I am pleased to see that The system, man has been a popular read on the net. I logged into my O’Reilly account to see that it has the following rank:

Rank: 622 , 4841 page views.

It is interesting to see how the different ranks and page views contrast to what someone wants to read about. Here is a summary of my articles and the stats as of right now (obviously these stats are always changing as people read the articles):

• Repetitive software injury – Rank: 1646 , 2536 page views.
• Refining for usability – Rank: 389 , 6208 page views.
• Advocating honesty – Rank: 3231 , 1022 page views.
• Mozilla and the potential for interaction – Rank: 609 , 4964 page views.
• Government IT rights in a new world – Rank: 3569 , 624 page views.
• Art, licenses and freedom – Rank: 3446 , 775 page views.
• Open Source, Open Innovation – Rank: 2919 , 1405 page views.
• The hacker ethic – Rank: 3061 , 1258 page views.
• The nature of the community – Rank: 3528 , 668 page views.

More news on the Infopoint front. Matt has created some press releases for the project, and I have created a new Infopoint Resources page for them. Paul is working on something as well for the page. We are now trying to book the June/July dates.

LUGRadio recording tonight!!
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I have a few new articles in Linux User & Developer magazine. One is about the OpenAdvantage scheme in Birmingham, and the other is about Blender and its history. These articles are in the current issue (Issue 39) which is on sale now. The Blender site have mentioned the article and LinuxToday have mentioned The System, man. Thanks to these sites for posting these links. 🙂

Some more great feedback is coming from Infopoint booths run at computer fairs across the UK. The latest one was at the huge Manchester fair and there is a report online written by Paul Waring. Thanks to everyone that was involved at the fair. There have now been four Infopoints and I am looking to book the June dates. Remember, we still need fairs for parts of the UK. See this page and don’t forget to join the mailing list. We also welcome people who arrange Infopoints themselves. Join the list and we can discuss how to better run these Infopoints.

Last night I finished reading Free as in freedom. This book is essentially a biographical look at Richard Stallman and his “crusade for free software”. I highly recommend the book as a good read. I was expecting some GNU mandated RMS backslapping and pulpit preaching about the incorrect use of Linux. I was pleased to read a candid account of the history of free software and how it has come to be. With that read, I needed some more books, so I bought:

• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity by Alan Cooper
• The Cuckoo’s Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage by Cliff Stoll
• Open Sources: Voices from the Open Source Revolution edited by the great Chris DiBona

Oh, and go and check out Castle Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. Commercial quality and free to download. This should hopefully form the basis of some LUG gaming.

Went out last night with Sooz, Aq, Matt and Matt’s mate. Good night and a lot of fun was had by all. 🙂

The situation with Mono seems to be getting more and more press attention. This has also involved a spat between Havoc Pennington and Nat Friedman. There seems to be some disagreement in the way that Mono may be used as a technology for Open Source free software development. The concerns from Havoc are expressed with “The issue here is risk management. Sure, C/C++/Python could infringe some patents. However, the risk is a heck of a lot lower. Those technologies are not invented by and driven forward by the single most powerful and open-source-hostile company in the tech industry.” Havoc also states later “Let me be crystal clear about Red Hat: the technical advantages of Mono sound great. But technology is not everything, and in my opinion Mono is not yet a responsible choice all things considered. Maybe Java is an alternative, maybe it isn’t; if it isn’t, that doesn’t make Mono more viable.”

Nat responded to Havoc with a few statements, one of which grabbed my eye: “We are taking the position that we will use the right technology to build our software. We believe that open source is on the rise, but that it will continue to coexist with proprietary software for most of our lives. Windows is not going away, and we will have to interoperate with it. But we are not going to allow Microsoft to tell us what software we write and which technologies we use.” It seems that Nat’s view is that they are choosing Mono because it allows them a level of cross-platform interoperability that few other technologies can provide. He is also clear on the fact that we live in a proprietary world where proprietary software just won’t go away. Fair point.

In some ways, I agree with both of them. In my view, Mono is on par with something such as Java; it seems like an interesting technology, but there are hooks into it from organisations that can prevent the uptake for free software development. In Java’s case, this is because it is non-free. Most of you are probably well aware that Eric Raymond is on the (rightful) warpath to get Java Open Sourced, and this will remove the non-free aspect of writing free software with it. If we identify the problem with Mono, I don’t see the problem being that Microsoft are the primary pushers of .NET – as far as I was aware, .NET has been created as an open standard. The worry I have is that Microsoft have not been entirely clear on their position with Mono. Are they going to take it down in the courts in years to come? While Microsoft has some kind of hold on the technology, be it through patents, collaboration or some other tangible link, Mono is essentially at risk. This has nothing to do with how good a technology Mono is; it looks great to me – this is about the security of that software’s future. After all, I am sure that years ago we would never have dreamed of SCO taking the action they are taking now.

I think Mono needs assurance. It needs legal assurance that Microsoft have indemnified it of possible legal action – If Novell can provide this to the community, I am sure the take up of Mono will be greater. This assurance may well exist, and I may not be aware of it, but until there is a legally binding declaration that Mono does not infringe on anything Microsoft does legally, I think Havoc has a point. All things considered, I have my concerns about Mono’s future, and I think that free software take-up of the technology (no matter how good it is) will be limited until this legal status is clarified.

Well, the training course that I gave from Monday until Wednesday is complete, and I am now back in the Midlands at home. The course went very well and the chap who I was teaching was not only impressed with the technologies that I trained him in (PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, Linux etc.), but he was over the moon at the new set of skills that he has gained. We covered a lot of ground and I was very impressed with his progress. I may well be going back in a month or so to work alongside him as a consultant for a web application that he will be developing.

Today I have been catching up on some email and work, and I also spent some time today getting some marketing materials ready to promote my services as a freelancer. These materials will augment some changes that I am planning for the site to add some functionality. All of this is waiting in the wings though; I have a few pieces of work that I need to get out of the door first. You should see some of these things hopefully in the next week or so.

The consultancy side of my work is something that I am really looking to push forward. I really enjoy the different facets of my work, and I am looking to push them all forward, but the consultancy is something of a priority at the moment. This is mainly because it is something that I have been waiting to develop and market for a while, but haven’t had time to do so. Naturally, if anyone out there is looking for some consultancy, do get in touch. 🙂

When I was down in London doing the training, I found an old piece of code that I had not seen for a while. It was a project that I developed for one of my university projects called Webdesk. The application basically provides a web based desktop environment that can be used as a more familiar method of accessing your information. The code provides a decent proof of concept that I wanted to explore at university. Although the code is filled with less than great coding (I was learning PHP while writing the code), I think it could be useful. I plan on GPLing it and putting it on here over the next few days.
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I have written a brand, spanking new entry in my O’Reilly Blog entitled The system, man. This article discusses the sheer amount of red tape that is initiated by new projects and how it can cause problems. As ever, I would love to hear your feedback, so leave it on the O’Reilly site, on here, or get in touch with me.

Unfortunately we are experiencing some problems with the LUGRadio server. It seems that some muppet somewhere at an ISP has forgotten to re-register our domain before the old one expired and as such, we are waiting for the domain to work its eerie way through the depths of the internetwork. This should not take too long, and thanks to Matt for sorting all of this out.

I am on day two of the training course and the chap I am training is doing really well. He is picking up most of what I am saying and today he started to become truly productive in his work. He is problem solving PHP scripts and things such as SQL statements and sessions are starting to become tangible to him. It has been interesting work so far, and I am looking forward to seeing how much will be achieved by the end of the course tomorrow evening.

Oh, and I do love IMAP. Just thought I would say so. It is cool. Not as cool as tea, Kinder Bueno’s and meat samosa’s, but still cool.
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That topic will mean nothing if you have never seen the Fast Show by the way.

I am down in Elstree at the moment doing some training (PHP / MySQL / XML etc) and we are making some really good progress. Long days, but great getting out of the office and doing some on-site work. Bit of a shock to the system getting up at 6.20am though. 😛

The Infopoint project seems to have gone off with a bang and we had a fair in Leeds and Bradford this weekend. Thanks must go to James Holden and Richard Bruce for their sterling work. Both have reported a success. James has also put a write up of the event on his website. James made me chuckle when I got an email from him at 11.34am. He wrote:

We're here!

James

I went along to the AFFS conference on Saturday in Birmingham and took part in a panel discussion. The usual topics of patents and digital rights came up, and we heard some really interesting points from members of the panel and the audience.

It was good fun meeting up with Alaisdair Kergon, Paul Cooper, Tim Williams, Justin Clifford, Neil Darlow (good to put a face to the name!) and also meeting Barbie from the Birmingham Perl Mongers. Barbie is gonna come to a Wolves LUG meet sometime in June and share a few beers and a heated discussion on Python vs Perl with a certain someone.

Busy few days recently. I have been working on various projects getting things completed and out of the way. I have also been playing a lot of music and doing a lot of drumming. 🙂

We now have an Infopoint mailing list by the way. Thanks to the kind folks over at lug.org.uk they graciously answered my request for a mailing list. Those people interested in the Infopoint project can now head over to this page and subscribe. It is all beginning to hot up and our very first Infopoint presence is tomorrow at Elland Road in Leeds!! Fingers crossed James Holden will be able to take some photos for us to see how he got on.

Well, after my Slashdot submission sat in pending hell for a full week, it was declined. I really do wonder why it took so long for them to make a decision. Any Slashdot admins reading this want to share with us?

We recorded LUGRadio Episode 7 on Wednesday and it was great fun. We are all really pleased with this one. There were a few moments in the recording when I just could not stop laughing. It is great to see that people seem to be really enjoying it too. 🙂

Oh, and I will be at the AFFS Conference tomorrow on a panel. If anyone drops by, feel free to come over and say hello.

As many of you are probably aware, the Evolution Connector that allows Evolution to connect to a Microsoft Exchange server, has been made free software under the GPL. This is, simply, incredible news. Despite the fact that the Connector has existed in a functional form for quite some time, the issue that it was a commercial product was sometimes a chink in the armour of an advocacy campaign. Although I am certainly not adverse to commercial products based on or around free software, it was sometimes a difficult concept to get over when supplying someone with a proposed migration plan. It was like “look, you can move over to this free Operating System that is far more stable, secure and future proof than the alternative, there is an office suite that pretty much near matches Microsoft Office, free productivity software, free web/email/print servers, free database, oh, but you need to buy this chunk of software that allows you to connect to Microsoft Exchange“.

The problem here is that certain things are seen as a commodity and certain things are not. I think that in recent times, people object to paying for a fundamental piece of software such as an Operating System. An OS is after all, fundamental to the operation of everything else, and more importantly, there is no direct output or benefit to using an OS. It just sits there and ticks over – its only ability is to allow other things to run. With this in mind, the typical business could justify shelling out for an office suite, programming language or email client, but in terms of an OS or things to communicate with other bits of the network, it all seemed a little strange.

Now things have changed though. with the Connector as free software, this means that virtually everything at the OS level can be interoperable with Microsoft products and not cost a penny (unless you buy from a distributor obviously, but then again, a distributor can merge the Connector into its products). I think the thing that I found most inspiring about this announcement was the fact that it was unexpected. Novell just sat back and announced it and quite a few people were a little surprised.

In other news, I have the great pleasure in announcing the first batch of confirmed Infopoint dates:

• 15th May – Elland Road, Leeds
• 16th May – Bradford
• 22nd May – Manchester
• 23rd May – Morley, Leeds
• 30th May – Wolverhampton

I will add these dates to the Infopoint site when I have some time. For more details, see the Northern Computer Markets website.

Finally, tonight is the recording of LUGRadio Episode 7. It shall be fun…
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Last night I had a jam with Emelye and then a bit later Sooz and I watched War Games. I haven’t seen it for ages, and the old dusty video was testament to this face; a great film though, as ever. The only criticism I have of War Games is the nauseatingly bouncy and bubbly Ally Sheedy. Ugh. She just seems to run around squeaking and being far too over excited about everything. She is one of those annoying cheesy people who studies dog psychology and wants to open a donkey sanctuary somewhere. I think the classic line from Gen. Jack Beringer of “Well,I would piss on a spark plug if I thought it would help” will always make me chuckle.

I have been trying to sort my nightmare email situation out over the last few days. I am moving over to IMAP on my home server and using a few scripts to grab my email. Part of this process has involved moving the different parts of my email system around – I now need to use a different SMTP server, a different client, and I also need to stop cron constantly sending me emails about processes that don’t exist.

Can you believe it? My submission to Slashdot is still pending. It has been six days now. I knew that they often like to be first to the news, but this kind of hi-speed journalism is just a little too fast for me. I am assuming they are holding back the submission for a suitable no-news day when Slashdot stories include such exciting events as new data archiving solutions and a new algorithm being used in tar.

The Slashdot situation is getting weirder. My submission about Repetitive software injury is still pending. I wonder what the alumni at Slashdot are upto with it. We will have to wait and see…

Busy weekend. On Saturday night we ventured into Birmingham for Steve (guitarist from Seraphidian’s birthday. Good fun, but unfortunately the minibus company failed to appear at the end of the night, so much running around with thumbs pointed out occurred at 3.30am. On Sunday we then headed down to London ‘taaaywn to go and see W.A.S.P play. Absolutely incredible band. Blackie Lawless is one heck of a good a front man. Oh, and yes, his daughter Lucy Lawless does seem to be from Xena: Warrior Princess. No, I don’t watch that drivel. Honest.

Today I have just finished off a DCOP article for Linux Format and I am now going to work on an IRC client round-up. I also have a few things knocking around in my head that I might write up.
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