Help for coping with bad bosses

A few weeks ago, my colleague Edward Correia struck a nerve with his Feb. 22 Test/QA Report essay about team leaders behaving badly. We got some great letters from readers, some of which I included in my blog entry on the subject.

Now, in yesterday’s Test & QA Report, Eddie has gone a step beyond merely publishing some of those letters. In “No Shortage of Bad Leaders Out There,” he ran some of the most egregious reader responses past Dr. Linda Burrs (pictured), an expert in organizational leadership and management. She offers comments and guidance on their specific situations.

However: Dr. Burrs points out (and I agree), that things aren’t always what they may seem to be: Bad boss behavior does not always appear in a vacuum. “It’s important to note, Burrs says, that some unpleasant work situations are the result not of a boss behaving badly, but might be representative of a boss behaving negatively to an employee behaving badly.”

Thanks, Eddie, for a great follow-up newsletter.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Good crop of winners in Eclipse Community Awards

Yesterday was the first day of EclipseCon, and I spent the afternoon in the Annual General Meeting of Eclipse Membership. This is where you hear people like Mike Milinkovich discuss the plans for the Foundation moving forward. New members are also introduced around, there are discussions of marketing, and so-on.

An important part of the meeting was a discussion of the forthcoming Europa “simultaneous release,” scheduled for June 29. According to Bjorn Freeman-Benson, Europa is on track. Milestone 5 came out on Feb. 24, and Milestone 6, which locks down the APIs, is set for Apr. 7. Currently, there are 25 projects set for inclusion in the Europa event; that’s an ever-changing number.

There was a bit of unexpected news: Skip McGaughey, one of the prime movers of the Eclipse movement, will be retiring from the Eclipse Foundation at the end of May. He was given a great T-shirt that said something like, “I helped create a multi-billion-dollar ecosystem and all I got was a lousy T-shirt.”

The Members Meeting often includes interesting talks by outside experts, and yesterday was no exception. There were two this year. Brent C. Williams, a financial analyst, talked about the evolution of the open source business model. James Governor, a principal at analyst firm Redmonk, shared his advice for future directions of the Eclipse community.

After the Members Meeting ended, it was time for the second annual Eclipse Community Awards; as one of the judges, I was asked to participate in the ceremony.

The winners fell into two broad categories: individuals within the Eclipse community; these were chosen by ballot; and products/companies, chosen by outside judges (like me).

The Individual Award Winners this year were:

Top Ambassador: Chris Aniszczyk
Top Contributor: Kimberley Peter and Tom Schindl (tie)
Top Committer: Ed Merks
Top Newcomer Evangelist: Daniel Megert

The Technology Awards went to:

Best Open Source RCP application: PSICAT
Best Commercial RCP application: TIBCO Business Studio
Best Open Source Eclipse-based Developer tool: eclipse-cs Checkstyle Plugin
Best Commercial Eclipse-based Developer tool: QNX Momentics IDE
Best Deployment of Eclipse technology in an enterprise: JPMorgan Chase

Congratulations to the winners! I’ll be back down at EclipseCon again today.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

EclipseCon without the NetBeans Girls

A couple of weeks ago, I joined a petition started by Ian Skerrett, director of marketing for the Eclipse Foundation, urging Sun to send its NetBeans Girls to EclipseCon this year. Sun brought the young emissaries to the conference next year, where they were welcomed in good cheer by EclipseCon attendees.

Given that both Eclipse and NetBeans are open-source software development platforms that primarily benefit Java developers, I was glad that Sun was engaging in some good-natured fun. After all, whether developers are using Eclipse or NetBeans, the odds are good that they’re using Sun’s Java platform.

However, it doesn’t look like Sun wants to play this year. According to Roumen Strobl (pictured), a member of Sun’s evangelism team, “I discussed this issue with my manager and we can send NetBeans girls to EclipseCon if you will cover all the expenses connected with this trip,” including accommodation, meals and other related expenses.

That’s a pity. I’ll be at EclipseCon most of this week, and hope to see you there, perhaps at my session, “Working with IT Press,” on Thursday.

Separately, Sun has announced a NetBeans Software Day at its JavaOne conference. NetBeans Software Day will be on Monday, May 7. I’ll be there as well. I wonder if Ian will send some Eclipse Girls (or Eclipse Boys) to NetBeans Software Day?

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

Cigital’s modern-day Justice League

The principal techies at software security company Cigital have started an intriguing new blog called Justice League. Gary McGraw, Cigital’s CTO, described the blog to me as “an eclectic collection of opinions about software security and software quality.” That certainly fits the first few postings (the blog started on Tuesday, Feb. 20), which were a combination of discussing Cigital’s security solutions and thoughtful tech-talk about things like Sarbanes-Oxley and Service Oriented Architecture.

The full team of bloggers are Gary (pictured), Pravir Chandra, Scott Matsumoto, Sammy Migues, Craig Miller and John Steven. That’s a pretty solid crop of experts. Gary, in fact, is the keynote speaker at the 4th Software Security Summit, April 16-17 in San Mateo.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick

SCO’s mixed results and wasted opportunities

The latest financials for the SCO Group show that the company’s revenues continue to shrink. For their first fiscal quarter of 2007, which ended on January 31, SCO reported gross revenue of US$6,015,000, compared to $7,343,000 from same quarter of the previous fiscal year. That’s a fall of 18 percent.

However, SCO seems to have slowed the bottom-line hemorrhage. For the first quarter, the losses were $(1,024,000), instead of $($4,581,000) from the same quarter in 2006.

A statement from Darl McBride, SCO’s president and CEO, attributed the declining revenues to “continued competitive pressures” on the company’s Unix products and services. The smaller-than-expected losses were attributed to a significant decrease in litigation costs against IBM and Novell – legal fees were only $654,000 for the first quarter of 2007, compared to $4,010,000 for the first quarter of 2006.

When you consider that SCO not only offers a decent operating system in its Unix distribution, and also has released some truly innovative solutions for mobile computing, such as its new HipCheck software, one can’t help but feel a sense of a wasted opportunity. If only SCO had decided to compete in the marketplace of ideas, instead of trying to litigate its way to a quick fortune, the company might have been a profitable powerhouse and McBride would have been hailed as a visionary leader. Instead, SCO is a failure, and McBride is a pariah. It’s truly a waste. But, by focusing on the courts instead of focusing on creating great products for his customers, McBride brought it on himself.

The best that we can hope for is that when SCO collapses, its products will be acquired (at fire-sale prices) by other companies who can make them successful in the market.

The March 15, 2007, issue of SD Times has some compelling coverage of SCO, and predictions about its future from some leading analysts. You’ll enjoy reading it.

Z Trek Copyright (c) Alan Zeichick