10 Reasons To Get Involved in Open Source Development

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Emma McGrattan

I’m contemplating updating a piece I wrote a couple of years ago on why students should get involved in open source developmentand scribbled the following quasi-humorous list over lunch:

1. Think of it as step 1 on the road out of living in your parent’s basement, eating hot pockets and playing WoW day and night. (In retrospect those last two don’t sound so bad!)

2. College Education – $43,600; Ultimate Gaming Laptop – $4,700; Finding a bug in code written by Linus Torvalds – Priceless

3. Your open source submissions may distract prospective employers from those photos of you dressed as David Hasselhoff that your friends tagged on Facebook.*

4. If you like WoW, you’ll love open source - even your most pleasant interactions on some open source projects will feel like you’re taking on level 82 elite mobs in Icecrown.

5. While you may think that Drupal is your one true love, unless you code-around you’ll never know for sure.

6. If you get accepted into the Google Summer of Codeyou can get paid to write code in your Sponge Bob jim-jams.

7. You can get involved in serious debates about the benefits of translating a project into Klingon or sign up to join a project to Train a Toy Elephant.

8. Jeans and a t-shirt is “dressed-up”.

9. Your favorite “Bow before me, for I am root” t-shirt will pale in comparison to the collection of hilarious open source t-shirts that you’ll assemble.

10. Open Source is an EgoSystem and you know that you’re going to be king.

* – this is obviously fictional and any resemblance it may bear to a real Actian employee is purely coincidental.

Girl Geeks Revisited

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Emma McGrattan

GirlGeekDinnerLogo Yesterday I promisedto provide an account of the Girl Geek Dinner at Hull University. The Hull event differed from other Girl Geek Dinner events that I’ve attended in that at least half of the attendees were students. Mid-way through my presentation I got onto the topic of open source development and I was shocked to realize that none of the students in the room were involved in open source development. I’m not sure if this is a reflection of the level of interest in open source in the UK, or vice versa.

I believe that open source is an obvious way for students to gain some real world experience on large scale software projects. There’s an enormous difference between submitting your work to be reviewed and rated by your professor/teacher and enduring the baptism of fire that usually accompanies your first submission to an open source project. Another huge benefit that open source development provides to students is that it gives them an opportunity to identify what aspects of IT they are passionate about. Open source projects run the gamut from web browsers to gaming engines and everything in between and there are roles for developers, testers, bug fixers, translators, tech writers, artists etc. etc. I’ve blogged on this topic in the past which you can read here.

I’m looking to fill a junior rolein my team at present and I find it interesting, and somewhat depressing, to note that we are seeing lots of applications from people with 10+ year’s experience applying for a junior role, because of the current state of the job’s market. I am also seeing resumes from recent college graduates, some of whom have not found employment in the tech sector since graduting from college over the past two years. Skimming college graduate resumes is usually easy and I always start by looking for involvement in open source projects and use this to quickly identify the type of self-starter that would fit within my team.

Linda Broughton and Leia Bassett of nti Leeds were my genial and gracious hosts for the English leg of my trip, and given their knowledge of open source I hope that they are able to work with the Hull University students to arrange a future Girl Geek Dinner at which they could provide a speaker who could give an overview of open source and faciliate an exchange of ideas on the topic.

Normally I like to book-end a trip to Europe with a weekend with my family in Dublin, but this time around I had to hurry back to New York because I’d volunteered to participate in a number of events that weekend including a “Polar Plunge” to raise funds for the Special Olympics. And just because I have no shame, and have littered recent blogs with personal pics, I’ve deicded to share a photo of that event with you.

New Economics and The Jobs Summit

Posted on December 4, 2009 by Fred Gallagher

Matt Asay made some good points on the Jobs Summit, where the technology industry was represented by Eric Schmidt and Jim Whitehurst.

The Obama Administration concluded after ten months in office that unemployment above 10% and eight million jobs lost in the last two years means a lot of people are out of work. And, this administration should take action.

Focus on the economy of the 30′s is what the Summit should do, and I mean 2030 not 1930. This Administration followed the previous one and focused on helping old companies, I mean really old and big ones.Lehman, Merrill and General Motors offered job opportunities for our grandparents and great-grandparents, but will not do the same for our children.

Heed the advice of Eric and Jim. For most people, the next job will come from a small business, less than 50 employees. Both Google and Red Hat were small businesses in our lifetimes, and continued to add jobs during this Great Recession.

Matt’s points on the economics of abundance, made two years ago, are outstanding. Ultimately, a great outcome would be a set of policies that encourage other industries, think health care and energy, to move from the 20th century model of managing scarcity to the open source and internet model of managing abundance.

Thanks Matt.

Tell me what you think of the Oracle acquisition of Sun

Posted on July 9, 2009 by Fred Gallagher

No surprise that people ask my opinion.

In our industry, customers buy products based on roadmap, at least that is one reason. Actian has a roadmap, Oracle has one, IBM, Microsoft, etc. The MySQL roadmap from as recent as March 2009 has lost their roadmap, please tell me if you have seen it.

Seriously, not to offend the roadmap team at MySQL, companies which have announced an acquisition have a difficult time communicating a roadmap. Ask MySQL what will happen to the MySQL roadmap after the acquisition. Next, if you are lucky to get an answer, tell me if you believe that roadmap will be relevant after the acquisition closes. Ask yourself if Oracle will continue the development plan for MySQL on the same roadmap, or will they make the roadmap better, that is add to the MySQL product at a faster rate, so that the product is as good as, say, the Oracle database….

Podcast – The Era of Open Source Databases

Posted on June 24, 2009 by Fred Gallagher

A lot can be learned about the current recession by looking at the recession that took place in 2001. By understanding the impact that recession had on technology, we can gain some insight into how things may play out as this recession starts to ease.

In the final episode of our three part podcast series, we discuss the Era of Open Source Databases and how the open standards and flexibility open source offers will change the IT environment in the future. We also take a look at what makes Actian stand apart from competitors as an application development solution.

The Era of Open Source Databases

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