Stefan Taxhet's Weblog

Survey - Developer Feedback Needed

We invite code contributors to fill out a short survey that will help to identify the needs and issues of developers working on OpenOffice.org.

Code Contributor Survey

We would like to make our project as attractive to developers as possible. Therefore, it is important to understand why developers want to work on the project and what can make life easy or difficult. For those who hesitated to work on OpenOffice.org, this is a chance to let us know why.
What motivates you to contribute code to an open source project like OpenOffice.org? Please tell us and take part in our Open Source Project Code Contributor Survey which is being run in conjunction with Netbeans.

If you are an OpenOffice.org developer, please take 5 minutes of your time to complete the short survey. Choose OpenOffice.org from the pop-up where it asks for which project you want to answer and proceed with the
code contributor survey.

For participants there is a chance to win one of 5 T-Shirts we are able to give away.

Thanks for your help and feel free to point people working on OpenOffice.org development related things around the globe to the link:

http://survey.services.openoffice.org/survey/public/survey.php?name=osscontrib

Posted at 01:51PM Jun 26, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org  |  Kommentare[6]

2.0.3 RC6 available

Just before the site upgrade started OpenOffice.org 2.0.3 RC6 was available on an adequate number of mirrors.

Let's give the download system bouncer a try and see how it works for OpenOffice.org. Unfortunately this project didn't make it into Summer of Code. But of course your help is still welcome. Thanks go to Corey, Mike, and Lars from OSU Open Source Lab for setting this up.

The links use bouncer for the English installation sets of

2.0.3 RC6 Linux
2.0.3 RC6 Solaris SPARC
2.0.3 RC6 Solaris x86
2.0.3 RC6 Windows

Additional information about RC6 like release notes will be available soon after the main site is back...

Posted at 02:54PM Jun 21, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org  |  Kommentare[4]

Feedback on the Announcement of Site Upgrade

A little error in the announcement mail for the site upgrade triggered some feedback. In minutes after the notification was sent we received messages pointing out that the month should have been June - not March but 20th of June at 19:00 UTC (Btw that is today!). A quickly issued correction brought another interesting view to our attention:

You'd be surprised to know that the common man's faculty to read is not like a computer i.e. we don't take each word in. So when you wrote 20 March, most brains would analyse only 20 and the next word would simply be interpreted as 'month' and brain would take it for granted that the month would be the current one. Consequently, most people would have 'interpreted ' it as 20 June but for your second mail when we went back to check the first mail to see that yes it was 'March' written there while we'd thought it June only.

Incidentally, dates would be interpreted correctly. Had you intended 11 July and wrote 11 Mar by error, the mind would pick up the error instantaneously knowing fully well that 11 of this month is already past.

Basically, thanks for drawing OUR attention to YOUR folly which had otherwise been gracefully unnoticed :-)

With Regards
Dr Saurabh Bhatia
MBBS(AFMC), MS(Psy)
Clinical Psychotherapist and Behavioral counsellor
TS MINDBEND PSYCHOTHERAPY & PSYCHO-ASSESSMENT CENTER
http://www.DoctorAtYourDoorstep.com

Posted at 11:15AM Jun 20, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org  | 

OpenOffice.org Site Upgrade

Next Tuesday, 2006-06-20 at 17:00 UTC, the OpenOffice.org main site will be upgraded. Mail lists, CVS, IssueZilla), ... will not be available for about 48 hours. A placeholder will guide users to the 2.0.2 download. The OpenOffice.org Wiki and anoncvs are not affected. But you won't be able to login to EIS.

After preparation and serious testing with members across all the functional groups contributing to OpenOffice.org we are confident that the migration to the new improved infrastructure will go smoothly. Sorry for the inconvenience the outage might produce. If you stumble over serious issues after the caution banner has been removed, please send a message to cee351 at website.ooo or file an issue against www/upgrade.

Thanks go to Bernd, Christian, CollabNet, Frank, Frank, Heiner, Karl-Heinz, Joerg, Louis, Martin, Sophie and team for your help with the staging site. Let's keep the fingers crossed that this will be the easiest upgrade ever...

Posted at 03:59PM Jun 16, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org  | 

Macro Curiosity as Firedrill

In the last few days we saw a blog that became news, subject of irony, serious technical investigation, background stories and a final burial of the case.

This firedrill was a helpful training for a security issue. It helped to practise the collaboration of developers including the ESC and security team with our marketing group.

So, are we prepared for a real case of emergency?

Posted at 02:44PM Jun 07, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org  |  Kommentare[1]