Author Archives: Chris

My Paleo Success Story

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I never thought I’d post a weight loss success story. Why would anyone care? However, with my ninja post, I made the decision to start putting more stuff out there. I imagine at the very least that some of my friends and family would enjoy the writing. Heck, if even one person finds a post interesting, useful, or inspiring, it was worth the effort to write.

I don’t have any of those semi-nude cell phone bathroom mirror pictures taken before I started losing weight, because there was never a day when I said I was starting this journey. My first drivers license, at the age of 16, listed my weight as 165 pounds. Over the years, through college and my various jobs as a computer programmer, I gained weight slowly. I always told myself that I’d start eating better and would start going to the gym on a regular basis. I won’t go any more into the entire history of my weight loss, since I already wrote about it during Mark Sisson’s last Primal Challenge.

chris_pre_paleoOf course, not having taken a picture of myself doesn’t mean that I don’t have any pre-Paleo pictures. A few weeks ago, while I was watching people make New Years resolutions, I lamented on Twitter that I didn’t have any “before” pictures. Mere minutes later I received an email from my dad with the photo to the right, taken in April 2007, a month after moving into my new house. Gee, thanks, Dad.

I always knew I was over-weight, but I never looked at myself and thought I was fat. I’m looking at myself now and thinking, “Wow, I was fat.” I must have realized it at the time, because I started keeping track of my weight, on a semi-regular weekly basis, in May 2007. According to my records, I peaked at 225 pounds. At first, losing weight wasn’t easy. But then I had two breakthroughs. The first was in mid-2008 when my wife was diagnosed with gestational diabetes and we both limited carbohydrates in our diets. The second was in March 2010 when I went Paleo. This second breakthrough is clearly visible in the chart.

weight_chart_jan2011

About five years ago I started studying again at the karate dojo at which I originally earned my black belt, when I was 18 years old. Shortly after I left for college and karate became one of those things I’d “get back to eventually.” Well, 10 years passed before I finally did. Unfortunately, when I pulled out my old gi, it didn’t fit. I had to order a new gi in a larger size. I never liked this new gi, because, while it fit my rotund physique, it was clearly too large for me. But it worked, and after a couple of years I earned my second degree black belt. However, as I approached my third degree test, I set my first goal. I would get my weight to 180 and buy myself a new gi.

I finally reached 180 in November 2010, but it wasn’t enough. I looked at myself and decided that my waist circumference was still too large to justify buying any new clothes. So I kept going.

As I write this, I weigh in at 172 pounds. I’ve had to buy new pants for the cold weather and I’m just barely keeping my old shorts up with a belt cinched to the last hole. Last weekend I decided that, as a late birthday present to myself, I could buy a new gi.

As I shopped online, I realized that I had never gotten rid of my old gi, the one I wore in high school when I earned my black belt. I dug it out of the garage, tried it on, and it fit. I was ecstatic (and I saved some money). Being able to fit into something old like this is even better than buying something new (don’t worry, I’ll be doing that soon enough). It’s amazingly motivating, too. I remember five years ago, struggling to get through my kata and sucking wind during bag drills, hating every minute. Now both are so much easier and I love doing them.

Here are the closest things I have to before and after pictures. On the left, taken in July 2008, I’m wearing the one-size-too-large gi. On the right, my 17 year old gi, which I’m much more comfortable wearing.

chris_pre_paleo_gichris_post_paleo_gi

Not Ninja Enough

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Last year, at SCaLE, John made an observation. “You are not ninja enough,” he told me. As a group of us were walking down a hallway in the hotel, I walked over to what I assumed was a portal used for catering events. As I pulled on the doors, finding them locked, John pointed out that I couldn’t go there, for the aforementioned reason.

Last night, as I watched my daughter fall down the stairs, the back of her head hitting the last two hardwood steps, I realized I am in fact not ninja enough. She’s fine, by the way, it wasn’t a bad fall and only scared her a little. The worst part for me, as I reflect on it, is that I knew it was going to happen. Well, I knew it could happen.

Kaylee, who is two years old and has been walking since she was 10 months old, walked up a flight of five hardwood stairs to meet me on the landing and take a book I was offering her. As she took the book and started turning to walk up the next flight of stairs, I observed that she was close to the edge and, if her balance wasn’t just right, she could fall backwards down the stairs.

Sure enough, this is exactly what happened.

Had I taken the simple precaution of stepping closer to her and moving in behind her, I could have repaired her balance when she lost it. Instead, perhaps lulled by her otherwise incredibly good balance, I shrugged off the thought. Right before I found myself lunging forward to catch her, my arms closing on empty air.

In Kiado-Ryu, one of our tenets is, Action is Faster than Reaction. In a fight, a punch can be thrown faster than it can be blocked. To act, an opponent merely needs to think about their action before executing it, a process invisible to an outside observer. To react, the action must be observed, processed, a reaction decided upon, and finally executed. Had I acted, I would not have put myself in a position where reaction was necessary.

Further, and only partially related to the moral of this story, as I prepare for my third degree Black Belt, I’m starting to consider other activities to augment my training. CrossFit is an obvious choice. While I enjoy the gym in concept, I’ve never been a fan of lifting the same weights in the same way every day. I also recently learned about MovNat, and the idea of functional fitness appeals to me. These activities would train me to move more naturally and efficiently when I do need to act or even react. Parkour flat out looks awesome, but I think I’m nowhere near ready to start that. Finally, for tactical training, I just purchased lifetime memberships for my entire family at FrontSight, so we can take all of the offered courses, some of which (as I’m told by those who have attended, who also advise me to ignore their infomercial-esque website) are downright awesome.

In short, I have a theme for 2011. I must level up my ninja.

Resolutions for 2011

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Welcome to the year two thousand eleven. Well, not quite yet; I’m actually writing this with about an hour to go. I’ve never been one for so-called New Year’s Resolutions. After all, why put off until the first of January what you can reasonably start on the twelfth of August?

With that said, here are (in no particular order) my resolutions for the next 365 days.

Spend more time with my daughter.

Not really a resolution, since I already try to spend as much time as possible with her. Still, it seemed important enough to reiterate at the beginning of this list.

Read more.

And not just Twitter. I already do more of that than I probably should. Having several hundred unread items in Google Reader is normal for me, especially now that I have subscribed to so many great nutrition and fitness blogs.

I haven’t had a cable television subscription for months, so if I’m not at my computer (and I use Linux, so you know I’m not playing games) I have the time to read a book. It’s been a long time since I read one or two books per month. In fact, it took me several months to get through the last book I read, The Three Musketeers. I did manage to read through Manthropology since receiving it for Christmas (I should write a review), so I figure it’s a combination of picking the right books and setting aside the time to read them.

Write more.

I neglect my blog, sometimes so much I start to wonder why I bother having one. On my to-do list for some time has been to clean up my blog. I still have too many categories from the days before WordPress supported tags, and images in a lot of my old posts are broken. Worse, I’ll go months without posting anything. Worse yet, I have a handful of half-written posts; always thinking I’ll finish them later. Later never seems to come.

Writing more also applies to programming. There is at least one project I started but never finished. Sure, I can blame my last computer crashing and life generally getting in the way, but how hard would it be to just sit down and finish it? Then there all the Perl modules I write. Unfortunately, most of those are for work, so I’m unable to release them. I tried once, but didn’t get very far.

Also, all those blogs I mentioned in the last resolution? I should comment when I think I have something to say, or participate in forums when they’re available.

Be more Paleo.

While I’ve eaten a fairly low carbohydrate diet since my wife was pregnant with our daughter over two years ago (my wife was diagnosed with gestational diabetes), it wasn’t until last March when I started looking at diet from a Paleo perspective. Looking at a graph of my weight, that really marked a change. From a peak of 235 pounds around three years ago, I finally dropped under 200 in March. As I write this, I’m weighing in at 178 with my eye on getting down to 165.

So far, even though I appear to be “eating Paleo,” I still acquire my meat from Costco. From a budget perspective, this isn’t too bad, but their meat is still conventionally raised and fed grain. There is a local meat CSA which I am interested in joining. Maybe this will be the year I start spending money on quality instead of quantity.

In addition to the meat CSA, there’s one that has partnered with the company I work for to make weekly deliveries of produce at one of our office buildings. I may join this CSA to augment our semi-regular Saturday morning visits to the Vista Farmers Market.

Join a CrossFit Box.

It’s all the rage in the Paleo community and I’ve never been a huge fan of lifting weights and I’ve always loathed chronic cardio. In fact, there’s one within walking distance of my house. Looks like I’m out of excuses.

Get into MovNat.

Because it looks like fun. That’s the kind of shape I want to be in.

In 2012 (if the world doesn’t end) I might throw parkour and ninjitsu into the mix because how cool would that be?

Actually use Facebook.

It seems that all of my friends and family use Facebook now. They chat, they share pictures, they comment on each others’ wall, and when I see them in person I discover I’m totally out of the loop. I tried to wait it out, hoping it would go away (anyone remember MySpace?), but it’s about time I jumped on this particular bandwagon.

Nah, I’m just kidding. Maybe next year.

Almond Walnut Bread

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Almond Walnut BreadOne of my favorite types of food (you know, besides bacon), particularly during the winter holiday season, is the sweet quick bread. Since going Paleo earlier this year, this solstice staple is no longer welcome in my house. Fortunately, I’ve come up with a suitable replacement for a basic quick bread recipe.

The folks over at the Cooking with Trader Joe’s blog came up with a recipe for almond bread. I tried baking it a couple of weeks ago, with one substitution. Instead of the agave nectar, which is pure fructose, I used Trader Joe’s Desert Mesquite Honey (I don’t currently have any of the awesome raw local honey available at my local farmers market). I also added a teaspoon of xanthan gum, which is useful in gluten-free recipes. The result was a dense loaf of nutty bread, which was a big hit with everyone who tried it, especially my diabetic grandfather-in-law (who was happy to finally have something to soak up his egg yolks).

I recently modified a fruitcake recipe to be more Paleo-friendly (more on that in another post), which was also a big hit with my in-laws. I decided to try adapting the almond bread recipe using the same techniques that proved so successful with the fruitcake. Primarily, this involves the substitution of coconut flour for some of the almond meal. So, without further ado, the recipe I came up with.

  • 3 ½ 4 ½ cups almond meal
  • 1 cup coconut flour
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon xanthan (or guar) gum
  • 9 5 eggs
  • 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 teaspoon vanilla
  • 1 tablespoon apple cider vinegar
  • ½ to 1 cup walnuts, toasted
  • 1 tablespoon unsalted butter, melted
  1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees F.
  2. In a large bowl, combine all of the dry ingredients.
  3. In another container, beat the eggs and add the remaining wet ingredients.
  4. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix thoroughly (you may recognize this as the muffin method).
  5. Fold in the toasted walnuts.
  6. Transfer the mixture to a 5×9-inch standard loaf pan, lightly greased (I use butter and parchment paper in a wonderful clay baking dish).
  7. Pour melted butter over the top.
  8. Bake for 60 minutes or until a skewer or knife inserted in the bread comes out clean.
  9. Cool and slice (my dish yields 11 slices).

If you can’t find coconut flour, or simply want to use all almond meal in the recipe, use 4 ½ cups of almond meal and use only 5 eggs. The coconut flour absorbs a lot of moisture, so the usual advice is to use an additional 4 eggs for every cup of coconut flour. Hey, this is Paleo baking, right? The more eggs, the better.

I found most of the ingredients at Trader Joe’s. They sell one pound of almond meal for $3.99. The coconut flour we found at Henry’s, which is a Wild Oats store, now owned by Whole Foods. As for the eggs, we go through so many that we buy them at Costco.

Update (5 December 2010): After eating the bread for a week, we decided that it was a bit too dry. I’ve updated the recipe to be a bit closer to the original, using only almond meal. This also makes it a little easier and cheaper to make.

My Primal Meal Photo

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Primal Snacking by cdgrau, on Flickr

A Simple Foraged Primal Dinner

Yesterday, Mark’s Daily Apple held a primal meal photo contest. All I had to do was submit a photo of a primal meal I ate. For most people, this would be dinner; something they cooked up after work.

Unfortunately, on the day of the contest, I didn’t have time to cook dinner. However, that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to eat dinner. When I got home, before I headed off to my karate class, I “foraged” through the wilds of my refrigerator for something to eat. We always have hard cooked eggs and salami on hand, for snacking or quick dinners. We’ve also been buying strawberries every week, since they’re a year-round crop in Southern California. And that was my entry. It’s not the fanciest primal meal anyone has come up with, but that’s okay; the winner will be picked randomly from all of the entries.

Also, if anyone is interested in having a “Grokfeast” for a chance to win a cow, let me know.

Gone Primal

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A couple of years ago, when my wife was pregnant with our daughter, my parents were reading through Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes, and getting started with the paleolithic, or paleo, diet. It was a happy coincidence, as my wife was diagnosed with gestational diabetes. The diet information she received from my parents kept the condition under control without the need for drugs. In fact, her doctor thought she was lying about the low blood sugar numbers she was reporting and had her tested in the office during each visit.

I wasn’t immediately convinced. So many years of indoctrination by the advice of the so-called experts and the recommendations of the United States government left me believing at an emotional level that carbohydrates are not only harmless, but necessary to my existence. Plus, I really like oatmeal and granola.

It was hard to argue with results and, after following Dr. Eades on Twitter for a while, I tried the diet. It was okay, but I didn’t stick to it very well. I was still addicted to sugar and convinced that I could lose weight in the gym. I did lose a little weight and enjoyed being able to eat all the food I actually like, but have been conditioned to believe is unhealthy, without the guilt (no one likes potatoes anyway, only what they put on potatoes).

One blog that I’d run across a couple of times, but didn’t think to bookmark was Mark’s Daily Apple. I could remembered it as the interesting blog with the photo of the guy lounging in the grass, wearing his Vibram FiveFingers (I have a pair, too). My Google searches turned up nothing. Finally, one of the people I follow on Twitter posted a link. Suddenly, it wasn’t just about the diet for me. Mark Sisson’s idea of an Primal Lifestyle was the missing piece. I jumped in with both feet.

Now, my typical daily sustenance looks something like this:

Breakfast almost always consists of three fried eggs and two sausage links. I cook a third sausage link for my daughter to eat when she wakes up. I rarely skip breakfast (though strangely I did today) and haven’t deviated from this menu in over a year.

Lunch used to be a protein shake, plain whole milk yogurt with berries and stevia, and three bread-less sandwich rolls. A few weeks ago, I stopped eating the sandwich rolls. I suspect that changes to my metabolism have left me less hungry at lunch, so I practice intermittent fasting. Sometimes I’ll have the yogurt, sometimes I’ll get a burrito at the taco shop (I unwrap it and only eat the innards), and sometimes I’ll skip lunch altogether.

Dinner varies from day to day, but only a little. I typically cook a large cut of meat, like beef chuck or pork shoulder, in a slow cooker on Sunday, which gives us enough meat for the week. For a weeknight dinner, I’ll sauté onions, peppers, and garlic in coconut oil, then add some of the leftover meat, sometimes finishing by adding sour cream for a tangy cream sauce. Tonight I used a three cheese tomato sauce from Trader Joe’s.

My workout has changed significantly, too. I was a big nerd growing up, so I never went to the gym. I started going on-and-off in college, but have started going almost every day over the last eight months. Fortunately, I had a few sessions with a personal trainer once, and I’ve always followed her advice to avoid the machines and use free weights. But I was the typical guy, doing repetitive sets of weights, focusing on those beach muscles.

Since the release of Primal Blueprint Fitness, I no longer worry so much about going to the gym every day, trying to lift ever heavier weights. For one thing, it’s boring. Also, I think I overdid it and hurt my shoulder. I certainly don’t miss the horribly dull “chronic cardo.” Now I work out using my own body weight and sprint occasionally.

Suddenly I’m losing more weight. Fast. Even though I’ve taken a break from the gym for the last couple of weeks to rest my shoulder.

I’ve had a draft of this post saved for about two months, but never got around to polishing it for publication, until now. A couple of days ago, Mark Sisson kicked off the Primal Blueprint 30-Day Challenge. This is just what I needed, especially after cheating on my diet over the Labor Day weekend. I’m not half as dedicated to the lifestyle as most of the people who comment on Mark’s Daily Apple, but I’m going to try to join in the challenge and have some fun anyway.

Coasting to Work

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I’ve been commuting between home in San Marcos and work Sorrento Valley every day since I bought my town home three and a half years ago. With the few exceptions when I’ve either been able to telecommute or traffic has been light, it has been an altogether miserable experience. At the beginning of the current recession, traffic improved a bit, but apparently there are still plenty of people who need to drive north on Interstate 5 past Del Mar in San Diego, because this summer has been absolutely awful.

I’ve shifted my schedule earlier for a couple of reasons. First, leaving home before seven o’clock in the morning gets me to work before traffic builds on the freeway; and second, leaving work before five o’clock in the evening gets me home in time for dinner with my daughter. Unfortunately, this summer has seen bumper-to-bumper traffic starting as early as three o’clock in the afternoon.

I’ve gazed longingly at the Coaster as it effortlessly glided by on its rails along the coast, while I crept along at a snail’s pace behind the wheel of my car. For the last three weeks—not coincidently since my return from Portland, where I’ve always enjoyed mass transit—I’ve done more than admire the train from afar, I’ve started to seriously consider using it.

So on Friday I did. I left for work a bit earlier than usual, so I could catch the 6:50 AM train at the Carlsbad Poinsettia station. After purchasing my $11 round-trip ticket, I crossed a footbridge to the boarding area. The tracks aren’t labelled, so I didn’t know which side I should wait on. After a few minutes, people had started to gather on the side I was on, so I guessed it to be the correct one.

When the train arrived, I headed to the upper level, because I wanted to enjoy the view. I wasn’t disappointed. The view of the beaches, the ocean, and the Del Mar Racetrack was gorgeous. In addition to that, I was able to use Twitter and read RSS feeds, something I’ve obviously never been able to do in the car. Twenty-six minutes later I was walking off the train at the Sorrento Valley station. A shuttle took me up the hill and dropped me off across the street from my office. I arrived at the same time, 7:25 AM, I always do.

I had a meeting scheduled from 3:00 to 4:00 PM, so I expected to catch the 4:26 PM shuttle and the 4:51 PM train. Fortunately, the meeting ended early, which allowed me to catch the 3:45 PM shuttle and the 4:05 PM train. That got me home just before five o’clock, which ended in a 75 minute commute. This is a bit longer than it would typically take me to drive home, but I arrived in probably the best mood I ever have after a commute. I attribute much of my mood to the Stone Smoked Porter I drank on the train. That’s right, the consumption of alcohol is allowed on the train. Bonus!

So on Monday I’m going to drive down to the train station and purchase a 30 day pass for $154. Unfortunately, I’ve missed the monthly cutoff to order a pass through my company’s bulk purchase and subsidy program, so I’ll have to pay full price until I can do that. I haven’t worked out how much money this will save me, if any, but right now I don’t care. It’s worth it to preserve my sanity.

This new commute comes with another benefit. We had been considering selling our 1997 Ford Explorer in order to help fund the purchase of a new car. By trading cars with my wife (I drive a 1999 Toyota Avalon) and using the Explorer to make the relatively short drive to the train station, we can get more life out of it, saving us some money. So even if the commute itself is a short-term monetary wash, there is plenty of cost saving in the long run.

OSCON 2010: Tuesday

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I returned from the O’Reilly Open Source Convention three weeks ago, and I’ve had drafts for my Tuesday through Friday travel posts sitting around since then. I’ve finally found a moment on a lazy Sunday afternoon to enjoy a pint of ale while writing. Although, it is a beautiful day, which I’d be spending outdoors if my family weren’t sick (and I’m not convinced I’m altogether healthy).

Tuesday was the second and final day of the tutorial sessions. In the morning I attended a tutorial on PostgreSQL’s new hot stand-by and streaming replication features; and, in the afternoon I attended part of a tutorial on Cassandra. Why only part? I’ll get to that.

I didn’t feel like going across the river to the food trucks for lunch, so I joined Debbie for lunch at Burgerville. Aside from the delicious food made from local ingredients, there are two things that struck me about Burgerville. The first I noticed when I walked in the door: for the first time, disposing of my trash would require me to read instructions. Burgerville uses three bins for trash: one for recyclable materials, one for compost, and finally one for trash that can neither be recycled nor composted. I thought this was neat, though I did get a kick out of the soft drink cup. It’s from the Coca-Cola company and advertises itself as something that can be composted; with the footnote that this was only possible in a large facility capable of composting such cups. Not something one can throw into their garden compost pile, I guess. The second thing I noticed caused me immediate regret: the receipt lists the calorie count of the foods ordered, along with carbohydrate and fiber content. Looking over the details of the burger, onion rings, and raspberry milkshake I ordered, I decided that it would not be a very paleo day for me. Oh well, the milkshake was very good.

While enjoying our carb-loaded, calorie-filled lunch, Debbie noticed someone wearing a pair of Vibram FiveFingers that we hadn’t seen before. From a distance, they looked almost like normal shoes and appeared to be made with a dark brown suede. With both of us deciding that a post-lunch, calorie-burning walk was called for, and sharing a desire to buy a new pair of FiveFingers, we set out for Portland’s REI store. A trip on the MAX, a walk, a few blocks on the trolley, and another walk brought us to the store.

The shoes turned out to be the KSO Trek. They’re very nice and I’m considering purchasing a pair for hiking. Unfortunately, I struck out on the trip. REI has been having a hard time keeping FiveFingers in stock, so I wasn’t able to find or buy a pair of the Classic version. Fortunately, I’m still satisfied with my KSOs, which I was wearing at the time.

Our impromptu quest for footwear took us well beyond the alloted time for lunch. Fortunately, this time was not wasted. While walking, we had received a call from our coworker back in the expo hall, who needed help setting up the QuIC booth. For some reason, it was fun being allowed into the expo hall while booths were still being constructed. Not sure why, other than that I enjoy seeing things taken apart and (sometimes) being put back together. After getting the booth set up, I made it to the second half of the Cassandra tutorial. I’m told by those who attended the first half that I didn’t miss much.

We had some time to kill between the end of the day’s sessions and the evening’s Ignite talks. So we walked a few blocks to a place called rontoms. Had I not been looking for the specific address, I would have walked right past, not noticing that this was either a restaurant or a bar. The cavernous interior was devoid of anyone save the bartender and a waitress, who would disappear as quickly as she appeared. The photographs on the wall, ost of which featured a man in an animal costume, ranged from strange to disturbing. After a moment’s hesitation, we ventured out back to find a patio crowded with patrons enjoying food, beer, and spirits. With what appeared to be only a single waitress working and not having particularly strong appetites, we went back inside, obtained pints directly from the bartender, and found a comfortable area to sit and chat. Twice we encountered people entering the restaurant, looking for people they didn’t know by sight. Both times my colleagues convinced them that we were those people; one girl even sat down with us for a few minutes before we let her in on the joke. After a while, I received a page from Jonathan that there was beer, salami, and cheese being served outside the ballroom at the convention center. This sounded like an excellent and delicious dinner to me, so I made my way back.

I hadn’t been to an Ignite session before, so I was looking forward to this one. Right off the bat we were warned that we would likely enjoy some talks and dislike others. Fortunately, each talk would only last five minutes, so we were free to use the time to retrieve another beer. By the time we returned, the talk would be over. I don’t believe I took advantage of this, instead waiting for the break, during which some awards were being presented.

Two talks stand out in my memory. The first, perhaps appropriately, was the first in the lineup: Paul Fenwick talking about Maximum XP: Optimising life for adventure (which he gave again, at a much better pace, at the Perl Lightning Talks). Presented in song, Paul’s message seemed to be to enjoy travel and to take advantage of opportunities to meet people and have fun. Based on what I’ve read on his Twitter stream, I’d say he’s been successful.

The other talk, Your Infinite Do-Loop Exercises Bores Me, struck a chord with me. John Scott and Jim Stogdill paired up for this talk, one would perform exercises while the other would speak, switching places at the halfway mark. Not only was it refreshing to see a talk about fitness at a convention populated by a class of people not known for their physical exertion, but it was about a method of fitness I’ve recently become interested in. While I don’t practice CrossFit myself, I frequently look at the exercises on the site and prefer it to the typical, repetitive gym workout. They also mentioned the paleo diet, which, along with the primal lifestyle, I’ve become a big fan of.

My coworkers all turned in early, so I hopped back on the MAX and headed downtown to have drinks with Kevin at Bailey’s Tap Room. I had a wonderful sour beer, which I no longer remember the name or origin of, and had the pleasure of meeting Steve, Jeff, and Michael Schwern. Jeff and Schwern were discussing the use of the Log4perl module in the latter’s gitpan project.

After last call at Bailey’s, I caught the last yellow line across the river and turned in myself.

OSCON 2010: License to Fail

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Robert “r0ml” Lefkowitz

This session is a companion to the session on competition r0ml presented on Wednesday. For those of us who, for whatever reason, were unable to attend the previous session, he provided us with five second summaries:

  • Wednesday: Competition is bad, don’t do it.
  • Thursday: Licensing is bad, don’t do it.

And with that, the session is over.

I’m kidding, of course. The best part of any of r0ml’s talks is the logic he uses to get from his observation to his conclusion. As he noted at the outset, the path typically takes us through the Middle Ages.

I don’t deal with lawyers very much in my day job, since I work in a support role for our engineering departments. However, I know several people in our Open Source group, and have attempted to release some of the Perl modules I’ve written while on the job. Doing so is decidedly non-trivial and, after two years I still haven’t been allowed to release my code. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement.

My experience with lawyers has been that they are extremely cautious. While frustrating, I understand that it’s their job to play it safe and to protect the company. They are scared, almost beyond reason, that an Open Source license will find its way into a piece of intellectual property that they’d rather not release. It can’t be easy trying to bridge the gap between the closed and open ways of doing business.

The topic was introduced with a question: What is the difference between copyright and plagiarism? Plagiarism is forever. I didn’t quite catch what r0ml meant by this, but I suspect it means that copyright (eventually) expires, granting the work in question to the public domain. Plagiarism, if one can get away with it, creates an attribution that lasts forever.

That, if one is an Open Source geek, leads one to think about licenses. Let’s take the attribution clause of the BSD, which contains two sub-clauses, for example. It’s redundant. It effectively means that the recipient of the source code can not claim credit for the author’s work. Under copyright law, this is already the case, so why the redundancy.

In the name of efficiency and refactoring, r0ml mused whether it would be possible to reduce the number of license clauses to one. He found this in the Do What The Fuck You Want To Public License.

Through inductive reasoning, if we can reduce the number of clauses from two to one, we should be able to similarly reduce the number of clauses from one to zero. After all, if we begin with the earlier premise that licenses are bad, this should be the goal, right?

First, briefly, why are licenses bad? There are many reasons and many arguments; too many of each for this post, but to summarize a few important ones, as of this writing, the Open Source Initiative lists 73 approved licenses. Choosing between them can be a daunting task. Neither do all of these licenses play well with each other, further complicating the selection task if one is attempting to integrate differently-licensed source code. Finally, it’s rare that anyone knows all that they are agreeing to in the license.

The Medieval sensibility was that all knowledge came either from God or from the Ancients. As such, no one could claim credit for a work, because, without exception, it would be plagiarism. For this reason, the majority of works produced during the Middle Ages were compilations, a representation of existing information.

We have a modern equivalent of this Medieval concept of copyright, called the Compilation Copyright. A compilation of files in the public domain is assembled with copyright only on the compilation. Further, no one may claim credit on the same collection of files. Instead, a new compilation, or derivative work, must be created.

How bad has copyright gotten? Well, thanks to the Apple development kit, there is a short piece of code, included in every project, that is separately copyrighted by everyone who has used the development kit. This is getting out of hand, to say the least.

So r0ml wrote unlicense.rb, which will scan a directory recursively, removing any licenses it finds. This, of course, is perfectly acceptable under the terms of the licenses being removed, so long as the files aren’t redistributed. It does have the effect of pleasing the obsessive-compulsive user.

Under the laws of many countries, a copyright notice isn’t actually required to have a copyright. This is particularly true in the United States and the European Union. In fact, in the latter one cannot even waive the protections of copyright. This creates the default case: without a license, nobody other than the author has the right to do anything with the code. The default is all rights reserved.

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU project and the Free Software Foundation, was not trying to protect the author of code from people downloading the code; rather, he created the GNU General Public License to protect the users of the code. He felt that users have an inherent right to have access to the code running on their computer. Thus, the primary reason for the creation of Open Source licenses was to protect the user.

Many companies claim that they have an Open Source business model. Typically what this means is that they offer their software, or some subset of their software for free, under an Open Source license. Then they offer support contracts, for usually high prices. These aren’t really Open Source business models. The SQLite project has the only known true Open Source business model. The software itself is released into the public domain. This is a scary place for lawyers, especially those employed by large companies. To assuage their concerns, the company that employs the author of SQLite will be more than happy to sell them an Open Source license for the code.

Next, r0ml talked about warranties. In some jurisdictions, the default case under the law is that there is an implied warranty, unless stated otherwise. Most of us have seen the disclaimer of warranty, included to protect the author, attached to the license in code we have downloaded (or added it to code we’ve released), usually in all capital letters. While not a strict requirement to be in capital letters, it is a requirement that the disclaimer be made to stand out. Often, licenses are in plain text files, so using a bold face type isn’t possible. Hence, capital letters. The simplest case of a disclaimer is such:

/* This program comes without any warranty, to the extent permitted by law. */

As we recall, the default case under the law is an implied warranty so including the phrase “to the extent permitted by law” is redundant. Also, it should be noted that copyright law, in the United States, is codified at the Federal level, in Title 17 of the United States Code, while warranty law is codified by the states. This leads to many more jurisdictions, and far more potential confusion, for warranty law.

So finally, here is r0ml’s part serious, part humorous take away: don’t include either a copyright or a warranty with your code. If a user sues you for damages under the implied warranty in a state court, counter-sue them in US federal court for copyright infringement. After all, under the law they were not given permission to copy the code anyway.

A question came at the end of the session, from someone who appeared mildly upset and defensive. He pointed out that Stallman created the GNU General Public License for a good reason, which wasn’t mentioned by r0ml during his talk. Someone had taken the code Stallman was freely distributing and sold it. After which, they went back to Stallman to inform him that he could no longer distribute his own code, because he hadn’t licensed it. The questioner appeared to be offended by the whole point of the session, apparently feeling that all the work Stallman has done for Free Software was being ridiculed and that, without these licenses, “capitalists” will simply steal the code for their own nefarious purposes.

To this, r0ml did have a response. Copyright law has changed since Stallman faced the problem that led to his creation of Free Software. It has become more strict and the requirement for registration has been dropped. The point was made that the questioner is actually referring to the concept of provenance, not copyright. However, this concept was not further explored as, unfortunately, time had run out.

OSCON 2010: Friday Morning Plenary Sessions

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I’m tired this morning after a long week at OSCON, so my ability to understand and summarize the Friday plenary sessions is diminished. As such, what follows won’t be terribly useful to anyone.

Your Work in Open Source, 3 years of Incremental Change

Chris DiBona (Google, Inc.)

Google crawled 40 million files in Google Code to generate statistics on what’s in there. Lines of code and numbers of commits are not the most useful of metrics but that’s what they have to use.

The Gnu General Public License is the most used license, at over 50%. Of those, more than half have moved to GPL version 3. Perl has declined a bit, but C has the most use, at about 40%.

Many companies are committing code, too.

Mayor Sam Adams

Sam Adams (City of Portland, Oregon)

Last September, Portland adopted one of the first Open Source policies in the nation. They’ve committed themselves to open software, open data, and Open Source in the procurement process for software.

It’s pretty cool when a politician gets it.

Situation Normal, Everything Must Change

Simon Wardley (Leading Edge Forum (CSC))

Simon started with a recap of the talk he gave last year, which showed correlations between the ubiquity and certainty. All technologies follow the same curve, from having both low ubiquity and certainty up to having both high ubiquity and certainty. The stages tend to be the innovation of a technology, the productization, and finally the comoditization.

The basic idea was that the cloud, as it is known, is still in its infancy. As it matures, we will see innovations built on it at an accelerated rate. If we don’t pay attention to it, we’ll be left behind.

Well defined processes stifle innovation.

Projects or teams can be organized by lifecycle: innovation, leverage, and commoditize. This circles back on itself. When one thing is commoditized, a new innovation can be built on top of it.