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Category Archives: Tech
On Diaspora
There’s been a lot of hubbub about Facebook’s ongoing tone-deafness regarding privacy. As a result, there has also been a lot of hubbub about the Diaspora project, with both wildly optimistic projections of their success, as well as more skeptical assessments. I’m skeptical about Diaspora specifically, because it reminds me a lot of an effort [...]
Posted in Tech 3 Comments
Doing the conferency talky thing
I didn’t do much in the way of public speaking last year, but I’m starting to make up for it this year. Here’s a few things I’ve got coming up: April 13 – Lighting talk at the Seattle Django Users Group – this will be about jsonwidget, which is shaping up nicely. I’m toying with [...]
Also posted in Personal 2 Comments
Thoughts on dual licensing and contrib agreements
photo by kwc There’s been a lot of chatter lately about dual licensing in open source and its much-maligned companion the contributor license agreement. Since my last two community management gigs involved dual licensing and CLAs, I have a few thoughts on the subject. These tools certainly make it harder to build a community. As [...]
Posted in Tech 16 Comments
Sorry about the NASCAR-looking comment area
As you may have noticed if you visited blog.robla.net directly, the comment area is handled via Intense Debate. I did that to get myself out of the account management business while still maintaining a modicum of control over my site. Other than then weird blue flaming logo and the name “intense debate” on a blog [...]
Posted in Tech 4 Comments
Python’s simpleparse module
I’m working on a project that required a bit more from the JSON parser than the stock JSON parser with Python allowed for. After doing some hunting around, I came to the unfortunate conclusion that I’d probably need to write my own. Thankfully, Python’s simpleparse module lived up to its billing (thanks in large part [...]
Posted in Tech 4 Comments
Moving on
I’ve decided to leave my current job at Linden Lab. Those of you interested in the ins-and-outs of Second Life may want to look at my post to “sldev” (our open source development mailing list). It was a tough decision to leave, and even tougher to make without having my next move totally nailed down, [...]
Also posted in Personal 2 Comments
Brutal honesty in open source development
There’s a bit of a flamewar going on right now between the main PulseAudio developer, and another Linux desktop developer who grew frustrated by some very real problems caused directly and indirectly by it. PulseAudio is the latest of many savior technologies that promise to make audio on Linux not suck. I’m actually pretty optimistic [...]
Software as hiring decision
This article in CIO Magazine touches on things that you should look for in choosing open source software: Project stability: Can you trust the project to be there when you need it? Project support: Can you get support when you need it? Internal software management: Does your company know what open-source programs it’s using? How [...]
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A hard problem worth solving
Here’s a description of the organic open source panel at OSCON (which I’m participating in): “The OSI’s Open Source Definition attempts to set the minimum bar for a software license to be considered “open source”. However, there’s much more to a software project than just the license. Are software projects dominated by a single company [...]
Open source and a free tote bag
Matt Asay wrote a blog post “Cash, code, or free-riding in open source communities?“, which was a good post on a topic I’ve been thinking a lot about myself. He used the term “free-rider” which caused a well documented uproar. I’m saddened by the sense of entitlement inherent in the uproar. What’s wrong with asking [...]
Is OpenSolaris an elitist?
Dave Neary has a great blog post about Sun trying to do the right thing. It was refreshing to read this, and quite insightful. I’ve been watching the naming debate with some interest, if for no other reason than this is a conversation I’m quite interested in pushing my view in, and it helps to [...]
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Speaking at the Seattle Social Media Club
A little bit of work talk. I’m going to be speaking tonight (January 31) at the Seattle Social Media Club about Second Life, along with my co-worker Greg Tomko-Pavia (aka Periapse Linden) Jeff Barr at Amazon, who has been doing really innovative work promoting Amazon Web Services using Second Life, and Brian White, the author [...]
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New Job Title: Open Source Busybody
For those of you wondering what I’ve been doing at Linden Lab, now I can tell you.
Also posted in Personal Leave a comment
Orkut is in Alexa’s Top 10 sites…wtf?
Google’s social networking site Orkut was the coolest thing since sliced bread back in early 2004. It was a social network that actually had interesting people on it. It had a fun user interface. And then, the reliability problems kicked in, and then the Brazilians invaded every corner of it. So just about everyone I [...]
Wikimania
I’m off to Boston, to be among fellow nerds at Wikimania, where I’m hosting a discussion about enterprise use of MediaWiki, as well as hanging around beforehand for Hacking Days. We’ll see what sort of attendance there is for my session; there’s a lot of parallel tracks at this thing. I’m hoping to figure out [...]
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Apple’s $150 IQ test
I’m not an Apple fanboy by any stretch of the imagination, but I do have to hand it to them with the new laptops. Not points on quality, but on revenue maximizing genius. Specifically, charging $150 more for a black laptop. People will pay for the cachet, and charging $150 is just enough to make [...]
Posted in Tech 3 Comments
Mobiguous company names
A friend recently told me about yet another mobile startup who I won’t name, but suffice to say has yet another one of those generic amalgams of “Mo” or “Mob” with some other word. It got me thinking “hey, I can automate this; maybe save everyone some time”….which I did (at least the first part). [...]
Posted in Tech 8 Comments
What a great picture of me!
I’m on the right, talking to Brian Aker down at the MySQL User Conference. (photo by James Duncan Davidson/O’Reilly Media)
New gig: Wikimedia Foundation