alex.polvi.net

Tonight we had a meeting with Greg and he blew our socks off. He had heard that mozilla released during one of our meetings, so being the Linux kernels 2.6.x.y maintainer he did the same. He showed the entire release process from checking his email for patches to uploading the .tar.gz. He even went as far to name this kernel release “Woozy Beaver” (2.6.11.8)!

In the announcement to the Linux kernel mailing list he thanked us, but the real thanks goes to him! Greg, thank you thank you thank you for everything you have done for the community including our own!

Photos here

The server that runs spreadfirefox was melting down because of the new firefox download counter. Going in to fix it we decided we would get much greater performance by caching the feed once a minute. This broke all the fancy live download counter plug-ins (sorry about that).

Since then it has been neat to see the evolution. The fancy live counters came back, this time using math to simulate being live. People have even started using regressions to find when we will hit 50,000,000 downloads.

Never really realized how many people were watching this little chunk of xml…

As silly as it sounds, it is a busy time to be a beaver. Today is sort of the last chance to sit back and breath. Here is a brief overview of the future:

• 30 mozilla servers land at OSL
• ACM Workshop on installing web apps, taught by yours truly
• GregKH is coming to visit OSU
• MTH351 Midterm
• New FTP hardware lands
• Physics + Botany midterms
• On going server madness at OSL
• Finding place to live in CA
• InstallFest3
• Finals
• Move to CA
• …

Good thing it is fun to be in way over your head!

The platform for learning in CS has not gone very far. We got to the point that it was time to talk details, and nobody came up with anything good. Nothing has “clicked” that just works.

Tonight after talking with members from the OVP, I am all fired up to start a program creating paid internships based around open source software. This is something we have talked about before. As the famous Paul Querna once said, “every open source project can use more love”. The value given back to the sponsors is relatively cheap training. The students would obviously benefit by having the coolest job in the world. I mean what is better then being dedicated to a open source project AND being paid to do it?

There are a few distinct groups that need to be contacted in order to make this happen

• Sponsors: Find people to fund such a program.
• COE: Need to figure out how to best fit this in with what the COE is doing.
• OSL: This might be the perfect chance for some cross pollination.
• Students: Find people that would actively participate (should be easiest part).

Lets start with OSL and COE.

The OSL is having an open house showing off all the cool things we are doing. Everyone should come and see what we are up to!

Thanks for the idea Randy!

Today was a hard hitting day for open source, Oregon, and what I know about it. Woke up at 6:30am to head up to the Innotech (yes, like office space) conference. Brandon and I were supposed to be lackeys for Scott while he moderated a panel between IBM, Novell, OSDL, and Microsoft. The panelists ended up bickering a lot. This was the first panel (of this type) I had seen, so I am not sure if bickering is a normal thing. None the less it was good entertainment.

The real fun came when I went and found the OSL booth at the actual conference. The booth was split between College of Engineering, and the Open Source Lab. It was almost like it was Open Source and COE at last. Ironically, our (OSL) half of the 8ft tabled attracted waaaay more traffic then our (COE) other half. I know, I know, its not a competition, however I think we proved a point. One of the key factors to having Open Source in COE happen is to have people clammering at the doors of COE absolutely begging for it. This is happening. A person walked directly up to Chris Bell and said something to the effect of “Thank you so much for providing open source in education. You guys are on the right track.” I smirked.

So yeah, the conference is was fun. I found out about myself that I really enjoy telling people about open source, and generally advocating things I enjoy. At the core of all this I feel that I simply enjoy getting people excited about what I am excited about. Just so happens I am excited about a world revolutionizing movement in my discipline.

Once I got back from the conference I spent a few hours doing communications homework. Killed sometime doing that, then started reading the news online. I quickly searched “Open Source”, just to see what was up, and the first hit was about LaVonne Reimer in Beaverton. That reminded me, I was supposed to be meeting with her! I went and met up with LaVonne and Cheryl because they stayed at Weatherford tonight! This was _very_ interesting. If are you are unfamiliar with LaVonne, then you are a minority. She is the director of the brand spanking new Open Technology Business Center. They are all fired up about open source (as they should be). We discussed open source, running over children, cheating Harvard students, and some sort of skate board motorcycling. Very very enlightening. I am going to continue to meet up with them in the morning.

Such a conversation really makes me appreciate the value that Weatherford has brought. I was able to sit one on one with big players in my industry, and let my voice be heard. For most students (at least in my hall) the value seems to come from the drinking and screaming that is oh so fun at 1am. I am encouraged to see a program that is strong enough to create collaboration, even in such a hostile environment. The more I think about it, the more I hope to stay at Weatherford.

I suppose it will all work out in the end. Just be passionate about something in the mean time.

Today the OSDL, from Portland, came to OSU to talk to students about a “membership” into the OSDL. Sort of like how ACM, NSPE, or EFF is funded.

Here are my notes:

- About the OSDL

* Mission: “… Center of Gravity… ”
* Vendor neutral
* No products
* Supply full time developers to the community
** Linus
** Mortan
* “doing patches to 2.7 right now”
* “All tests posted on the web”
* Production kernel: Morton, Experimental: Linus. (I thought it was the
opposite)

- About the memberships

* OPB style
** Gifts for contribution
* Supports kernel development
* Supports Legal efforts
** SCO Suit
** Easier for users because they do not have to worry about SCO
** Grow legal fund
** Open Source Licenses.
** Works with OSI

* Do not sell members products
* Trying to get involved with the end user.
** Getting involved with the desktop initiative.

“What would make you feel good about giving a donation?”
* Help kernel devs
* Help engineers
* more projects
* more initiatives

Pays Linus to work full time to develop the kernel.

She also said twice “Down with Microsoft.”

My comments on the situation:

Honestly, I am not quite sure what the OSDL is up to about this. This
could easily be looked as a fund raiser, but I do not think it is.
Simply because they would not make much money from us poor college kids
;) They seemed to understand that. So what else is there? I suppose they
could be trying to build an elite community, but that _sort of_ goes
against the whole open source world. Even though there are some elite
OS groups out there — nobody (that I know of) paid to be in them.

If they really want to build a good relationship with FOSS users and
devs in college, they need to offer scholarships and internships. This
year was the first year they provided internships to the popular MECOP
program on campus. Good start. They also need to be proactive about
getting speakers down here to talk about how cool they are. The OSDL has
plenty of interesting resources, in people, that could greatly benefit
students. Now we just need to get them to share, with out having to buy
our way in.

We told them all this.

I think this was a good start for them. They started by coming to our
community and gathering our thoughts. However, the fact that they did it
as a “Focus Group” just screams cooperation. If they want to come
across as a community member they need to interact more with the
community, in a community style. They probably would have gotten more
feedback and attendance if they just would have came to a LUG meeting.
:)

If nothing else, they understand that selling a college student this
“membership” is not going to be easy.

Here is the line up.

Wednesday: Send off scholarships I have been working on. Attend the career fair for many schmoozing opportunities.

Thursday: Harish Pillay from RedHat Asia arrives at Oregon State. I will be hosting him.

Friday: Breakfast with Harish in the morning. Meeting with Kveton and Dr. Quinn regarding open source in COE mid morning. Class all afternoon, followed up with the Oregon Stater dinner. At the dinner Harish will be put into the Oregon Stater hall of fame. After that it is Johnny’s birthday celebration.

Saturday: Attend Phu’s badmiton tournament at Oregon State. This will be the first time Phu (who took me to Vietnam) has come to OSU.

Fill in the gaps with working away at the OSL!

Go life.

Today I stuck to my new years resolutions and submitted a few more patches to open source projects. I was motivated by the OSLUG GentooBugDay (photos).

Monday I have a meeting with Dean Adams (yet again) and Micheal Quinn to talk more about open source in eduction. Also on Monday I get a new boss, pretty exciting. Finally will have someone that I can talk to about systems stuff and not feel like I am bringing others off task.

Tuesday Dan Frye and Randy Kalmeta from the IBM Linux Technology Center are staying in Weatherford, I am hosting them. The LUG is taking them bowling, should be fun :)

Wednesday is a math midterm from hell.

Friday I give a speech in COMM111 and it will most definitely be preaching Linux.

Lesson of the week/month/whatever: Everything works out.

I try to stay as positive as possible, and I rarely complain about things, but right now I feel it appropriate. Tonight I took on the task of racking 3 HP DL360 G4 servers. Normally this task is not too daunting, stick the rails in the rack, then slide the server in. However, it seems that HP decided to follow the erector set theme with their rails. This entailed 4 screws per rail all requiring the use of a wrench on one side, and a screwdriver on the other. A very hard task indeed when you only have two hands. All in all it wasn’t so bad as I only ended up with two cuts and a torn finger nail, not like I was in war or anything. The task only took me two hours to complete, which is only about five minutes per screw. Pretty slow for such tiny screws. Anyway, enough griping from me.

On a good note, I get to rack some Dell servers soon. I know this will be very pleasant because Dell has always been the best and easiest from my experience.