It takes a while to get the hang of Twitter. For a first time user, it is not obvous how to use Twitter effectively. I have a few friends who are somewhat active on Facebook, but have inactive Twitter accounts. This post is an attempt to compare Facebook and Twitter, show how Twitter is different, and hopefully convince some of my friends to be active Twitter users.

Facebook is a social network with a lot more features than the simple Twitter. Other than that, I see one major difference between the two. On Facebook one can add another user as a friend only with that user’s authorization. The default behavior on Twitter is to let anyone follow anyone else’s updates. This fundamental difference has resulted in me using these two social networks in two different ways. Majority of my friends on Facebook are my existing friends. I have made very few new contacts using Facebook. I use Facebook mainly to keep in touch with my existing friends. The conversation there is casual.

I use Twitter differently. Only a few of the people I follow on Twitter were known to me before.
On Twitter, I follow a lot of people in the software industry. Although I Tweet about personal activities, the focus of my tweets has mainly been on Software Engineering related topics. I find Twitter a great way to learn about software engineering or any other specific topics of interest.

There is a lot of interesting and well-known people on Twitter. Here’s a list of Twitter users worth following:

Well known personalities in the software industry

• Kent Beck
• Martin Fowler
• Ron Jeffries
• Tim O’Reilly
• Ward Cunningham

Other well known Twitter users I follow

• David Allen
• Guy Kawasaki
• Jack Welch
• Stephen Covey
• Tony Robbins

Enrich your Twitter experience using TweetDeck

Although you can always use the simple web interface given by Twitter, you can have a richer experience by using a client like TweetDeck, which is my favorite Twitter client.

TweetDeck is an Adobe Air application and you can install it in a few minutes. It allows you to group tweets. For example you can have a group of favorite users, or have another group with tweets on Twitter that has the words “Unit Testing”. I find this very useful as it’s a great way to know what’s happening right now related to a particular key word.

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I switched from Windows XP on my laptop to the free and open source Ubuntu Linux (vrsion 8.04) about an year ago. Before that I was frustrated with Windows more than once. There were occasional crashings and subsequent loss of data, increased slowness, and vulnerability to viruses. Getting used to Ubuntu was easy, and I could find free and open source software for Ubuntu that met my needs. On Ubnutu, I can do almost everything I did on Windows, and more with less disruptions to my work.

As a beneficiary of “free” and “open source” software, I thought of tracing its history.

Free Software

Let’s try to understand what “free” software is from a layman’s perspective.  In the following video, Stephen Fry presents the argument: if you  own your house, you can improve the plumbing or do any changes you want. Why can’t you do the same to software. Why can’t the community alter and improve software? That is how science works. All knowledge is free all knowledge is shared.

Now let’s look at a more formal definition of free software by Richard Stallman, the president of the Free Software Foundation (http://www.fsf.org/)

Note, the word “free” here means “free” as in free speech, “free” not as in free beer.

Stallman lists the following freedoms that software should have:

• Freedom 0 - Freedom to run the program however you wish
• Freedom 1 - Freedom to study source code and change it to do what you wish
• Freedom 2 - Freedom to distribute copies of the program as you wish
• Freedom 3 - Freedom to distribute modified copies as you wish

According to Stallman, if one of the freedoms is missing, it’s proprietary software; it should not exist; we should reject proprietary software, and replace its unjust social system with the ethical social system of free software.

Is proprietary software really evil and should we reject them?

The argument is that knowledge (like science) should be shared. Good scientists share knowledge, and all knowledge is open and free.

However, software is also a business. Had it not been a business, software may not have advanced to where it is now. Let’s for a moment look at the analogy of buying a car. What if the buyer could replicate the car and freely distribute clones. If it were possible, the auto industry would collapse. Therefore, if we allow the sharing of software, the business model of selling or renting software would fail. The ability to easily replicate software mandates this restriction of freedom.

Could there be a better software business model that allows freedom, as well as generates revenue. Yes. The commercial value in the software industry has started to move from the product to related services like technical support, trainings, customizations of the product.

“…  software itself is no longer the primary locus of value in the computer industry. The commoditization of software drives value to services enabled by that software. New business models are required. “ - Open Source Paradigm Shift

In my view, in the coming years, we will see a competion between these two business models. In some cases, proprietary software would find it difficult to compete with free and open source software with large developer communities, and service based business models, while in some other cases community based open source software that fail to attract large developer communities could lag behind proprietary software. My view is that free and open source software and proprietary software could co-exisit to provide maximum value to consumers.

Open Source

Now let’s look at how the term “Open Source” originated.

“The Open Source Initiative is a marketing program for free software. It’s a pitch for “free software” on solid pragmatic grounds rather than ideological tub-thumping. The winning substance has not changed, the losing attitude and symbolism have.” - Producing Open Source Software , Karl Fogel (http://producingoss.com/)

The difficulty to market “Free” software in the business world resulted in the origination of the term “Open Source”.  However it has resulted in some friction between the Free Software movement and the Open Source movement.

The following videos discuss the switch to open source.

Related videos: Revolution OS

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