Stefan Taxhet's Weblog

Montag September 18, 2006

Data sent for Online Update Notification

OpenOffice.org 2.0.4. Release Candidates are available for download. Online Update Notification is coming up with this release. Martin showed us the dialogs where the user can influence the behaviour.

There were some concerns about the data OpenOffice.org sends to the update server.
Let me cite from the Online Update Specification (linked from the page with specifications which affect all OpenOffice.org modules):

"StarOffice/OpenOffice.org sends via http post request the following data to the server:

ProductKey
Buildid
ProductPatch
ProductSource
AllLanguages
Operating System
Platform

The first four items are contained in the version.(ini|rc), ProductKey is contained in the bootstrap.(ini|rc), and operating system and platform are provided by the internal bootstrap variables _OS and _ARCH."

Here is the data as sent by an English OpenOffice.org 2.0 Solaris SPARC version:

ProductKey=OpenOffice.org 2.0
 &buildid=680m181(Build:9057)
 &ProductPatch=
 &ProductSource=SRC680
 &AllLanguages=en-US
 &_OS=Solaris
 &_ARCH=SPARC

There is no personally identifiable information ("Personal Information") sent over the net.

In my opinion this step from the manual to the automatic check for updates (on our way to an automated update) has significant advantages for the user and the project. While I think we should enable this feature by default I agree that we could improve the way it is presented to our users to avoid confusion.

For those connected people that don't want to benefit from the functionality there are three ways to disable it. Let's not trade apprehension of superficial press articles for the ability to improve the product.

Posted at 05:17PM Sep 18, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org | Kommentare[1]

Dienstag September 12, 2006

Hallway talks

Monday started with the Community Council meeting.
We spent a major portion of the time on the topics decision making and raising the voice - especially in case of controversy. I took the action item to review the existing descriptions (project guidelines, Community Council charter, Engineering Steering Committee page, ...) and make responsibilities and escalation paths more clear.

One of the most interesting part of the conference is spontaneous talks on the hallway. It's fun to see the long-term contributors again. And it is always interesting to chat face-to-face for the first time with people you know only from mailing lists or IRC.

The nearby bistro should install wireless access to the internet. It would definitely be even more inviting for conference attendees. Extempore dragging people aside for a serious conversation might not be successful - even if all are participant joined with a good intent.
But it's a prefect place to relax and have easygoing conversations.

In the evening a ship tour showed us the beauty of Lyon experienced from Rhône and Savone. The dinner could have been a bit more palatable, but people couldn't escape. We had some fun over a wine and enjoyed the boat trip.

Posted at 04:22PM Sep 12, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org |

The day before

Sunday afternoon Cedric guided us on a trip through the city.

And we heard that the team Kiberpipa is taking care of the media coverage again.

During a stop in a cafe I continued to ask OpenOffice.org contributors for the most important obstacles to enter our project as a developer. I first run this quiz with Kai. Kai happily picked this up and interviewed Jürgen

and several other developers later during dinner.

Feel free to contact us, if you would like to let raise your top inhibitor with us.

Posted at 11:29AM Sep 12, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org |

Gulls everywhere

If want to see gulls you see them everywhere:

For me the train station at the airport Lyon-Saint Exupéry was a perfect welcome to OOoCon 2006.

After a half hour bus ride we changed to the tram T1 going to our hotel.
We spent Saturday evening in the old town of Lyon to recover from the walk.

Posted at 09:32AM Sep 12, 2006 by Stefan Taxhet in OpenOffice.org |

Freitag September 08, 2006

It's OOoCon Time

In these days before OOoCon we every year experience a certain kind of activty and eagerness.

It's interesting to see people collecting all the information for the talk, publishing drafts for review in the Wiki, motivating people to finalize the preparations for a competition, ...

The first release candidate for OpenOffice.org 2.0.4 has been published some days ago. It's a tough decision whether these issues under consideration justify another RC. Fortunately we can continue the discussion in Lyon.

And as always some last minute decision makers have a hard time to find a room. Do you know about an accommodation for Christian? If you are in a similar situation or just would like to chat with other attendees join ooocondiscuss_2006@marketing.openoffice.org.

I'm looking forward to see many of you in Lyon!