Only Three More Days !!

Greetings:

If you want to attend the October Rules Fest AND you would like to avail yourself of the Early Bird Discount of $50, you should do so by midnight (PDT, GMT -8) THIS Friday night, July 31st. That's when it expires.

Also, remember that the first 100 attendees to sign up will get the best seating in the house. All attendees and speakers will have power outlets and WiFi available in the meeting room itself. But the first 100 or so will be two persons at a 6' (just under two meters) table.

I have said this so many times that I'm beginning to sound like a cracked record - if you're old enough to remember records made of vinyl that had a tendency to get caught in a groove and just repeat itself over and over and over... Anyway, ORF 2009 has absolutely the BEST Technical Speakers in the world. AND, these guys will be hanging around during the conference to chat with the attendees - especially during Pub Nights.

Who else can say that they bought a beer for Mark "Drools" Proctor, Charles "Dr. Rete" Forgy, Jason "The Jess Answer Man" Morris, Gary "CLIPS" Riley, John "EA" Zachman, Carole Ann Berlioz-Matignon, Carlos "Advisor" Seranno-Morales, Paul "Tibco" Vincent, Edson "CEP" Terilli, Daniel "TurboGeek" Brookshier, Rick "V&V" Hicks, Daniel "ANN" Levine, Hafedh "I wrote the books on JRules" Mili or Jacob "Open Rules" Feldman?? But, if you are at the conference and hang out on Pub Night at the Walt Garrison Room, YOU might !! :-)

The main theme of this year is just like last year: Have Fun! We are doing the one thing that we enjoy the most (outside of one or two indoor activities) and we should be having lots and lots of fun doing it. Last year was simply great. This year is even better. Better Hotel. Better location. Better presentations. I would say better speakers but some are the same as last year BUT we have many new speakers who will knock your socks off!! And the vendors who are the sponsors will have the very best technical personnel to answer your most perplexing problems.

This year, we will have redundancy on the video / audio recording so that we don't have gaps like last year. We learned our lesson about depending on a single source of technology. Greg Barton has promised the best recording and Chelanie Israel has promised to deliver a truly professional, well-polished product for those who attended the meeting. And, no, we do not have plans to sell the video to anyone. It's our free gift to those who attend the conference - and ONLY to them.

Sign up NOW and avoid the rush AND get an extra 10% along the way. Also, when you sign up, be SURE to sign up at the hotel for the special rates. If you have any trouble whatsoever, send me an email and let me know. [ jco@kbsc.com ]

SDG

jco

October Rules Fest (ORF)

I spoke with the other directors of the ORF and it seems that ORF is filling up more quickly than anticipated. We now have another Silver Sponsor (thanks to Dr. Forgy of Production Systems Technology) and a few of the Bronze sponsors have moved up to Silver. Visual Rules is still the # 1 sponsor (Gold) but we are anticipating a Diamond sponsor from a major vendor as soon as marketing finishes up their annual budget and allocates the funds. Such is life in the fast lane. :-) We're negotiating with a major hotel chain for decent room rates as well as a large conference room, bar, restaurant, workout gym, etc., so that you won't have to go anywhere for anything unless you just HAVE to sample a bit of the real Wild, Wild West. We'll know by Tuesday if we have it secured or not.

The conference has guests and speakers from around the world right now; several from the UK, Canada, Australia, France, Germany, Columbia and, of course, many from all over the USA. Where else would you get a chance to meet and greet (and have a few drinks with) the major thought leaders in the rulebased community. I look at the signup list and then at the speaker list and it begins to dwell on the unreal - some of the attendees alone would be honored guests at any other conference dealing with rulebased systems. And our speakers are the creme de la creme de la creme. One speaker said that this might well be the "Woodstock of Rulebased Systems". Another likened it to the 1956 (it isn't anywhere near that level) conference at Dartmouth College where the term AI was first used.

What we really need at ORF is a really good PR guy who could tell the world what is happening here in a way that would help folks understand that this is "must attend" event. And with a price tag of only $150, why not? This will be better than attending any five-day or ten-day school hosted by any one vendor. These speakers are the people who invented all this stuff !! Check out http://www.rulesfest.org/OctoberRulesFest/Speakers.html and look at their credentials: The very people who invented Rete, Rete 2, Rete III, CLIPS, Drools, Advisor, Open Rules, OPSJ, CLIPS/R2 as well as the chief engineers and scientist from all of the major vendors. I have only one comment:

Sign up now or there might not be room later.

SDG
jco

Was Jess a CLIPS Spin-Off?

Here we go again - same article in 2006 I said that Jess was a CLIPS spin-off. It wasn't and isn't and wont' be. I suppose that I "ass-u-me"ed that it was derived from CLIPS because CLIPS came first and Jess uses the same defrule, deftemplate, etc., syntax that is used by CLIPS. It even uses the same file name extension that is used by CLIPS. And, sometimes, if it isn't too complex or too tool-specific, you can import a Jess file straight into CLIPS or a CLIPS file into Jess. (Or so I've been told.)

OK, I should have checked with the authors of the tools before I said that. BUT, in my own defense, if I saw a tool that used ILOG JRules code with the same file name extensions and the same syntax, I would HAVE to "assume" that it was a JRules spinoff. The same thing goes for Drools or any other tool.

So, just to set the record straight, Jess is NOT a CLIPS spinoff and is NOT derived from CLIPS!! Got it? Got it!! Can we close this case now? Two years later? Please?

SDG
jco

Open Source - Myths and Legends

What is "Open Source" software? Wikipedia gives this definition:

"Open source is a development methodology,[1] which offers practical accessibility to a product's source (goods and knowledge). Some consider open source as one of various possible design approaches, while others consider it a critical strategic element of their operations. Before open source became widely adopted, developers and producers used a variety of phrases to describe the concept; the term open source gained popularity with the rise of the Internet, which provided access to diverse production models, communication paths, and interactive communities.

The open source model of operation and decision making allows concurrent input of different agendas, approaches and priorities, and differs from the more closed, centralized models of development.[2] The principles and practices are commonly applied to the development of source code for software that is made available for public collaboration, and it is usually released as open-source software."

Lots of words but not what some have defined as Open Source. Some have defined Open Source according to the Free Software Foundation, aka, Richard Stallman. Others have used the Apache License as the defining criteria. Others, such as my editor with InfoWorld, maintains that if the software is free, the source code is free (or available for a nominal fee), and others are allowed to contribute to the core code, then the blinking stuff is, for all practical purposes, OPEN SOURCE!

Several have taken me to task for this definition: Jason Morris, Dr. Ernest Friedman-Hill (he of Jess fame), Mark Proctor (the Drools guy), and one or two others. They feel that Drools is Open Source while Jess and CLIPS are not. (Gary Riley has not weighed in on this one - not yet.) While I respect their opinion (and indeed I have to respect their opinion since they wrote this stuff) I do feel that if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck, swims like a duck, has a bill like a duck and webbed feet like a duck, then a swan it ain't. Now we can have Mallard ducks, Brown ducks, Mottled ducks, Green ducks, but they are all ducks.

Quite some time ago, about November of 2006, InfoWorld ran an article on Rulebase Open Source Software in which I called Jess an Open Source product. It seems that this stirred up a hornet's nest and both Dr. Friedman-Hill and Mark Proctor let me know about it the following week at the BR 2006 Forum in D.C. Their complaint (and they both agreed) was that Jess was not true Open Source. Well, again, who is the official Open Source committee members? Richard Stallman wrote an article on this (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html) in which he argues that the GNU General Public License should be the controlling factor.

Bruce Peren et al have come up with the following "Open Source" definition and (I think - don't know for sure) that they also copyrighted this slogan. (How can you copyright something that is not yours?):

Quote:
"Under the Open Source Definition, licenses must meet ten conditions in order to be considered open source licenses. Below is a copy of the definition, with unauthorized explanatory additions. There is a link to the original unmodified text below. It was taken under fair use.

1. Free Redistribution: the software can be freely given away or sold. (This was intended to expand sharing and use of the software on a legal basis.)
2. Source Code: the source code must either be included or freely obtainable. (Without source code, making changes or modifications can be impossible.)
3. Derived Works: redistribution of modifications must be allowed. (To allow legal sharing and to permit new features or repairs.)
4. Integrity of The Author's Source Code: licenses may require that modifications are redistributed only as patches.
5. No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups: no one can be locked out.
6. No Discrimination Against Fields of Endeavor: commercial users cannot be excluded.
7. Distribution of License: The rights attached to the program must apply to all to whom the program is redistributed without the need for execution of an additional license by those parties.
8. License Must Not Be Specific to a Product: the program cannot be licensed only as part of a larger distribution.
9. License Must Not Restrict Other Software: the license cannot insist that any other software it is distributed with must also be open source.
10. License Must Be Technology-Neutral: no click-wrap licenses or other medium-specific ways of accepting the license must be required."
/Quote

Under that definition, Jess is NOT Open Source. However, CLIPS probably gets in just under the wire. As do many other free, Open Source projects.

All of that being said to say this: My deepest and most humble apologies to anyone who has been offended by my suggestion that Jess is Open Source. But I'm still right - I'm just apologizing for offending. :-) In other words, I didn't do it and I promise never to do it again.

SDG
jco