Archive for April 10th, 2007
A Call for Help
Comments(6)Ok, since my recent post on Dashboard there has been scattered interest in helping revive/work on Dashboard, so I wanted to post a list of things Dashboard needs before we can really look at making it usable at all.
- libdashboard
- Or as its better known, a C library that generates valid, parseable clues. This is not only critical since most plugin authors aren’t going to want to spend the time validating that mono can deserialize all their XML. But because we can generate bindings for most every other language once we have them in C.
- This is a huge one, Dashboard is still pre-alpha, and mostly proof of concept. While the code base could be brought up to production level, it needs tons of cleanup. This is where an army of open source dev’s can help the most, compile and install dashboard from SVN, then just play with it, and every time it crashes, track down why, and try to make it sane. This is long, slow, tedious, and thankless work, but it is an absolute necessity if people want to start using dashboard, as even simple race cases will crash dashboard most of the time.
- You have to be a little more familiar with the Beagle/Dashboard code base to help out with this, but we need them for a huge spread of plugins, and almost everything beagle can generate.
Just a note, I posted this list on the Dashboard Wiki.
Technorati Tags: linux, gnome, dashboard, mono, beagle, search
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Applying for Ubuntu Membership
Comments(1)As I find myself getting more involved with the Ubuntu community and specifically the packaging of Beagle, I decided that it might be about time to apply for official Ubuntu Membership. I always feel a little odd in these situations, much the same as when I applied for membership to the Gnome Foundation. It feels weird trying to itemize and quantify my contributions, and moreover, I’m not a very good bragger when it comes to computers.
While the application process isn’t my favorite, once I commit to it, I find that there are plenty of tools that simplify the process, my blog not being the least of these, as its a nice reminder of what I have worked on. The harder part is deciding when its appropriate to apply, most guidelines on such topics are pretty vague, and to compound things, the most visible members tend to be hacker rockstars that are so above and beyond the accepted norm for membership that intimidation is almost impossible to avoid. I don’t mean any of this as a critique or attack, just my personal feelings and observations as someone slowly getting more involved in the community.
But I digress, The purpose of this post was to ask for anyone who was willing to give a quick glance over my wiki page at Ubuntu (its more or less your resume near as I can tell) to do so, and if willing, share their feedback. The next Community Council meeting isn’t until April 17th, so theres plenty of time. I would appreciate any of the following:
- Feedback on if I am applying too early (ie. not enough Ubuntu experience)
- Feedback on wiki page (formatting flukes, missed information, broken links etc)
- Anything I might have worked with you on, but forgot to include
- General Comments on life and/or its meaning
So yeah, I appreciate any feedback I can get!
Technorati Tags: gnome, ubuntu, linux, membership, gnome foundation,
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