The Goldfish Chronicles

Came across the Alfresco Open Source Barometer while catching up on planetapache. Reading it, the first thing that jumps out is a dumb piece of analysis.

On Page 6, it shows the breakdown geographically of respondents by %age. The US is far out in the lead with 22%, then France with 9%, and so on through the big European countries with the UK at 4.5%. The finding is that “the US is leading open source adoption globally. We believe the Global 2000 is seeking innovation… whereas in Europe open source adoption is driven by governments”. Also that the UK lags behind other European countries.

Somebody appears to be taking stupid pills. The news that the US has 5 times the users of Alfresco than the UK is oddly similar to the US population being 5 times the UKs. It’s an assumption to assume that this maps onto the relative sizes of their business communities, but I suspect the assumption is the other way and the US business population is more than 5 times the UKs.

It’s also no great shock to see Germany being significantly larger than Italy or the UK 6% vs 4% - again the population balances out nicely there. The bigger surprises are 9% for France and 6% for much smaller in population Spain.

So, step 1) they left population out of the equation, and step 2) it wouldn’t help to be doing per capita anyway as all this really talks about is Alfresco, not Open Source.

Sorry about that rant… the ‘analysis’ on that page irritated the hell out of me.

This is a minor bugfix release, unless you’re on JIRA 3.10 already in which case it’s bloody essential to stop the nasty Exceptions. Thanks go to Mark Derricutt for reporting this and Vincent Eggen for nudging me to get it fixed.

For more, see the webpage.

From Justin’s OSCON talk the other day:

• ApacheCon US 2007 (Atlanta, November 12-16)
• OSSummit Asia 2007 (Hong Kong, November 26-30) - This is a joint ApacheCon/EclipseCon.
• ApacheCon EU 2008 (Amsterdam, April(?))
• ApacheCon US 2008 (New Orleans, November)

We (the ASF) are never good at giving the long term scheduling in my view, so thought I’d share.

Write email, hear child being oddly quiet and breathing weirdly. Walk over. He’s playing with his nose. Odd. So I poke his nose very lightly, and one nostril feels a bit firmer than the other. Oh dear… young idiot has put his cod liver pill up his nose.

For once he’s very still, and very responsive to our requests to hold his head up, to stay still, and to not move while his mother pokes the ‘vitamin’ a bit. A strong nose blow later and out flies the remains of a cod liver oil pill and a lot of snot.

Parents sigh with relief.

Sometimes when I find myself standing in the warm sun, I like to close my eyes, clear my mind and see what memory pops up. It’s always surprising how warmth and sun act as a catalyst for happy memories.

This is something that I think I now have straight, so here’s an info share. The initial premise is: “You are a person who wants to donate code to the ASF”.

1. If you are a user and the code is a minor change, please either bring the subject up on a mailing list, or create an issue in one of the issue trackers (2 Bugzillas, 4+ JIRAs). Please attach the relevant code to the issue, if the tracker offers the option to state that this is intended for the ASF, please tick that option. PleaseIt’s customary to avoid putting copyright statements in your contribution.
2. If you are a user and the code is a major piece of new functionality, then you will be required to fax in a software grant so the ASF is allowed to use your code. This holds for companies as well as users, a software grant will be needed from someone. The project the code is going to should be working with the ip-clearance materials in the Incubator.
3. If you are an existing committer and the code is a minor change; then just commit.
4. If you are an existing committer (ie: signer of a CLA) and the code is a major piece of functionality originally developed elsewhere then you can happily commit it, but you do need to work with the ip-clearance in the Incubator. This means adding a file to SVN - it does not mean that you have to fill out a new software grant.
5. If you were made a committer as a part of the the major piece of functionality - then it’s the same as 2), but you sign the CLA instead of a grant. (I’m not 100% on this one)

This is something that I think hasn’t been that clear. I’ll update the above if I find that it is incorrect.

• ip-clearance - http://incubator.apache.org/ip-clearance/
• software grant - http://www.apache.org/licenses/#grants
• CLA - http://www.apache.org/licenses/#clas

Updated 20070719 in line with Aaron and Wendy’s comments

After what seems like forever, Commons CLI 1.1 is released; bugfixes and some minor improvements. In the end it was Brian Egge who pulled up his sleeves and finished off the last issues, so much thanks to Brian for making a release happen.

• MacBook problems
• MacBook Pro problems

Suffice to say, my wireless craps out every 20 minutes now.