Planet #LUGRadio

Syndicate content
Planet #LUGRadio - http://planet.lugradio.org/
Updated: 23 min 25 sec ago

GingerDog: Grr…

4 hours 8 min ago

Why would someone write Python and mix tabs and spaces. Do you really want to have random arbitrary bugs … grr….

:%s/^I/    //g

Grr. grr. grr. stupid programmer. Grr.. That’s my final moan. honest.

GingerDog: Logging … and how not to do it.

4 hours 13 min ago

One thing that really annoys me is when I come to look at the log file and I see something like :

blah blah did blah blah blah foo blah random comment fish blah some data which spans many lines or does it?

This is bad, as I’ve got absolutely no idea where the messages are from (so have to grep around a code base), and I’ve no idea WHEN they were made. At best I can look at timestamps on this file and figure out a timeframe (assuming logrotate is in use so there is a definite (must be after X timestamp)).

What’s far better from a maintenance point of view :

2010/07/29 09:33 filewhatever.py:355 blah blah blah did blah blah

2010/07/29 09:34 filewhatever.py:355 blah blah blah did blah blah

2010/07/29 09:35 filewhatever.py:355 data received from x is {{{hello world…. }}}

Changes are :

  1. Date and time stamps (in python: datetime.datetime.now())
  2. Recording where the message came from (see the ‘inspect’ python module – inspect.stack()[1][1] for calling file, and inspect.stack()[1][2] for the line number, or debug_backtrace() in PHP)
  3. Wrapping any interesting output (e.g. from a remote service) in obvious delimiters (e.g. {{{ and }}} )  - without e.g. timestamps or some other common line prefix, I’ve no way of knowing what’s from where, especially if the output spreads over many lines.

Other good ideas :

  1. Different severities of log message (classic: debug, info, error type annotation with appropriate filtering).
  2. Make sure logrotate is in use, or a simple shell script via cron, to stop the log file growing too large and causing problems.
  3. Stop writing your own logging mechanisms and use ones provided by the system (e.g. Python has a logger built in which does all of the above and more)

EOR - EndOfRant

jono: Ubuntu Global Jam: Start Your Engines!

Tue, 27/07/2010 - 16:25

Are you good folks aware of what is happening on 27th – 29th August 2010. But of course, it is the Ubuntu Global Jam!

In the last few cycles we have organized and run an event called the Ubuntu Global Jam. The idea was simple: encourage our awesome global Ubuntu community to get together in the same room to work on bugs, translations, documentation, testing and more. And they did, all over the world, as can be seen here.

To make the event as simple and accessible as possible, we have picked five topic areas and we are encouraging you lovely people to organize an event with one or more of them:

  • Bugs – finding, triaging and fixing bugs.
  • Testing – testing the new release and reporting your feedback.
  • Upgrade – upgrading to Maverick from Lucid and reporting your upgrade experience.
  • Documentation – writing documentation about how to use Ubuntu and how to join the community.
  • Translations – translating Ubuntu and helping to make it available in everyone’s local language.
  • Packaging – packaging software for Ubuntu users to install with a clock.
  • Other – other types of contribution such as marketing and advocacy etc.

With six primary methods of getting involved, there is something for everyone in this rocking global event.

One thing that I am keen that everyone remembers: you don’t have to be an official developer, packager or programmer to take part in the Ubuntu Global Jam. Also, lets not forget that Ubuntu Global Jam events are a fantastic place to learn and improve your skills: you can sit next to someone who can show you how to do something or explain something in more detail.

If this is all sounding right up your street and you fancy organizing an event, go and read this page and then add your event to the LoCo Directory by following these instructions.

Rock and roll: let’s make this one to remember. Start your engines, folks…

jono: Awesome GUADEC Espresso and Coffee Bar

Tue, 27/07/2010 - 16:05

I have always been a fan of helping in any way I can to encourage people to support small organizations and businesses who are doing their best to be successful by working hard and providing a friendly, honest service.

For the earlier part of this week I am in The Hague at GUADEC, and I stumbled across a small espresso shop that is the embodiment of these kinds of small business. It is impeccably clean, the food is awesome, the coffee is fantastic, it is good value, and the guy who runs the shop is the definition of kind and welcoming. Oh, and it has great wi-fi too.

So, I wanted to share with all my friends who are visiting GUADEC too to come and support this guy’s small business, drink some coffee and leach his Internet.

The address is: 7 o’clock Espressobar, Wagenstraat 187 2512 AW Den Haag and if you are walking back to the hotel before you walk over the small bridge you will see it on the left with a big Coca-Cola sign above it.

More details on the website.

schwuk: Almost Barefoot

Tue, 27/07/2010 - 13:09

I love my Vibram Five Fingers. I rave about them every chance I get, and I love them for running.

What I don’t do, however, is wear them as a general purpose shoe. Until last week that is.

This last week I’ve been in Prague for work, and since my wife & kids are off work & school respectively we decided a road trip was in order - Cumbria to Prague (in two days), a week there, Prague to near Paris (one day), a day at Disneyland Paris (my wife’s birthday), and near Paris to Cumbria (one day).

Now, anyone can see that’s a lot of driving. :)

What’s more interesting - and the point of this blog post - is that with the exception of the first day’s travel and two days of work, I wore my VFFs exclusively, which included:

  • Three full days of driving + related wandering around
  • Three days of work, including a 15-minute walk each way from our apartment to ‘work’ and back, plus various wanderings in the evenings
  • A full day walking around Disneyland Paris

Two notes:

  1. They are, by far, the most comfortable shoes I own. My feet were tired (especially after Disneyland Paris), but by no means sore or blistered
  2. They are a great conversation starter, with random people in Prague commenting on them

So, from now on I suspect I will be wearing them far, far more.

popey: Change for Change’s Sake?

Tue, 27/07/2010 - 10:41

Tony Whitmore (@tonywhitmore) blogged about The Quest for Originality which got me thinking about the podcast that we make with @ciemon, @daviey and @lauracowen.

Over the weekend at OrgCon there was some discussion of originality. The subject was brought up when talking about the creative business, with original works being “worth” something, perhaps more than a digital facsimile of some work. So for example a concert is a one off live event is worth paying for, whereas an MP3 is “worth” less because in part it’s easily duplicated and thus lacks originality. (I’ve paraphrased and perhaps twisted the meaning of the discussion to suit this post, but I’m sure you know what I mean).

I guess there’s a couple of things that I think of in relation to being original. There’s originality with reference to the ‘competition’ and originality in terms of us not being stale over time. Both require some effort to achieve, and in my mind we should be doing both.

Competition in podcasting is hard to define. People have a finite amount of time in their lives to listen to podcasts, so we’re competing with other things people would rather be doing, like spending time with family, programming .. or whatever else our listeners do in their ‘spare’ time. People also listen during a commute, jog or some otherwise ‘dead’ air-time. So we have to be compelling or people will do ‘other things’ than listen.

People thus have a limited amount of time to listen to podcasts, and will thus only consume a limited number of shows. I doubt anyone listens to every FLOSS/Linux podcast, but I’m sure most people have tried them all to see which they prefer. So we need to appeal to people if we want people to listen to the show.

I do want people to listen to the show by the way. Whilst we do this for fun (and no financial profit), if nobody downloaded the show I think we’d probably stop doing it. The idea of being on stage to the sound of one hand clapping doesn’t appeal (to me at least). Others are happy to continue making a show no matter how many people listen.

There are of course other podcasts which do pretty much the same as us, Tuxradar and Full Circle Magazine are two good examples with a similar format, but with their own style. Then there’s the likes of Linux Action Show, Linux Outlaws and The Linux Link Tech Show who all have their own style and niche. Every podcast is clearly different, with presenters having their own expression, shows of varying duration, different personalities, quality and frequency. None (including ours) are perfect, all are serving a segment of the market successfully.

Within our own podcast we’ve evolved slightly over the 2.5 seasons we’ve been running, but for the most part the format has stuck. We have introduced new segment ideas, and refined various elements of the show, but in general we’ve stuck with a formula that works for us, and gets us some listeners.

Right now each episode gets downloaded about 5K times in the week after release with a long tail of 13 weeks to hit 10K downloads. After a year each episode hits around 18K and after two years each episode hits around 32K downloads. Clearly as with every podcast, we have no idea how many of those downloads translate into listens. We’re not so naive to think they all do, but we don’t know what the proportion of downloads to listens is, and I don’t think we ever will do. On that subject, for the record, I don’t think we need to do any kind of survey or tracking to try to figure that number out. I’m personally happy to know that some thousands of people download it and some of them listen to it.

When we started I think we had some original concepts compared to others within our space. We’re family friendly, (usually) well prepared, not North-American (not that being American is a problem, but many FLOSS/Linux podcasts come from there, so it’s nice to have one with a non-American ‘accent’ in my opinion), (mostly) above average audio quality, (generally) on time with a regular schedule and made by contributors to the Ubuntu project rather than bystanders. Whilst other podcasts had some of those elements, not many had all.

Since then we’ve perhaps stagnated, and whilst we have introduced new concepts and made changes at the ‘backend’ to streamline the way we produce the show, we haven’t had much in the way of revolutionary changes that the listeners would notice. The big question is I guess is ‘should we?’.

We could do as Linux Outlaws and TLLTS do and have a live part of the show. We tried this in the past but technical barriers (like Tony having a crap internet connection) stymed that. It’s also tricky in that we take tea breaks and eat cake between segments, rather than record it in one go. We could open the show up to have callers phone-in now we have a nice telephony setup. Maybe we should drop the ‘season’ system and just produce a show constantly with no breaks. We could change the duration, presenters, format, style or any other part of the content, but again, ‘should we?’.

There is the danger that we could break something that didn’t need fixing. Perhaps it is broken and we just don’t know that. Perhaps we’re in danger of burning out on a treadmill to churn out episodes that we don’t enjoy, if we don’t change. I don’t know. Do you?

                          

tonytiger: The quest for originality

Mon, 26/07/2010 - 21:34

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about the things that I do in my free time and why I do them. Over the last year, the course I have been studying has taken up a lot of evenings and weekends, as well as nibbling away at a few days of annual leave. Despite this I’ve kept up my work on the Ubuntu Podcast and contributed to the organisation of two OggCamp events. However, other activities have been less lucky: I’ve hardly seen some good friends and my two godchildren recently and there were a few months when I hadn’t picked up my camera at all.

One of the problems I’ve been mulling over is that of originality. Our Ubuntu Podcast is a successful show by most metrics, but we’re not the only Ubuntu/Linux/FLOSS podcast, not by a long stretch. Some are very different, stylistically, from our own. Others are more similar and I have found myself wondering if there’s any point in having several shows that share similarities. If podcasting really is radio that anyone can do, then what is the point of you doing it? If you’re not doing anything original, anything different, if other people can do it, why continue? Just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

The same thing applies to photography. I’m not a professional photographer, but I’ve enjoyed developing my skills over the last few years. I went on my first photo walk at the weekend, and couldn’t help feeling that twenty photographers walking them same route would come out with pretty much the same photos. Similarly, taking photos of well-known views or places seems pointless when you can find high quality images of the same thing on Flickr. There seems little point or challenge in taking photos which others can easily take too. If there are people making better photos of the same subject than you, why carry on making them?

Is this just trying to avoid being judged and found a failure? To compare your photographic efforts with those of someone who had access to the same scene and come out second best can’t be a nice feeling. If someone starts an Ubuntu or Linux-related podcast, rather than seeing them as a kindred spirit, I can’t help but feel it is a threat or increased competition; that they might do what we do better than us, that our listeners prefer the newcomer.

All this leads me towards the question of motivation. Why do I continue to work on the podcast and spend my time trying to take better photographs? If one can’t make something original, why make anything at all? A lot of my interest in learning how to do something new. The idea of doing a live podcast appeals because it’s a new experience. I’d like to photograph more and varied subjects; to feel I have acquired some new skills. If one finds the process rewarding or fun, or it serves a bigger, grander purpose then that on its own should be enough. Like anything worth doing, it’s difficult to be good at it. If you happen to strike on an original idea on the way, you’re very lucky.

What do you think? Please leave your comments below.

jono: Team Reporting

Mon, 26/07/2010 - 17:50

Some time ago we created the Team Reporting facility in Ubuntu, and I am pleased to see that LoCo Teams are using Team Reports to kep us all up to date on the awesome progress going on across the community.

I just wanted to remind you good folks of where to find the reports and how to get involved.

jono: The Five Horsemen

Mon, 26/07/2010 - 15:43

Last week I was in Prague with my team; the first with Ahmed since he joined. It was an awesome week and it was useful to checkpoint our progress.

We also took the first ever full team photos of us, first in our room and second at the end of the week having a drink:

Thanks to Gord for the photos.

This photo makes me feel incredibly to be part of such an awesome team. Rock and roll!

GingerDog: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-25

Sun, 25/07/2010 - 17:41
  • Morrisons. You are the worst supermarket ever. Let me buy single bananas. #
  • Even with an iPhone and google maps etc I got lost around Bentley / webheath. #amireallyawoman #mapreadingfail #
  • Cycled to arrow valley park (redditch) and back, via lickey hill (out) and cycle route 5 on the way back….. #
  • Cycling with a dead weight toddler in a rear seat is hard. This might have to become a regular routine. #
  • Toddler cycling day (well I'm cycling, he's along for the ride) #
  • Hmm. Apple case app crashed my phone. Great. Shame there aren't more pictures or info provided to help me choose #iPhone4 #case #
  • Wish subversion would let me revert line ranges within a file so I can easily avoid committing whitespace changes etc. #svn #
  • FOOL WOMEN into thinking their opinions are valued by nodding occasionally and saying 'mmm' /via @VizTopTips #
  • Say the word and I'll be gone. Say the word and I'll be gone forever, and ever. #
  • Yey. Query time reduced from 2.5 seconds to 0 seconds. And a happy customer soon. #
  • http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2010/07/20/proper-use-of-your-and-there/ #

GingerDog: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-25

Sun, 25/07/2010 - 17:41
  • Morrisons. You are the worst supermarket ever. Let me buy single bananas. #
  • Even with an iPhone and google maps etc I got lost around Bentley / webheath. #amireallyawoman #mapreadingfail #
  • Cycled to arrow valley park (redditch) and back, via lickey hill (out) and cycle route 5 on the way back….. #
  • Cycling with a dead weight toddler in a rear seat is hard. This might have to become a regular routine. #
  • Toddler cycling day (well I'm cycling, he's along for the ride) #
  • Hmm. Apple case app crashed my phone. Great. Shame there aren't more pictures or info provided to help me choose #iPhone4 #case #
  • Wish subversion would let me revert line ranges within a file so I can easily avoid committing whitespace changes etc. #svn #
  • FOOL WOMEN into thinking their opinions are valued by nodding occasionally and saying 'mmm' /via @VizTopTips #
  • Say the word and I'll be gone. Say the word and I'll be gone forever, and ever. #
  • Yey. Query time reduced from 2.5 seconds to 0 seconds. And a happy customer soon. #
  • http://www.myconfinedspace.com/2010/07/20/proper-use-of-your-and-there/ #

matthewrevell: Recording video calls in Ubuntu

Fri, 23/07/2010 - 14:12

Lately, I’ve been interviewing Launchpad users to learn more about how they work with Launchpad and what they think of new features we’re proposing.

Until now, this has been mostly face to face, either at the Ubuntu Developer Summits or Canonical’s London office. Talking in person seems to be the best way of doing this: as the interviewer, I can see exactly which part of a proposed page the person is looking at when they pull a certain face, for example.

However, doing it this way greatly limits who I get to speak to. Not everybody who uses Launchpad attends UDS or is within easy travelling distance of central London during the work day.

So, I’ve been looking at ways of doing this remotely. There are some important constraints:

  • pretty much anyone should be able to take part
  • no special equipment should be needed
  • it should cost nothing, or very little, to conduct.
Recording Skype video calls in Ubuntu

As it seems to meet my requirements, I’m going to give Skype video calling a go. And I say “Skype”, rather than anything else, for reasons that I’ll now explain.

I’ve spent quite some time trying to find a straightforward way to record video calls in Ubuntu. I’ve come up with nothing, so here’s one way that seems to work:

  • capture the audio using Skype Call Recorder
  • capture video using GTK-RecordMyDesktop (apt-getable)
  • splice the two together in a video editor.

Test calls have worked. I’ll post again with a report on how it worked in practice.

Rainking: Photo Scope available for free

Wed, 21/07/2010 - 12:19

I have just released an ad supported version of my photo location tracking android app. If you are interested in photography and would like a way to keep track of photo opportunities check it out.

Aquarion: WoW

Wed, 21/07/2010 - 00:20

This week, I installed World of Warcraft.

Possibly not my greatest idea ever, because I need extra bonus timesinks like I need a punctured skull, but having ditched Champions Online and not making it out of the Closed Beta of Star Trek Online before being bored with it, I thought I’d give WoW another try before they rewrote the beginning.

I did a 14 day trial of WoW in 2005, but nobody I knew at the time was playing it. I bought a boxed copy in 2006 and spent a while pottering around in it, not really getting very far:

2006-08-28: I’m trialing World Of Warcraft again. After the ease of teaming and working and… everything that City of Heroes gives you, I’m finding the idea of attempting to build an entire social interface for a game as big as WoW on a substandard IRC client hellish. “LFG L31 Pally F RFD” pops up in the chat window. LFG… looking for group, yes. L31 Pally? Oh, Paladin. I’m one of those. Not L31 yet… RFD? Real fucking donkeys? Ready for domination? Red Flowers Die? Alt-Tab GoogleGoogle Razorfen Downs. Right. Ignore that then…

One of the things I really like about City of Heroes is the effortless *multiplayer* bits. That is, you set a flag saying you’re looking for a team (Any team, or a missions team, or a “task force” (er, WoW players can see that as a Raid, I guess), but I logged into my account (mostly to check I still know the password), and it offered me a free trial of Burning Crusade, so I’ve spent a few hours over a couple of evenings levelling up my shiny new Blood Elf:

Mostly, though, I’m noticing how empty the world is.

It’s similar to the problem in LOTRO, but there are supposedly 11 million people playing this game (Although that number is now two years old, and breakdowns per country seem thin on the ground), but there is nobody in chat, and I see other players of anywhere near my level every few hours, and always running in the opposite direction.

Maybe its that Warcraft’s emphasis on pushing the world boundries out along with the level cap is bouncing against my being used to Heroes, where the emphasis is on either rerolling or – more recently – doing content on forks you didn’t take as “Flashback” stories, but the emptiness is kind of weird. Obviously, I need to rope in other people to level with at the same time, or something. Most of the people I know are doing the top-end raid content, though.

Aquarion: Pears and Sausages

Mon, 19/07/2010 - 22:41

Lets start with a quote. From the Lies Of Locke Lamora, by Scott Lynch:

The white-robed boys swept back their hoods and Locke saw that they were twins; perhaps a year or two older than himself, and far sturdier-looking. They had the olive skin and black hair of the true Camorri; their identical long, hook-ended noses, however, were something of an anomaly. Smiling, they joined hands and bowed in unison from the waist.

‘Um, hi,’ Locke said. ‘Which of you is . . . which?’

‘Today, I am Galdo,’ said the one on Locke’s left.

‘Tomorrow, I will probably be Galdo,’ said the other one.

‘Or perhaps we’ll both want to be Calo,’ added the one that had first spoken.

‘In time,’ Father Chains interrupted, ‘you’ll learn to tell them apart by the number of dents I’ve kicked in their respective arses; one of them always manages to be ahead of the other, somehow.’ He stood behind Locke and placed both of his wide, heavy hands on Locke’s shoulders. ‘Idiots, this is Locke Lamora. As you can see, I’ve just bought him from your old benefactor, the master of Shades’ Hill.’

‘We remember you,’ said presumed-Galdo.

‘A Catchfire orphan,’ said presumed-Calo.

‘Father Chains bought us just after you arrived,’ they said in unison, grinning.

‘Knock that bullshit off,’ Father Chains said, his voice somehow regal. ‘You two have just volunteered to cook dinner. Pears and sausage in oil, and a double portion for your new little brother. Get. Locke and I will deal with the kettle.’

That’s what I was reading yesterday, and so, casting around for something to do for dinner today, the quote popped into my head. Pears and sausage in oil.

(If you like the book, you can buy it in most decent book stores. If you’re not quite sure, there’s another 29 and a half pages of the book in extract form on Mr Lynch’s site. I’d highly recommend both the book and the sequel).

Tescos supplied me with some “Cumberland style” sausages and a few pears, edibly ripe.

The frying pan has yet to recover from the weekend, so we won’t be frying them. Pears are quite delicate to the taste, and we want to bring out the flavour rather the bury it, so this is going to end up as simple as possible.

A roasting tin, into which we throw four of the sausages, each sliced into three. The pears are peeled (which is a bastard) sliced and then stripped of the core bits, then thrown in without any more slicing. Olive oil is drizzled over that to help it cook, and Onto that goes a sprinkling of basil with a dash of thyme, ginger, salt (Basil because I like it, thyme because I think it’ll work well with the pear, and a pinch of ginger to add an subliminal edge. The salt helps bring out the flavour too); some sliced tomatoes go over the top because I think that’ll help, and then the whole kit and caboodle gets thrown into the oven for an hour and a half on 150°c while I go attempt to work out why so many people like World of Warcraft.

A while later, I come to the conclusion this isn’t quite enough of a balanced meal, throw some rice on, and serve that lot over it about ten minutes later.

Then I have an idea.

popey: Ubuntu at Non-Technical Events

Mon, 19/07/2010 - 11:53

We seem to be quite good at turning up to technical events such as LUG meetings, technical conferences and other self-organised events and telling everyone how great Ubuntu is. However we seem to spend a lot of time preaching to the converted, speaking to people who already run Ubuntu or some other distro, rather than ‘converting’ people who have little or no exposure to Ubuntu.

Amber Graner recently wrote about her experience evangelising and advocating at a local Goat Festival. She was also interviewed about this on the Full Circle Magazine podcast recently.

When I heard about this it made me think that it’s something we should think about. Not specifically Goat festivals, but non-technical events. I wanted to canvass the group to see what events people might want to have a presence at. I’m not (at this point) asking for volunteers, but just ideas of events where people go and we might be able to have a stand where we could talk to people about Ubuntu and how they might want to use it.

These could be non-technical business events, they might relate to a specific sector such as education, or they could be cultural events like festivals. Anything goes really. I’ll start the ball rolling with a fairly generic example that pretty much anyone here can do:-

Village Fêtes

These attract families from all walks of life, and would be a great opportunity to have a public stand at little or no cost to run. Other attractions could include simple games (always popular at Fêtes) with prizes perhaps donated by community members, sponsors or (if willing/possible) Canonical. With summer coming it would be a great opportunity to get geeks outside in the sunshine and show off what we have to offer.

What events local to you would you like to see a stand at?

Also posted on the UK LoCo mailing list, so some responses may appear there too.

                          

tonytiger: Geoff Sayers: Gone but definitely not forgotten

Sun, 18/07/2010 - 22:00

Geoff Sayers was the Head of Drama at St. Bede’s, the school I attended in the 1990s. Last week I found out that he had passed away, which was both a great shock and a great sadness. Geoff was one of those teachers whose individuality and commitment to their subject meant that every lesson was a memory. He helped me learn about lighting and sound, which became my job for a while and the skills from which I still use on the podcast and in my photography. Not without eccentricities, he achieved superb results on GCSE and A-Level courses. The chief examiner of the exam board often attended assessment performances personally to ensure they were fairly marked. Geoff directed many plays over the years, a few of which I had the privilege to be involved in, which were noted for some excellent individual performances and were often spectacular budget-busting ensemble pieces. Working in his drama classes also helped create friendships which are still strong today.

I posted a short message on my Facebook status when I found out he had died and soon a collection of comments amassed from ex-classmates, each of whom had their own memory of Geoff to share. Although there is a memorial service is being held at the school in September, getting together for an evening of memorial drinks felt like a fitting tribute for the man who treated his students like his cast, who was always a teacher but felt like a friend. So on Saturday 7th August we’ll be getting together in Reigate for some drinks and, I’m sure, a fair bit of reminiscing. There is a Facebook event page, but it would be great to see anyone who remembers Geoff with affection come along. Please pass the details on to those others who knew Geoff too.

GingerDog: Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-18

Sun, 18/07/2010 - 17:41
  • Good morning world. #
  • . @ChairmumMiaow is on @BBcWm tomorrow
    Morning (fri) to talk about upcoming breastfeeding picnic (Monday – http://bit.ly/brumbfpicnic) #
  • Breastfeeding picnic in Birmingham – monday 19th July 12-3pm http://bit.ly/brumbfpicnic see fb group. #Birmingham #bfpicnic #
  • Sblug html5 talk from @brucel might start soon. #
  • So much for an early night. Potential office viewing tomorrow…. *crosses fingers* #
  • Evolution is better than thunderbird for mail on Linux …. Except for address learning / completion. #
  • Interesting day – customer turns up unannounced for what turns into a near 5 hour meeting. Still he bought lunch #
  • Finding a wordpress virus thing (eval(gzinflate(base64_decode(….)))) on a site just before bed is annoying. Timestamp implies before us #
  • 2 old ladies sitting in church 1 leans over and whispers to the other "my butt is going to sleep", other replies "i heard it snore 3 times" #
  • I love orange. O2 you sucked so much. #
  • Sweet. FETIDUS is back on podcast. Zombies. Yey. #
  • I'm not sorry to see the Food Standards Agency go #fsa #
  • Thanks mr postman for parking your bike right in front of me in the middle of the fricking pavement. #
  • This is excellent and should be seen by everyone: http://is.gd/doq8o /via @FellowAtheists – zombies religion venn diagram #
  • My 10km time – 42.38 (43rd, last year: 42.50 & 29th). #timberhonger #running #bromsgrove (results at http://timberhonger10k.co.uk) #
  • Back home from the launch party of Intimate Perfection. Go Jenny! Congrats on doing the England team! And the world cup winners get it free? #

port7: Open Source Enterprise Community

Sun, 18/07/2010 - 15:48

Recently been thinking, that if there is one thing that Open Source Community do really well is collaboration, and building community. Something that very few ‘Enterprise’ places do really well.

Considering why can’t an Enterprise do that, why can’t they? Is the question I am asking.

If I was starting a Open Source Project outside of work, I would be working the online community, frequenting IRC Channels, Mailing Lists, and Blogs of related projects. Announcing my new project and gathering a team around that.

Things like that just don’t seem to happen in Enterprise, sure there are no IRC Channels, or Mailing Lists. I guess the equivalent are teams, both support and project specific. To but in on those would be difficult.

Why can’t we do it?