self-serving?

is it self-serving of me to want to show/talk about/demo Songbird on OpenSolaris at the devsummit coming up in May?

i thought about it long and hard, and decided yeah - it was perhaps a bit self-serving for me to push that as an agenda item. people might view it as abuse of the fact that i’m both an OGB member and work at Songbird.

to that end, i’ve put it up on the agenda anyway and volunteered ken mays, alfred peng, and triskelios to demo it ;-). i put myself at the end of the list since i’d rather those guys did it (especially alfred since he tackled much of the hard build system work, and albert for getting an initial port/patch up). i might say a few words about the integration/code review process of getting it back upstream into Songbird, but nothing too much.

but enough about that. i’ll bring stickers! wonderful farting gaseous stickers!

2 comments April 3rd, 2008

many thanks…

thanks to all who elected me to the new 2008-2009 term on the OGB.

i have the dubious honour of being the only non-Sun employee on the board. i hope that won’t play into my role or responsibilities, but it’ll certainly be interesting to see whether that has any influence on the dynamic at all.

i’m glad to see that we have some continuity with alanc, gman, and myself carrying through. i’m also happy to see some higher-level Sun representation with webmink on the board as well. i think plocher will bring some great knowledge and thoughts to the board. i value all the community experience that jimgris has, and i’m glad he’s finally on the board (he was the first runner-up last year), and having the ON tech lead, jbeck can only be good.

plus jbeck don’t take shit from no one.

update: I’ve gotten a number of congratulations from various people, but so far this one takes the cake:

<me>: i can’t believe i was elected again
<friend>: Oh, it makes sense that you were elected, but not that you ran!

1 comment March 28th, 2008

Songbird on OpenSolaris, more progress

Just saw Alfred’s latest comment on bug 7800 which notes he’s got Songbird up and running on OpenSolaris, playing .mp3 files, natch.

woot!

/me needs to get his MacBook dual-booting with OpenSolaris again.

2 comments March 19th, 2008

OGB candidates

Glynn just posted the official candidates running the 2008 OpenSolaris Governing Board. Yes, I’ve been nominated again - but this entry is about my concerns as a voter, not as someone running for a board position:

There are some fine candidates on that list (and I can easily think of 7 better more qualified people that should be elected other than myself)… but for me, my dilemma is this…

Do I vote for the people who best understand the current situation/model/issues? Do I vote for the people who best understand where the community should head to next? Are their candidates that fit both of those? I’m not sure. I think there are some candidates who, due to their positions inside Sun, are notably well-suited to be both a voice and an internal advocate for board-decisions. Do I also think those same people could be used to influence the board unduly? Probably, sure. Is that so bad? I’m not sure.

In other words, should the board members vote in favour of the community as it exists? In favour of the community that it could grow to be? In favour of their company’s interests? Or in favour of their own personal interests?

Tough to say. Sometimes these 4 factors are at odds with each other (witness Indiana creating tension between the first two). Sometimes they aren’t. And these aren’t unique to our cloistered little community… should elected officials in American politics be looking out for the Americans who voted for them, or growing the future American immigrants? Tough call.

Sigh. This is going to be a pivotal election. Arguably more so than last year’s given this year’s issues, and the past year’s education and understanding.

I definitely have more thinking I need to do.

I posted this to the list, but for visibility’s sake, I’ll post it to my blog as well so p.o.o. picks it up as well…

In the interests of satisfying the proposed amendment to Article VI of the constitution, section 6.3: I work for Pioneers of the Inevitable, Inc. (aka Songbird). It has no current commercial interest in OpenSolaris, other than working to support community members (in both the OpenSolaris & Songbird communities) who have interest in porting Songbird to OpenSolaris. Conceivably, it could be a supported platform in the future; at that time, there may be more of a commercial interest.

Add comment March 4th, 2008

inching towards farting birds on opensolaris

Mook just committed this guy last night… which stemmed from Alfred Peng’s success in getting an initial build of Songbird up on OpenSolaris (screenshot)

I’m looking forward to getting back to running SXCE^WIndiana^WOpenSolaris^Wwhatever-the-nom-du-jour-is on my workstation.

2 comments March 2nd, 2008

euro trip photos

photo roundup time!

while i was in london last week, i fortunately found myself with one evening free. coincidentally, it happened to be the same night the London OpenSolaris User Group was meeting… so i dropped by and took some photos. it was great to see nick again, and to finally meet peter tribble.

this past weekend, i went to FOSDEM and ended up taking a few photos there as well. predominantly they are from the Mozilla DevRoom, with the exception of a few from the OpenSolaris booth, and a few from Mark Finkle’s talk (Mark is big-time and got a talk in the main track with a huge room separate from the DevRoom ;-))

and on wednesday evening, Songbird hosted a get-together/social, which i lazily called MozzyBirdyXULy Type Meetup Social Thing, where i took more photos. some of them are from the Nest during the day, but most are from the evening social where we had folks from Mozilla, Songbird, Flickr, Wesabe, and Flock (did i miss anyone?).

Add comment February 29th, 2008

#opensolaris-meeting

OpenSolaris General Members Meeting is on NOW

irc.freenode.net

#opensolaris-meeting

If you don’t have an IRC client, you can go to the web client glynn setup

Add comment February 28th, 2008

Tired of it all.

I was going to write a long-winded response to the ongoing trademark, naming cluster-fuck that is Indiana OpenSolaris, but frankly I’m tired. Instead I’ll give a +1 to benr’s response (yes I know it’s a cop-out, sorry).

I’m tired of Sun’s continuing ignorance in how to treat its open source community with some modicum of respect, I’m tired of Sun’s arrogance in taking upon itself to determine what’s best for the community (a community which Sun’s current executives are completely out of touch with). I’m tired of Sun executives not listening to the people in the trenches who work for them, who quite frankly, know a helluva lot more about this whole “open source” thing than they do. I’m tired of Sun not acting within the framework of the governance and constitution that it helped setup. I’m tired of Sun telling me it knows what’s best for me.

But on the flip side…

I’m tired of all the armchair-lawyers on ogb-discuss asserting they know more about trademark law than Sun’s lawyers, I’m tired of all the trolls who agitate for immediate heavy-handed responses without thinking through the ramifications of their actions. I’m tired of so-called user experts telling me they know what’s best for me too. I’m tired of idiots on the mailing lists painting Sun employees with a broad brush and slagging the very people who backed them up and supported the same ideas as them.

Yes. Sun fucked up (and continues to). Who hasn’t? Is a response warranted? Yes, I think so. Should that response be petty and childish? Sure, if we (the OGB and the OpenSolaris community, by extension) want to be perceived as petty and childish too.

So my general plea to Sun executives is: Listen to the very people you have tasked with helping you to understand what open source is, and how to develop an open and transparent developer community. You have smart people working for you and with you.

My general plea to the rest of the OpenSolaris community is: Have some empathy and take 30 seconds before you hit Send or Reply All and try to understand the other side’s view. Personal insults and accusations are unwarranted.

Okay that was more long-winded than I wanted to type. I’m off to recuperate with a bowl of pho, and a pint.

1 comment February 14th, 2008

catchup rambling

i propose starting a new trend in web 2.0. first there was blogging. then there was microblogging (aka twitter’ing). i propose to start time-batch concatenating micro-blogging, or twitter with a touch of both diarrhea and constipation if you will.

so here’s my spew of random micro-blogging-type thoughts, concatenated into one post.

• psyched to be going to London for a week. looking forward to hopefully dropping by the LOSUG meeting while i’m there. would give my left nut to get tickets to the Arsenal/AC Milan Champions League game.

• super-psyched about FOSDEM. little bit nervous to be presenting my first conference preso about Songbird. looking forward to moules et frites with timf, catching up with other various OpenSolaris folk, and meeting more of the Mozilla Community.

• steak and bj day. seriously. i’m so in.

• i’m so desperate to go up to the sierras. i haven’t gone snowboarding at all this winter, and its been dumping lately. sigh. brand new snowboard and everything.

• work is keeping me so busy. feel like every day i finish 5 tasks only to add 7 more to the plate. i was expecting as much when i left Sun… and i love the work and my coworkers, but wow i could use a few days off.

• had a shite day at the gym yesterday, couldn’t get up the V2 & V3 routes i was able to do two weeks ago. ugh. starting to get really psyched about climbing Cathedral Peak with jesse in june though. i think my strength is there, but i could definitely do with some sustained route-climbing to build up the endurance. should probably go out somewhere (diablo maybe?) to practice some trad placements in case my rusty.

• isis is definitely getting worse. we’re taking her to the vet on saturday, but i suspect her time is near. she’s eating slower, and starting to strain so hard her body shakes a lot of the time she’s awake. her 10th birthday is in 10 days. bumming me out.

• great to see benr, tamr, and to finally meet derek c at redmonk’s party a couple of nights ago. cheers to sogrady for a great party and for the beer.

• i feel like i’m spending so much time in front of my computer lately, and not nearly enough time outdoors or with the dogs. gotta figure out this work/life balance thing.

3 comments February 8th, 2008

FOSDEM 2008

Anyone going to FOSDEM this year? I’ll be presenting Songbird in the Mozilla DevRoom (and hopefully giving a lightning talk if it gets accepted). Anyone wanting to meetup to talk about Songbird, Mozilla, OpenSolaris - or just to go sample some awesome Belgium beer - drop me a note! Would love to meet up….

Add comment January 23rd, 2008