Life is so good, it gets better every day

Moving Island

As Jayne already blogged, we’re heading up to Wellington for a few months. I’m super psyched that it’ll be a bunch of new exciting experiences up there. It’ll be a nice opportunity of spending some time in another place (and Wellington did seem like a cool place on previous visits), and explore some new mountain biking, fishing, climbing and whatever else it throws at us. Sun have an office up on the terrace, so at least I’ll have a drop in office for a chance. It’ll be fun also to meet the Wellington IT crowd, and explore the various networks there – and obviously an awesome opportunity for Jayne to push forward with her web project.

We already have some accommodation arranged off Oriental Parade overlooking the entire harbour, and have a rough plan to be up there from about April. Should be fun!

Project Ideas for OpenSolaris

Last year, OpenSolaris had the opportunity of taking part in the Google Summer of Code, getting 2 student projects to work on. Nicolai and Ricardo both did a rocking job with their respective projects, and I believe it was a success all round.

This year presents another opportunity to build on the experiences of last year, and I still think it’s very much worth the effort of applying again as a mentoring organization and coming up with a list of rocking projects. Not only does it give us the opportunity of consolidating a tailored list of suggestions for any potential student of OpenSolaris community member to pick up and work on in our day to day development, it also gives us an opportunity to learn from the interaction of bringing new people into the project as a whole, something that we desperately need to advocate more of if we really want the project to grow and succeed.

Specifically, I desperately need people to stand up, take on the responsibility and step up to the plate – get involved either by suggesting relatively straight forward project ideas, by being a mentor, or simply contributing your ideas of how best to run this. We need our rockstars to be involved (you know who you are). We need them to take an interest in the project, lead by example and encourage others.

We currently have a mailing list (check out the archives) for the organization of this, working against a series of pretty hard deadlines. I, however, can’t do this alone and I need your help. A few people have already joined up – I hope others (*cough* ON *cough*) take their lead.

Photos from OSDevCon

Really enjoyed seeing Jim’s photos from Berlin, especially being able to identify faces with current set of contributors. Anyone notice that Roland is still smiling even after tackling the ksh93 integration project?

Similarly awesome to see the elections hotting up, including new candidates Shawn Walker, Karyn Ritter, and Alan DuBoff. Rocking!

OpenSolaris and the Google SOC

Jim asked me last night if I would like to lead the OpenSolaris involvement in the Google Summer of Code – more work, but hey, sounds like fun and I think it’s an opportunity for a lot of rocking projects to be tackled. I’m only starting to get my head around this, and posted a project proposal for getting some basic infrastructure ready that we can use year after year for our students. If you’d like to get involved, and help get things rolling, you are more than welcome! Mail me, glynn dot foster at sun dot com

Open Java Community Thoughts

Really awesome to read Mark Reinhold’s experiences at FOSDEM, including his slide deck. OpenJDK seems in reassuringly good hands with the thought going into it – very cool to see different perspectives being shared around the various communities. If OpenJDK grows up to have similar community spirit like I’ve experienced in GNOME, it will be a very happy place indeed. Rocking!

The Hackergotchi Factory

I’ve been in full hackergotchi mode today, doing heads for James, Alan, Ben, and Moinak. The family is coming along quite nicely.

Sad Reality

I am getting more exercise from my wii than any other means. Too bad that NZ is also in the state that the US has found itself in – bugger all chance of being able to get accessories for a couple of weeks. Having a lot of fun playing Rayman at the moment. Catch me on 4054-9503-1001-0825 😉

Cool Runnings

Cool blog of the week, Jayne’s friend Phil has just started her time down in Antarctica helping to restore Shackleton’s hut – Six months in a fleecy coat.

OpenSolaris Wins!

Yay! OpenSolaris hit Slashdot around the in.telnetd vulnerability. Alan has an excellent blog post of the timeline inside Sun and how a patch was provided. From my point of view, it’s a great win for the OpenSolaris project. It means the code is getting reviewed by a bigger volume of people and the vulnerabilities are getting found. The obvious benefits of open source really in my mind overshadow the obvious temporary embarrassment. The community is growing.

OGB Elections – I’m in!

As a diversionary tactic to the current set of discussions on the OGB list, I’ve decided to run for the OGB elections this year and hopefully this will encourage other sane motivated people to put themselves forward or discuss the upcoming elections. OpenSolaris needs you more than ever .

Why me? I believe I’m up to the job, willing to get my hands dirty, and hopefully take part in some positive direction that the OpenSolaris project needs to take over the coming year. I have many years experience being involved in the GNOME project, and while they are completely different projects, I think there’s some benefit to be gained from that experience. I’m principally involved in the Desktop Community (being a community leader), currently GNOME Foundation board member and secretary, and paid by Sun for the last 6 years mostly involved in community building and relations rather than at a high technical level.

I have never built my own kernel.