Found Line Software License

See Found Line Software License at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

We recently made the strategic decision to license all software developed by Found Line under the New BSD License. This is a free/open source software license meaning that our clients will have the four freedoms as outlined by the Free Software Foundation. Basically, this means that clients are free "to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software" that we develop for them. The New BSD License also gives our clients another, more controversial, "freedom": the "freedom" to turn the free/open source software we have licensed to them into proprietary, non-free/non-open source software. This is a "freedom" we hope is not exercised but is something we understand may be important to our clients.

We made this decision for several reasons. We are strong believers in the free/open source software movement. To us, this means not just using free/open source software but also contributing to free/open source software. While this software is currently only licensed to individual clients, we plan on licensing specific components publicly in the future (and, of course, individual clients currently have the right to do this as well). For now, this decision makes it really easy for us to publicly release specific components to the community as it makes sense.

Many of our web applications are built using existing libraries, Zend Framework being the most common. Zend Framework is also licensed under the New BSD License so this provides consistent licensing for our clients. Also, I would like our business to contribute back to Zend Framework and this license parity helps make this simpler.

This licensing allows us to give our clients the most freedom while still protecting our right to reuse individual components (which helps keep costs down). We are in the business of creating value for our clients and are not interested in locking them into proprietary software contracts. This licensing gives our clients many options such as switching to another vendor in the future or even bringing web development work in-house. If clients are going to pay us to develop, maintain, or extend their web applications we want this to be because we're the best team for the job — not because they don't have a choice due to vendor lock-in.

VSA Arts of Vermont Website

See VSA Arts of Vermont Website at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

We recently launched the updated VSA Arts of Vermont website. Since VSA Arts of Vermont's mission is to make "the world of the arts accessible to Vermonters of all abilities" it was critical that their new website be accessible. This was a challenge we readily accepted as web accessibility is something we take very seriously.

Web accessibility is fairly straightforward if you take a content-first approach and focus on web standards. The real challenge is doing this and making a great looking website that doesn't have to compromise on functionality. We accomplished this by using semantic XHTML that contains enough structure to stand on its own without any visual representation. Then, this content was stylized using CSS. Finally, some behavior was added using unobtrusive JavaScript (using jQuery). This concept is called progressive enhancement. The final result is a great looking and very functional website that is accessible to all users.

Proprietary Skype

See Proprietary Skype at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

Peter Saint-Andre (Executive Director of the XMPP Standards Foundation) has pointed out the Free Software Foundation's recent addition of a "Free software replacement for Skype" to its list of High Priority Free Software Projects:

Skype is a proprietary Voice-over-IP program that uses a proprietary protocol. Skype is seducing free software users into using proprietary software, often two users at a time. We do not want to encourage the creation of a Skype compatible client, but instead, we want to encourage you to create, contribute to, or promote the use of free software alternatives to Skype, such as Ekiga, and to encourage to adoption and use of free VoIP, video, and chat protocols such as SIP and XMPP/Jingle.

I have long been annoyed by Skype's closed platform and have refused to use it despite its popularity. Skype users can only communicate with other Skype users (or PSTN users through SkypeOut) because they do not use an open standard and do not federate with other VoIP providers. This destroys much of the value proposition of using VoIP and ultimately reduces VoIP (in people's minds) to simply "free/cheap phone calls." In other words, Skype is helping to hold back an entire industry from innovating.

At Found Line, we use two open VoIP standards: XMPP and SIP. Google Talk provides our XMPP service (through Google Apps) and is used mainly for internal communications. However, Google Talk is connected to the public XMPP network so, just like with email, we can communicate with anyone else using the same standards. Junction Networks provides us with very reliable SIP hosting and allows us to communicate (at no cost) with anyone on any public SIP network. They also provide us with a PSTN gateway (so that we can make "normal" phone calls) and a hosted PBX (auto attendant, unlimited extensions, etc.) all at a very reasonable price.

ZendCon Summary

See ZendCon Summary at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

Rafael Dohms has posted a good summary of ZendCon '08. He touches on several topics including performance, testing and code analysis, PHP's integration with other technologies, Zend Framework, and some interesting things to look forward to in 2009 including Ibuildings' PHP Center of Expertise.

Orange Mountain/True Soap Website Launched

See Orange Mountain/True Soap Website Launched at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

We just launched the Orange Mountain/True Soap website. Jason and Dave did a great job on the design and Liz did a fabulous job getting all of the content organized! Although there's no real functionality at the moment, it's built using Zend Framework so that we can add features later. There's an article in the Burlington Free Press today about the company and product if you're interested.

Don't Vote

See Don't Vote at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

Google Customer Service?

See Google Customer Service? at its new home on bradley-holt.com.

My customer service experience with Google rivals my experience with Verizon Wireless for winner of the "worst customer support possible" award. Verizon Wireless would not let me pay them more money for a service with more minutes without forcing me into a contract. After many phone calls I finally got the privilege of spending more money with them. I was able to wrangle some choice quotes from the Verizon Wireless customer service representative such as "marketing doesn't talk to customers." Apparently at Google, customer service doesn't talk to customers.

Let me start at the beginning (since that's usually a good place to start). We decided to use Google Checkout and Google Checkout Shopping cart for one of our client's projects. The reason was that they needed it done quickly, they were only selling a handful of products, and a full shopping cart seemed like overkill. One of the products they were offering was a donation on behalf of a non-profit.

Three days ago our client got an email from Google Checkout support indicating that soliciting donations is against their policies unless you are a non-profit. Google indicated that they had removed the Checkout badges from our client's AdWords ads but did not say anything about suspending their account. We immediately removed the donation item so as to reinstate the Checkout badges and not risk having the client's account suspended. At this time we verified that the the Google Checkout account was still working and had not been suspended.

Yesterday I sent an email to Google Checkout support asking if there was any way our client could collect these donations on behalf of a non-profit. I clearly indicated that we had already removed the offending item from the website. This morning I received a response that did not answer my questions, but instead said "We were unable to verify your organization's tax exempt status. As a result, your Google Checkout account has been suspended."

Our client never claimed to be a non-profit. We immediately removed the donation item in order to comply with Google Checkout policies once this issue was brought to our attention. Only after we had removed the donation item was our client's account suspended.

I immediately emailed back to support explaining everything above and asking them to reinstate the account. This is a micro-site for a nationally known brand and is part of a larger campaign. Not being able to accept orders is a big problem. In the last eight hours I have sent seventeen emails to support and have yet to receive a response. I have also posted a message to the Google Group with no official response yet. If the lack of response is because the support department is closed, then why did they suspend the account of a nationally known brand while support was closed without first double-checking that that policy violation was still in place?

We went so far as to try and call the corporate number. The absurdity of that phone call was beyond imaginable. We explained the problem and the Google representative said we needed to know the first and last name of the person we wanted to talk to. Of course, the email we had received from support about the account suspension only had a first name. They would not forward us to a department either. When we asked for the Google representative's name we were told, "I'm not authorized to give you that information." When we asked to speak to their supervisor we were told, "I'm not authorized to transfer you to a supervisor. You need to have their first name and last name." This was after we had said, "Don't you know your supervisor's name?" We were told to wait for an email reply. I'm still waiting.

Google Checkout is a service that Google offers to businesses. This is not a consumer-oriented service. It is completely ridiculous to expect businesses to use your service if this is the type of support that is offered. Google, fix your customer service - it is completely broken!

One last message for Google: I didn't take "no" for an answer from Verizon Wireless, in my opinion one of the most evil companies around. I called them again and again until they bent the rules on their asinine policy. Do you think I'm going to stop hounding the company that claims, "Don't be evil?" Wake up call: your lack of customer service for business customers is downright evil. I have been a Google evangelist for many years and this experience has been a huge slap in the face from a company that I thought was different.