Tag: Linux

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F-Spot and its new home

As some of you might have noticed I’ve created a repo on GitHub for F-Spot under the mono umbrella – F-Spot on GitHub!

I have left the repository on git.gnome.org/f-spot and will try to sync up changes in master regularly. I’d like to thank the awesome GNOME project for hosting F-Spot and want to be clear that I have absolutely no plans of dropping GNOME support in F-Spot nor diminish F-Spot’s GNOME integration in the future. On the contrary, as the .NET bindings for the GNOME  3  platform are improving I expect to be working on further GNOME integration for F-Spot.

The goal in moving F-Spot over to GitHub is purely for the benefit of its development technically as well as to breath new life into the project through the wider GitHub community and feature set.  Github provides several really cool features, one of the features that I’m looking forward to taking advantages of is the pull request system.

Currently, contributors will typically clone a repository, create a patch that fixes some bug, file that bug in Bugzilla and attach the patch, which then sit and wait in the hope that the developers will notice the bug and accept the patch.  What seems to happen with projects, particularly F-Spot, is those bugs will sit there and bit rot.  Either someone will come alone, see the bug and possibly rebase the patch against git master or it’ll be forgotten until it’s no longer valid.  The pull request interface isn’t some silver bullet, but I see it making the process much simpler and much more discoverable for both patch contributors and maintainers alike.

With the GitHub system, it’s really simpler for any user to come along and fork F-Spot.  Once forked they can fix a bug and do a pull request.  At this point there is a nice list of pull requests or shame list (a list of all the patches I haven’t addressed yet!).  There are some other features such as issue tracking and a built-in wiki that comes with GitHub which I’m not sure if it will get used, but time will tell.

Another goal I have for the project is to port it over to OS X and Windows.  GitHub has a nice client for both platforms as well as conveying the idea that F-Spot is intended to be cross-platform application with GNOME support more clearly than being on GNOME’s git does.

I hope everyone will appreciate this new workflow and will enjoy the improvements that are to come in F-Spot.  I’m excited to continue development on F-Spot and look forward to the future of such an awesome photo management.

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GNOME & Mono Festival of Love 2012

I get to hang out with several awesome developers this week in Boston to work on f-spot and other GNOME and Mono related projects.  It will be great to meet many in person and help improve these awesome apps.  GNOME & Mono Festival of Love 2012

Also, a huge thanks to the GNOME Foundation for sponsoring my travel to this event!

 

GNOME Foundation

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openSUSE 11.4 Release Party

We are planning a community release party this coming Thursday, March 17, 2011 to celebrate the 11.4 release.  We are planning on having some media and usb thumb drives for anyone that would like to install 11.4.

This time we are changing the location a little.  We are still having the party on Novell’s Provo campus, but in one of the executive briefing rooms building H which is the tall south most building.

Everyone is welcome.  If you are planning on coming please let us know by sending me an email sshaw ]at[ decriptor ]dot[ com.  We are hoping to have food and swag to give away.

Details:

March 17, 2011

6:30 to 8:00 pm

Executive Briefing Center, Building H

Novell Provo Campus

 

Here is the poster we threw together.  The artwork was provided by someone in the community and the poster was put together by my awesome wife.

 

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FireBreath 1.2 released

This is an open source project that one of my friends at school started.  Here is a quick description of the project.

FireBreath aims to be a cross-platform plugin architecture, targeting:

  • NPAPI browsers on windows, mac, and linux:
    • Gecko/Firefox
    • Google Chrome
    • Apple Safari
  • ActiveX Control hosts:
    • Microsoft Internet Explorer 6, 7, and 8

FireBreath is licensed under a dual license structure; this means you can choose which of two licenses to use it under. FireBreath can be used under the New BSD license or the GNU Lesser General Public License v2.1.

Here is his announcement and reflections on starting an open source project.

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Mono Accessibility 2.1 Released

We just released our first 2.x series update this week.  This release brings a 127 bug fixes.

Over the last several months a fair amount of attention has been paid to improving at-spi2 as well.  For those that don’t know what at-spi2 is its the next generation of Assistive Technology Service Provider Interface.  The new at-spi2 using dbus in an effort to remove corba and bonobo from the gnome stack.

A huge benefit of this work is that kde will be able to use it without pulling in a bunch of gnome dependencies allowing for a clean desktop independent accessibility infrastructure.

Some release details:

  • Improved compatibility with AT-SPI2, including fixes and performance.
  • More compatibility with Silverlight Accessibility for UIA Clients.
  • Caching improvements in UIA Client API.
  • Support for custom providers and client-side providers.

As well as where you can find the packages:

For more details – The UIA Team Blog

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openSUSE 11.2 release party

Just a quick post letting everyone know that there is a release party here in Provo, Utah.

The Open Source Technology Center, building A on the Novell campus, has been good enough to host us again.  It will be this Thursday, November 12 from 6 to 9.

I do not have the replicated DVDs, but I will have some burned copies of the isos.

We don’t have a sponsor for pizza yet, but please RSVP anyways just in case.  Maybe we can have people throw some money in for pizza.

Pass the word on and See you all there!

UPDATE:

We will have pizza and drinks.  Please RSVP!!!

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Clear Center launched

Clear Center is the resulting company/group/foundation from a company that I used to work for.  Its a full complete small business solution that gives and empowers small business with the big boy tools without the big boy costs (ClearOS features overview).  For those that have heard of clarkconnect, this is the next chapter for them.

I wish them all the best in this chapter they are opening up!

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SUSE Studio Launch!

Its not every day something this cool is announced and released: SUSE Studio is finally ready to go live.  For those of you that don’t know what SUSE Studio is, it is a web based appliance builder.  It allows you to take either Novell’s SLE11 (Enterprise Server or Desktop) or openSUSE 11.1 as your base OS and customize it however you want.  With any image base, one could completely build a custom appliance from the bootsplash to software to the last character in a file.

This will enable communities and companies alike to deliver an image with their software already installed, provide a demo, or use it however they want using various formats.  Some of the current formats are disk image, live cd/dvd, vmware, and xen with more to come. (Both 32 and 64 supported)

A couple of the really cool features that I really like are the ability to add custom repositories, add mysql and upload my db, add custom files, the suse studio API, and maybe one of the coolest is test drive.  What test drive allows you to do is test your appliance in the web browser without having to download it first!  You can even customize files in test drive and save those changes out for the next time you build your appliance.

There are just too many cool options and features that I can’t do it justice and therefore I will give out invites to those, until I run out, that comment on this blog post!  Remember to leave your email or I can’t seem you an invite.

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The new Mono UIA Status page

We just added a new site to our server.  Our new site is very similar to the Mono team’s status pages.  In fact its running the same software!  The link you ask? Well, here it is the Mono UIA team’s status pages.  This allows you to see the Mono UIA team’s progress with respect to porting the assemblies over to Linux.

We are currently working on fixing bugs, adding support for moonlight 2, and building out the client side.  So, if your company writes software that takes advantage of UIA we’d love to hear from you!

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openFATE: Now with more open

It was just announced that openFATE, openSUSE’s feature tracking system, will now be open to non openSUSE members.  What this means anyone can submit new feature requests.  For more info: openFATE – Adding New Features Now Open for Everybody.