| Workspot offers Desktop Linux 'Anywhere' |
by Jill Ratkevic
Are you considering using the Linux operating system, but want to give it a test-drive first? Workspot offers a way to try Linux through your Internet browser. The subscription-based program gives you the flexibility to use Red Hat in your business or at home for a low monthly fee. DesktopLinux.com spoke with Workspot's CEO Greg Bryant to learn more about using Desktop Linux anywhere . . .
DesktopLinux.com: Can you briefly describe Workspot's history and mission?
Greg Bryant: We set out to provide a personal, infinite machine ... something like a desktop that lives forever ... available remotely through any other machine. We could only build that with nonproprietary, open, Free software ... so it's a GNU/Linux desktop.
DesktopLinux.com: Currently, Workspot offers Red Hat 8.0. Are there plans to offer other Linux distributions?
Greg Bryant: We have boundless plans ... we want to offer all distros, and all desktop managers, and all applications, and quite a bit of hardware. Workspot should be the complete, living showcase of the Linux world, where people can try anything at the click of a button, preconfigured.
Unlike a computer show, it's a personal showcase, within your protected account.
The idea is to make all these distros, apps and environments available for personal trial. Some are proprietary, and will be rentable. Some may not be proprietary, but you could support it by renting it ... to get the latest updates, or to get your feature implemented, etc.
This is groundwork for the "community showcase" idea: once you use software, you can become part of the community that improves it, through comments, work or money. It's like a giant, people-focused working group, for improving the computing user experience.
DesktopLinux.com: So who is Workspot most suited for -- the mobile worker, the developer?
Greg Bryant: The funny answer is: the mobile developer. That's why I started Workspot. As a programmer, I wanted an environment I could depend upon when traveling for work.
But I'd like it to be for the average non-Linux user. There's half-a-billion of them on the Internet! I'd like them to click on the desktop button, on our front page, try GNU/Linux for a few minutes, and then decide to try it for a month, using Workspot.
Many of our subscription cancellations are people who've decided to get a Linux box for themselves! It seems to be an effective demo, if we could just reach the full audience.
So there's workspot the demo, and workspot the mobile tool. It just happens that it has both these aspects: one couldn't exist without the other.
DesktopLinux.com: Some claim Linux isn't easy to deploy in the enterprise. Have you heard this? Being browser-based, Workspot makes this less of an issue. Can walk us through the environment that benefits most from Workspot. Do you offer corporate packages?
IT people like Workspot as a tool, for themselves ... for example, as a viewable machine outside the firewall. I don't see them using Workspot as a demo of Linux, let alone as an outsourcing alternative.
Usually it's outside consultants, or renegades in a company, who use Workspot for work, or to demonstrate Linux to the top tier in an organization.
Workspot as a tool is anti-bureaucratic by nature, a kind of subversive approach to collaborating and getting stuff done, without a lot of redtape. It's quick and inexpensive, kind of an instant VPN, so companies trying to save costs should like it. But they'd have to let go of some control ... Sometimes, people from two different companies will use it as neutral territory, to do a joint project, for example.
DesktopLinux.com: Workspot requires a Java-enabled browser and broadband connection. Any other requirements?
Greg Bryant: That's really it, aside from a friendly connection to the Internet. People can test whether we work for them by clicking the demo on our front page. We've tunneled through 95% of the firewalls: there's an unlucky percentage we're still trying to help right now.
DesktopLinux.com: Hotmail and Yahoo mail have gained mindshare -- and users -- based on the convenience it provides to email account holders who don't wish to be tied to a single location. Is this Workspot's model? Any limitations?
Greg Bryant: For traveling without a computer, Workspot's the most advanced tool. Webmail seems primitive compared to Ximian Evolution through a Workspot! I'm beginning to push this point more, to find more mobile users.
We also make the web a different kind of platform. Web pages make a really poor application environment ... HTML was invented to convey information, not create a super-primitive programming culture. But now I can use a spreadsheet in a web browser, or IM with people, or use a graphics application ...
The biggest limitation, for normal people, is that it's GNU/Linux. But I think we can create an open process with Workspot, to make the GNU/Linux interface better than Microsoft's and Apple's.
Other limitations? We work about as well from Hong Kong as from California. The last mile creates more latency than the backbone around the planet.
DesktopLinux.com: What software is currently available via Workspot? (OpenOffice.org etc.)
Greg Bryant: We have OpenOffice and KOffice. Great stuff comes with Red Hat 8.0 -- GNUCash, Tex, Gimp etc. We try to install things as people want them ... the list is quite long, so we're setting up a system for partner developers to install their releases on our machines. This is really the beginning of a very public, continuous "programming for an audience" initiative, for apps and desktops! Workspot will be a kind of constant, pre-configured "freshmeat test" in the not-so-distant future. By then we'll have the user feedback system set up, so developers can incrementally improve their work, based on user demands. And get points and payment for being responsive.
DesktopLinux.com: Linux is often reported as "not quite there yet." What are your thoughts and how does Workspot capitalize on the market today?
Greg Bryant: Well, we capitalize on it, because when you're looking into this magical little desktop in a webpage, almost anything it can do ... seems amazing! You know the effect, let's call it "automata adoption", where a cute little robot sweeps the floor and the whole world cheers. The Gnome 2.0 desktop just looks incredibly snazzy and snug in a Java applet in a webpage.
Linux seems good enough for our self-selected audience. Workspot converts some people to Linux, who are already "on the fence", who are idealistic, or who want to be free of commercial software.
But if Workspot can bring all Linux developments to a broad audience, so the audience can debate, brainstorm, prioritize and evaluate, in a continuous fast cycle of incremental improvements, then in very short time, the diversity and quality of GNU/Linux environments will supersede secretly-produced, monolithic, proprietary ones.
DesktopLinux.com:Can you describe the collaborative environment that is supported through Workspot?
Greg Bryant: Basically, you can share your desktop with any other Workspot member -- you can point with cursors, browse together, program together, paint or write poetry together ... in real-time. It's the simplest collaborative tool imaginable, and with a telephone (or voice over IP) you can effectively teleconference without any special equipment, anywhere in the world, at your whim.
DesktopLinux.com: What about security?
Greg Bryant: Our servers have AES encryption implemented, and we're adding it to each of the clients over the next two weeks.
It's quite important to us -- Workspot is a personal space, and if it wasn't, it wouldn't really work as a demo of software. How can you really get to know software unless you use it for something important?
We're firm believers in freedom, privacy and civil liberty. We don't keep logs, although to protect ourselves from inside attack we monitor network activity. But we protect our users, and won't give anything to anyone knocking at the door. Knowing something is truly private is essential to testing software. Although, in a sense, I wish this wasn't true. I'd like people to live more openly, to feel safe sleeping in a park, for example. But that's a different project!
DesktopLinux.com: Do you have any corporate customers yet that you can announce?
Greg Bryant: I think of the individual users as our customers. Corporations are partners, and investors.
I'm working on setting up large corporate demonstrations, of hardware and software. But we're vendor-neutral. I want our partners to compete on their own merits, and improve through the visibility of public performance.
Because we're an open corporation, I usually pre-announce interesting corporate relationships on my blog.
DesktopLinux.com:IDC predicts that Linux marketshare should grow from 2% to 4% in a year. How does Workspot hope to claim some of that market?
Greg Bryant: Well, I hope we help convert people to using GNU/Linux desktops. If we're successful at that, then we'll be supporting ourselves along the way. And people will discover that we're a Swiss-army knife of mobile tools ... I really can't imagine being a consultant today, or doing demos, without a Workspot around.
DesktopLinux.com: Where do you see Linux in say five years? ten years?
Greg Bryant: I think GNU/Linux will be much more people-centric. I think programming itself must become more humane as well -- I've been programming for thirty years, and I know that people issues are unnecessarily fighting with technical issues, all the time. That has to change -- after all, programmers are people too! The process of creating software will start to deeply reflect natural, human needs. This will probably happen first in the Free Software world. Then the real revolution will happen.
Want to testdrive Workspot? Go here to sign up or try an online demo. Screenshots of Workspot in action are here.
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