alex.polvi.net

I had an entertaining time at the O’Reilly Open Source Conference. Went mainly to network with people, help at the booth and attend conference sessions. One of the sessions showed off Bacula and it looks like a good fit for the Mozilla infra (proposal pending further research/alternatives).

We thought we would get a lot more questions at the booth about the Corporation, but we barely had any. In fact, some people felt pretty pumped about it. I mean, the product is going to be better as a result of this, so they had plenty of reason to get excited.

Took a few photos of the event…. By far my favorite is this one of Asa:

It was great to see the OSL guys again. They threw an awesome party… so awesome it got some press.

Also had a chance to visit the friends back at OSU during the LUG BBQ.

So yeah, very fun times, and now I shall get back to work at MoCo (at least until LinuxWorld :).

Alright, here I am, with a wifi connection in hand. Lets talk.

Parents friends rule

Kyle, thank you for being my friend. Via our relationship I was able to share the time with two wonderful people, Karl and Amy. I am quite certain that they are two of the nicest to people ever exist. Not only did they allow me to stay with them in San Francisco (the city), they fed me, entertained me with a Canary, and even took me to grandma house for a potluck! It was so much fun! Thank you thank you thank you.

Housing situation

My biggest concern with moving to work for Mozilla was housing. I had no idea where I was going to live. Leaving Oregon, I still had no idea, but I left anyway (with the confidence from Karl and Amy). My only lead was meeting with a person the Saturday before I started work… however, Saturday rolled around and nobody called. The plan was to do the 45min commute and then try to find a place after work. To my luck I got a call Saturday afternoon… we met Sunday and now I live in an awesome condo. I have my own garage, bathroom, and fully furnished room. I do not think it could have worked out any better!

Work

Work. Holy crap this is fun. Already put in two 12 hour days (I know, I need to settle down). It is hard to leave. They have all the food, drinks, and people to keep you at the office for eternity. The work is a riot too. The OSL has given such valuable experience that I feel I will be able to help make huge leaps forward within the organization in my short, 3 month, time. Right now I am not learning a ton, but I am using straight up experience to help. It is very empowering to offer solutions to problems after walking in the door. I am starting to get that “oh, so thats why we did it that way” sort of feeling…

Other random things

• One of the colos has a hand scanner, I feel like James Bond
• Work is going go-karting, this is very exciting
• The roommate creates chunks of synthetic DNA, fly fishes, rock climbs, and drives a black Camry
• Moving to a different state with no where to move is not that bad
• In less then a month I will no longer be a teenager
• Everything works out

OSU news gave Brandon and I some props today. Thanks OSU news!

Bigger thanks to the OSL.

Mozilla too :)

INTERNSHIPS MAY AID COMPUTER USERS, CHILDREN WITH DISABILITIES

06-06-05

By David Stauth, 541-737-0787
SOURCES: Alex Polvi, polvi@osuosl.org
Brandon Philips, brandon@osuosl.org

CORVALLIS - Two undergraduate engineering students at Oregon State University who gained valuable computer software programming experience with the university’s Open Source Laboratory are anxious to begin what they call “the perfect summer internships.”

One project may help millions of computer users gain access to a popular Internet web browser, and the other will create new robotics technology to help children with disabilities.

But neither would have been possible, the students say, without the experience they gained in OSU’s expanding work on “open source” software, or systems which are available freely to anyone.

“These opportunities would never have happened if OSU didn’t have such a great open source computer organization,” said Alex Polvi, a sophomore in computer science from Amity, Ore. “Not only has it given us invaluable experience, it has also made us very attractive to industry.”

OSU is one of the universities leading the nation in the development of this evolving concept of software, which creates programs that are free, open for inspection and can be adapted by companies or individuals for their specific needs. Among other things, the university is very active with Firefox, a highly popular software program used in browsing the Internet.

At the same time, these systems are saving the university substantial amounts of money on sophisticated software programs needed in university operation, while also helping people and communities address their computer needs.

The work with Firefox will form the basis of Polvi’s internship - he will work with the Mozilla Foundation, the lead developers of this software, to help increase its availability to many more users. Polvi will spend the summer working in Mountain View, Calif., and then return to his studies at OSU.

“We’re trying to scale up the use of Firefox to hundreds of millions of users,” Polvi said. “I’ll be working in system administration, managing all the servers that are required to run things like mozilla.org websites, build machines, and perform other services.”

The other internship is equally complex, but with a very compassionate goal.

“I’m going to be working with NASA experts on a robot called CosmoBot, which is designed to help educators and therapists give better care to children with special needs,” said Brandon Philips, a sophomore in computer science from Sherwood, Ore. “It will be my job, along with two or three other students, to figure out how to integrate image processing, voice recognition and wireless sensors into the product.”

The project will be at a NASA laboratory in College Park, Maryland, and include visits to artificial intelligence laboratories at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other research centers. Philips said he is looking forward to “working for some very talented people and making a difference in people’s lives.”

Robotic systems such as these, experts say, can combine wearable sensors with voice-activation to control electronic devices by gestures or body movements. Such systems can be used by people with disabilities and their therapists to integrate therapy, learning and play - and they will be tested in actual clinical and educational settings throughout the development process.

This particular project is one part of NASA’s Robotics Internship Program, providing an avenue for students to participate in challenging projects on the frontiers of robotics research. Some of the projects have space applications, and others address societal needs.

The OSU Open Source Laboratory was the first such facility of its type at any public university in the nation. Its work provides international leadership in this computer concept and valuable educational experiences to OSU students.

And for two OSU students, the knowledge gained in the lab has opened the door to a couple of great summer jobs.

-30-

What a day. 0800: running to work for a staff meeting…. 0930: a trip to Albany to do some last minute shopping for Lar’s BBQ this weekend. As soon as I got back from that I went to work on Mozilla stuff, trying to finish up the developer wiki before finals hit (1100 - 1350). At 1400 I had a physics recitation, followed up by a PAC178 final at 1500. By 1530 I was running over to the library to participate in the Fall 06 TRF grant proposal process. It is a fun committee to be on. I have more things to say about the meeting… hopefully I will find some time to write about them. At 2130 (yes, that was a 6 hour long meeting) I immediately walked over to the computer lab to finish up a math project. And now, at 0130, I am done. What a day.

Last day of classes in the morning! Wooooooooo…..

Now that the school year is almost over it is time to look back on all the open source in COE heckling. In brief, it worked. Of course, I do not think the job is done with… but there has definitely been change.

Case 1: CS 312. “Linux Systems Administration” is going to be taught in the Fall by Scott Kveton. While this was mostly just a renaming of a current course, it still is progress.

Case 2: CS 411. Rumor has it that this course is going to use the Linux Kernel instead of Nachos next year. Finally!

Case 3: Open Unix Computing Labs. Next year COE plans of having at least one Linux lab (out of three total labs) in the new Kelley Engineering Center. This too is all tentative, but I would bet it will happen.

Case 4: I was contacted by Don Heer to discuss a platform for learning for EECS. He seemed pretty fired up about the idea, and wanted me to collect more information. He asked me to research three different things, the responses are here(many people helped compile this) . Good things will come of this.

Case 5: While members of the OVP were interested in helping start an internship program for open source projects, they now insist on not responding to email. Too bad. This is still a great idea and needs to be presented to the professor who runs senior capstone projects.

Here is the progress from the beginning of the year to the end:

• Open Source and COE — part one
• Open Source and COE — part 2, The meeting
• Open Source and COE — part 3
• Open Source in COE — part 4
• Open Source in COE — part 5, The big meeting
• Open Source in COE — phase 2

This is progress.

After our little firefox prank there has been a pretty large fall-out. So far it has been talked about on:

• Slashdot
• Fark
• The Inquirer
• Spreadfirefox
• The Barometer
• Wired News (a mention)

Oh, and don’t forget all the comments on the LUG photos, and my previous blog.

All of this attention has generated over 2.2 million page hits via 60,000+ unique vistors. CRAZYNESS. All over a silly stunt!

Recently the Austin Entrepreneurship Program brought Bob Foulor, of MSN marketing research, in to talk with us about Microsoft. We ended up talking more about google then we did about Microsoft. With quotes like, “Nobody will by lining up for the next Windows release” he really made it sound like Microsoft is having a hard time. He went around the room asking people how they used their computer, and for most people it was just a bitch session about how slow and insecure Windows is… I did not hear any actual constructive feedback, but oh well, hopefully he enjoyed the pizza.

After that talk I started reading some of Paul Graham’s latest essays. He mostly talks about how to start companies and why young people should. The common theme through out all of his papers is, “Make something people want.” Relating this back to the Microsoft evening I quickly realized that Microsoft is not doing what customers want. They do a lot of things partially and not very well, but since they are the only ones even close customers go to them.

Customers want a faster and more secure operating system. They want it to be more intuitive. They want to have everything “just work”. People want to have systems so consistent that they can think as if they were the computer and predict its behaviors (side note, I think Google search does a great job of this). With the success of products like Firefox it is evident that this is indeed the case. It is not by chance that an alternative browser has become to popular, it is evidence that people are looking for something new.

So then, what to do? We have this hodge-podge of free-software laying around… maybe it is time we get it up to the right level, bundle it up, and release it. Ubuntu seems to be giving this a shot. However, they may be a touch too early. The free software environment is missing many things. For example, maybe we need to wait for open office 2.0. While the current open office is good… I do not think that it is friendly enough for most end users. We also need some sort of calendaring equivalent. Mozilla will hopefully tackle this one. Finally we need to integrate all these components together into a supportable package that can be easily distributed. Again, Ubuntu is making headway on this. Hopefully Mark and his team can pull it off.

People are beginning to want something different. We are so close to accommodating them. All the communities need to do is make something that is genuinely better. If you serve something that is really good, the customers will never leave. As Mr. Graham asks, “can you think of one restaurant that had really good food and went out of business?”

Trying to solve the “what is the osl?” question, I thought up a good analogy for the hosting side of things.

Lets use a football team to explain how I see it. In this case the team is the open source community. Out of all the positions available the OSL is the water boy. We provide a very important function to the team by providing the water and support.

I see apache as the wide receiver that never misses a catch, mozilla as the rookie super star, gentoo as the “secret weapon”, and the kernel as the center. Without the center the whole offensive line would fall apart and the team would be worthless.

This raises some questions. Do we always want to sit on the sideline giving players their drinks and ankle-wraps? Or do we want to play? How could we play? Can we be successful even if we never make a touchdown? We can be the best water handlers in the world, but we will still never be remembered. The players will know us… but do we want more?

I don’t know.

UPDATE

Danny’s comments were so good I wanted to promote them to the main post:

Continuing the player analogy, even on the hosting side, I would equate us more as like a tight end than a waterboy. We’re on the field, getting dirty, and blocking for the receivers so they can make the big plays. But without us, they’d never get open. Besdies, the fans (the community!) love big hits :-)

A few months ago I had the pleasure of mounting 3 HP servers. I prayed it would be the last time we would meet, but it turns out that didn’t work. Now the task is to mount 15 servers all using erector-set like tactics. Mike and I were able to mount 4 sets of rails in roughly an hour, bringing the 5min/screw average down to around 2min/screw. This is unlike other screwless brands were we can have a set of rails mounted in under a minute.

Trying to figure out why HP decided leave rack rails un-engineered I went to the website. Quickly I found out that this was a treat from corporate leadership. Mark Hurd, the current CEO and President, says, “Everything we do must be for the customer. If it’s not, then we need to reconsider why we’re doing it.” So thats right folks, they did it for us! Mike, myself, and all other sysadmins that are stuck with HP gear will be the most dexterous, patient, screw driver able people on the planet! All thanks goes to HP for making customers a must!

Between the hours of 12-6am Saturday morning a group of friends and I “took back the sidewalk” by painting a 24ft x 24ft firefox logo in the middle of the quad. We used 100% earth friendly materials: cornstarch, kool-aid, and water. Our process involved drawing a large grid with yarn and then chalking outlines for the different areas of paint. We only got talked to by campus police once and they were very understanding.

We all had different jobs. Some people were painting orange, some red, and some white. My job was to paint the ocean… instead of using paint brushes we used our hands (for the most part). Thus, my hand is blue.

Crazy fun way to support the community!

Project page: here
Photo gallery: here