Clic!Dev, ‘Tate, and many more projects!

I just realized that this post was still a draft, thus not really ‘posted’. I am reposting it from my personal blog. I wrote it in July 2005 and am not going to change a single word.

I lifted this from Markus’ website, even though it’s originally attributed to Caterina Fake, founder of Flickr:

You don’t do good software design by committee. You do it best by having a dictator. From the user’s point of view, you must have a coherent design philosophy, and I don’t see how that could come about from open source software. The person who’s done it best is Steve Jobs, and he’s well-known for being a tyrant.

– Don Norman

Well now that’s an interesting misconception: open source software = democracy. Of course we have to remember that this is just a quote; something in essence always taken out of context.

I have made this mistake though. My first open source software was democratically developed. Well, more accurately, my very impressively sized team spent several months discussing it but I ended up being the only one coding something while all my virtual chefs would tell me where to add ingredients.

I have never made that mistake again. Open source software, to be successful, needs a strong leader, just as closed source software does. I believe that to lead a project to success, you need personality. Not necessarily a good personality, just something that will make people feel that at least the project is going somewhere.

A famous example of open source software that is *not* democracy-based is Linux. Linus Torvalds will not let you add your code to the existing kernel code base without thorough review and he will sometimes decide to reject your code based on ‘political’ reasons. It makes for interesting debates and I can think of at least a few people who went from idolizing the idea they had of Linus to squarely resenting any interaction with him. But it’s only fair: open or closed source, software development needs direction and you have to pick your own priorities: who do you wish to satisfy first? Your users or your developers?

Funny coincidence: mere days after I decide to re-post my views on open-source, Daniel Robbins, of Gentoo fame, decides to post a late-night rant trying to address the shortcomings of the Gentoo Foundation.

More interesting than his original post, though, I enjoyed reading most comments as well as his own answers to these comments. The phrase “Benevolent Dictator” emerges fairly early on, and obviously this is what it is about. My own experience was very similar, albeit less significant to the community at large since it was with a project that, in the end, was never really jump-started. But I, too, went through the typical phases seen by Daniel: group euphoria, with our extended team posting about 100 messages per day, making all sorts of suggestions, followed by the “Let’s do it” phase, when people started mysteriously disappearing -but still wishing the project well- and finally the disillusion phase, when it became obvious to me that I was left all alone to steer the boat.

Do not get me wrong: Gentoo-the Distro, following Daniel’s impulse, has evolved into a great product and, more importantly, a product with a great community. But Gentoo-the-Foundation is another story. If I remember correctly, Daniel left the Foundation shortly after starting it, thinking that 13 people could do the same work as one single leader. And, in my opinion, this is where he inadvertently - and ironically - created the whole problem that’s plaguing the Foundation today. An Open-Source body, without strong leadership, can only wither and die.
I believe that the current situation could have been avoided by Daniel staying with the Foundation long enough to train its officers to make informed decisions through delegation and coaching.

One of the comments I read stated that management is not what makes Gentoo great. Maybe not, but lack of management is what will make it fail in the end.

Unless..!

As you, no doubt, have noticed, I have decided to stop serving this blog’s content using Wordpress’ standard RSS script; instead, Feedburner is now in charge -note that this option is available to any Zteo blog owner.

Why would I want to do that? An obvious answer is that it keeps track of my feeds’ popularity and is amazingly friendly. But Feedburner can do much, much more for you than just counting readers.

1. What about those readers who are afraid of syndication? There are some good reasons to be and the main one is that, to use my case as an example, reading RSS feeds is definitely sucking all my free time -the whole daily hour of it I was hoping to scrape… For these user, it is possible, using the same engaging interface, to ask Feedburner to send any new post of interest to their email inbox. No need to maintain a list of feeds, download an RSS reader or find an online one that doesn’t suck.
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2. Select your feed’s format on demand: no need to decide between RSS and Atom. Feedburner will automatically present to your readers whatever format they favor.
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3. Feedburner will also adapt your RSS output to a more palatable one if you’re still using an old version of your blogging program.
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4. Auto ping: Whenever you make a new post, Feedburner can be configured to alert more blog directories than your default Wordpress installation does. And it does it seamlessly.
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5. Add to Digg/Delicious/FaceBook/etc: I know there are plugins that do this, and do it well. But Feedburner does this AND many other things for you.
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6. Create your own widgets for syndication: You too can offer your supporters to display your feed’s widget on their personal page. Certainly adds quite a touch of professionalism to your blog. You can event create a feed ticker or an animated ‘headline’ but I am having a hard time finding any advantage in doing so.
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7. Create an event feed: Just like upcoming.org, you can have your own feed. Not everyone is going to find a use for this feature but if you’re talking at conferences or simply trying to remind your family of important personal events, it is for you.
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8. Re-export your feed to html: …basically, close the loop. From your web page to a feed to another web page. This feature can be helpful if you wish to integrate your blog in another web site. No need to program anything, just copy/paste their code.
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9. Protect your feed: Your feed can be password-protected, so that only your friends/subscribers have access to it.
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10. Monetize: This one is a bit trickier because it does not depend on you. If the good folks at Feedburner think that your blog is valuable, you may suddenly find the Feedburner fairy knocking at your door and offering to join their ad network. I really do not know how good that network is but I imagine that if you get contacted by Feedburner, your blog must be worth something and it’s good news. Period.

These are the things I’ve learned about Feedburner since I started using their services. Let me know if I am missing some interesting stuff in this post.

A couple months ago, I made a post about my new toy: OpensIFRr, which lets you easily create awesome Flash files that you can use to render just about any font in your web pages.

I was pleased with the feedback it got but of course a lot of readers asked about the Windows version.
Well, it’s here now! In the process I’ve learned a thing or two about Nullsoft’s Scripting Engine

Hope you like it and, once again, a tip of the hat to Mike Davidson & al.
Get it now, courtesy of SourceForge

ps: It appears that the version of swfmill that is currently working under OpensIFRr’s hood does not always like spaces; therefore if the program seems stuck converting a font file, try again with less characters - which is good practice anyway!

The player I used in my previous post ( ‘nBBS Admin CP’ ) is now available in the Wordpress.org’s plugin directory.

A quick overview:

• This plugin lets you embed a flash stream using Geoff Stearn’s player.
• You can embed multiple movies in the same page and/or post.
• You can embed movies in posts and comments.
• You can specify a width and a height to override the default values of 640×480.
• I use Geoff’s Javascript to work around Adobe’s restriction on flash content display.

I know it’s not the first Flash plugin for Wordpress…just let me know if you have creative ideas for this little guy.

Find it here.

Soon to be unleashed on your unsuspecting screens (well…if you’re using NextBBS, that is *):

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See Topic Here
*: if you’re not, you really should