vendredi, décembre 14, 2007

Old Europa ?

I'm using eclipse for years now (I started with 1.0-RC1, AFAIR). This is just a great IDE, and it has evolved greatly through years. Not that I consider IDEA or other IDE to be bad, it's just a question of feeling comfortable with the current one I'm using.

Lately, I switched to the latest 3.3.1 version.

Bad move...

This is the very first time I experienced regressions. OOM errors all of sudden, bad completions, a lot of burden. Ok, "let's wait for the patches" was my first reaction. Too bad, 3.3.1.1 is out there, but there is no way to get it installed, due to many 403 errors, whatever mirror I select.

At this point, I'm starting to consider to rollback to 3.3.0, or, a more drastic move, switching to another IDE(A?).

Don't get me wrong : I really like Eclipse, but lately I feel like it has lost some momentum. The web site has been changed in a way it's now a PITA to find valuable informations (for instance, just try to get some release notes or to download an old version). There are more than 1000 plugins available, out of which pretty much are just random student homeworks (IMHO, of course). And the update process is just a nightmare (don't get any error while downloading a load of packages, otherwise your are good to start it all again). Not to mention that package removal is a O(N2) process, as you have no clue about which one you should be removed first unless you know the dependency graph...

Wake up, Eclipse Foundation !

vendredi, novembre 30, 2007

Why does blind people can't drive a car ?

Two days ago, I have been told that Neil Wilson, the guy behind OpenDS, and four other guys working with him, have been fired from Sun :

http://directorymanager.wordpress.com/2007/11/28/an-open-letter-to-the-opends-community-and-to-sun-microsystems/

Sad news... We met them at Austin last year, during ApacheCon US, where we have had a very interesting BoF. Here are some minutes : http://mail-archives.apache.org/mod_mbox/directory-dev/200610.mbox/%3cd45b08f00610120922r7522013apac39a4ea3b1a828a@mail.gmail.com%3e
http://hrabal.blogspot.com/2006_10_15_archive.html

We don't have the exact reasons why the core OpenDS team has been fired, because it's obviously something we don't have all the elements, but the 'reasons' which are going public are quite strange (quoting Simon Phipps) :

"...However, I do question how you characterize the requests to change the OpenDS governance. I note that the OpenDS governance was changed on April 28 by sshoaff[2] and that the original line reading:

“This Project Lead, who is appointed by Sun Microsystems, is responsible for managing the entire project”

was replaced by one reading

“This Project Lead, who is appointed and removed by a majority vote of the Project Owners, is responsible for managing the entire project”

I have not been able to find a discussion of this change anywhere, and I understand from your former managers that they were unaware of this change. While you characterize the request made of you as:

“demanded that the owners approve a governance change that would grant Sun full control of the OpenDS project”

it seems to me that what in fact happened was you were (collectively) asked to revert that change to its original state. On present data, it appears to me that far from Sun acting in bad faith over the governance, they were in fact making a reasonable request to correct an earlier error."

Now, when you think about this governance thing, this is clearly something we discussed about during our meeting one year ago. We really found strange that a so-called Open Source project could be managed entirely by a single company, namely Sun. That means no one but Sun can decide which direction the project should go. It's not anymore Open Source, but For your eyes only Source. Use OpenDS, and build a stack on top of it, go front to front with Sun but then they can change something in the code and you are in a dead end.

So what's next? From ApacheDS point of view, OpenDS existence validated Alex Karasulu's vision when he started to write an Ldap server in Java. It was also good to have a competitor, and a strong one. But now what will be OpenDS future? We started some kind of collaboration, a new JNDI API, which was stopped as the project never became a JSR, another failure... Will OpenDS stall totally? Considering that Neil wrote more than 50% of the server, it's likely to be the case, at least for the next 6 months (it's a 1 000 000 lines of code project !)

There is something wrong about Sun and OSS. It's like a blind person driving a car. Being a passenger is not exactly a good position ;)

jeudi, novembre 01, 2007

100$ OLPC vs 100$ OPEC

We are close to a 100$ Oil barrel (100$ OPEC) : in a few day, every children on earth will be able to exchange a barrel of oil for a cheap computer... As we produce around 80 millions barrel each day, in 10 days, each children will have its own computer...

Sadly, the OLPC price is now closer to 200$ ! But wait, by december, we may have to pay 200$ for an oil barrel too, isn't it?

Time to use your legs more often !

vendredi, septembre 21, 2007

Apache Directory Studio 1.0.1 is out !

Apache Directory announced the release of Apache Directory Studio 1.0.1, the latest version of its Directory and LDAP related tooling platform written in Java and based on Eclipse technologies.

This release fixes some issues in the LDAP Browser plugin and adds documentation for the Schema Editor plugin.

It fixes a few bugs, the main one is related to SSL connections, which were not anymore available.

Here is the change log :
http://directory.apache.org/studio/changelog.html

Thanks to the Studio team for its good job !

mardi, septembre 11, 2007

LdapCon : Just great !

We have spent two days in Köln, Germany, attending the first Ldap Conference. This was a great conference ! We met a lot of people, including other server teams (OpenDS and OpenLdap peeps), and Isode guys. How lucky we were to be able to discuss with Kurt Zeilenga ! Not only a LDAP guru, but also a very cool dude !!

We discussed extensively with Howard Chu (Symas chief architect), and with Ludovic Poitou (who has great pictures on his blog, where you can see one very intense technical session ...). OpenDS vision is quite different than Apache's one, but at least, it is a coherent vision. I'm also sure that we can find some synergy with the OpenLdap team, as they also share this Open Community spirit (openDS is much more about only OSS, not Open Community).

Otherwise, it was also great to meet Stefan Zörner for the first time. He is one of us, but we never have been lucky enough to meet him. Just a very cool dude, too ! We were 7 apache committers, around 10% of the attendance, all of us with a sweet ADS T-shirt ! Easy for us to share our ideas and message with the 63 other guys, they knew we were from Apache :) Naomi Klein was plain right : The brand is everything...

We managed to get Apache Directory Server 1.5.1 and Apache Directory Studio 1.0.0 released just before the conference, and Apache Directory Server 1.0.2 has also been certified compliant by the Open Group for the second year.

Last, not least : the beer ... Excellent !

lundi, mai 07, 2007

ApacheCON EU is over

This was just a great ApacheCon ! And the weather was just perfect :)

Almost all of the ApacheDS team was present (Christine, Stefan Seelmann, Pierre-Arnaud aka pam, Alex and also Chris), and we have had very interesting discussions about the next release. A lot of work to be done ... But also a lot of great guys to deal with !

I also had time to attend some presentations, like Sally's one ("Breaking Through the Noise") with was really good, Peter Royal's presentation (http://people.apache.org/~proyal/MINA% 20AC%20EU%202007.pdf), one of the best presentation I ever saw, and of course the funny lightning talks, which I can't enjoyed as much as I wanted, due to an accident I had to deal with (google sponsored some beers during this event, and I couldn't resist to have one, so was my computer... Dell keybords don't like Heinekken *at all* ! At least, after having spent 3 hours dismantling, cleaning and reassembling it, it works again. Joy ! )

It was also a pleasure to meet all the Joost guys, Stephane Baillez, Sylvain Wallez, Jean-Baptiste Quenot, Sander, Leo, Erik, Pier (plus a few more guys, like Marteen, Torsten, Ludovic, ... they are so many !). Guys, Joost just rock !

A special thanks to Ugo who scooted us into the city, and to Yeliz and Qing who are interviewing many of us to try to understand the way we work (it's all about the community, guys :)

I don't know if I will attend to ApacheCon US this year, but I will certainly be in Amsterdam again next year !

PS: nous avons un nouveau président, et bien sûr quelques crétins n'ont pû s'empêcher de marquer leur déception en brulant des poubelles, cassant des vitrines et jetant des pavés sur les forces de l'ordre. Visiblement, le suffrage universel et la démocratie est encore une notion abstraite pour une couche assez limité de la population, aussi limité que leur capacité mentale... Traverser Paris la nuit en vélo avec ces odeurs de plastique brulé et de gaz lacrymogène n'a pas été très plaisant. La bêtise a ceci de plus que l'intelligence que cette dernière est forcément limité quand la connerie est sans limite ...

samedi, février 03, 2007

New site for Apache DS

I'm Impressed ! The new Web Site for Apache Directory server is now up and running ! We were expecting it to be revamped for months, but none of us had time to do it. And suddenly, that's it : a new site, with a new logo, new L&F, etc.

The problem with Apache people is not that they are bad, or lazzy, it is just that they don't have enough hours in a day to do everything they have on their list... But when they decide to dedicate a few hours, and gather all their energy, working as a network, it's incredibly much faster than in any other company or organization. Because of the network.

Apache strength is the network. People are the nodes, information is exchanged through this great network, from Turkey to USA, from France to South Korea, from all over the planet, 24x24, 7x7.

I'm impressed every single day ! Oh, and by the way, Apache has reach 500 000 commits in SVN. I missed it, but it was very close :
http://svn.apache.org/viewvc?view=rev&rev=499999 :)