That Could Be Anyone’s Silo of Pig Crap

I was a huge Simpsons fan when I was younger, but I haven’t seen a new episode in years. When I heard about the movie coming out I was excited but didn’t expect much. Well, I just finished watching it and it was really funny.

The Open Source Space Software Community

Next week at OSCON, I am going to be giving half of a presentation on The Open Source Space Software Community (Jessy Cowan-Sharp from the NASA Ames Research Center is going to give the other half). The presentation is going to look at some of the specific challenges involved with using open source software in space applications, including export control issues and contributing to open source projects as a civil servant. This is scheduled for Friday, July 27 at 11:35am – 12:20pm, so please stop by if you’re interested.

Update: The slides from the presentation are now available.

• The Open Source Space Software Community (356 KB pdf file)

Finding XUL Applications

I recently got a new laptop and I’ve been spending some time installing software on it including several Mozilla extensions and applications. While doing this I’ve noticed that there isn’t one place where you can find links to all XUL applications, although there are several partial lists available:

- Mozilla products and projects pages
- XULRunner Hall of Fame and Mozilla Hall of Fame
- Map of the Mozpad Universe
- dmoz XUL Applications page

None of these contains links to Firefox, Sunbird, Songbird and Komodo Edit (just to name a few examples). The mozpad list seems to be the most complete and current, so I’m planning to put some time into adding links and filling in any gaps on that page. If you’re interested in helping out with this, please feel free to post links to other XUL applications in the comments.

PS. I find it interesting that mozdev isn’t included in the list above, since mozdev hosts both application and extension projects. The problem right now is that we don’t have a way to sort out the application projects from the extensions, although there is a bug open to fix this.

Status Update for week of 7/13

Last week I continued to focus on learning more about the donations program and I think I have my head around that now. This week I’m going to finish up some items and get ready for the upcoming OSCON and IPG conferences.

Tasks from last week:

* Wrote up notes of my research into the donations program and have been thinking of ideas that could potentially be useful to the Foundation

* Continued research into how the Mozilla Store was used in the past to accept donations (examples from the Internet Archive from 2003 and from 2005)

* Started moderating the mailing lists used for Mozilla Foundation donation related email

* Started work on a mockup of a proposed web page for grants related information

Byzantine Bureaucracy

After reading about 21st century space tourists, it seemed like a natural progression to go back and finish reading about Roman bureaucrats in the 6th century. Ruling the Later Roman Empire is largely based on a memoir of a bureaucrat named John Lydus who worked in Constantinople and it details how the imperial government was organized and how it functioned.

There seems to be a good reason why the word ‘byzantine‘ means highly complicated, intricate and involved (although which bureauracies aren’t?). The book makes a good case though for why things were set up they way they were. A couple of the reasons were that people and messages traveled slowly over the enormous distances of the empire and there was no efficient way to store and retrieve all of the information generated by the government.

The solution to these problems was to structure the bureaucracy to prevent most people from using its services. The obstacles put up by the government ranged from incomprehensible formalities and obscure technical language to fines and even the possibility of exile for people who pursued appeals and then lost their case.

I’m not sure how much can be generalized from this example, but I think it is helpful to be reminded that even things that appear to be set up in a bizarre fashion can be perfectly rational when seen from a different perspective.

Next up: Back to the 20th century with Carl Sagan’s Pale Blue Dot.

Never Schedule a Meeting for Friday the 13th

In retrospect, trying to have a mozdev board meeting today might not have been such a great idea. Today was the only Friday in July that worked for everyone, so we scheduled our meeting and made a couple of jokes about being brave enough to get together on such an unlucky day.

Well, we had to switch dial-in numbers at the last minute and the first two emails I sent with the new information were lost in the void for an hour and a half. We did end up meeting about twenty minutes late though and things went relatively smoothly after that (although a commercial did come on the line at one point). I accept full responsibility for any confusion, since I should have known better than to schedule this for Friday the 13th in the first place

As long as we’re on this topic, I want to tell everyone that the mozdev home page is wearing its Friday the 13th theme created by the talented cdn. Check it out today or it will be the Bastille Day theme before you know it.

Status Update

Over the last three weeks I’ve been getting up to speed on a number of things at the Mozilla Foundation and I wanted to share what I’ve been doing. There has been a lot to learn and a lot to think about, so I’m interested in talking more about things on my blog and in person at OSCON in a couple of weeks.

Week of June 22

• In Mountain View from June 18 through June 20 and back in Brooklyn now
• At the main office got set up with accounts and had several meetings
• Discussed with Frank and Mitchell initial tasks to get started on

Week of June 29

• Wrote up donor relationship tool notes
• Started work on tracking donations to the Foundation
• Worked on suggestions for changes to www.mozilla.org
• Started compiling list of obsolete pages on www.mozilla.org
• Finalized OSCON plans

Week of July 6

• Gathered and reviewed more historical donation data
• Researched how donations have been handled in Mozilla Store
• Fixed Perl problem and made successful test update to Mozilla Foundation site
• Finished first pass at obsolete pages list
• Made plans to attend the Internet as a Public Good Symposium

Spelunking World War Two Veteran

One day several years ago I got a call from someone who asked if I was the World War Two spelunker David Boswell (I’m not). Until then I had assumed I was the only one with my name. Although my first name is common enough, I hadn’t met anyone outside of my family who had my last name. Now a quick search on Google shows that I’m just one of many, including:

• A Jazz Guitarist
• A Baseball Player
• A Comic Book Writer
• The First Air-Conditioning Engineer
• A Kentucky State Senator
• The Author of Grimsby As It Was
• An Emergency Medicine Physician
• A Lawyer In New Zealand
• A Guy Who Had A Problem With Java On Irix In 1996

Note: My wife wanted me to call this post “The Least Talented David Boswell”. I agree with her that I can’t compete with such David Boswells as the person who installed the first air conditioner in the House of Commons, but I wanted the chance to use the word ’spelunk’ as often as possible in this entry.