Planet dgplug

The artwork by Shreyank:

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pem is the expense manager.

The developer behind this magic

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This weekend we are organizing a small gathering at Pune for the Fedora faithful. Details about the Release Party are here. Besides getting the Fedora folks to hang out together and share notes, we hope to have some fun, get some show-n-tell going. Photographs and event reports would eventually follow as well.

As an aside, I am posting this using gscribble – a yet another offline client for Wordpress blogs being developed by Roshan. I had to rebuild it to get it working for F11 and, the truly bleeding rpms are here

well this is a documentation on the advances that i made these two days after deciding on a project.not exactly “a project” for the sense of the word but after i got the category of my project fixed.This is my 1st summer training with dgplug and i learn here loads daily.The irc sessions are really [...]

I made my first commit today, with the primary infrastructure of the code and the only basic feature of adding and removing directories in the database. You’ll see that there is already a bug as the ‘Cancel’ button of the Collection Dialog does not cancel anything… but I’ll think about it Anyway, if you [...]

I joined twitter - no, I have neither lost my mind nor entered my second childhood. My conference management app needed the functionality to tweet, so I had to get an account to test my code. I have not tweeted, will not tweet and the only tweets you see there will be tests.

SubDownloader is an application used to download/upload subtitles for videos(movies). Click here to visit the site and here for the project homepage. Download the tar.gz  here. Basic Features:- Two operating modes . First,  scans a directory for video files => based on the names, searches subtitles from opensubtitles.org => lists all available subtitles => one can download [...]

You can downlod it from here.
Lekhonee is a desktop client for Wordpress.

New features:

• Tag support
• UI improvement for editing last entry
• Bug #507518 fixed

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I came to know about dgplug's summer training when kushal announced it in ilugc,i didn't know mbuf will be there to guide us [:)] ,my task in summer training is to setup a SMS gateway on fedora with kannel, test it and document it.

With the help of kannel you can send/receive sms from your GNU/Linux box.(Don't just think of some third party text message sending sites [:P], its more than that )

Here are the use case scenarios i am trying to address:

* User sends us a text message.

* We might send them a reply after processing it (web application is used to process the text message).

* We might also periodically able to send the user text messages.

I successfully completed testing the last use case and in the process of documenting it.

I always wanted to create a desktop app for GNU/Linux with GTK+ ,i am thinking of picking up another project after finishing this task [;)].

Apart from summer training i am now teaching php in a private training centre for free,you know what teaching is the best way for doing some GNU/Linux advocacy [:D].

btw: Switch to firefox 3.5 ;)

Of late there has been a significant increase in the number of texts talking about “community”. This could well be a perception bias as well, since I have been looking around trying to see what others are writing or, thinking about groups of people, communes and so forth.

Some of the common aspects of the texts I have stumbled across include attempts to have a model defined, description of a rudimentary framework of tasks, an analysis of infrastructure that facilitates collaboration and, a broad overview of the character of a community. Either way, I am a bit tired about “community” as a word and, I feel that it is beginning to suffer from over-use and under-statement. A primary driver for that feeling is the tendency to look at “communities” as if they were thriving specimens on a petri-dish, isolated and unperturbed in their own imaginative evolutionary cycle. That is simply untenable as a hypothesis and, impossible in real life. Communities are constituted by groups of people and, people react to the push-pull of daily life around them – the political issues, the personal issues and, the social intricacies. As much as communities try, other than a basic tenet that binds them together, there isn’t much difference between the growth of a community and, the evolution of family. The same basic principles of Belief, Responsibility, Accountability and Trust ensure that the forward momentum is not stalled.

The paradox is that having stated the above, I ended up attempting to box-in the “community” into some nice tangible parameters so as to enable explanation. Fun !

The decline of a community or, even a sub-aspect of a community can also be traced to a larger sense of hubris and, a lack of plan in terms of moving forward to embrace change. The hubris part is perhaps derived from moving away from a central core idea that was the genesis of the community and, attaining a false sense of being indestructible to external forces. Statistics are important – but statistics are external representations of symptoms – for example, wiki edits; commits to version control; activity on mailing lists; number of contributors; mass of consumers all these indicate how the community (or, tribe) is moving forward. They do not capture whether the general direction is based on the central core theme and, is moving across a wider spectrum without getting too diluted.

Why can’t “communities” be replaced by “tribes” ? Makes for a better understanding of the complexity of interaction that ensures a sustaining environment for a group of people who perceive a need to exist. And, would be able to come together to arrive at decisions that ensure sustenance. Most communities/tribes are specialized formations of people who find a common space to talk about and extend their areas of interest. As such, the need to “fabricate” a community is somewhat redundant while the need to work on providing a “commons” is important.

ps :The post is rambling in essence, at some point I’d like to re-visit this and, collate the other thoughts.

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A is a good guy. A member of the FSF and a faithful reader of the scriptures. Always falls asleep accompanied by the soothing voice of an RMS lecture. He is also a kickass developer of GUIs and releases his software under the GPL v3.

B is bad - a heretic. Has never read the scriptures and thinks GPL is restrictive of freedom. He is a kickass developer of backends and has no use for GUIs - a real old time Emacs groupie.

C is ugly - an evil proprietary software developer. Knows nothing of of open source and a great believer of software patents. His company markets slick looking proprietary shrink wrapped packages.

B has developed a fantastic application, but has only a CLI. B doesn't care. He has enough takers for his app who use it as a backend for their apps. B licenses it under the new BSD license.

A offers to develop a GUI for B's app and asks B to switch the license to GPL. B declines and asks A to fork it. A forks it, renames it, licenses it under the GPL, and builds a classy looking GUI on it. People flood to download A's app. A, not being a backend guy, periodically pulls code from B's app and updates his app with it.

B of course, cannot take code from A's app so sits and gnashes his teeth but is helpless to do anything else. Being a dutiful programmer, he answers all A's queries on his mailing list. B is happy.

Then C sees B's app and immediatly offers to buy it and employ B at a huge salary. B refuses and tells C to go ahead and use the code as long as he changes the name (in accordance with the new BSD licenses). C does so, spends a few lakhs and builds a slick looking GUI and starts minting money selling the package. Whenever he has problems he posts them on B's mailing list. B is unable to answer many of C's questions because C is reluctant to show him the relevant code snippets. Or if he shows them he obfuscates the code so much that B cannot determine whether it is a typo in the obfuscation or a bug. C in desperation gets into the habit of paste binning his snippets (making sure that the expiry time is very short) and B is able to debug a lot of C's code. C then moves to version 2 of his package and has a brainwave - he donates his version 1 GUI to B's project. B is thrilled because though the GUI is slick looking it is full of bugs, quirks, backdoors and all the other crap that comes with proprietary software. And there is nothing an old time hacker like B likes more than squashing bugs, ironing out quirks and closing backdoors. B has a ball, and so does C and his developers who grab all the changes and apply them to version 2.

A, meanwhile is not happy. B has started integrating his backend more closely with his shiny new frontend - which means A has to work much harder to modify B's new code to his GUI. His app becomes less popular and a lot of his users shift to B's app.

C also finds his sales dropping off and realises that with his wide support network he can make more money supporting B's app than in developing and supporting his version 2. So he calls a press conference and hands over version 2 to B and dedicates a set of his developers to help maintain it. C's business improves, his developers become better programmers as they are exposed to the Open Source methodology and mentored by a kick ass developer. And for his generosity, he is honoured by the local Rotary club too.

Moral: the good go to heaven, but the bad and the ugly flourish on earth.

This is a test post created using gscribble http://sourceforge.net/projects/gscribble. The author Roshan Singh is a fellow college mate and heads all technology related issues in at NIT Durgapur. I have a feeling I will blog a LOT more now

I really feel proud to announce that I have written a client of my own today for posting contents on my blog. I am really looking forward to fix problems with the interface very soon. As I am new to GUI development, it will take some time till then I ask you to be patient. The project [...]

Yesterday a couple of us (well, 11 of us actually) took a trail organized by Trek’Di to the Tamhini Forest. It was something I have not done before and, the completely different nature of sounds within the forest took me by surprise. Some photographs are here. There were elements of fun as well which is bound to happen in a diverse group of folks. The photographs have been from mobile phone cameras mostly, an indication of showers (which were heavy) did not encourage me to take the usual point-n-shoot along