Entries in Life

Working on free software projects isn't easy. Just because you're giving away your work for anyone to use doesn't mean that anyone is going to take it, no questions asked.

Take my MediaWiki work as an example. I am being paid for the work, but it is freely licensed and I'm learning about the standards of quality that the community has formed around the code.

Frankly, before becoming involved in such a serious PHP-based project, I didn't have a very high opinion of PHP. Even Rasmus (creator of PHP) doesn't seem to live in a pure php world and, as a result, thinks of systems where PHP is merely the web frontend instead of almost the entire system.

So working with others who have been neck-deep in PHP for years, building one of the top-10 sites on the net entirely in PHP, and gaining intimate familiarity with the quirks of PHP, has been a wonderful experience.

But MediaWiki isn't the only free software project I'm involved in. I also contribute to Emacs occasionally. (For those not so familar with Emacs vs Vi, let's just say this is like the social situation between Republicans and the Democrats or the Roman Catholics and Southern Baptists: You live next door to them, but you know they're going to hell.)

And it is my most recent commits to Emacs that have gained me noteriety. Yesterday, I was catching up on some blog reading (Planet Emacs, thankyouverymuch) and came across a nifty use of loccur.el. But it used defadvice instead of a hook (and hooks are better — no this is different than emacs vs vi, I swear).

I looked at the code and thought, “Hey, I can make a tiny little contribution to Emacs here!” So I made a couple of small changes.

Little did I know what a problem that was going to be.

Óscar Fuentes used my commit message as an example of how not to write a commit message. This was not the first time I've been so honored.

Three weeks ago, I made a mistake committing to the bzr repository for emacs and was again used as an example for the Emacs-devel community of how not to make a commit.

There are two reasons I'm such a stellar example for the other Emacs developers.

First, I've been using bzr for a couple of years while working on the iHRIS Suite. This experience (2 years more than most Emacs developers) naturally made me think I had things under control. So I didn't bother reading over Bzr for Emacs Devs.

Second, Emacs recently switched its source-control system (after much debate and some effort on speed the bzr side) from the ancient, worn, CVS to bzr. So people are still adapting their work flow. I just happened to make some commits that were particularly egregious and ended up being great examples of what people should avoid.

So, yes, Free Software is a great thing, but that doesn't mean the developers don't take it seriously. And being reprimanded in public isn't the most pleasent experience. But at least I can blog about it!

Almost two years ago, when I started working at IntraHealth, dcm told me about IntraHealth Open. Being a neck-bearded freetard, the idea really appealed to me: Use open source in the education of students in developing countries across Africa to build a workforce that could support the IT infrastructure of the continent without using Western consultants.

The use of Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) is essential to the goal. Using software that is freely licensed for perpetuity avoids the "First Hit is Free" model many software companies use to get developing countries hooked on their software. Building the use and understanding of FOSS into the curricula gives the students the skills they need to use software on the job. And deploying freely-licensed software like Ubuntu, OpenOffice, iHRIS Suite and OpenMRS into these developing countries will create a local demand for workers who can use, understand, and maintain the very software they've learned about in school.

I'm very excited about the new IntraHealth OPEN initiative. You can even take part. Senagalese musician Youssou N'Dour is working with other musicians to help raise funds for the OPEN initiative by making his music and remixes of it available for free download under a Creative Commons license. So go download some music and consider making a donation to IntraHealth OPEN.

UPDATE: Listen to dcm talk about Open in the Launchpad podcast.

One of the never-ending subjects of Free Software is "Where are the Women?"

While I see it as mostly a non-problem -- that is, there are some obvious problems that need to be fixed with time, but no one is going to rectify them right now -- I'm doing what I can to encourage my daughters and son in the field.

In the meantime, The Decline of Women in Computer Science from 1940-1982 has some fascinating anecdotes:

Computing was unique, however, in the sense that the fledgling profession was still in its infancy and had no strong pre-war gender socialization.  This fact must have helped the women in that the returning men lacked programming expertise, and clearly had no expectation of “returning” to a programming job.  The lack of structure in the industry was also a boon to women programmers who wanted to continue working even after they became pregnant and had children.  Most notably, “Computations, Inc., of Harvard, Massachusetts (outside Route 128), formed in 1958 by Elsie Shutt and several other programmer-mothers who worked part-time and largely at home on problems contracted out to them by their former employers, such as Minneapolis-Honeywell and Raytheon”.  These women, widely known as the “Pregnant Programmers” were mentioned by speaker Richard H. Bolt at the M.I.T Symposium on American Women in Science and Engineering in 1964.  Bolt, who was a lecturer in Political Science at M.I.T and also a former Associate Director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) from 1960-1963, also mentioned the following:

 “I asked one of the unmarried women, a computer programmer in industry, if she thought a woman’s activities as a mother and homemaker would interfere with her opportunities in a career.  ‘One good thing about programming,’ she said, ‘is that you can work part time.’”