PegaSoft Canada White Paper
Draft - 2003
By Ken O. Burtch
When I undertook my Masters of Computer Science at Queen's University, Dr. David Lamb was my overseer. To determine my goals, he asked me, "Do you want to work in industry or in research?" I was born in a small rural town, the son of two generations of entrepreneurs who revolutionized agriculture in Canada. I had never met anyone with commercial or academic careers.
When I came to university, I wanted to know everything about computers, and I wanted to apply that knowledge to benefit people. I received a lot of scoffing at Queen's for my broad interests. Students were supposed to specialize in a single branch of research, not to work combining unrelated topics in new and interesting ways. So it was that Dr. Lamb had inadvertently given me a "thesis" to work on suitable to my insatiable curiosity towards all things computational.
I spent the following years trying to determine whether I would be better off in a university or a corporate headquarters. Unfortunately, Dr. Lamb neglected to mention that fact that there was something that industry and research shared in common: mendacity.
More than a word made popular by the Tennessee Williams play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof", mendacity is the rule by which North American culture operates. It is the denial of fundamental truths leading to a false worldview protected by hostility, fear and deception. Beyond some superficial differences of ivy walls and high rise edifices, both industry and academia were in complete agreement that truth, good will and integrity were all disposable in the pursuit of ambitions.
So the short answer to Dr. Lamb's question is, "I want to work in neither industry nor research because they are essentially one and the same." Of course, they shouldn't be, but they are both products of North American culture that holds mendacity in a high regard. This observation is hardly new. In media and academic journals, people have been speaking out against this problem for a long time.
Our modern society often believes that it is beyond such self-delusion. The idea that North American business and scholastic system are effective is absurd. As Desmon Tutu said that "To be impartial is to have taken sides already...with the status quo." If you live in a broken world, then you have to build a new one yourself or maintain the current dysfunctional system. To that end I wanted to form a new organization that combined clear-minded business sense and clean research without the poison of mendacity.
To begin this discussion, I need to introduce two rules of thumb. One of these I invented, and the other is a time-honoured computer industry maxim.
My attempts to understand human interaction began in the eight grade. I attended Ridley College, a private school emphasizing discipline and excellence. While there, I witnessed a lot of student bullying and cruelty and I tried to understand what drove people to such extremes. I created graphs and Venn diagrams in and effort to explain the relationship between the emotions. Was fear the opposite of joy? Or perhaps hate? But the more I tried to construct the emotions, the more I couldn't resolve them into polar opposites. Emotions, I concluded, had nothing to do with morality and couldn't be categorized easily.
Ridley provided a dumping ground for problem kids by wealthy, irresponsible parents. At the beginning of the school year, students were well-behaved and worked together. But as the year went on and the pressure grew, I watched as good kids turned bad and begun hanging around the bullies until more kids were bad then good. So I proposed a theory I called "The Bullying Syndrome": that cruelty was spread from the truly troubled kids to infect others like a disease, a lynch mob fueled by pain. One tier of kids picked on another that picked on another until the culture of the students was pervaded by fear and hate.
By the time I was working in IT, I discovered that adults aren't really any different than the kids I grew up with. The Bullying Syndrome was alive and well wherever there was pressure and the seeding of criminal minds. Fear and hate were readily spread and encouraged.
I developed what I called the "127 Rule". Based on my experiences working in North American companies, a typical group of 10 people will consist of the following: 1 hero, 2 villains, and 7 selfish people. Or, to put it another way, 1 loves others, 2 love nobody, and 7 love themselves.
This bears some similarity to a normal distribution and it explains the "Bullying Syndrome". It's a vicious circle: afraid for themselves, the 7 children allow the bullying majority to bully them, wreaking their position until the bullies have total control. As Bishop Tutu suggested, the 7 will bad together with the status quo, and the bullies outnumber the good guys 2 to 1 making them the de facto status quo. It's purely psychological: after all, there are 7 of them but only 2 bullies. But the 7 will not normally ban together.
All things being equal, the 7 who are only concerned with their careers will gradually side with and empower the criminals in an organization since there are more criminals than heroes. Judas Iscariot, for example, the man who betrayed Jesus Christ, was a "7" siding with the relative power of the corrupt authorities.
There is no such thing as a person who purely fits into one of these categories. In any given situation, who is a "1", "2" or "7" may change. Anybody can be a 1, 2 or 7 in a given situation, although people's overall lifestyles fall into one of these categories.
Although I call it a "rule", the 127 Rule can be beaten. When I left Ridley College and went to Great Lakes Christian College where a number of students on campus were studying for a degree in theology. On the first day there I watched as a bully was harassing a student. One of the Bible College students came up and told the bully to clean up his act. The bully, intimidated, never bothered anyone again when he discovered there were students older them him that weren't afraid of him. The vicious circle of the bullying syndrome was disarmed because of the larger than normal number of people concerned for others.
"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will." [BR15,pg.311]
The 80-20 rule (sometimes called the “Ninety-Ninety Rule” or the “Rule of Credibility”, attributed to Tom Cargill) states that 80% of the work of a project is spent trying to completely only 20% of the functionality. Another way to phrase it is that "the devil is in the details."
For example, an arrogant programmer might say, "Oh, I could write a better program in 6 months." He probably could create a workable prototype within 6 months, but by the 80-20 rule, to complete and test the project would take another 2 years on top of that. As a result, programmers who make senseless boasts often don't start the projects they boast about, or they will say that 80% remaining is somebody else's problem as if the fact that they completed the prototype in 6 months is proof of their superiority. The 80-20 rule shows that such programmers are only average, meeting the status quo.
Scott Adams added the "LWF factor" in his Dilbert cartoon, the "Lying Weasel Factor" when your boss alters the facts of a project and then expects you to complete it to his artificial deadlines.
Founding members in 1989, PegaSoft initially created entertainment software for the Apple II community. Their game "Quest for the Hoard" was award winning and critically acclaimed. Accolades for Quest, and its sequel Quest II, included "Quest for the Hoard is a very impressive product...a lot of work obviously went into this program's creation, and it shows." (GS+), "[Treasures from Heaven: Quest for the Hoard II is] definitely a commercial quality game" (Shareware Solutions II). PegaSoft's best-selling Apple product was DrawTools, an animation toolkit for game designers, which was marketed through a partnership with Micol Systems of Willowdale, Ontario.
Dan Braun joined PegaSoft in the early 90s. With the acquisition of a UNIX minicomputer, PegaSoft became the first Internet Service Provider in the Niagara Region, with email and Usenet newsgroup services. They developed their own custom BBS software. The ISP business was running as a sideline before players with large capital appeared with the web opening the Internet to the wider public.
Taking advantage of their experience with UNIX, PegaSoft was reformed in 1996. The new partners spent several months examining the software climate and believed that Linux, then an unpopular and unheard-of product for hobbyists, would grow to compete with Microsoft and commercial UNIX's. The partners believed they had a golden opportunity to move into a new untapped market with great potential.
After two years of development, their first program, System Manager in a Box, neared completion. With Ken's father donating $10,000 to the cause, PegaSoft presented SMiaB at Comdex Canada 1999, the largest computer expo in Canada. At this time, their faith in Linux was confirmed as it received publicity in CNN and other major news sources.
When System Manager in a Box was released in September 1999, it received a 5 star rating but there was no money left for marketing. Linux vendors and developers responded positively and several SMiaB partnerships were formed, but they were not followed up due to a lack of manpower.