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Unsung Heroes of Open Source
Yosef writes "Jon Udell uses his experience from using and hacking the free software BitPim to say that developers of such less-known projects are the true heroes of open source: 'For solving a host of vexing problems with quiet competence, and for doing it in ways that invite others to stand on their shoulders, I salute them all.'"
Yes, I too know the delights of gnuplot for graphs, and the usage of make to smush together twenty graphs and diagrams (mmm, dia) into one LaTeX output document.
Have you seen WikiTeX? It allows for direct inclusion of graphviz, gnuplot, LaTeX and LilyPond directly into a wiki page. (It's a MediaWiki extension.) You lose the excellent typesetting, but man is it ever quick and easy.
--grendel drago
Laws do not persuade just because they threaten. --Seneca
Many developers I know began writing code in college and compiling using gcc for MUDs. Most popular MUDs in my circles were DikuMUD based derived from the work of Sebastian Hammer, Tom Madsen, Katja Nyboe, Michael Seifert, and Hans Henrik Staerfeldt. (The creator fo CircleMUD, Jeremy Elson, also deserves a mention in my opinion too.) Freely available MUD code helped promote using open source software. I and many of my friends had our first introduction to Linux by finding a OS to run our MUD since we were getting booted off our university's unix boxes. So if you're looking for unsung open source heros, look at those who created and opened up their MUD source code back in the early 1990s.
McGrath is the head developer of the GNU C Library, which is an absolute necessity for an entirely F/OSS system.
The funny thing is that none of my friends would call me unsung or obscure :-)
:-) Having something like BitPim on my resume has been very useful to show that I can actually do things.
h on/msg/16c51c50418bbb7f
As someone else quoted we do not accept money, kickbacks or other forms of financing for BitPim. This is simply because it creates issues. Firstly some initial amount of that will be squandered on dealing with the tax situation it creates. Secondly it creates certain expectations. For example if someone donates and mentions they primarily use a particular operating system, then they wouldn't expect us to drop support for that operating system. Developer time is the most valuable thing, and it is best allocated without being biased by this kind of expectation.
The best kind of help is time from developers, and reproducible issues that on fixing improve the product from users. But anything that is an improvement anywhere is nice.
Don't worry about Microsoft. I've turned down the opportunity to even consider working for them several times. I've even reverse engineered several of their protocols, but sadly the results are all closed source. And I do know several people who have ended up at Microsoft. Not bad people as individuals, but the aggregate actions of the company are questionable.
Yes, I use Linux. And Windows. And a Mac Mini. To me open source and free software is about freedom of choice as an end user. I can use things for whatever they are best at, and later take my data with me to something that is better. Funnily enough, the games I most enjoy come from Microsoft (eg Rise of Nations).
BitPim got started because the closed source people in the cell phone space only supported Windows, and only allowed one installation of their software. (That isn't one concurrent use - it is one installation total. If you have two machines you would have to uninstall and reinstall.)
None of my time on BitPim has been paid for by anyone else. My regular consulting gigs do take time away, but also pay me something to live on
There are also several other people who contribute to BitPim. And *way* more contribute to the components that we use. BitPim is also an example of what you can do with Python.
You can read more at http://groups-beta.google.com/group/comp.lang.pyt
Roger