OK, this is a joke…sorta.
Sitting in the Black Duck booth at LinuxCon, I’ve had three different people mention “rubber duckie debugging” to me. And, as my old product manager training tells me, three mentions is a trend, so I had to Google it.
As those who frequent open source events know, we distribute hundreds (and sometimes thousands) of black rubber ducks at every conference we attend.  And yet, we’ve never formally aligned ourselves with this practice (which is detailed, for your reference, in Wikipedia).
The concept is simple: If you go through the exercise of explaining your problem to someone in detail, you are likely to find the answer yourself… even if that someone is a rubber duck. Years ago, I discovered this myself after running down the hall for help from a colleague several times and each time figuring it out myself after explaining it aloud, at which point my friend suggested using my dog as a sounding board. It was a great lesson in how not to annoy people.
But I digress…
In his keynote yesterday morning, Jim Zemlin talked about the great interest he’s hearing from companies about how they can employ open source development techniques behind their firewalls. We are certainly hearing the same thing, as Tim Yeaton’s recent blog addressed, and are rolling the concept into future product plans.
As I’ve learned at LinuxCon: Step one is to install a black rubber duck next to your keyboard. Let us know if you need one!
(Image from rubberduckdebugging.com)
