MashedPotato Tech

Thanks to Gwyn Firth Murray , Larry Augustin , and Jeff Luczcz for a very entertaining panel discussion around Open Source at the recent eBig meeting . I was a bit nervous about how this panel would come together since I was the 'rookie,' whereas Gwyn had worked with Larry and Jeff separately before. However, the commonality of the passion for Open Source brought this panel together nicely and there was an excellent exchange of ideas between and amongst the panel (as well as our audience). I think we had someone in the audience comment on the fact that it seemed like we had all known each other a long time! :) The areas we covered during the talk were: licensing, community development, and reasons for using Open Source. I think the panel all agreed on good reasons for using Open Source, with all of us giving cogent examples of what the value proposition for using Open Source is (taking advantage of the huge amount of R&D and work that goes into good Open Source project...

For anyone interested in hearing about Open Source as it applies to companies, I'm going to be part of a panel discussion at eBig (East Bay Innovation Group) in Pleasanton, CA on Monday 11/10/08 titled ' Open Source: How to Make Money and Get Money? '. Given my previous post on the pragmatic aspects of using Open Source, I think this should be an interesting discussion. It's been a while since I've spoken/participated in a panel, but this one should be a lot of fun. I'll be joined by Open Source luminaries Larry Augustin and Jeff Luszcz , with Gwyn Firth Murray moderating. So, yes, for those following, I'm the least well known of the panelists. :) Hopefully my colleagues on the panel will handle most of the questions around legal/IP, since those that follow my blog will remember that while I recognize the value of understanding licenses around Open Source, I tend to be more focused on the community building/collaboration aspects (not surprisingly, giv...

Stormy Peters, the new Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation , penned an interesting blog post today on how she got started in the computer field. Reading through it, I was struck by how similar some of the aspects of her beginnings in the industry were to mine. It is kind of scary actually. :) I fell in love with using an Apple IIe in the A/V room of my high school, and found every excuse I could to go down there between classes and at lunch to play with 'peek' and 'poke' (and yes, write everyone's favorite BASIC program which loops the phrase 'I'm awesome' forever). :) The fascination of holding data and programs on a 5 1/4 floppy drive was something I'll never forget. I too 'graduated' to IBM PC's, and wrote some early graphics programs (but, they looked kind of hokey on the 'green screen' monochrome monitors). I was very fortunate, in those early days, to know that this is what I wanted to do with the rest of my li...

First off, to my few readers, I didn't die... :) I had a very interesting couple of weeks, plus a vacation. The short version of my interesting weeks is that I've left Motorola and taken a job as an Open Source Community Manager at CollabNet , where I'll be working to help build the communities of CollabNet's current and future customers interested in Open Source development practices. When and if I end up doing a corporate blog, I'll post the link here. Now, on to today's topic - Open Source Pragmatism. I was having a conversation with some new colleagues, and I mentioned that I sometimes get a hard time from hard line Open Source folks about my use of a Macbook Pro. I look at software very pragmatically, and quite frankly, while Ubuntu has done a great job of getting the Linux Desktop to where it is, it still cannot compare (for my needs as a consumer) with OS X. Now, that doesn't mean I don't believe that Open Source (and Linux) have made grea...

If you've ever wondered whether the 'multi-touch' technology present on Apple's iPhone and iPod products would make sense on a larger scale, then take a look at this video from perceptivepixel.com . This technology has been being worked on since at least 2006 by Jeff Han , as a spinoff of an NYU project, and it has been featured on CNN's election coverage, and written up in several places, including this article on OSNews.com . Though I'm completely sold on the promise of this technology for vertical applications such as weather and news, I do wonder about the usefulness of this technology in the general purpose computing space. Wondering about this technology's general usefulness doesn't mean it can't be an excellent niche market tech, but the prospect of most knowledge workers or others who enter a lot of data into their computer using this interface makes me cringe. Some people can get by with just ' haptic ' feedback (ala the iPhone...

I've been a technology/gadget freak almost my entire life, and I remember at an early age being curious about how the technology around me (TV's/Radios/Remote Controlled cars) worked. This of course influenced my career path, and led me to a Computer Science degree. However, I've never lost my love of all forms of technology, especially radio. This love of technology has also intersected with the desire I've developed to volunteer in emergency services/communications roles outside of my normal job (a desire cemented after I lost a colleague and friend on American Airlines flight 11 on 9/11). Two years ago, I studied for and received my Amateur Radio (Ham) technician class license (K6GWM). At the time, some of my tech friends questioned the decision for me to invest in such 'antiquated' technology. However, experience in emergency situations since that time has taught me time and time again that the saying: 'When all else fails, Amateur Radio' is a...

Corporations and the Open Source community seem to have a love/hate relationship most of the time, and I think it stems from several key misunderstandings (mainly on the part of the companies). A lot of companies (though there are notable exceptions, such as IBM ) seem to look at Open Source as a source of free (as in beer, not as in speech) code/labor. In other words, management sees that code and those developers as a great way to shortcut the product development process, do it for less, and then 'profit ensues'. I know that sounds funny to a lot of technology people (like me) who are familiar with and involved in the Open Source community, but that mentality is very real in larger/older companies (especially those in consumer electronics sectors). It doesn't help that marketing and PR grab ahold of the notion of Open Source as a great 'hook' to make their company or product offering sound sexy and appealing. The unfortunate reality is that a lot of corporate...