Tim Ferro

Do you grok open source? I grok open source, and it’s awesome. The challenges, depth, commitment, and advances continue to amaze me. There are tons of amazing projects (Firefox, Fedora), books (The Cathedral and the Bazaar), users (Linus Torvalds), user groups (NOVA-LUG), and blogs (linux today).

To grok is more than just to know, it means to understand so thoroughly that the observer becomes a part of the observed. I think I have done that. I started and open source project (Anchuan.Org), volunteer for Tux.Org, have given speeches about open source (at Marymount University), and am now the chief contributor of an open source software business blog (OSS-biz).

All of these things have enriched my life and given my great feelings of accomplishment. I recommend that everyone get involved with open source anyway you can. It can be anything from just using Firefox to writing kernel code. Open source is a community, and new members are always welcome.

The fight for programming talent… – Source

“The first beta of Red Hat Developer Studio was published yesterday. RHDS seems promising. This IDE is a bunch of Eclipse plugins that comes from the fusion of JBoss IDE and Exadel Studio. The main advantages it offers are: JSF development improved, in particular integrating RichFaces and Ajax4JSF libraries; Seam (next J2EE middleware standard?) integration; and plugins for JBoss, Hibernate… Here are [some] first impressions.” – Source

“In a rare public talk, C++ creator Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup discusses his ideal in programming languages, as well how he sees the next version (and beyond) of C++ developing. He explains the general selection criteria used for adding new features, some of the legacy of C++, and many other interesting topics. Especially interesting is during the Q&A he explains his views of the embrace and extend mentality some implementations, such as VC++, have taken.” – Source

“Projity will release a public beta of OpenProj, a free open-source competitor (of Microsoft Project). Reportedly, OpenProj works with Windows, Linux, Unix, and Mac OsX. Word has it that OpenProj can also open native Microsoft Project files. The Beta will be released on August 7th, the first day of the LinuxWorld San Francisco show.” – Source

A recent poll shows that Vi/Vim/GVim have a dominating 56% user preference. But in a surprising find, Emacs/XEmacs were not the second most popular as one would think from the many Vi vs. Emacs debates. – Source

When I saw this article I just had to post it. Like the author I was also speechless. Enjoy.

http://worsethanfailure.com/Articles/My-Kind-of-copyFile.aspx 

“Mozilla could spin Thunderbird off as separate organization” – Source

“Mozilla has been supporting Thunderbird as a product since the beginning of the Foundation. The result is a good, solid product that provides an open alternative for desktop mail. However, the Thunderbird effort is dwarfed by the enormous energy and community focused on the web, Firefox and the ecosystem around it. As a result, Mozilla doesn’t support Thunderbird as much as we do browsing and Firefox and we don’t expect this to change in the foreseeable future. We are convinced that our current focus – delivering the web, mostly through browsing and related services – is the correct priority. At the same time, the Thunderbird team is extremely dedicated and competent, and we all want to see them do as much as possible with Thunderbird.

We have concluded that we should find a new organizational approach for Thunderbird; one that allows the Thunderbird community to determine its own destiny.” – Source, Source

Earlier I reported on the release of Microsoft’s new Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008, and SQL Server 2008. Now the development side of the equation is announced officially as betas and RCs.

“Announcing the release of Visual Studio 2008 Beta 2, .NET FX 3.5 Beta 2, and Silverlight 1.0 RC” – Source