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20070323 Friday March 23, 2007

nick decoder ring

So you're probably wondering... where's Tom been? I really enjoy participating in dicussions on lists, IRC and blogs... And recently there have been many very important conversations going on! Alas this past week has seen me spend a great deal of time having internal discussions, partipating in conference calls, attending meetings, discussing F/LOSS issues with more lawyers, filling out applications, and all sorts of things that "must be done".

Please indulge me for taking a break to have some fun this time with the OpenJDK IRC nickname decoder ring -- that I promised at FOSDEM. It takes me a while to remember name-face associations... and this is especially hard when I've never met people f2f. And I'm intrigued with the sorts of clever robots people have deployed on IRC (for answering FAQ questions, recalling the transcript, launching discussed URL's in a browser window, etc.) And so I thought it would be great to have the "nick decoder robot" to do the mapping from nickname to real name, e-mail, website and... mugshot!

Although I don't have the robot written the key is having high quality data to work from and that's the point of this first effort: to constuct a draft of the data so that it's ready to go (for when the hacking begins). Of course this is all personal data and thus it's important to be sensitive to allow each person add as much, or as little, information as they would like. Therefore the first draft is hosted on the OpenJDK Wiki. Everyone can edit the OpenJDKWikiNickDRing and (unlike some wikis that allow to you get the wiki code directly) you can save the data by selecting Edit, copying the contents, then selecting Cancel. This is really low tech, open, but not completely unstructured, data.

I wonder what other columns might be interesting (e.g. which networks are frequented, one sentence bio, etc.)???

[nick decoder ring]


I will apologize in advance that I didn't get everyone into this first draft. Please feel free to edit the nick decoder ring. If you would like me to add/change/delete any of this information just drop me a line (esp. if the website I have for you is missing or incorrect).

Next week promises to be fairly quiet, again, but afterwards I'll be more present online. And I'm very much looking forward to talking about Java Livre at the Forum Internacional Software Livre conference in Brazil. I'll get to see some old friends, hopefully make some new friends, and see the sunset in Porto Alegre, which I am told, is the most beautiful in the world.

NOTE on submitting comments: The Roller software we use here at Sun is quite aggressive about which comments it likes. Please be patient if your comment which includes HTML is not displayed immediately. I will ensure it gets published the next time I check e-mail.

Posted by tmarble ( Mar 23 2007, 12:48:33 AM CDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

20070311 Sunday March 11, 2007

Creativity from Difficulty

The New York Times has an interesting article today, Gilberto Gil Hears the Future, Some Rights Reserved, in which Gil, the Brazilian minister of culture, makes some excellent points about creativity (Gil will speak on Wednesday at SXSW, do read the article soon as it is All Rights Reserved).

Mr. Gil's complaints about the inequities of copyrights are derived in part from his own experience. Like many other musicians he signed contracts early in his career that essentially gave away publishing rights to the songs he wrote. But he waged a seven-year court battle to regain his rights, which ended recently with a favorable ruling that opens the door for other Brazilian artists to regain their rights as well.

[...]

Why give up something as gratifying as playing music for the wear and tear of public administration? "Life is not just pleasure," he said. "The first phrase of the Vedic scriptures is that 'All is suffering.' Difficulty is stimulating, challenging, it's an element of the pulse of life."
[Gilberto Gil, Lawrence Lessig and Ronaldo Lemos]

A great deal has been written about modernizing copyright of creative works -- especially for music. Perhaps the most important reference on this topic is Lessig's book Free Culture which provides an eminently readable overview of the complex legal environment for art and culture. I anticipate this struggle for authors to retain copyright of their works will extend beyond music to all sorts of creative endeavor. Knowledge workers are often creative people who leverage their skills with their employers time and materials as part of their day job, but who may also, like Gil, exude other expressions of creativity after they punch the time clock.

Just as Gil has secured rights for musicians in Brazil it seems that knowledge workers could benefit from modernization of employment agreements in the context of the digital age. Typically all work for hire is owned by the employer (except, of course, for states like California that have special limitations).

NOTE on submitting comments: The Roller software we use here at Sun is quite aggressive about which comments it likes. Please be patient if your comment which includes HTML is not displayed immediately. I will ensure it gets published the next time I check e-mail.

Posted by tmarble ( Mar 11 2007, 12:47:13 PM CDT ) Permalink Comments [1]

20070309 Friday March 09, 2007

DevJam FOSDEM Slides

This is part of an ongoing series of followups to FOSDEM.

Here I want to collect all the slides from the DevJam. Several people have already blogged about the DevJam, including: tromey, Betelgeuse, geir, and mr (I'm sure there are many others too... please leave a comment with a link!).

  • Before the DevJam got started Betelgeuse talked about Java and Gentoo.
  • During the DevJam session fitzsim spoke about Java and RedHat.
  • doko's slides about Java in Debian and Ubuntu which covers topics such as:
    • The semantics of Debian and Ubuntu repositories
    • Debian and Ubuntu architecture support
    • Basics of Debian packaging
    • Issues for OpenJDK

I didn't have slides, but did talk about how cool it was to have a quorum of Linux distros present (those above as well as Daniel Bornkessel from OpenSuSE and David Walluck from JPackage). I also talked about how we can envision distro specific packaging working in concert with the upcoming Java Module System. And rsands -- colleague and OpenJDK Community Marketing manager (and Computer Scientist I will point out) -- had a fantastic idea about extending NetBeans for Java application developers such that it help applications integrate nicely with distro specific packaging and the Java Module System! Keep this up Rich and we're going to ask you to get coding!

[RedHat Java Dependency Graph]

Thanks for attending the DevJam, sharing your slides and your ideas, and most of all for collaborating with OpenJDK on envisioning the future of Java distro integration. There's so much more to talk about too... OpenJDK in academia... OpenJDK in the Linux toolchain... Stay tuned for more!

NOTE on submitting comments: The Roller software we use here at Sun is quite aggressive about which comments it likes. Please be patient if your comment which includes HTML is not displayed immediately. I will ensure it gets published the next time I check e-mail.

Posted by tmarble ( Mar 09 2007, 11:23:24 AM CST ) Permalink Comments [1]