Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

Prodded mail; really, really pleased to see Samsung doing the right thing - using ARM's Mali 3D core for their phones. Anything must be better than Imagination which appear to have an utter contempt for Free Software drivers that goes beyond ridiculous. Imagination FWIW are the root disaster behind many mobile phones 3D hardware as well as Pulsbo and other miracles such as Intel CPUs that come without full specifications, and missing programming documentation for great chunks of the silicon. Hopefully ARM will show the right way to do this with Mali, and win a lot of traction. Building key parts of your product on top of a complicated, closed, binary blob is just a disaster - how can companies ask their customers to do that ? Update: seems I jumped the gun, and Mali still has a big closed user-space blob; that sucks - fix it !
Pleased to see Norbert reply to Roberto's curious blog; and despite being a key LibreOffice hacker who rather knows what he is on about, get told:
"In fact these non functional changes are not a way to get people acquainted with the code - that is something that require time and dedication - but maybe a way to make more complex integrating upstream contributions."
Interesting the certainty (from a non-developer) that doing small changes is not a way to get acquainted with the code (though in fact this is an excellent way to even learn to program: by reading first. I recall learning the syntax, and love of BBC BASIC by typing in games from magazines). The speculation of some malign intention behind trying to get more people involved which is (maybe) to make our lives more difficult in future is an odd thought indeed; why would we want to make merging changes from Oracle more difficult than necessary ? As for the sensitivity of "cutting bridges with up-stream" - from the LibreOffice side, there has always been an open invitation to Oracle to join, and the bridge chain-sawing seems to be in full swing on the other side. As for the idea that LibreOffice programming changes must be discussed and agreed (with a non-technical audience) before implementation - I'm not convinced that that is a winning strategy for attracting independent contributors to balance Oracle, Novell, RedHat etc. so we get a truly diverse and vendor neutral project. Indeed - the very idea that people who did not contribute to the code, should be controlling its ultimate ownership and licensing is fairly offensive to most developers. Having said all that Roberto makes some good points about the social dynamics; It is my hope that we would have a governance represented by a Community of Practise - ie. a meritocracy of those developing, marketing, and actively working to improve the product and project. With regard to code hackers being "a de-facto minority" - I believe we can change that, and we've made a great start thus far, if only by providing easy tasks (I dispute that these have 'very little value') so people can build confidence in having their work accepted. I completely disagree on his copyright assignment point, and I too talk to very many corporate employees at different levels; let us see who is right in the end.
Why is it that while you have a FaceBook friend request open you cannot see more of the details of their page. It is ridiculous to have a person about whom you can see almost nothing, asking to be friends with you - surely ? How are you supposed to know if you know them ? (or if you ask that, is it too late anyway). For some reason I loathe ignoring friend requests on principle, and thus agonise over the regular friend/spam traffic.
Managed to get my counselling coursework done finally; it is frightening to try to answer questions like "Identify areas for possible future self-development / growth" - I mean - with me, where do you start ? it looks like a cliff-face; very useful to understand such erroneous beliefs as "People ought to follow the advice I give" and the impact that believing that can have; anyhow my attempt finished with:
It appears certain that my prior prejudice about those involved in counselling others: that they are almost uniformly emotional and relational basket-cases, is perhaps simply a reflection of their greater ability to face and talk about their failings, rather than any incipient problem in those drawn to this field
Still developing that thesis, lets see how the marker takes it.
Ellis arrived to stay for the counselling corse; Tally baby-sat, set off, A14 closed due to fatality ... teacher absent; drew fun pictures on the flip-chart for a while and returned. Up late talking to Ellis.

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In case it's not painfully obvious: the reflections reflected here are my own; mine, all mine ! and don't reflect the views of Collabora, SUSE, Novell, The Document Foundation, Spaghetti Hurlers (International), or anyone else. It's also important to realise that I'm not in on the Swedish Conspiracy. Occasionally people ask for formal photos for conferences or fun.

Stuff Michael Meeks is doing

2010-11-12: Friday.