The computer industry is certainly not recession-proof, but the Open Source convention that's just wrapping up had more attendees than last year (we were up to
about 2000), and discussions about starting businesses based on open source seemed to take place everywhere. And I don't mean just free software: open source concepts apply to hardware, creative content, and other materials. Big topics included virtualization and the next stage of virtualization: cloud computing. Perhaps those are the practitioner's solution to multicores.
An essential issue for making sure the good survivalist benefits of FOSS are not swamped by the corporate agenda abetted by authoritarians, is that FOSS (and open standards intended to allow FOSS) has to be architected for hackability. People are used to thinking that a technical standard is bad when it disenfranchises normal geeks (in favour of an elite or minority) rather than good because it enfranchises non-geeks.
Alex Martelli, a well-published Python developer and Google's Uber Tech Lead, has some fairly strong convictions about code reviewing, and he's not afraid to share them. Alex believes that there's not enough code reviewing being done in the open source community, and enumerated several of his convictions for O'Reilly News at OSCON 2008. He also addresses the increasing availability of tools for organizing code reviews, and some lessons that even the largest companies can take to heart.
O'Reilly blogger Nathan Torkington spent some time with James Turner of O'Reilly News at OSCON 2008 in Portland. He shares some of the trends and technologies that he thinks will play a big role in the near future, including open source biology and the rise of mobile computing.
Mark Shuttleworth's life to date seems more like the daring hero of a science fiction pulp magazine than that of a programmer. A South African programmer working on the earliest Debian code, he founded a company called Thawte which specialized...
The ability to create an "instant" communications experience through the Web is the strength of the Comet recipe. The use of long-polling via the XMLHttpRequest is a critical technology to meebo. It enabled meebo to implement low-latency bi-directional communication on any modern computer that can access the Web, without the need to download software.
Damian Conway has a well-deserved reputation as the mad scientist of Perl. His opening night keynote at OSCON 2008 combined Perl programming, the difference engine, quantum mechanics, and general relativity to produce variables which travel backwards in time.
I am a Perl hacker. I have written parts of the core, created CPAN modules and written tons of perl code. In fact I am addicted to it ; or rather, CPAN. I have been wanting to play around with Google App Engine, but I haven't had time to get up to speed in Python. Today at OSCON I met up with Brad Fitzpatrick, who told me he had permission from Google to talk about and work on a Perl on App Engine project.
It's been 10 years since O'Reilly held the first OSCON. At the latest edition of O'Reilly's open source convention, Tim O'Reilly sat down with O'Reilly News to talk about the anniversary. He also reflected on how open source has changed in that period, whether Web 2.0 (a term he helped coin) has met his expectations, and how the nature of technical book publishing has changed.
Larry Wall, father of perl, likens the history of perl to raising a child. In this live interview at OSCON 2008, Larry talks about perl's rebellious teen years, the role of the benevolent dictator, and dual licensing as a quantum physics phenomenon.
Anthony Baxter, one of the lead engineers working on Google's new App Engine, spent some time at O'Reilly's source convention, OSCON, talking about the features that App Engine can offer to developers. James Turner interviews Baxter for O'Reilly News at OSCON in Portland.
Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, talked with O'Reilly News at OSCON, the O'Reilly open source convention. He demystifies the role that the Linux Foundation plays in helping to promote Linux use, provide legal defense, and broker cooperative work between Linux related projects.
Pia Waugh, President of Software Freedom International sat down at O'Reilly's open source convention, OSCON, to talk about some of her interests. These include how women are entering the computer field worldwide and her work getting laptops into the hands of children across Australia and the Pacific islands.
Is Terry Childs a Maniacal Hacker-Terrorist or a Capable and Dedicated System Administrator. While the mainstream media paints a colorful picture of villain and vice, Paul Venezia of infoworld uncovers a different story. What if this is just the case of job termination gone wrong.
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