Gregarius » Ari Jaaksi's Blog

Feeds

12070 items (6327 unread) in 27 feeds

• mypapit gnu/linux blog (173 unread)
• Catatan merepek ku... (24 unread)
• Affiliate Program Tip Blog (763 unread)
• GMS Blog
• Robert Love's Log (140 unread)

ComputerTechnology (2777 unread)

• Linux and Open Source Blog (471 unread)
• Ubuntu Blog (14 unread)
• linux kernel monkey log (37 unread)
• PHP Classes: Latest entries (720 unread)
• PHP Freaks Tutorials (27 unread)
• Tien Soon's Tech Blog (25 unread)
• When {Puffy} Meets ^RedDevil^ (233 unread)
• anti-keseronokan
• TaoSecurity (386 unread)
• Ari Jaaksi's Blog (31 unread)
• Marc Abramowitz (110 unread)
• IconBuffet
• Your LiNa Job Matches (665 unread)
• Patpat's Scrap Notes (58 unread)

RantsandRamblings (2450 unread)

• #fakap community speaks (71 unread)
• 5xmom ~ Humour, Life, Lies, Sex (750 unread)
• Infoplease - This Day in History (989 unread)
• Dilbert (345 unread)
• Tip Satu Minit: Irfan Khairi.com (226 unread)
• Tips Temuduga (1 unread)
• Road 2 Millionaire (43 unread)
• Download Ebook PERCUMA (25 unread)

Ari Jaaksi's Blog (3 unread)

• 

  Open and Agile -- the Transparent Twins

  Posted: November 30th, 2008, 10:08pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

  Component level
  
  Open source adds transparency. It provides a very practical means to access and share code, work together with others, and design and implement software in a collaborative manner. When code is licensed under a copyleft license, there is also a guarantee that nobody can mess it up! Transparency and free access to source code provide very powerful tools for software development.
  
  Commercial system level
  
  However, building complex systems remains challenging. Developers who never worked in a large commercial project easily underestimate challenges outside the source code domain. Creating right user experience is hard. Collecting feedback from users during the development is not simple. Providing accurate project estimations for various stakeholders remains tough. Integrating complex systems from components that originate from different sources is much more difficult than writing the actual components. Testing and stabilizing large systems gets harder and harder as systems grow. Replanning after late and big changes in project conditions is laborious. And, running several software projects concurrently multiplies all the above challenges.
  
  
  Open and Agile
  
  Open source adds transparency to software development. The code, developers, and design decisions are all visible to everybody. I believe transparency can also be used in other areas of software projects. Agile methods, such as Scrum, can provide such transparency on the system project level.
  
  Our context is challenging, though. Teams cannot be co-located. Non-agile hardware development happens simultaneously with software development. There are tens -- and even hundreads -- of Scrum teams working for a same project. Projects deal with issues ranging from hardware design, driver and OS base port, middleware and application adaptation -- all the way to end user experience and over 40 language variants ... and so forth. In these circumstances a basic idea of a a few agile software teams is hardly a complete solution.
  
  I believe
  
  It is a bit early for me to make any final conclusions of agile methods in practice. But I'm a believer, and we are using Scrum now more and more at Nokia. I believe that what open source has done for software development, agile methonds can do for commercial system and product development. Add visibility, access, and intellectual honesty. Transparency. You cannot hide shit no more.
• 

  A few thoughs based on your feedback

  Posted: October 26th, 2008, 8:20pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

  Some time ago I asked you comments about openness. You sent me some interesting links. Thanks! I try to summarize your comments a bit.
  
  Rights vs. executing the rights
  
  Joel explained the idea of community openness by using three different characteristics:
  1) the IP (right to use),
  2) the development (right to influence the direction of the code) and
  3) the governance (right to make decisions like who's in charge).
  
  Then, Andreas talks about comparing and constracting community models by two axes:
  - governance model
  - license type used.
  
  Both Andreas and Joel seem to have similar ideas, and I think they both have very good characterizations. But, in addition to these, I'd like to add an other dimension. The three elements above talk about the rights. In addition to the rights I'd like to think about the reality; i.e. is anybody really using these rights. And if not, why not.
  
  Let me give you an example. Suppose I start on open source project and put my stuff into the sourceforge under GPL. I then invite others to discuss and influence the direction of the code I'm developing. And invite them to contribute. I also say that any time somebody suggest to change the leader, I'm ready to step down if somebody else gets a majority vote. So now, in Joel's three dimension model presented above, this would be very open, eh?
  
  But what if nobody shows up? What if nobody is interested in my project and I'm left alone to develop it. Or if somebody just takes bits of my code and uses them elsewere inside another project. Is my project then open? I theory it is, but really? I'd claim that the project is open only if people use their rights, show up and contribute, and thus make it open. To me open source is more about "doing it" -- less about theory or human rights. So, to make the project open I also need to get others involved.
  
  Another interesting aspect by Joel was his study on corporate sponsored open source projects. Check this one out!
  
  Other comments
  
  A good summary of different projects was provided by Smancke. He compares different projects in terms of their openness.
  
  Jaffa gives us some ideas and opinions on how to continue with maemo. He talks about the community involvment, openness and control. He says "Nokia need to take action to really push community involvement. Nothing's got for free: if Nokia aren't seen to be committed to the community, why should the community be committed to Nokia?" Good points, Jaffa!
  
  Usability
  
  Then last but not least, David opened up a discussion on usability and open source. He refered at a good article by Matthew Paul Thomas. An interesting topic that needs attention. While talking to different people, I hear a lot of similar concerns and discussions.
  
  Thanks!
• 

  c-base

  Posted: September 19th, 2008, 10:41pm MYT by Ari Jaaksi

  Greetings from the Maemo Summit here at c-base. Quim found us a cool place to have the Summit. You who didn't come -- you missed a lot! We are all here. Over 200!
  
  
  
  A few new announcements about the current plans with Fremantle:
  -WLAN / power management to open source-Fremantle to support OpenGL-Clutter -- altough there is a roadblock now ... but we're hopeful
  We just had a nice lighting sessions. Alan ran OpenOffice in a Debian bubble within Maemo. Sebastian showed how Maemo devices can be used in police cars. Eduardo showed new Canola stuff on Qt. And so forth. Cool stuff. More here.