Last week I was at the Nordic Perl Workshop 2007 in Copenhagen – it was a blast! Quite a few interesting talks, and lots of nice things to do in the city. Kudos to the organizers, and good luck to Stockholm.pm who’ll arrange next year’s workshop. 
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NPW2007: Nice one, Cph.pm!
May 9th, 2007How to become a Good Free Software User
May 9th, 2007How do I become a better user of Free/Libre/Open Source Software? Here’s my list:
- When looking for Open Source or Free software to use, remember to first look for good projects, then for good products. With FLOSS I have the option of becoming a contributor – even if it seems unlikely I will right now, I may become one sometime in the future. I know this because my requirements for the software will most likely change as I get comfortable with it – and when this happens, I’ll be glad that I chose a project that will support me as I get to explore it’s details, or support the people I hire so they can improve on the product on my behalf.
- Consider the license! If I in some way intend to add value to the product in order to sell it, go for products with a BSD-like license. Otherwise stick to licenses that force other people’s (and my own!) contributions to stay free for all and anyone to scrutinize and improve. The GNU General Public License is the most used one in this regard.
- Get a feeling of the type and amount of activity. Look for mailing lists, web bulletin boards, bug trackers and newsgroups, and try to lurk around for a while to get an impression. In a FLOSS project it’s evolution of the code that matters most. Not the code itself, not the people working on it, not marketing or managerial matters. See if the project has good code, people, marketing and management – but if one of these seem to hurt the project’s prospects, find out how the project lead(s) solve the problem so that the project can continue thriving. Also take into consideration the type of project you’re looking for. Are you trying to solve an open problem (the kind which never is “done”), then you should expect the activity to be bustling. With projects trying to solve closed problems, you shouldn’t be too disparaged by low amounts of chatter on the forums.
- Look for inclusive but code-centric leadership. What do the contributors do to attract talented people? How is the tone and atmosphere in the different fora? How much of the discussion is solution-, system-, feature-, wishlist- or people-oriented? Is the project open and welcoming to novices and new contributors? How often do discussions reach a satisfactory conclusion?
A project should at presumably make use of the following infrastructure and characteristics in order to support good communication:
- One or more open forums (with searchable archives) where you can join the discussion, ask for support etc.
- A standard way of retrieving the latest bleeding edge version from a revision control system (e.g. SVN or CVS) so you can check for yourself what’s going on in the project.
- A bug- and issue tracker that is in active use.
- A website describing the product, with documentation, download links and other collaborations tools (a wiki for example).
- Responsive project participants, and a good and friendly tone wherever the software is being dicussed.
If the project seems promising but lacks some of the infrastructure, then try to find out if the contributors are working on aquiring the missing tools.
Lifesigns++
May 9th, 2007Oh my, it’s been a long time since I wrote notes for myself.
So, since last post happened, we (Oslo.pm) successfully arranged NPW2006, I’ve met people and lost them, I’ve played way too much EVE Online (to the point of some friends becoming worried, I think), and all other kinds of more-or-less interesting things. I might post about that some day.
On the private side of my affairs, things are still quiet. Family matters haven’t changed much, GF still not there, friends still hang around for some reason. Good to have them! They help me a lot.
Nordic Perl Workshop update
December 19th, 2005The NPW2006 update #3 is out! Highlights are:
- We now have the perlworkshop.no domain.
- The Call for Papers has been announced!
- We’re looking for a Oslo.pm logo. Send in your ideas!
- The conferece topic will be “Managing Complexity”
…and more.
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Clearing up my mind I
December 11th, 2005Lots of things are running through my head nowadays (makes sleeping difficult, I tell you). I think I’ve been frustrated for long enough now, so I might as well try and structure myself a little.
Maybe this helps me start on some of the things I’ve been putting off for too long now?
- Patents on software. I’ve heard some proponents say that the EUCD (and the Norwegian implementation of it) are only going to effect software-controlled technical devices (whereof the software only is a part of the physical device). This, IMHO, is still absurd because software is instructional language. Even if you make these automatable instructions a part of some patentable physical device, the instructions are still language.
- Collaborative Authoring Platforms. We know free software and it’s brethren development methods. With CAPs I’d like to look beyond the software and see if some of these principles can be applied successfully in more general authoring environments. I’m not thinking about blogs and wikis and the like, but of authoring in general.
- Knowledge Management. I’m still a newbie when it comes to KM, and when I read Dave Pollard’s blog or similar KM, management or information design blogs, I get the gut feeling that there’s something amiss at the place I work. It could be that I’m just expecting too much, or that I’m living with too unrealistic ideals, but this doesn’t change the fact that something should be improved. Not sure what yet, but I’ll keep you posted.
- Local community building. I’ve been trying to make Oslo Perl Mongers into a self-sustaining group, and basically had my fears confirmed – that people are too busy. We decided to arrange the Nordic Perl Workshop 2006, so we’ll see if this will improve the life expectancy of Oslo.pm.
- Information usability and accessability. I recently looked into frameworks for replacing the intranet at work. I found that creating a good intranet is not easy by any standards. One could say that most “users” of an intranet have quite low expectations of what kind of functionality they need/expect (e.g. “I just need something to publish with!”), but my work cannot stop there – sure I could just have set up a simple CMS (there are literally hundreds of them! Lots of good OSS ones too.) but then I would ignore the long-term effects of using a particular tool. Basically, we need not only to be able to publish, but we need also to do multi-publishing, keep track of metadata (categories, keywords), create new custom applications, integrate these and older ones into a coherent intuitively understandable whole, and then to boot, make it all indexable and searchable.
- Self-motivation and motivation in general. I’m still getting there, and this blog is one of the things I’m trying to help me Get Things Done. Right now I’m too distracted by all the stuff floating around in my head.
I think there’s still more “potentially public” things I need clearing up, but this’ll do for now.
code.foo.no online
October 17th, 2005You can find it at code.foo.no. I’m using WordPress, and it seems to be a quite capable blogging platform.
Let’s hope it works out fine then.
Interesting blogs I
April 7th, 2005I’m compelled to say that Dave Pollard definitly is On To Something, or more probably, On To Several Things. He writes a huge amount of sensible stuff in his blog “How to Save the World”, covering topics from economics, creativity and research, the environment and business, to the act of conversation.
Definitely worth a look – if you don’t mind being provoked into thinking about stuff.