A friend and I went out for ice cream at Baskin Robbins last night before catching a movie. While there, an interesting observation was made. Usually on a price display board, portions or servings are listed in ascending order of size;

• Small portion $x
• Regular portion $y
• Large portion $z

At Baskin Robbins however they use two marketing tricks I hadn’t noticed before. Firstly, regular serves are not called ‘regular’. They’re called ‘popular’. Keep in mind that for many products on offer, Baskin Robbins offers only ‘popular’ and ‘small’ serves. One therefore assumes that this trick is intended to convey a sense of unpopularity or undesirability around ordering the ‘small’ serve. If you buy it, you’re not socially acceptable. Sneaky.

The second trick plays on the ability of our brain to ‘fill in’ anticipated information. Based on the example of ‘small, regular, large’ above, if the options were presented in this order, what do you think the missing piece would be?

• Regular serve $x
• Large serve $y
• [unknown serve] $z

Most people ‘fill in’ the unknown element based on pattern recognition – and will state that the unknown serve is ‘extra large’ or ‘jumbo’ – something to that effect. However, Baskin Robbins uses this against us. Where do you think the ‘small’ serve is positioned? That’s right – at the bottom of the list!

• Popular serve $x
• Large serve $y
• Small serve $z

In reality your brain will generally ignore the ‘Small’ option – and make you choose between ‘Popular’ and ‘Large.

Perhaps a psychology major can explain why?

While doing research for my MBA (Computing), I stumbled across the below article on weight bias in employment, and found it fascinating. In summary, the research showed that obese people, in particularly fat women, experience significant discrimination in workplace settings, and from society in general. Obese women are less likely to earn higher salaries, and their partners, if they are able to attract one, are less likely to be highly paid.  However, rather than poverty contributing to obesity – through factors such as access to nutritious foods, education on healthy eating practices, and access to safe exercise programs – the paper puts forward the notion that obesity causes poverty – if you are fat, you are less likely to be earning a high salary.

http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/~rothblum/doc_pdf/weight/WeightBiasinEmployment.pdf

My employment experiences have generally been very positive ones; I’ve chosen workplace cultures that value intellect over attractiveness and reward excellence in output rather than in application of makeup. While dressing smartly, I rarely wear makeup and don’t even own a pair of high heeled shoes. They don’t make them in a size 11D

Lately though the educational institution where I work is becoming ‘corporatised’ – with suits becoming more de rigeur. Slowly, our values are changing – with more weight (pun intended) being placed on image and presentation. So, although losing weight is a great health goal, should career advancement also be a motivator? Or am I just selling out to a culture that conflates being fat with being stupid and lazy? Clearly I’m neither – holding two degrees, well on my way to a third – and holding a significant workload both on the job and through extra-curricular activities.

What’s the best strategy for someone like me – that is, highly intelligent, well educated, but obese – and likely to remain so – even with significant weight loss – for the foreseeable future? As I see it, my options are;

1. Accept the status quo but continue to invest in my career
2. Accept the status quo but not invest in my career – as I may not get a return on that investment
3. Lose weight (motivated for health reasons and personal drive)
4. Lose weight (to look good, meet societal expectations and advance my career)

It’s a fascinating area. One of the concepts that’s been playing on my mind recently is around societal contribution. As an educated, gainfully employed member of society I contribute taxes, donate to charities and am generally a “good” citizen.

However as an obese citizen I’m denied many opportunities afforded others; social inclusion is more difficult, there are barriers to attracting a partner and starting a family, I’m taken less seriously in some professional situations and getting competent medical care is harder (viz the case when I presented with pneumonia and the first question from the GP was ‘how much do you weigh?’).

So why should I contribute as much to society when society doesn’t value me as much as the “hot chick”?

While doing some investigation for the upcoming Software Freedom Day event to be held at the State Library of Victoria on 18th September, an interesting trend emerged. As I browsed the plethora of free and open source software (FOSS) tools available in different disciplines, it became clear that many so-called ‘open source’ products were presented as such, but were free only in the form of ‘community editions’. Fully featured ‘premium’ versions of the product were only available in paid form. Is this an increasing trend toward open source in name only, with scant lip service paid to the principles of freedom, knowledge sharing and the greater good that ‘old school’ open source strives so hard for? Or is it a inevitable conclusion driven by market forces?

On one hand the stratification of products into ‘community’ and ‘premium’ editions goes some way to solving a dilemma which has plagued the open source sector for decades; how to derive value from a product which does not cost money to obtain. By encouraging adopters to ‘try’ the community edition and providing a seamless upgrade path to the paid version, the ‘owners’ of the open source product build a user base, while the user base is able to get access to a product for minimal financial risk – a seemingly win-win situation.

However, there are a number of problems here. Firstly, if a product starts out as open source and manages to generate an active developer and support community, with contributions made on a good will basis, what happens when that product is forked? Often, the ‘community edition’ is neglected and left to rot, while development effort (and money) is invested into the ‘premium’ edition. This is exactly what has happened to DimDim, once a truly open source product now split into a defunct open source ‘community’ fork, alongside a cloud service (albeit some offerings of which are free).  A similar thing has happened to KnowledgeTree, which once offered a community version alongside its premium, fully featured product. The community edition is no more. Other examples – which still sport community editions -  include SugarCRM and JasperSoft.

If I were a developer who had contributed to the original open source product, I would certainly feel cheated that the eventual product did not exhibit the same commitment to freedom, sharing, community, and the greater good that the antecedent did.

Perhaps the core issue here is one of branding. The term ‘open source’ connotes a sense of freedom; of contributing something for the greater good. There is a sense of emotional identification with a product or organisation which promotes itself as open source; it is a statement which says ‘we’re not just in this for the money’. However, I firmly believe that many organisations are simply using the phrase ‘open source’ as a hollow marketing tool, when their product suite does not reflect the core values of the open source community – free as in beer and free as in freedom.

So what is the answer? Projects like WordPress have employed a different tactic; here a suite of value-adding services such as hosting and personal support are being provided, while the base product remains completely free and open source. To me this is the preferable model – as the product itself remains free, while the organisation can add value (and derive a profit) while enhancing – rather than detracting – from the code base.

Regulation – such as stipulating standards against which organisations must comply if they are to label their products as ‘open source’ are likely to fail in a globalised environment with multiple jurisdictions and no imperative for monitoring.

Perhaps the answer lies in developers and end users becoming more savvy – and being discerning enough to recognise when a product – and the philosophy behind it – is truly open source; and when ‘open source’ is just another buzzword on a marketing brochure.