If you can’t say anything constructive…
Comments(14) Something I’ve noticed a lot recently, amongst the IT/Open Source crowd (not specifically geospatial), is the inability to answer a question in a constructive manner, if it can be answered in a “well you shouldn’t use that piece of software” kind of way. This drives me to utter distraction, as it’s not only pretty useless to the person asking the question, if they actually have a problem that they want to resolve, but it also creates a really bad impression.
Example 1- I have recently been investigating how to convert from Open Office Base files to Microsoft Access. The standard answers have ranged from “well get the other person to install open office”, to “why would you want to do that, freak!”. Now, consider the motivation of the person asking the question. They have already decided to give Open Office a try, but are aware that (shock!) not everyone uses it. They don’t want to cause trouble for their colleagues, and perhaps they don’t want to give the impression that Open Office Base is in some way limited. So- how useful is it to get the answers above?
Example 2- We often get questions about how to convert from some totally random file (usually a docx) that someone has received in their email, to something our staff can actually use. Standard answers have been “well, don’t use Microsoft Office 2007 in the first place”, to “tell the client to send you the file in a different format”. Again, consider the motivation. Our staff member is stuck with a file that they need to do their job, in a format that they can’t read. Potentially they can’t do their job until the file is converted. In this case, I can see the merit in trying to persuade the staff member and/or client to think about the formats that they send files in, but on the other hand, it’s a bit like one of the Harry Enfield characters, and doesn’t help them with their immediate problem in the slightest.
I appreciate that often the motivation behind these comments is a genuine desire to get people to use interoperable software, and a frustration that people don’t always do this. However, is it too far-fetched to think that you might help your cause more if you are helpful and constructive? To paraphrase my nan (and probably every one else’s too): If you can’t say anything constructive, don’t say anything at all…
read your post before i left for work this morning, on my drive this http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=100763005 story on ‘snark’ and snarky comments came on the radio – thought i’d share as they’re a bit similar.
I agree completely:
http://postgis.refractions.net/pipermail/postgis-users/2008-June/020359.html
Follow the thread – especially when you find out what the actual problem was.
I have also noticed this from all sides, along with some evidently unwritten rule that, in the blogosphere/twitterverse/et cetera, one MUST be a cynical commentator about whatever topic-du-jour.
I try to be platform-agnostic, vendor-neutral, but in many instances, it’s just a matter of fact that you HAVE to work with what’s already there. And then, similar to your experience, I so often get “*ugh*, why are you using ESRI” and so on – to which I just nod and grin. Sorry, guy – but you are seriously barking at the moon if you think you are going to change every part of some agency of over 10,000 to Open Source overnight, doesn’t matter how great you are. One has to pick and choose battles in order to win the war.
Or, I get, “*ugh*, why would you want to mess with integrating WxS services.” Well, because they aren’t mine, but I need to consume them regardless, and I don’t have budget, time or resources to rebuild them as I fancy. Or, alternately, in the case of building WxS services, perhaps I need to build something to feed into a client that in some instance can only consume WxS.
Or the old *nix vs. MSFT debates, for the sheer sake of ideology alone. Well, some of my software doesn’t run on *nix and I don’t have the luxury of writing something to take its place from scratch.
It usually just leaves me thinking that these folks work in tiny shops, on a project-by-project basis, with a very limited number of stakeholders, and a whole lot more free time on their hands than I do.
So just take a deep breath, grin, nod, and carry on.
Hi Jo,
Did you solve your problems converting Base to Access? If not you could try this:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=2078
I’m surprised there isn’t some kind of export/import tool to cover this, but maybe I’m spoiled by using Oracle RDBMS for years, although converting to CSV as an intermediate format usually seems to work pretty much anywhere.
I sympathise with your general point, which I suspect has at least something to do with the fact that some of the noisier OS advocates are simply the kind of people who care passionately about software and spend just a little too much time on their own with their computers. And as Dave says, some people don’t appreciate the issues involved in commercial IT away from the home hacking box.
But you at OA surely know better than most that much of the time OS people are pretty helpful and eager to encourage the kind of constructive attitudes you describe. That’s certainly my own (limited) experience of asking for help with OS, not least with all the helpful comments I got from you guys for my MSc last summer (thanks again!).
Even Bruce’s PostGIS thread shows that most responses were helpful, constructive and positive, and one snitty comment got stomped on pretty quickly and the poster apologised. Pretty civilised by the standards of the web, I’d say.
And it’s not just the OS people who can be a little snitty at times:
http://linuxhaters.blogspot.com/
I’ve seen plenty of sneering comments on the web about “freetards”, especially in the GIS world, where many people are still strongly committed to big vendors for all kinds of reasons. True, the Stallman Fringe may be dominant in the blogosphere, but they’re hardly dominating the discourse in mainstream commercial IT after all.
Anyway, the unhelpful responses work both ways: try asking a lot of people using proprietary software to comment on OS interoperability questions, and you’ll often get a blank stare “Huh? Why would you use that instead of super-expensive product X?” or a sales call from some marketing department telling you the answer to all your problems is the very latest release of product X, which is competitively priced at only 10% more than the previous version.
Fundamentally, pehaps the problem is just the nature of the web: in cyberspace, nobody can hear you scream, because nobody ever listens in the first place…
I’ve noticed this over many years of involvement in open source projects (particularly on mailing lists and IRC channels). Unlike other socially awkward interactions online, the same behaviour occurs during real world interactions.
I wish I had a solution, but I only agree that it’s unconstructive, and add that it actively drives people away from the projects that should nuture and appreciate approaches from newbies and supporters.
often we have no choice but to use microsoft etc as is the case at most universities. As we are on a network and not allowed access to install anything at all, we have to use what we have access to, so in order to share/disseminate we have to rely on the default file settings and as they are standard across the board, assume the person on the other end can open it.
Also from another angle, the open source gurus need to watch how they promote the products, I gave a paper at this years TAG as did an open source fan, he told us we could not do archaeology if we only use proprietary software as it was not designed for archaeologists! Well all that did was cause a big argument and ruin the session. Thats ok for CAA but not TAG, see my thread if you want to read more
http://www.medievalarchitecture.net/blog/index.php/2008/12/reflecting-on-tag-30/
“Thats ok for CAA but not TAG, see my thread if you want to read more”
I’m confused – why would talking about computational archaeological theory be better at CAA rather than TAG?
Thanks all for your comments!
@chrisw: Thanks for the link- I have seen various options for converting simple or single-table databases from base to access, but for complicated multi-table databases this is going to take some time, and will break any relationships. Strangely, there is a feature-request for this- but no one seems to think it’s important, which is weird because I think it puts people off making the move away from Microsoft.
@richie: hmmm, this is complicated. Actually I agree partially with Joseph, in that I don’t believe you can do real science (not just archaeology) with proprietary software, but I’m not sure it’s for the same reasons…
My reason is that to do proper science, someone else should be able to take your starting conditions, follow the same analysis and produce the same results, otherwise the veracity of the results cannot be tested. If the middle of that process says “we put the data into a black box and got some results out” then you’ll be laughed out of town. If you use proprietary software to do your analysis, you don’t have all the information about the algorithms used to perform that calculation, because you don’t have access to the source code- there’s your black box. Someone else can’t exactly reproduce the analysis without using the identical software- what if the results are flawed because there’s a bug in the software?
With archaeology, we can’t faithfully reproduce the initial data gathering process (because we’ve already dug up the site and built houses on it) but we should be able to reproduce every step of the ensuing analytical process- so we should be using open source software.
Getting data out of OpenOffice Base using JDBC will allow you to write a Java program to copy the data into your target database on a table-by-table basis at least, based on the instructions in the following very helpful post:
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/viewtopic.php?p=56868#p56868
Go to the entry: “Re: OpenOffice.org Base HSQLDB External Connection by hol.sten on Sat Nov 15, 2008 1:45 pm”
These instructions tell you how to get a standard HSQLDB out of your OO Base DB, set it up to run using HSQLDB in server mode, then access the DB via JDBC using the HSQLDB manager program. Once you can do this, you can use the same JDBC settings to access the database from any Java application. This in turn should allow you to build some Java code to read the data from your HSQLDB and write it to any JDBC-compliant target database. So provided you can talk to your MS Access DB using JDBC, this should work. As an Oracle developer, this is all a bit low-tech for me, but I’ve tried reading a sample table from OO Base using JDBC in this way and it seems to work fine.
Of course, this is not exactly a convenient export/import routine, and may not be any easier than exporting to CSV then re-importing to Access, but it might at least allow you to use some proper DB tools and maintain key relationships etc in the process. Also, once you can read your data from HSQLDB, it might be there are some easier export/import routines available too.
For example:
http://www.razorsql.com/features/hsqldb_export.html
Hope this helps!
@ChrisW, Wow, thanks, and sorry for the delay in responding- I have had a break from work (and pcs) for a week or so. This might well be something we can build on to try and get a decent base-access exporter- I still find it weird that the developers don’t think it’s important…
Well, I suppose the idea is that once you’ve got a normal HSQLDB out of Base, you can use any JDBC-compliant tool to do the job anyway. But it’s hardly the sort of thing the average OpenOffice user will want to try. They should at least provide a simple “export as HSQLDB” option to get the database out without all the messing around with files. Still, you could always contribute your own Base-Access exporter to the OO project, eh?
)
There are loads of open-source Java/JDBC SQL tools around e.g.
http://java-source.net/open-source/sql-clients
One of these may well provide the import-export tools you’re looking for.
OK, I’ll shut up about databases now.
And here’s an example of a constructive answer to your example question:
You probably already know this, but to enable pre-2007 versions of Word to open Word 2007 files, they can install the Office Compatibility Pack, available for download at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/default.aspx – It is the #1 popular download.
Thanks John- I’d somehow not thought of the Office Compatibility pack! We’re mostly an Open Office organisation, so this issue comes around more often with Access than Word, but it’s worth knowing about such things.
Jo