Updated Slash & Server 51

I'm not planning on announcing each and every release of Slash here, but there were several pretty significant problems in the v0.9 release of Slash (mostly the fact that my e-mail was hardcoded in one spot so I'm getting status report e-mail from dozens of new Slashlings as they pop up). Please Upgrade! Details about the release, and future announcements will mostly be posted at Slashcode.com, so if you're using the code or just interested, bookmark it. Second is the matter of Server51. We had a little miscommunication over here and let the cat out of the bag on this when we released Slash v0.9: S51 is Freshmeat's new open source hosting site. It's still very alpha, and only hosting a few projects, but since it's already getting a fair amount of curious visitors, feel free to poke around and send suggestions... it'll be ready for mass consumption "when it's finished" of course ;)

Comments

Re:server51 url doesnt work

[ro]

OK. when the story was first posted server51.freshmeat.net didnt work and a 'ls freshmeat.net' on the freshmeat DNS did not show an entry for server51.
looks like they have just added it now :-)

cant think why...

Re:server 51 why ?

[technomancerX]

Kind of like sourceforge does? Sorry, if they want
to do it it's cool... and I'm sure from Andover's
point of view anything that draws more hits is good... but it just seems like kind of a waste of time... especially if they're rolling their own tools since sourceforge open sourced theirs...

Re:BTW, that was FP

[aliebrah]

Well what exactly would you suggest I should have done?

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Will do. For the record, Chris, I think you're one of the good ones.

Take care,


Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

DateManip

[sallgeud]

Anyone else out there experience the slowness of DateManip? The company I currently work for used to use DateManip heavily (in mod_perl even), and it slowed things down by 1/2sec per request... we converted all the DateManip stuff over to strftime and localtime... worked MUCH MUCH better for us. Along with not having to install and keep updates on a module, and not loading it into memory, this is a great benefit...

This is all from my experience, and just a recommendation on a minor change which could be made...

-CK

Re:I named Server 51. I never knew of System 12.

[Bowie J. Poag]

Ahha. :) Ok..Thanks for the heads up.



Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

Re:CaptTofu ??

[CmdrPinkTaco]

I just had to post here so people can see my name :)
--------------------------------------------

Why isn't the whole piece of code released?

[forsberg]

One question though. Why is just parts of the software released?

I can't find the 'http://' and the 'dot.org' packages...

Re:SlashCode.com

[dlc]

I like the ability to put content-boxes on both sides.

i think i missed this... where is this option?

Re:server51 url doesnt work

[MrHat]

Heh... We can even slashdot servers that *don't* exist... :)

Sincere forms of flattery..

[Bowie J. Poag]

bitch_mode(on);

Back in June of last year, I had a conversation or two with Trae McCombs at VA about what to name my project. Laboriously, we sat and thought about names for the new project--one that would shelter developers under a common umbrella while providing them the tools and materials they needed to build.

One of the names I proposed was "Source Forge". I really liked the word "forge", and felt it could be combined easilly with other words down the road as the project expanded.

Trae didn't like the name, told me to keep thinking. 6 months later I find out VA is funding a project called "SourceForge" with full time employees, and was doing essentially the same thing as us. I scratched my chin and thought about that. "Hmm. Thats flattering." I thought.

Well, back to our story--After a week or two of primate head-scratching, and an infamous trip to a shopping mall in Tucson, I finally thought of a good name. The name was chosen, and "System 12" was cast in stone, and work began on the project.

System 12...Hmm. Now, we see Server 51. Same concept.

Sure, its all good..No problem there. Its just that I would rather not be routinely "flattered".

bitch_mode(off);

Good luck, Patrick.
(Yes, I know the URL doesn't work. :) )

Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[chrisd]

Hey,

Bowie, I'm sure you came up with Sourceforge and I'm sure you talked with trae, but as the guys who was in charge of hosting over here and the guy who registered the names on internic (well before anyone else did, I might add) I take issue with your complaining about it. I had no idea that had the name in your head to use, I thought it up and I registered it, and then we used it, at first for a machine we were bringing online to butress a failing machine and afterwords to launch sourceforge.net

I know you had something going on with Trae, and I know you guys don't get along because of it, but what I don't understand is why you have such a huge problem with both us and freshmeat offering hosting services. This is not brain surgery to come up with this stuff, it's obvious that it is a needed service and VA has been hosting projects and groups since well before my time here, and at least streching back to 1996.

As far as System 12 goes, If you want to go forward with it, I'll give you some hardware to set it up, all I heard about was that system 12 was going to be a GTK widget repository and you'd do some hosting, and I was looking forward to that. Why do you think that if sourceforge and Server 51 exists that you can't be there too? If anything it'd be good for them to have the competition.

Chris DiBona
--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[fusion94]

Bowie,
Not the same thing as System12. No where close from the talks that you and I had back in November when I was trying to get you a job at VA. You told me that that System12 was to be an online repository of GTK & KDE Widgets. You mentioned hosting but were unsure of how to do it or what you'd offer. And it was nowhere near the scale that SourceForge was planning on offering. One other thing to note was that at no point in the design and implementation of SourceForge was Trae ever consulted.

Also in November the talks were initiated by me to see if there was enough common ground to merge the 2 sites together. Needless to say that never happened. In regards to System12 shutting down that was initiated by you and you alone. VA gave you the server and the bandwith to continue on and yet you still shut it down.

just my .02

-t

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[OctobrX]

Bowie,
I've done everything I ever could for you. I've given you a server to do whatever you want, a place on themes.org, and just about anything else anyone could have wanted. I've even given you job ops at VA that you repeatedly turned down.

I personally didn't dig the name SourceForge, but for you to accuse me of telling people about an idea you had.... Thats just low. I would never do such a thing to anyone ever.

If you came up with SourceForge as a domain, and one of the billions of choices we went through, I turned it down because I didn't think it had anything to do with Graphics which is what I thought I was helping you to achieve.

You are a friend, and It saddends me to think you couldn't come to talk to me and had to bring this to a public forum.

I tried to email you, but your email doesn't work anymore.

All the best to you in all your endeavors.
Sincereley yours,
Trae " OctobrX " McCombs

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[Bowie J. Poag]

My choosing not to discuss why we shut the project down with you, or anyone else for that matter, is out of simple courtesy, not because I (or the 11 other people working on the project) had anything to be ashamed of. Trust me. That decision was also reached as a group, not (to paraphrase) "by me and me alone." Im not in the business of slinging mud.

If you look carefully at the interview I gave to Linux.com, it spells out quite specifically what we were doing, how we were going to do it, and what we were going to offer.

As for "trying to get me a job at VA in November", I'm afraid you're mistaken. I went home to recouperate in October, and stayed until early January. I rarely touched a computer in the time inbetween, and only then it was to discuss matters with my staff.



Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[fusion94]

quoting your interview which came out 14 days before we launched SourceForge:

" Bowie J. Poag: System 12 will be a resource stockpile for Linux application developers. For lack of a better buzzword, we don't really know what tocall it yet, but the basic premise is this: System 12 (hopefully) will do for Linux application development what Themes.org did for windowmanagers. We're going to be offering a series of free "component toolkits" for developers to include in their own work. In exchange for using our work, we will be offering them free hosting space on our server so they can showcase their work to the community.

The component toolkits themselves are organized according to what kind of material they are. For example, on any particular day, we may release a
"Generic Verbal Clock Toolkit" -- a collection of sound samples: a recording of someone saying the words "One" , "Two", "Three", "AM", "PM", etc.
So if you wanted to build a clock applet for Linux which announced the time on command, you'd download this kit, write your code, and release it. "Four" "Twenty" "Two" "PM".

We will be manufacturing these kits in-house, and making them freely available to the public. All sorts of things, not just sound, but graphics, fonts, lots of stuff.

System12 is currently under construction. There's a lot of other stuff I really can't discuss yet, but that's the main function of the project -- to allow Linux developers to increase the quality of their work, and make ourselves an integral part of what it means to develop applications for Linux as a whole. "

at that point in the Game SourceForge was past the point of "Under Construction". We were putting the finishing touches on what we released on November 17th. If you think that we built SourceForge from scratch within those 14 days then your deluded.

As for not touching a computer during the month of November because you were recuperating ? Have you forgotten the conversations we had on IRC during that time ? I know several people here that participated in those conversations with you. Or some fascimile of you I guess.

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Hi Chris,

Well, if what you say is true (I have no reason to doubt you) then your choice was rather uncanny to say the least.

My problem isnt with you, or Trae, or Patrick, or anyone really. I'm actually fairly happy that SourceForge is taking off--In a small way, it validates what we were trying to do with S12. I also hope Patrick succeeds with his project, too..Both were and are much-needed additions to the community. My "problem", if you could even call it that, is that i'm growing fairly tired of people who refuse to be creative, and think of new things, and new ideas. Theres too much copying going on. Just look at Slashdot -- Even though Rob releases the source for his work, it has done nothing but spawn an endless array of poorly contrived knockoffs. Its happened with every project i've been involved with for the last couple years. I dont think its too much to ask for someone to sit down and brainstorm about what can be done, instead of thinking about re-doing whats already there. We have enough of that already.

FYI, the concept of what we were doing in System 12 last year (that is, a hosting umbrella for developers, and providing content for them to deploy) came out of the demise of InSight 2+ years ago. Back then it was called NuBox, and got mothballed when Propaganda took off. Now it sits on a backup tape. System 12 was something I dreamed of, wanted very strongly to do for the community even then, let alone when I agreed to head up the project in May '99. I was even interviewed (by Trae himself!) for the old themes.org's Tile Of The Week feature, where NuBox was discussed briefly. I had every intention of guiding that project to fruition, even if it took a year or more to do so, without pay, and without any sort of compensation. That was my big break, I thought..So did the 11 others who agreed to bust their ass for 6 months to make it happen. Then we got forced off the map.

As for your offer..nothing personal, Chris, but I dont need hardware, bandwidth, or any other resources. What I do need, however, are people who know the distinction between cooperation and competition. There are a few key people at VA who don't understand this concept, i'm afraid.



Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[chrisd]

That's fair, I'm sorry things got too weird between us (va and you). As an aside, I also grabbed really lame names before like sourceanvil and such that were too lame to use.

Anyhow, in the future if there is anything VA or I can do, let me know.

Chris DiBona

--
Grant Chair, Linux Int.
Pres, SVLUG

Re:Sincere forms of flattery..

[Bowie J. Poag]

Like I just said, I rarely touched a computer between October and early January, and even at that, it was usually only to discuss matters with my staff.

We had a little IRC party, if you recall..Thats about the only significant thing I did during October and January..I was bedridden for most of that time. During one of my talks with a couple guys on staff, I was approached by someone from l.c, who conducted an impromptu interview with me. He was in a hurry, and needed the help, so I gave it. Took about an hour or so.

If I remember correctly, SourceForge sprung from the ashes of ColdStorage, which was apparently going to be a Freshmeat clone. When that project collapsed, whoever was heading up the project decided to take it in an entirely different direction, and SourceForge was born.

No offense, but I just cant help but wonder how an idea I had two years ago, and had discussed at some length with a few people at VA *several* times between July and early August of '99 could materialize out of thin air with several full-time, funded VA employees behind it, all without our knowledge.

I dont think i'll ever know.



Bowie J. Poag
Project Manager, PROPAGANDA For Linux (http://propaganda.themes.org)

Sourceforge

[augustz]

is doing an excellent job already. I can see the desire for another hosting prject free thing, but I can also think of more worthwhile projects to focus on, places where no one else is yet meeting a demand.

SLASHDOT BUG?

[gwicks]

Hey! Did someone change /.

Can anyone try putting their display into Nested / Oldest First and see what they get?

(I might be putting my head in the lions month here but..) the formatting of the posts really screws up, starting half way across, with the "sections" panel in the centre (US center). then half way down it jumps over to the left.

OK - I'll admit to running IE5 *duck - flame attack*

Am I going mad? Can someone check please...



(BTW - Mozzilla 13 is surpisingly good! I've been keeping a sneakie eye on it and I recommend you check it out. Once they fix the proxy auth. then I'll ditch IE, I promise!!)

Re:Moderation exploit?

[Dr. Evil]

Another skeptic here, but have you ever noticed the super-highly moderated comments, usually in interviews which despite being "Intriguing" or "Insightful" haven't a single reply?

Have you noticed that if you check out the person's other posts, they're all similarly highly rated, with few followups?

Sometimes I wonder if professional reporters for news outlets aren't stuffing the moderation scores with multiple accounts.

(This is not off-topic as it has to do with the functionality of the code mentioned in the article!)

I was thinking about other systems of moderation to implement. Something like introducing "entropy", randomly allocated positive moderation points. Each story would get points at a rate determined per hour and per volume of posts. That way people (first post kiddies) have no way of obtaining moderation by boosting their Karma, or bleeding moderation points by posting intentionally stupid anonymous comments. All they could possibly do to abuse the system is to open zillions of accounts, hope for one of them to randomly get some points, and boost stupid comments.

Hand-picked super-moderators could probably control, and hence discourage this problem. Blasted commments could go into a "censored" page or something. Just to check for abuse.

The other key is to make moderation convenient... ie, not require a page reload to submit, and to be able to post to the same story you moderate. Just tick off boxes as you read, and tie moderation to any action on the page. Even perhaps a javascript "onDocumentExit" event.

Yeah, I know, write it myself. I just might.

There must be a simple way to allow anonymous comments, public moderation and curb abuse all at the same time.

Same problems with Opera

[harmonica]

Opera 3.60 / NT, to be more specific. So it seems to be more of a bug in the HTML creation than a browser error.

Re:Moderation exploit?

[technos]

There was a lot of link-baiting going on yesterday.. Post something mildly (3, insightful) entertaining, but include an outside link to (porn-site, etc) as an integral part of it. On top of that, Mr. Don Knotts/Emmanuel Goldstein was rampaging, trying to it off as legit.. So there were a lot of (-1, interesting) floating.

Re:slashcode is great!

[chris.bitmead]

Sort of a slash site ... TechPhoto.org

Great to see updates...

[aliebrah]

Good to see updates of the code... it certainly puts the nail in the coffin the /. team is uncommitted to keeping the code current and that they just released unfinished code to appease the whiners.

Welps

[aTRaTiCa]

Welps, time to upgrade my schools news forum already :-) Just spent the whole day yesterday setting the machine up from scratch. *groan* Oh well, I don't mind doing it for a nice piece of product :-) Thanks guys

server51 url doesnt work

[ro]

try http://server51.net instead

Re:server51 url doesnt work

[MrHat]

I had no problems with the story's URL. In fact, both http://server51.freshmeat.net and http://server51.net work from where I am.

server 51 why ?

[Zurk]

why doesnt freshmeat simply mirror all fm entries locally on it sown server ? i would think that would be more helpful than simply adding another "we host yer project free" site to it.

Re:server 51 why ?

[volsung]

There's more to hosting a project than providing an FTP server. Any place that plans to do it well will have to offer a mix of web-hosting, mailing list management, CVS service, FTP, and any other whiz-bang features they can think of.

Re:server 51 why ?

[manitee]

From the Server51 page:

"...it features free CVS, FTP, and WWW hosting for Open Source projects."

RTFM ;)


--

SysReqs?

[marks]

Just curious, maybe I didn't read far enough into the previous article or the code itself, but what are the system requirments for Slash (hardward and software) I know it requires mod_perl and an SQL server, but what else?

-mark

Re:SysReqs?

[Issue9mm]

I've posted a system requirements page over at Slashcode.com. You can check it out, although it is backed by absolutely no scientific data whatsoever. The software requirements are in the slash installation text file, and they're pretty much self-explanatory. Apache, related modules, MySQL, etc...

As for the hardware, I've got it running on a low traffic site using a 486 with SCSI-II Cheetah drives, and 16MB RAM.

Works like a charm.

Hope this helps.

Stop Complaining

[1DeepThought]

Does this mean at least a temporary end to CmdrTaco being accused of not supporting OpenSource? What a refreshing change. Now, maybe we don't have to sift through the whinging comments every time an OpenSource related article is posted.

"Patience is a virtue, afforded those with nothing better to do." - I don't remember

So Malda is not big brother?

[Bishop]

And here I thought the hardcoded email address was so that Mr Malda, in his efforts to be Big Brother, could keep track of who is using the code. Ofcourse we are all aware of Mr Malda's other nefarious schemes.

slashcode is great!

[Frederic54]

my friend use it on his site http://www.beroute.tzo.com which is a french BeOS community website alà Slashdot, and he translated the strings in french also! it's so cool the code is available! thanks!

Frédéric
--
see /. in at Elle online and Elle paper
--
BeRoute

Re:slashcode is great!

[dattaway]

I'd like to see other slash sites as well! Please post URL's if you get something up! :)

Re:Big surprise

[Yebyen]

Hey, every project has some bugs, and Cmdrtaco couldn't really let us test it before he released it, could he? I don't know if you noticed, but the version number was Slash V0.9. This means it was NOT the 1.0 release. Understand? If you don't like it, then either just live with it, help fix what's wrong, or write your own code :-).
Note: not meant as a flame, sorry if it came off that way...

--
linuxisgood:~$ man woman

Re:Why the "dot com" in slashcode.com?

[CaptTofu]

slashcode.org

Moderation exploit?

[costas]

Slightly off-topic: Did anybody else notice that moderation was quirky yesterday? there were decent posts moderated down all over the place.

Now, I aint the cynical kind (yes I am), but this phenomenon coming a few days after the Slash release makes me sceptical: is it possible that some group o' kids found themselves a moderation exploit in /.? I haven't tested the 0.9 code, but it was definitely a possibility in 0.3...



engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

Slashcode plugged in ANDN earnings report

[chandoni]

I noticed that Slashcode is plugged in ANDN's latest earnings report. On the other hand, Server 51 was not mentioned... they were probably hoping to save that news for another earnings report or press release.

Metallica

[drivers]

That's how Metallica got their name. A magazine was going to use that name then the band convinced them not to use it, and used it for themselves. :)

bigger better faster

[Basje]

That's what you get for hurrying things. Better take your time next time, Rob :)

----------------------------------------------

An observation...

[RabidMonkey]

I'm curious as to why they are advertising it as Slashcode.com when Slashcode.org works too, and fits a little better into the Open Source idea (being a .org).

Just a brief observation.

(Slashcode.net works too)

Need to re-register?

[Nicolas MONNET]

Damn, could'nt you have used the same user database for slashcode.com??? It's a bit of a pain in the a** to reregister. Anyway.

Tables

[flink]

I'm viewing this page with Netscape 4.7/Linux and the tables are really messed up: they're all squished over on the right up top, and to left on the bottom. Is anyone else getting this?

Re:Tables

[DragonHawk]

"Me too!"

Re:Tables

[gulped]

yes

Re:Tables

[costas]

Yep; same here: IE5 on NT4 (I am at work, alright? ;-)


engineers never lie; we just approximate the truth.

SlashCode.com

[Hard_Code]

Is SlashCode.com using Slash? I think it actually looks better than Slashdot...I like the ability to put content-boxes on both sides...it also looks a bit more aesthetically pleasing.

When's the last time Slashdot got a makeover? Perhaps one's due...

Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla

Re: No! Please use http://server51.freshmeat.net/

[Kurt Gray]

I'm starting to think that someone working on Slashdot intentionally posts the exact wrong URL for every web site I work on! (Shall I remind you of the Linux Bazaar pics fiasco?)

Grrr...

Guys please for now on cc' the announcement text BEFORE you post it! Thank you.

Re:Big surprise

[mcrandello]

Very good point. Now that /. has made good on opening their source, it's up to anyone who finds a bug, exploit or missing feature to at least let them know about it. If you fix something and submit it or release the fixed code then that's even better.

I also don't think that there's going to be too much of a "PREVENT FORKING" issue at stake here either, since every webpage is going to do at least a little customizing to get things just the way they want. In the future I see the Slash code being a 'blessed version' with maybe many other sites releasing their own versions, and whichever site you land on who's codebase you like, you use.


mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.

Now I purpose a public execution

[Dast]

of all the whiners and complainers that have called Rob dirty names. That sh!t got reall old. Now the source is here, and you can all play with it.

On a side not, slashcode.org looks great. Maybe Rob should think about giving /. a new look. :) Maybe make it user themeable with xml. Something like slashdot.themes.org could be put up to hold cool themes. I guess that just means I read /. to much--I want it to match the rest of my desktop.

Re:I named Server 51. I never knew of System 12.

[Kurt Gray]

I came up with the name Server 51. I pitched a list of names out into an internal malining list (many weird names) and Server 51 got the most votes. I was thinking of Area 51. I had never heard of System 12 before. *shrug*

Server51 = One cool looking site

[DragonHawk]

Wow! That Server51 is one cool site. Personally, I think the "alien conspiracy" thing is bit overused, but they've done it well, and made excellent use of a few small graphics to create a very cool look.

Re:CaptTofu ??

[CaptTofu]

It's me, Patrick Galbraith, I'm the guy who's co-maintaining this with Rob. I was going to create the name "CaptSandwich", but I like Tofu better, and I wanted more rank (LtTofu wouldn't be so cool), so Captain and Tofu. No mystery there. I have a link to the site in my name so that I don't get bombarded - that's what the mailing lists are for.

Woohoo!

[Forkenhoppen]

Okie dokie, people; first one to impliment a parody site called "Sloshed @" gets a cookie. ;-)


James

Slashcode == Nice Site!

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, Slashcode.com looks very clean, i wish i could use my account to change the look of slashdot to that. (but instead of red..hit the classic /. green)

Re:CaptTofu ??

[Genom]

LOL

It's good to know someone outranks CMDR Taco ;P