As the time goes by, video is with no doubt achieving a very important place as media used for promotion, advertising, teaching and many other stuff. Free software is not an exception.
Video plays an important role in these kind of projects, above all as powerful tool for Video Tutorial creation.
And the best example of how important Video is considered from project management view is the 100 Linux Video Tutorial started some months ago, in particular in November 2012, in order to build a complete video knowledge base around the most important Open source project, the Linux Operating System.
But Linux is not the only project who is empowering its community building by means of Video media.
A very important and active project, the Wordpress CMS, provides a unique web, wordpress.tv in order to host not only Video tutorials, but also Video media having to do with news, broadcasting WordCamp events, etc.
To summarize, Video is key for promotion and advertisement, and the extra-effort investment is a guarantee to help on your project promotion. Are you a project manager ? Take this into consideration: Video is one of the keys for success. It is not the only one for your project to be successful, but without Video being successful will be almost impossible.
In an FLOSS project development, where the main goal is to provide the best functionality to a certain project or product, it is key important to advise the releases that are taking place.
Taking Calligra as example, who released less than one month ago its version 2.6, it can be observed the different statements that come together with the announcement, such as:
- New Applications / New Functionality
- Improvements on existing applications (in terms of productivity, capabilities, etc.)
- New Supported Formats (also applicable to standards, protocols, etc).
In terms of advertising, it is also mandatory, above all, to announce the new releases on a visible and/or easy reachable part of the main project web. The case of Calligra is a good example, where the released version number, 2.6, appears on the main title of the project:
Together with this state of their intentions, Calligra also focuses on wide spreading the new released versions in different manners, such as, for example, on a highlighted place of their "Announcements" section.
Apart from previous considerations, a deep SEO (Search Engine Optimization) task is also welcomed. In the case of Calligra Open Source Project, the search of "Calligra 2.6 released" key words on Google throws more than 118000 results, which is a considerable search index return.
Are you planning to release software?
Let everybody know !!!
Having a deeper view to the project, Phabricator appears to be a set of tools than, far from being a software forge, allow integration with an existing one in order to provide extra functionality.
In
particular, "phabricating" the software implies, regarding this set of
tools, being able to perform what other Software Forges also provide, without source code hosting infrastructure. Among the tools, next can be found:
Until here, no further extra functionality from services that are already provided but Software Forges such as Github. However, Phabricator seems to offer additional functionality that can make this set of tools to worth a while:
- CLI (Arcanist). It is supposed to be a command line interpreter that can perform almost all the functionality available, providing cryptic commands, ANSI colour (when supported), etc. It is supposed to offer, besides, compatibility in both Windows, Linux and MAC.
- API (Conduit). This program interface is supposed to offer an scripting interface to interact with Phabricator, by means of an HTTP JSON API.
It happens that, when someone smart ask for money to continue with a project, gets support and funds from "the community". It does not have to be related to Open Source, although it is the case. Karl Fogel started a KickStarter initiative to try to obtain 10000$ in order to write the second version of its brilliant book, "Producing Open Source Software". 11 hours before initiative deadline, Fogel had reached more than 15000$ to accomplish the book second version update.
Great news for the Open Source community!
Many FLOSS projects are being migrated to GIT version control system. But .. why GIT?
Basically, due to a bunch of characteristics GIT provides basically against Subversion, its precursor on version control system, widely used in FLOSS projects [1]:
- Distributed Nature: Meaning multiple redundant repositories are available, but, above all, that full functionality when disconnected from the network is available.
- Access Control: No commit access to other people must be provided. Distribution means merging what you want from what you want.
- Branch Handling: Every developer's working directory is a branch. GIT provides advanced branching operations such as:
* Tracking the project revision the branch started from.
* Record branch merge events (author, time, date, changes, etc.)
* Start the next merge at the last merge.
* Easy conflict resource between branches while merging.
In general, GIT behaves on a more efficient way compared to subversion when branches are involved
- Performance: In terms of speed operation, GIT design ensures extreme speed with operations such as:
* Viewing file history
* Committing changes
* Performing diffs
* Merging and switching branches
* Obtaining other revision of a file
- Smaller Space Requirements: Git's repository are extremely small compared to Subversion, above all if a huge number of files is being handled. Basically, GIT needs less size due to the fact that Subversion always work with two copies of the file, the one being modified by the user, together with the one in ".svn" directory where the original repository file is kept.
But, does Subversion have advantages against GIT? Of course it has:
- User Interfaces Maturity: due to Subversion being a more mature technology.
- Single repository: that makes easier to keep under control where something is stored.
- Access Controls: meaning possibility to specify read / write access controls in single location.
- Partial Checkout: with Subversion, the possibility to download just a sub directory of a repository is possible, but not with Git. This can mean a problem for large projects in case not a good bandwidth Internet connection is available.
- Shorter and Predictable Revision Numbers: As Subversion assigns sequential revision numbers (starting from 1), it is easier to identify revision states, changes and time locating.
- Ability to Represent Richer Histories: as Subversion allows branch/tag to be created from arbitrary combinations of source revision, while GIT does not.
So, to summarize, lot of large projects are migrating from Subversion to GIT, as the benefits by this last one seems to be more important than disadvantages, with performance and space requirements being enough reason to give GIT an opportunity.
This talk by C.Leadbeater issues about "Creative Collaboration" [1].
To start with, C.Leadbeater introduces the next topic: Who created the "Mountain Bike" (MTB)? C.Leadbeater clarifies about how different are the classic economic theories from the reality.
And MTB is a real example, as MTB was born in California, due to the
fact that some classic bikes users were not comfortable with the
traditional bikes. It was after some time when companies discovered the
business around MTB, although nowadays MTB means 58 billion $ (65% of
the total Bike Market).
Leadbeater introduce the term of passionate "pro-am" consumers,
to this kind of consumers that perform innovation by means of creative
collaborations, rather than by means of traditional business
organizations. This aspect, new kind of organization, without organizations, is were the huge challenge resides.
Associated to this idea, Leadbeater talk about "radical innovation".
He issues how telephone was invented for a very different mission
compared to how users ended using it. This example allows him to address
the fact that many times, an invention is performed with great uncertainty,
without knowing the final usage that the particular invention will
face. From my perspective, FLOSS is a good breeding ground for this kind
of innovation, as FLOSS nature favors different software components to be mixed and mingled in order to innovate.
The second main thread is around "Disruptive Innovations".
Leadbeater exposes how many times Big Companies are not the best
channel to hold a disruptive innovation, as it is difficult to plan how
successful it can be. Companies want to hear about continuing innovation, to existing users, with existing channels, as they have an "in-built tendency to reinforce past success".
This is why Emerging Markets are the breeding ground for passionate users.
Hip-Hop/Rap music is exposed as the best example. It started on the
streets, with "pro-am" people that created it, distributed it, and made
it how it is. The style was so "aggressively different", that it would
have never been invented in Big Companies. Nowadays, it is the most
important cultural music and has a powerful industry.
Related to this issue, FLOSS many times is the only option to develop a competition against a software product which has a dominance in the market.
No company will fund a mail client based on privative software even if
it is much better, as Outlook is so dominant that it is not possible to
compete against it.
To continue with the talk, Leadbeater addresses how the two type of phylosophies and organizations, meaning traditional companies versus open innovation, Microsoft vs. Linux, Privative versus FLOSS, professional journalists versus bloggers. The main aspect around this issue is to foreground the different places between the two opposite attitudes,
and how Microsoft is proceeding to release Free Software, how FLOSS
projects are not only altruism and need funding and organization on a
more structured way, or which is the role to play by BBC with the new
types of journalism.
Last but not least, Leadbeater talks about "users as producers".
Leadbeater traveled to Shangai to interview with Timothy Chan, creator
of Shanda, the largest computer game company in China, with 250 million
subscribers. Shanda employees only 500 people, to provide the gaming
platform basically. Meanwhile, users create their characters and are the
real producers for the games, apart from being consumers. This kind of
companies, built on communities, is very powerful, although they are not
created on top of FLOSS.
However, this kind of behavior is dominant in many FLOSS projects, as normally, some users, cooperate with the project in different ways:
- By testing the software and reporting issues.
- By contributing software, to perform new functionalities or fix existing bugs.
- By creating or fixing the documentation.
- By solving other user's issues via Forums.
- And so forth, and so on ...
Among previous different issues, I will focus on the fact of professional "pro-am" consumers, and how they can lead innovation around a certain product.
I completely agree with Leadbeater on the key factor around this issue, which is how initially, what
are assumed to be "amateur" users around a certain product, get into a
high level of understanding of the product due to simply how interested
this kind of consumers are on it.
If someone loves doing
something, let say kite surfing, will always be more involved in trying
to innovate around products around this sport, compared to those who
work for a company which manufactures kite surfing products, despite the
fact that they are experts on the materials used to build this kind of
products.
One illustrative example of "pro-am" consumers innovation is "The Sims" [2].
In the Sims computer game, player can create their own family and home
on a computer, as well as watch the inhabitants doing different daily
issues such as sleeping, eating, argueing, etc. Before the on-line
version was shipped, the designers released tools that allowed players
to create their own content for the game as, in example, furniture or
architectural styles for houses. Within a year of the game’s initial
release there were hundreds of independent content creators, more than
200 fan websites displaying more than half a million collectable items
available to the game’s millions of players. More than 90 per
cent of the content in the Sims game is now created by a Pro-am sector
of the Sims playing community, with an estimation that there are 30,000
Pro-Am modifications to the Sims game that can be downloaded from the
Internet.
The Sims community is a good example of
distributed and self-organizing body of Pro-Am knowledge, where gamers
are constantly innovating.
Barclays reported to V3 a reduction of its IT spending for the development of new software and applications by 90 percent. The reason for this high amount of savings is moving to an internal private cloud solution based on open source Linux software. A spokeperson for Barclays told V3 about the advantages of incorporating alternative IT systems to improve efficiencies and save costs across its business: "It means we can write new applications once and then develop them using an open source model, rather than re-writing them again for legacy systems." Main tasks have been driven by Shaygan Kheradpir, Chief Operating Officer of Barclays Retail, who has also pushed the development of key toos, such as Pingit, a mobile payment service, as well as Banking application. He asserted: "Because information is hosted on our secure internal cloud information that provides access to our legacy systems, whether you are a mortgage or credit customer for example, it can still be accessed. This was not possible beforehand".
The move appear to be successful, as application has been downloaded 1.3 million times each across UK.
