Rudy Godoy :: an act of subversive playful cleverness

For some time ago I’ve been pondering about this question. As long as GSoC 2009 is about to start and people are looking for project ideas, I’m posting here a very preliminar draft of my findings and an idea for a posible software project. It’s pretty written on-the-fly while I’ve managed to have some minutes between work and uni. Rigurous wording isn’t P1.

Debian’s social contract 4th item states:

Our priorities are our users and free software We will be guided by the needs of our users and the free software community. We will place their interests first in our priorities.

When we make decisions, either technical, legal and others regarding the operating system we deliver, this is one of the most referred argument. Altough that’s seen as high priority often we don’t have ways to properly know what our users want. While working on translations on the Spanish team we’ve faced this situation. Do our users find them useful? they are able to understand them? they find that a much familiar wording would be bette than high technical details? We didn’t know. Then, the question still exists.

Altough Debian has ways for users to provide feedback (BTS, mailing lists, IRC,  popcon, etc) none of them is designed to offer a way for the user to provide feedback on features, development roadmap and other non-bug aspects that developers and the project can tally and use for prioritize on releases. It’s rather amusing to note that one of the most valuable assets free software community has is user involvement and contribution.

But before we enter in details let’s start on the basics. For using this information we first need to know who our users are? do we? From my findings and interaction with the community I’ve identified two kinds of Debian users who can be clearly named.

1) The derivatives or pure blends, who use the Debian base and framework to build niche distributions.

2) The lead users (using E. Von Hippel’s definition), who are the developers, contributors and a group of users. Debian is, if not the only, one of the projects who is best for fostering lead users. Most of them at some point involve themselves in the development process and some, later become developers.

There is a more diverse group who are end-users but it’s unclear to me how we can group them. Despite that they probably represent the biggest part of the pie.

So, how we do please everyone? can we? In my opinion we can, at some degree. By implementing tools for first: gather user feedback, make statistical data, tally, we later can take informed decisions. In Debian decisions are voted and the set of people who votes are only developers with their own constraints.

I think this would ease the constant that release-decisions-regarding-foo-tech-legal-issue represented on each release iteration, saving time, health and bits.  It could be useful for knowing more about who are the ones we develop things for. I’m thinking of some sort of Dell’s IdeaStorm.com for software.

What do you think? I’m willing to co-mentor this if someone finds that is an interesting project for GSoC. Let me know!.

Often I happen to come with some pretty crazy ideas about anything in life. That’s me. Some of them may work, that’s why I adventure to share them with the world.

Working with computers, software in particular, for almost 12 years have brought interesting views regarding life. For the past 3 years I’ve progressively improved the human being am I, and also the improvement process. The other day I was heading to the uni and I’ve just noted that some practices of my profession can also be applied to my personal improvement. So, here I’m sharing some of them. Hope you find them useful.

1. Spot your bugs and kill ‘em. While it’s important to want to improve yourself. It’s more relevant to the fact of real improvement that you spot your personal “bugs”. This is a crucial part of it all. Once you are aware of you personal “bugs” you’ll be able to take action on them. So, when you do, just kill them and don’t let stink until you are not able to manage it at all and all your “code” taints and breaks.
2. Let process run on the background. Life has a limitation, which is time. Time is a scarce resource. You must be aware of it, really. While we might want to do many different things life presents to us, is not really responsible to engage on all. However, we can hack this. Here technology is our ally. There are many different ways to be able to do some things in the background while on the foreground you focus on what really matters to you at the time.
3. Outsource services that are not key for you. Delegation and distributed architecture come to mind. Professions and specialization are an evolution of humanity. Please take advantage of it. You don’t need to know or do  everything. Karen Sthepenson’s connectivism axiom is illustrative:  ‘I store my knowledge in my friends’.
4. Focus on what matters. This is somehow like the unix tradition of doing one thing and doing it well. Identify what makes you unique, special and relevant on your ecosystem. What value you can offer to others, and work on that direction. Hard work pays.
5. Release early and release often. Once you have spot bugs and managed to fix them, release a new version of yourself!. Tell the world by showing an improved version of yourself. Make this incremental and iterative, just like a software development framework. For instance I currently run a 3.1 version of myself. Just released a point version last week :)

Last night I’ve been recalling how many debconfs I’ve already missed and this got me thinking about how long I’ve been a bit off the records on my Debian involvement. Many things have happened in the last couple of years, many for the good. I’ve started a business and learned a lot about entrepreneurship, resumed my computer science career, started a pretty awesome (yet to be released) personal project involving music and computers, and most important: discovered what I want from life, who I want to be and who I’d love to be with :)

Latest weeks I’ve progresivily started to get back on track with my Debian duties. Took care of my packages, update some information, kept track on current issues and hanged on IRC. While doing that I’ve found some issues I’d like to elaborate on later, so we could improve things. So, expect me to be more active and post updates about my findings. It’s good to be back!  I’ve missed you guys :)

Se aproximaba el final del año 97 u 98 cuando el encargado de coordinación me ofreció pasar a formar parte del grupo de operadores OpenVMS en la BVL/CAVALI. Mis compañeros en TdP me decian que no aceptara, que ahi estaba bien. De hecho, ya estaba mas adaptado y la gente me apreciaba, intuyo que además por ser el más joven del grupo con una corbata terrible. Tendría 18 o 19 años en ese momento.

Finalmente acepte y empece a trabajar precisamente el 1ro de enero del año siguiente. El entorno de la BVL era más tranquilo, no tenían grandes servidores ni cosas sofisticadas; sin embargo tenian algunos elementos que eran bastante interesantes para mi, y creo que claves en mi desarrollo: el proyecto era relativamente nuevo asi que había algunas cosas por construir, había un esquema de telecomunicaciones con los distintos agentes de bolsa a través de un sistema ATM usando el protocolo x25 (antecesor del modelo OSI, TCP) -también conocido como MEGANET en TdP-, el ambiente era tranquilo, teniamos acceso a Internet y el grupo era bastante ameno.

En este lugar es donde logre desarrollar un conocimiento de buen nivel sobre el sistema operativo OpenVMS, a punto que recibia constantes consultas de los nuevos operadores que ingresaban a GMD y de algunos desarrolladores. Mis inicios fueron en el turno de la noche, donde básicamente se procesaba información e imprimia reportes para el día siguiente, ejecutaban respaldos y se aprovechaba parte del tiempo para dormir. Recuerdo que mi primera noche me recoste sobre el sofá que mis compañeros me recomendaron y no desperte hasta las 7am, todavía no me adaptaba; de hecho antes de eso no acostumbraba a desvelarme.
En algún momento pase al turno de la tarde donde tenia que interactuar con usuarios, vestir formal (cosa que jamas me incomodo, salvo cuando me “sugirieron” que use el cabello más corto -obviamente me rebele!-), y sobretodo conocer en persona a los CVL$algo, osea los usuarios, de entre los cuales había algunas guapas chicas; cosa que felizmente parece ser una constante.

Con el pasar del tiempo logré automatizar algunos procesos en los servidores, escribi cientos de programas en DCL, y en algún punto practicamente tenia todo el tiempo libre consecuencia de eso. Logré configurar el stack TCP/IP (ya que esos equipos solo funcionaban en red con el protocolo DECNET), ejecutar y navegar en Mosaic desde el entorno Motif de los servidores Alpha para ingresar a Internet y los servicios en los que ya era ávido usuario (confesión). Descubri todo el mundo detrás de OpenVMS, las conferencias DEC, los grupos de usenet, de los que aprendi, además de incrementar mi interés en conocer el tema en más bajo nivel.

Ocurrio en algún momento que llevamos un curso de Unix, del que ya había oido porque un usuario del chat de Yahoo! lograba hacer cosas que otros no y me dijo que sabia Unix y que debería aprender puesto que todo ese chat estaba sobre Unix. Rápidamente busque en Altavista o Yahoo! y aprendi qué era este Unix.

Luego de la primera clase estuve más seguro de que si queria aprender esto. Lamentablemente desde mi sitio no tenia forma de acceder al servidor en la red de GMD que estaba en el otro edificio. No contento con esa limitación empece a investigar en Internet hasta que encontre la luz: Linux, un sistemas imilar a Unix que se podía ejecutar en una PC. Los siguientes pasos fueron reciclar unos discos duros de 500MB, reducir el espacio usado por Windows 95 en la PC (Pentium 33Mhz, 16MB RAM) que tenia asignado, descargar durante 1 mes -debido a que reiniciaban el equipo y la descarga FTP no tenia “resume”- una distribución de Linux (creo que RedHat 5.x), y tratar de instalar y configurarla, cosa que logré luego de algunos días.

Cierto día buscando información di con la página del Proyecto GNU y leí su manifesto, e inmediatamente coincidi con el mismo. Esto me animó bastante a conocer, usar y promover esto que ahora sabía que se llamaba software libre. Posteriormente supe que habían distribuciones y encontre a mi subsiguiente amor: el Proyecto Debian. Luego de leer su contrato social, manifesto y las directrices, en donde percibi claramente que cualquiera podría contribuir a éste, levante la mano y dije: yo también. Hasta antes de eso no había sentido tan cercano el hecho de que, además de usar algo, también podía hacer cosas para hacerlo mejor y que beneficie a otros como efecto secundario. Esto claramente fue amor a primera vista, de los cuales uno nunca se separa.

Reemplace el RedHat por Debian, que por ese tiempo era complicado de instalar; lo instale en la PC de mi casa, que había adquirido recientemente, y decidi enlistarme en el grupo de traducción como punto inicial de mi contribución.

De las anécdotas de ese tiempo recuerdo una cuando el nuevo jefe de sistemas, ex marino, ingreso al centro de cómputo para mostrarlo a una visita y empezo a describir las actividades y equipos que teniamos. Al señalar mi PC, ejecutando GNOME 1.x, con una terminal ejecutando top y alguna otra cosa, dijo: desde aquí monitoreamos todo. Tuve dos sensaciones, la primera la obvia (no tenia idea de lo que estaba pasando allí -ya que yo mismo me autorice a instalarlo-) y la segunda fue un poco de ego que me decia: exacto, tengo el control de todo esto (cosa que tampoco estaba lejos de ser cierto).

En algún momento, años después cuando ya había salido de GMD, fui a ayudar a mi amigo Oscar con un tema de backups y para sorpresa mía se trataba de uno de los programas que hice tiempo atrás. Finalmente llegaron a usarlo (Oscar era reacio porque no quería olvidarse las órdenes y sus parámetros) y replicarlo en otros proyectos, fue bastante halagador :)

Altough it was on my willingness to travel to Mar del Plata for this year’s Debconf, I’ve come to the conclusion that I’ll have to skip it this year, again. I happen to have final exams the very same week and the one which follows debconf and have to deliver a small software class project next week.

This escenery renders almost imposible to have a decent timeframe for me to be able to stay for more than 24 hours at Argentina. This is bad since, besides willing to speak about my recent work and seeing old friends, I also did want to visit my father’s family on La Plata and have lot of fun at ‘La ciudad de la furia’ aka Buenos Aires, wich I happen to like a lot.

I still plan to find ways for me to be able to present my talk, since I noticed it’s been accepted!. Maybe I can run a non-RL debconf in Second Life ;)

Anyway, life isn’t this bad at all. I’m afraid I’ll be enyoing a wonderful vacation with such insuperable compannion soon. So, expect me to dissapear of the known world and to return from the sky. Looking forward to that moment! :)

Latest months have been of great improvement and empowerment on my life; say by my return to the academic life, more of the crazy corporate and business world and other changes on my own (read self hacks) have been keeping me busy and on constant training. Sadly, and not by intent, this have impacted on my direct contribution to the free software ecosystem and interact and work together with the brave gnu world out there. However I’ve been doing some little work and also finding ways to keep cooperating but now from another position. Today I’d like to present the first of this new form of contribution to the free software ecosystem, and specially to the Debian Project.

In the last couple of months I’ve been working on a paper which intends to offer a (not so) new -as you might notice after reading it- approach to what the Debian Project have been managing to produce and what can be done to keep doing it better in the new escenery that we are and will be living in the upcoming years.

My work describes the way Debian have been sucessfully producing lead-users, as described by Eric Von Hippel’s Democratizing innovation book, since it’s conception and what elements were key to have done so. Previously it takes a look on how the process of innovation is really done. Then it describes the current and future world’s escenery according research and current trends, later it makes links between them and gives some ideas for us to keep fostering innovation and play a key role in the free software ecosystem.

With this work my intention is for us to understand what we are, what are we good doing, and how we can keep rocking! I want Debian to look further and be the free software development cutting edge project and atract bright people to work on what they are passionate about.

Hopefully I’ll be in Mar del Plata to discuss about this and also have some fun with you guys I haven’t seen in years!

I’d appreciate any comment or feedback to this. My intention is to turn this work into a collaborative fashion that allow us to make our project much more wonderful!

The full paper is here to download (pdf): http://stone-head.org/talks/debconf8-fostering-innovation.pdf