Begining of a Great Adventure

2:51 pm work

I have never been paid to work on Free Software, and have often wished I was – I would have loved to be able to spend my working day striving towards a grand goal that I am passionate about and believe in. But circumstances (and a lack of backbone on my part) conspired against me, and so for the first 8 years of my professional career, I have never been paid to do what I am passionate about.

Until now.

At the start of November, I will be joining Wengo, where I will be working on growing the community around the OpenWengo project, a Free Software, open-standards based VoIP softphone (and instant messaging client).

It’s a big challenge, but one I am very happy to take on. Talking to people at Wengo has convinced me that there is a real willingness to open up the development process and be a good citizen in the free software world, which is a great starting point. My first job will be to look at the development processes of the company as it is, and identify ways that we can make that process even more open, even more welcoming to new contributors.

It’s going to be a fun ride.

12 Responses

  1. Hub Says:

    Wengo, it is a Qt app, isn’t it? Traitor !

  2. Michael Says:

    Now that telepathy is coming perhaps it’s a bad idea to do commercial im/voip applications?

  3. Dave Neary Says:

    Hub: You started it, I’m just following the trend you set 😉 I’ve always been a free software advocate – as luck would have it, QT is free software too, yay!

    Michael: OpenWengo is completely 100% free software, with a nice modular interface that uses ffmpeg, oSIP, oRTP, libgaim, and a bunch of other existing free software modules. We have a QT front-end, but also a XUL front-end in the form of a Mozilla plug-in. In what way are we a commercial im/voip application?

    Plus, telepathy is itself a platform – OpenWengo might eventually become a user of telepathy for all I know, so far from making OW redundant, telepathy risks making us better. Free software rocks, doesn’t it?

  4. andre Says:

    congratulations – i’m sometimes using openwengo under windows because it’s much cheaper than using skype. anyway, it hasn’t run well under linux so far for me. good luck! 🙂

  5. Quim Gil Says:

    The free software community wins a new professional, congratulations!

    Are you still in Lyon? Is your work in an office or are you stuck at home with WengoPhone? 🙂

    Downloading…

  6. Daniel Glazman Says:

    Plus on est de fous, plus on rit…
    More seriuously, and even if I am not a wengo employee, I am part of the project. Glad to see you onboard and see you in Boulogne !

  7. Alan Horkan Says:

    > Wengo, it is a Qt app, isn’t it? Traitor !

    For any Qt lovers who dont know Hub he is mostly joking and not trying to stir up any trouble when he jokes about “traitor”.

    Best of luck in your new job Dave.

  8. Pierre-Jean Coudert Says:

    Félicitations Dave !

  9. Vincent Says:

    Wow, good news!
    I’m glad for you. This is quite a big change. It also means you’ll be able to go at more events to talk about Wengo 😉

  10. Maurits Says:

    Hi Dave, good luck with your new job and thanks for all the work you’ve done for GIMP!

  11. Lloyd D Budd Says:

    Congratulations Dave and welcome to the ranks of professional open source developers!

  12. Sylvain Oranger Says:

    Hi Dave !
    Nice to see that you’ll begin at the start of November.
    That’s great.
    You’ll leave the Cege…’s Professionnal World for the Free Community.
    You won’t lost more time there !
    Good Luck for your new job Dave.
    Your sincerely.