In the last few weeks I have had the opportunity to watch releases of both Mozilla (1.0.3) and the Linux Kernel (2.6.11.8 aka Woozy Beaver). These are two of the largest open source projects in existence today and watching the release, build, bug tracking, and communication systems used by these projects was an eye opening experience. Why was it so interesting? Because these projects have strinkingly different ways to develop software.

Bug Tracking
Bugzilla is used pretty much exclusively by Mozilla to track issues, patches and the versions of software that they effect. Chase Phillips of Mozilla seemed very happy and comfortable working with the interface and understanding how and what all of the flags meant. It is a system that seems to work very well for the Mozilla crew.

Alternatively Greg KH said that the bugzilla.kernel.org rarely gets the attention that it needs and ofter goes ignored by kernel developers; although Andrew Morton does notify the proper subsystem maintainer if a bug has been sitting in the database too long. Instead the LKML is used as the primary place for tracking bugs and patches.

The kernel seems to have alot more “buy in” from its community of developers than Firefox does. And from my limited experience in working with open source communities, I think that the use of a mailing list over a BTS could make this difference. When filling a bug report people generally file and forget never having to get involved further. But with a mailing list you post your own problem and in response get to see everyone elses bugs and get introduced to the development process as patches poor into your mail box.

I realize that there are many other differences between the projects but I think that the dynamics of a mailing list are superior in getting people involved in a software project. But it has its draw backs- the LKML is historically a very harsh environment to get introduced to as the existence of Kernel Newbies and Kernel Mentors suggests. Furthermore some people do not feel comfortable working with mailing lists and smaller projects may miss out on bug reports from users if that is there only form of contact.

Source Code Management
Mozilla uses CVS and have some cool tools setup and integrated with it. Chase gave us a brief tour of Tinderbox (see below), LXR and Bonsai. If there is something that you want to know about the sourcecode these services would be a real help.

The Kernel deals in patches sent through email in particular Greg showed off some cool scripts that allow mbox files containing patches to be automatically parsed applying the patch after a dry-run and adding the patch writers information to the commits and changelog. It all seemed to be a very regulated and standardized process that was inspiriing to watch.

Recently the kernel developers have been working on git and from Gregs recommendation I have been following its development and all I can say is WOW the system is already usable after a month of work and it is looks to be one of those software products that is so practical, simple and pragmatic that in a few years it will become the standard. At the very least I have been having fun reading the source and watching it being developed.

Automated Builds
Mozilla’s Tinderbox system was impressive. The system was polished and well used by the developers. Particularly the integration with CVS and the ability to comment on who was taking charge and fixing the issue was neat.

The Kernel doesn’t have such a system although I have emailed the IA64 team which runs this service and I have been following the git mailing lists and playing with cogito. Maybe I will write one before someone points me to one that exists already :-).

Thanks Guys

Greg KH PCI, USB, I2C, Driver Core and 2.6.x.y maintainer.

Chase Phillips - release engineer for Mozilla

Dave Miller - system administrator for Mozilla

Recently I have started playing with a computer vision library. But it is one of those pieces of software that just moves sooo slow because the developers are hard to get ahold of.

In particular I have a terribly trivial patch that makes the library compile under Linux 2.6 and no one has even commented on it on the mailing list or bug tracker. Furthermore the documentation currently has examples that do not compile because of missing libraries and almost twice a day someone is asking how to fix it on the mailing lists.

To make things worse the mailing list is hosted on a closed Yahoo! Groups account and requires logging in to view. Gah!

In any case I am doing my part and I am going to update the documentation and post it on my wiki as soon as possible. If I can’t get the developers attention I see a fork in the future…

What is the recipe to my ideal summer internship?

• 1x Robotics
• 1x Image and Voice Processing/Recognition
• 1x Embedded Linux
• 1x Internet Technologies

Now of course it should be in a really neat location. I have always wanted to live on the east coast and visit the MIT AI lab and the NASA centers; so lets put it in Maryland. To finish it off I want to be working for some very talented people and most important of all making a difference in peoples lives.

In January Kim told me about a new NASA robotics internship program, I applied and patiently waited as the date of notification for interns was pushed back several times, settling on April 1st 2005. The 2nd and 3rd came and went with no phone call and I began considering my other options.

At 10:30am today my phone rang, it was from an area code that I didn’t recognize and I almost elected not to answer. I am glad I didn’t make that mistake.

It was Lubna Rana of the Goddard Space Flight Centers Office of University Programs and she had some good news. I got my first choice project for the Robotics Internship Program and I should be in Maryland on June 6th 2005. Wow! It was the last thing I expected today.

The project I will be working on is called “CosmoBot,” a robot used to help educators and therapists give better care to children with special needs. And it will be my job, along with 2-3 other students, to figure out how to integrate image processing, voice recognition and wireless sensors in to the product over a 10 week period.

It is going to be a great summer!

Other Cool Internships
Fellow LUG members Alex and Jeremy are taking off on some cool internships too:

• Alex Polvi - Polvi is going to San Fransico for the summer to work at Mozilla
• Jeremy Orem - Jeremy is going to work at Intel

Last week I found two tools that make my life better and make me look cool in front of my friends (j/k). So I thought I would share them.

Keeping bookmarks sync’d and accessible
Back in the day I used to use a shareware tool to dump my IE bookmarks to html, then upload them via FTP, and then download them again and re-sync. But times have changed and del.icio.us is the new way to bookmark.

For those not in the know del.icio.us is a “social bookmarking” website. The first consequence is that your bookmarks are stored on a globally accessible webserver with an easy to remember URL like http://del.icio.us/philips. The second and more fun aspect is that when you make a bookmark (with one of the great del.icio.us bookmarklets) you can see who else has bookmarked the same page and what other sites may be related and of interest. From this feature I have found some great websites, including my new favorite techno radio station Radio ABF France.

But the coolest part is a plugin for Firefox called Foxlicious that allows you to sync your bookmarks from del.icio.us into a folder, organized by tags. It is great I can bookmark at home, and sync at work, then bookmark at work and sync at home, then; well you get the idea.

Zebra Tele-scopic
As you may already know I carry with me at most times an analog notebook (you know the paper kind). But I have never been able to find an inexpensive pen that is compact enough to keep in my pocket. Until my faithful run to the store last week where I found it! “It” being the Zebra Tele-scopic pen which is small enough to put in a jean pocket but telescopes into a regular sized and balanced ball point pen. Not only that but they are far cheaper than the Fisher Space Pen. At ~$5.49 US for two tiny telescoping pens with two refills these pens are a great deal!

The last few days have been alot of fun and required the help of a few friends. There have definitely been some challenges, but in the end it has been rewarding.

The GentooBugDay was a great experience, I got two bug fixes submitted 77328 and 68277. It is a start, and I plan on doing more in the future.

Alex Polvi invited Michael Marineau and I to a meeting he had set up with Professor Quinn and Dean Adams. Hearing the questions and concerns of Professor Quinn helped to focus what we can do to move our idea of having Oregon State use more Open Source Software in the classroom.

The next few baby steps are creating a document, a StateOfTheLug, something that we can place down on a table and show people what we have done, show them we have students excited about this, and that we need to bring that into the classroom. What we need to show is the benefits of having software developed by communities that reach outside the bounds of any one company, school, or even person. And how exposure to this process is valuable to students. It is an experience that Dan Frye, Randy Kalmeta, and many other universities recognize, but that we, OSU, are not taking the opportunity to engage in.

But, I think that we are approaching it the right way, the students should be able to demand the skills that the college teaches them, and I want to see open source development taught.

Today Dan and Randy came down today from the Linux Technology Center at IBM. Both of these men understand Linux the business very well, and listening to them helped me to realize how important Linux is becoming to the technology sector, and how it is making customers, engineers, and business people happy. I talked to Randy about where their employees are coming from, and they are not from Oregon. In fact one of their goals in coming down was to meet with the computer science department to see how they are going to help train students to work with open source communities; it is the community stupid! Dan said that it is not the “technology that is revolutionary but the community, and how this software is developed.” This isn’t a new idea, Eric S. Raymond, Linus, and Richard Stallman have recognized the power that a community of dedicated people have when they are able to work together without the frictions and bounds of traditional organizations.

On Alex’s blog he quotes Professor Quinn, “There are only finite resources, however there are infinite things to do.” I think the ultimate goal is to show the department that this is not another check box to add to the list of things that are being done, but a new way of teaching and learning about the things we are already doing. I don’t want to see an “Open Source Class” I want to see Open Source In Class. I think Dean Adams understands it, and loves the idea and we need to work on concentrating what it is we want to see done.

In other news I have been doing alot of work with Ruby On Rails. This framework is beautiful, Ruby is a great language, and the community is very fun and excited about the project. I plan on doing some weekend hacking on my side project of getting Maintain re-implemented in RoR. So far I have been impressed, and think with a week or two of work I could get a system rolling with alot of momentum. But I will wait and see how this weekend goes.