Howto Manage Successful Open Source Software Projects Books

I’d like to share with you two great books I’ve read which motivates me in managing open source software projects.

These two books has taught me all the things I need to know about starting up a successful Free and Open Source Software project, best practices and how to handle the project properly.

Most importantly the books taught me how to use essential tools that helps me in the development of collaborative open source projects development.

Among the thing explained in the books are:

  • Guide on starting Open Source Software Project
  • Source Code Control (SVN,CVS)
  • How to manage bug tracker and feature request
  • Choosing an Open Source License
  • How to setup discussion channel (mailing lists, IRC channel)
  • Funding your project
  • Managing Volunteers
  • Managing Documentations effectively
  • Sharing management and technical tasks
  • Choosing Project Committers

For those who are interested to read these two great books, you can get them from here :

  1. Producting Open Source Software
  2. Producing Open Source Software (2nd Ed)
  3. Producing Open Source Software (Mirror 1) f
  4. Open Source Messaging Application Development: Building and Extending Gaim (Expert’s Voice in Open Source)

[tags]open source, free software, foss, gpl, fsf,e-book,ebook[/tags]

Listen to free OGG stream Internet Radio on Ubuntu Linux

Sometime, in the middle of the night, I like to listen to music while working on the computer, hacking codes or plain writing blogs on my Linux desktop.

Because of my Linux desktop default installation ‘discourage’ me from listening to MP3 streams, so I’ve to find alternative Internet radio that uses the free OGG Vorbis streams.

So far I found that Xiph Streams directory is the best internet radio directory that can be found on the internet. It feature collection stations dedicated for certain genre of songs, such as blues, hard rock, dance, alternative rock, jazz and few others.

The streams is playable on Totem Player, XMMS, Rhythmbox, and almost all music player available for the GNU Linux operating systems.

FYI, I’m currently listening to a radio station which plays oldies songs. :)

[tags]linux,gnu/linux,ubuntu,radio,streaming,mp3,ogg,vorbis[/tags]

No more Fedora Core, It’s only Fedora 7

According to the announcement I read from Fedora devel lmailing list recently, Fedora project will not release Fedora Core and Extras anymore.

There will be no more distinction between the two repositories as both are will be combined and maintained by the community.

Fedora 7, the first release under this new move will have 28 new features to be added. Fedora 7 is schedule to be release on 26 April 2007

[tags] linux,fedora,fedora core, open source,opensource,distro,rpm,yum[/tags]

The Matrix Linux Console animation

One of my irc chat friend, surface has created a cool ncurses application which displays Matrix-style feed (as seen from The Matrix movie triology).

the matrix feed console

The application comes with C++ source code licensed under the GNU General Public License 2, and it requires libstdc++ and ncurses (most linux distribution already have this installed).

Please read matrix 0.1a announcement from surface’s website for more information about the program.

Source code : matrix.cc

[tags]ncurses,curses,linux,console,gpl,matrix, the matrix,screensave[/tags]

Search Ubuntu Edgy Eft package from Mozilla Firefox

Have you noticed that the Mozilla Firefox build of Ubuntu has an extra search plugin that lets you search for Ubuntu Package Repository? I have, and sometimes I miss the functionality much if for some reason I had to use other operating system to do my work.

I need the search plugin because sometime I want to quickly check the Ubuntu software repository for certain packages while surfing the internet.

So to make things easy for me, I extracted the search plugin directly from my Ubuntu Linux installation and made it available for download. Now everybody can use this plugin to search Ubuntu Edgy softwares even if they are not using Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Edgy Package search plugin

[tags]ubuntu,firefox,edgy eft, linux, apt-get, repositories,gnu/linux, open source, mozilla,plugins[/tags]

Fedora Legacy Project Going to End

Fedora Legacy Project – A community driven project that supports older releases of Fedora Core announced that it has stopped its support for Fedora Core 4 and earlier distros, much earlier than expected.

Currently, Fedora Core is one of the most popular Linux distro besides Ubuntu and OpenSuSE

The Project’s main objective is to provide critical and security bugs fix for end-of-life Fedora Core releases, effectively extending their support for a much longer time.

The Fedora Legacy Project however faces challenges to keep up with the relatively short support time provided by Fedora Core (around 6 to 9 months compared to 18 months from Ubuntu). What Fedora Core users need is longer support for the current release and the older release immediately after it.

It seems Fedora Core Legacy is unlikely to support older releases than Fedora Core 5 anymore, so it is advisable for users of older Fedora Core to upgrade their operating system to the latest release in order to receive critical patch and bugfix to avoid their system being exploited by malicious programs/crackers.

p/s: It is interesting to note that Ubuntu/Canonical is able provide such a relatively long support for their releases compared to average community supported GNU Linux distro.

It is still to be seen whether Ubuntu Dapper LTS is going to be supported up to 3-5 years after its release, but I’m confident that it will be supported.

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[tags]fedora core, fedora, red hat, linux, open source, distro, centos[/tags]