e.g., home computers, Internet access),would reinforce existing social and economic inequalities, and, if so, what (if anything) government should do about it.
• “The Role of the Reader in ‘Way New Journalism’” (1995). Another HotWired forum post from 1995, this one was written in response to the idea (promoted by Josh Quittner under the buzzphrase “way new” journalism) that digital media will drastically change the way that journalism operates.
• “What ‘sales engineers’ do” (2000). The original version of this piece (titled “What systems engineers do”) was written to accompany my biography on my personal website, to explain what kind of work I did.

Netscape, Mozilla, and open source

These documents span the years during which I worked for Netscape, got involved in open source-related activities, and then worked with open source personally as a Mozilla project volunteer and professionally at CollabNet. (I subsequently joined the Mozilla Foundation; see the “mozilla” tag for what I wrote while I worked there.)

• “Netscape Source as Netscape Product” is an memo I wrote to argue for Netscape releasing the source code of its software. It’s been cited as having influenced Netscape’s decision to release Netscape Communicator as open source (see for example chapter 14 of the book Speeding the Net), although note that my proposal was actually to commercially license the source code under liberal terms, and provide it at no charge for noncommercial use—somewhat analogous to the way Netscape licensed the Netscape Navigator and Netscape Communicator binary distributions.
• “Setting Up Shop: The Business of Open-Source Software” (1998). A flawed attempt to explore the business aspects of open-source software, based on the Netscape memo. Although it assumed a true open-source model, it suffered from the same limited perspective as the Netscape memo. In particular, I did not then understand what the real driving force behind open source would be, namely its role in providing basic infrastructure for Internet-based services (Google, Facebook, etc.).
• An abridged version of the “Setting Up Shop” paper was published in the January/February 1999 issue of IEEE Software magazine. Since then it’s been cited several hundred times by other papers—a classic example of a paper cited because it was one of the first on the topic, rather than because it was actually correct.
• The “Mozilla Crypto FAQ” (2000). An attempt to explain the intricacies of U.S. export controls on cryptographic software and how they affected Netscape’s release of Netscape Communicator source code.
• “Overview of U.S. Encryption Export Regulations (2000).“ An almost-complete draft of a more detailed piece discussing US encryption export regulations.
• “Analysis of Proposed Changes to U.S. Encryption Export Regulations” (2000). A draft companion piece to the previous one.
• “Successful Open Source Collaboration: The Mozilla Experience” (2001). A presentation I gave while working at Collab.Net, a startup focused on assisting corporations who wanted to do open source (or open source-like) development.
• “Open Source Licensing (and Beyond)” (2001). Another Collab.Net presentation, this one explaining the basics of open source licensing.

I replaced my original personal website with a Blosxom-driven site in 2004. All my writings since then can be found in this site’s archives, except for the books Dividing Howard and That Type of Girl.