vendredi 6 juin 2003

Radio UserLand Has a Clue I just made a post to the Radio UserLand running on my laptop, which was sleeping when I made the post. By the time I woke it up, my browser had timed-out. Thinking that the post failed, I submitted it again. Radio detected that I had just made the same post and kindly told me: "Can't post this text because it's an exact duplicate of the previous post." That extra touch is called finishing work, and it's the kind of thing that, too often, we in open source don't do well. I'm not sure why, but my guess is that in the hierarchy of needs, finishing work provides little positive reinforcement to open source developers. Their primary motivations: 1) Scratch my own itch, 2) Give cool stuff to other developers, 47) Make a good experience for secretaries. Whereas commercial software better nail (47), otherwise they won't get cash-o-la, which is their primary motivator. Alternative explanation: most open source projects aren't yet mature enough to attract people interested in or good at finishing work. And alas, with all the fragmentation (especially in the CMS field), few of us can achieve the kind of gravity to attract such people. Or maybe not. Dunno. What do you think? Fill in a comment and educate me. 9:28:40 AM   comment []

Zope in Italy: Giuseppe Masili At the Padova sprint (previous blog entry) organized by Reflab, I got to meet a bunch of people from the Zope scene in Italy. Including the folks behind Zope Italy, such as Giuseppe. He followed up in email, telling me some of their goals: 1) Zope User Groups in the various regions in Italy, 2) Quality translation of the Zope Book, 3) Zope and Plone books in Italian (they have a publisher), 4) Push out articles in Italy, 5) Translate more Plone documentation (Alex, need some help here), and 6) Push forward the coordinated web presence in Italy. Go Giuseppe! 9:20:28 AM   comment []