WednesdayMorning

I’m just going to start by apologising for the title, I realise its a little naff but i can never think of things to call my articles
Okay, jumping straight in! I’ve written 3 articles over the last month and i’ve not finished one . I’m determined to finish this one however, I have that feeling whenever I write one off these blog articles.. well to write something profound. I have however realised that by just documenting my experiences with open source software, linux, computer science in general I might provide someone with the information they require to make the swap over.

First thing I would really like to talk about is Linux Outlaws, its a podcast for anyone who doesn’t know and its probably my favorite out of the lot i listen too. In episode 85 they interview Chad Wollenburg. Chad had some interesting stuff to talk about when it came to the network of computers for the district he manages (correct me with comments if I’m wrong) and how over the summer they changed to open source software i.e Open Office and many of the other open source alternatives for commonly used tools. I really recommend that you listen to this particular episode because I think its something that is applicable in both the UK as well as the US. It’s one of those things I wish I had the time to pursue and is really something I should put on my “list of things to do”.
I’ve been using Identi.ca over the last few weeks, I’ve used twitter too over the last few months but i decided to see what all the fuss is about. Now I’m not an Open Source zealot, if someone doesn’t want to give out their source code but is still willing to provide a free and useful service then I don’t really have a problem with it. Open Source  Software is a great concept and to be honest can only help the development process off a project however one off the things that puts me off is that when it comes to developing anything, be it a website, script or even documentation I work in a very incremental way. I will set a bunch of goals in several steps and just work towards them, I personally find it helps to provide my work with focus. I’m one off those geeks that has a feature idea while he’s coding away and will just go off on a tangent, after a nights work I’ll then realise that my new feature won’t work with the rest of the stuff i’ve planned and have too do later on and now I’m buggered. Anyway heading back towards what I started with, after each incrementation the project would be at a releasable state, it might not have an 1/8 of the features of say the next iteration. Now if i was running such a project I would still want to release this, this is where my dilemma comes in. So I release this as an open source project so people can play with it and give me feedback. Now some budding helpful developer gifts me some code for my project and adds it to my repository. This turns out to be a great feature and something I’d love to keep but adding it will prevent me branching onto something in a future iteration unless I heavily rewrite the code.

Okay, so the solution is right there? rewrite the code in a better way to accommodate changes? However then another person gifts more code and then its agian not compatible with my current changes towards that rewritten code. So what do i do then? do i alienate another developer or call their submit a branch? If I branch there is no guarantee that the person will continue to update that branch or branch of the next release with the same awesome feature. Dilemma!

The way I would like to develop the project is just too carry on with my iterations untill I reach the point where I’m happy for 3rd party development of the project however a question i’ve been asking myself about this is “do i release the source code when i want feedback for the iterations?”. This problem is something i’d love to hear some feedback on, for my third year individual project at university I’ve had a few idea’s all stemming around a community based education system, i don’t want to get into to many details because you just don’t want to read it all. Its effectively an application I wish I had to aid me with my studies. The general development of the project would be greatly benefit from input from other people and I would like to release the project as an Open Source application when its done.

So back to the identi.ca vs Twitter thing, i apologise for the digression. The only thing i prefer about identi.ca over twitter is the groups. Being able to post a question to a group and get a simple clear answer in a few minutes is really useful.

Oh and if you’ve visited before you may notice I change the skin, i had a play with it. I’ve never been a great artist, ocasionally i come up with some good designs but I can never seem to skin Wordpress in a satisfactory method.

Happy Easter,

Darius