Yesterday I stumbled across the Google Code Syntax Highlighter.
If you have Javascript enabled, it prettifies various types of code and markup:
<h1>Matthew is cool</h1> <p>You should listen to Marillion.</p>
Adding it to WordPress is pretty simple, through a WordPress plugin.
In the most recent LugRadio, we discussed licence proliferation.
Our main conclusions were that:
We already face a battle in explaining the benefits of free software to non-enthusiasts: licensing is something that rarely makes it onto the radar outside our community. We can make the job easier by talking about concrete benefits but the conversation becomes increasingly difficult with every caveat introduced by yet another licence.
When licensing writing, music, visual art, we don’t need to be lawyers or even all that familiar with the Creative Commons licences. Instead, we need a rough idea of the rights we want to grant and the protections we want to retain. The Creative Commons licence picker translates those desires into the most appropriate licence.
On the show, we suggested licencepicker.com as a way to help users know where they stand and guide projects in making an informed licence choice, without the need for a law degree. It’s great to see that members of the LugRadio community have picked the idea up.
To better cope with the licences that we have, licencepicker.com could offer a clickable list of common FOSS applications, each with a summary of the licence under which it is released.
The genie is already out of the bottle, though. We have more licences than most people could name and we’ll undoubtedly see more. Although many people may agree that licence proliferation is unhelpful, each new licence’s creators believe that their modifications are necessary.
Perhaps we can learn a lesson from environmentally led government policy: the polluter pays. We need to raise awareness, within the community, of the pain that licence proliferation causes. As attitudes change, so it will become more difficult for projects to create yet another licence. If the pain of introducing a new licence becomes more equitable with the damage it causes to the user’s understanding of their freedom, there’s a chance that projects and companies will settle for an existing licence.
Free software is hobbled if we don’t understand the rights it grants us. Mark Shuttleworth highlights licence proliferation as one of the big challenges we face in making “free software ubiquitous on the desktop”. I see three ways to attack the problem:
These suggestions aren’t perfect, the list isn’t exhaustive and this all needs discussion. For example, some would argue that a licence picker would make it easier for projects to choose yet more obscure licences.
Following our interview with Everybody Loves Eric Raymond creator, John Leach, Michael Erskine has created Everybody Loves LugRadio.
Damn, I knew I should have updated my photo on the LugRadio website.
Incidentally, Michael has a hole in his tongue large enough to fit a pair of kitchen scissors through.
John Leach, the chippy northerner behind Everybody Loves Eric Raymond, has caved into the pressure of his fanbase by releasing:
Everybody Loves Eric Raymond the t-shirt.
John also talks about ELER on the latest LugRadio.
Kphone is, unfortunately, the only SIP phone software in Ubuntu Warty Linux.
Over the past week, I’ve been wrestling with it, trying to get it work with both Gossiptel and SipGate. Kphone lacks documentation, which would be fine if it “just worked”. However, my experience has show a couple of quirks, that have led to several frustrated evenings.
Once apt-get has installed Kphone, you’ll notice it doesn’t appear in any menus. It is on your system, you just need to type “Kphone” from the command line. Once loaded, you’ll be able to edit what Kphone calls your SIP identity. This is fairly straightforward, just bear in mind:
You can then click “Register” to check your details. Frustratingly, if you’re changing an existing Kphone identity, you’ll have to restart Kphone before it uses the new details.
Depending on whether your firewall has explicit SIP support, or not, you’ll also need to visit Preferences->SIP Preferences->Socket, to enter details of your SIP provider’s STUN server. In simple terms, STUN helps Kphone to get round the restrictions put in place by your firewall. For Gossiptel. ensure Use STUN server is selected, and define your STUN server as “stun.gossiptel.com”. In my experience, it doesn’t
OSS sound setup
You should now be able to make and receive SIP calls. However, like most of the rest of the Linux world, you’ve probably moved onto ALSA for your audio. Kphone has not. Kphone still uses OSS. So, even if you’ve had Skype running successfully, you’ll still need to go into your volume settings and have a fiddle.
For whatever reason, each time I restart Ubuntu, I have to reset the OSS settings, to make it work with Kphone.
Make sure your microphone is set to Mute and Rec, with the slider up high. Also set In-gain to full, as this boosts the signal coming from the mic. Of course, your setup may not need in-gain.
Even once you’ve got what appear to be the right settings, I’ve found it may not work until you’ve selected, unselected, then reselected those settings a few times.
Testing everything
On Gossiptel, you can call 160 for an echo test. You can also give me a bell on 9301661. If you’ve been a Skype user you’ll be surprised by just how reliable and clear a VOIP call can be.
Kphone, on my system, has been prone to crashing and is far from the most user friendly software out there. However, despite the more complicated initial setup, I’d say SIP is a far better system than Skype, which now feels rather like VOIP-lite.
Mark Shuttleworth seems like a cool bloke. He came onto LugRadio, to talk to us aboutUbuntu Linux and to explain a little more about why he’s working on it and what plans they have for the future.
I think many open source fans will agree with a lot of what Mark says. He seems to have a thorough understanding of why open source is a good idea and what can be achieved with it, both commercially and as a community.
DJ, one of the LugRadio faithful, mentions today’s advert for Firefox, in the New York Times.
When I ran Debian, the shutdown process would never power off my machine. The processor fan would stop and the screen would read “Power down”, leaving me to press the button. A minor irritant.
I had the same problem with Ubuntu, until yesterday evening. After reading a few forum posts which all seemed very involved and a bit disjointed, I added:
apm power_off=1
to /etc/modules
Now, Ubuntu powers down automatically. Hooray.
Earlier this week, I attended a talk by Jaguar‘s Head of Global Marketing Communications, Laurence Thomas. In it, he described how the company had worked to move the Jaguar brand from being seen as the old man’s favourite, to a credible, premium alternative to BMW, Mercedes, etc.
As Laurence described the substantial efforts his team had employed to effect the change, I began to think about two things we’d discussed during season 2, episode 3 of LugRadio:
Aq was very vocal in his opposition to any form of, what he might describe as, corporatism, including marketing, in open source software. Later, when discussing the NHS, Jono said that we had failed – “we” being the open source community.
Aq wants us to find a way, other than marketing, to build and promote open source software. Jono feels the collective pain of a community whose products, and organisation, are experiencing the shortcomings of not employing marketing.
Beautiful, fast software
During his talk about repositioning Jaguar, Laurence Thomas made it clear that changing the perception of a brand does not begin and end with some witty copy in an advert. Instead, the company needs a common goal and philosophy, which then creates the brand
Internally, Jaguar has a statement of purpose, which is intended to inform everything the company does:
Beautiful, fast cars.
Three words which are broad enough not to restrict but specific enough to be a meaningful guide for the company’s actions.
Rather than simply telling the world that Jaguar is different, they have actually changed the company, so that their products, service and communications all live up to a certain set of standards and ideals. The reality informs the brand.
This, my marketing-fearing open source friends, is what marketing is. It’s a management philosophy that evaluates needs and creates solutions to satisfy those needs. To use open source terminology – it’s about scratching itches.
Perhaps it’s useful to see how the marketers themselves describe marketing:
Marketing is the management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitably. Chartered Institute of Marketing definition.
In other words, marketing is not just advertising, nor is it dodgy door-to-door selling. Marketing is finding out what people need and giving it to them. The profit you make would normally be financial, but it could be any benefit that is worth more than the effort expended.
It’s reasonable to say that the open source development model already employs marketing methods. The challenge is to get open source proponents and project leaders to realise that marketing isn’t evil; it’s essential.
As Jaguar have shown, marketing isn’t about smoke and mirrors, or trying to fool people. Marketing is about creating a reality which is best for both the organisation and the end user.
I’ll be writing more on this subject, over the next few weeks. I’m sure I’ll raise the ire of some people, but there’s genuinely no need to fear marketing within open source; in fact, to dismiss it is to dismiss much of what already happens.