Blue Sky On Mars

The Michigan Python Users Group (MichiPUG) monthly meeting is coming up this Thursday, July 3rd at 7PM. This month, I’ll be speaking about the Zope Object Database (ZODB). Unlike last month’s meeting, where I led us in a random experiment with Google App Engine, I actually have some experience with the ZODB.

I’ll be demonstrating use of the ZODB and will talk about concurrency, replication, packing, etc. If you’re not familiar with the ZODB (and you’re somewhere near Ann Arbor!), this is a useful topic to get to know, because the ZODB is great for a variety of situations.

Update (May 13, 2009): You can see my examples from this talk.

• Obama needs to get behind the FISA filibuster, not support unchecked executive power: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/06/21/ … #
• ahh, never mind the filibuster. i missed the cloture vote articles. Obama needs to vote against FISA support and get others to go along #

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• Looks Good Works Well: Announcing: Jiffy Firebug Extension for Viewing Client Side Performance Data
  (tags: browser development firebug javascript firefox performance tools optimization)

• back from vacation, caught up and digging in! #

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Sorry for the noise.

• Macworld | Sync your iPhoto libraries
  (tags: iphoto mac software)

• Dr Long Ghost – Validanguage
  This is like something that I prototyped but never carried beyond that stage. It’s a validation package that offers a JSON interface, which means it should be possible to integrate with server-side based validation packages (have them generate the appropr
  (tags: javascript validation development json programming webdev)

• ScreenFlow won two Apple Design Awards. Congrats to the folks at Vara! It’s definitely one of the best apps I bought last year! #

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Anyone who runs a significant open source project should read this, especially if you don’t currently require your contributors to send in any kind of agreement:

So why have it? Why create the barrier to entry for newcomers who just want to pitch in? I have great sympathy for the impatient potential contributor huffing “why do I need to sign this, anyway?”, so this blog post is an effort to boil it down.
[From “Why Do I need To Sign This?”]

I’ve spoken with Alex a couple of times about open source intellectual property, and he’s definitely given this a lot of thought. For a project the size of Dojo, involving many very large contributors, having something like Dojo’s CLA seems critical for keeping the IP clean.

With TurboGears, from the beginning, I’ve required people to send in a simple contributor agreement and this sums up why: “One of the best aspects of the CLA process is that it gets people who are contributing to think about what it means to contribute.”. Significant open source projects that people depend on need to have contributors that are serious about maintaining the project’s quality and the project’s IP. Making people aware of this responsibility from the get-go is a big positive.

I’m posting this in hopes that more of my friends in open source software will keep these things in mind as their projects grow and the outside code contributions increase.

• Installing lxml on OS X Leopard « The Offbytwo Blog
  Just what I needed! Concise instructions for installing lxml on OS X.
  (tags: xml python mac)