I have a nice love story with Plone. It is like a close friend that becomes a lover in different stages of somebody's life.
I first discovered Plone back in 2003. It was a great love story, I use it as intranet since then and worked in a few projects based on it. But since the end of 2005 I haven't been able to work deeply with it, so I haven't been able to test the newest version (other people from Grupo CPD were in charge of projects related with Plone). I was willing to work with the new version, specially after I met Alan Runyan during Software Libre Conferences that took place in autumn in La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain. During the last 3 o 4 weeks I've the chance to use it again for a project, this time for a web portal.
Plone has grown up but still keeps in the user layer that mixture of functionality and simplicity I used to love so much, and the power and complexity that have attracted technicians these past 10 years.
I love this wiki way of generating contents that Plone has added to the new version. I'm a wiki fan and Plone can satisfy people like me.
Plone is not just the first and only really robust CMS, useful for big scale projects, it is a really good CMS, useful for medium size projects too.
Saturday, January 26, 2008
Saturday, January 12, 2008
KDE 4, a motivation to keep fighting
I hear people talking about innovation everywhere. It is an easy concept to talk about but hard to put in practice. KDE community had the skills and the determination of doing something new back in 2005, when I first got in touch with the project, but that was not enough. We usually think that money is a key factor for innovation but history give us tons of examples of the opposite. This is one of them. Hardworking is a necessary one, but not sufficient.
To innovate we need freedom.
Now we are close to see the light. KDE 4 is almost out and I was wondering what does this milestone means for me.
We have put a lot of effort fighting against patents, propietary software, restrictive licenses, etc., not because we want to defeat our opponents but because we want to have freedom to innovate... and to have fun doing it. We deserve the chance of having something better, promoting that the people with the knowledge and the determination of going for something like KDE 5 (or whatever adventure they want) are able to try it, and maybe do it, just like KDE community has done in this case.
For me KDE4 means, overall, a motivation to keep fighting to make our way to the next stop easier, to gain more freedom to innovate much more than we've done so far...that has been a lot.
To innovate we need freedom.
Now we are close to see the light. KDE 4 is almost out and I was wondering what does this milestone means for me.
We have put a lot of effort fighting against patents, propietary software, restrictive licenses, etc., not because we want to defeat our opponents but because we want to have freedom to innovate... and to have fun doing it. We deserve the chance of having something better, promoting that the people with the knowledge and the determination of going for something like KDE 5 (or whatever adventure they want) are able to try it, and maybe do it, just like KDE community has done in this case.
For me KDE4 means, overall, a motivation to keep fighting to make our way to the next stop easier, to gain more freedom to innovate much more than we've done so far...that has been a lot.
Thursday, January 03, 2008
ReciclaRed, a software libre edu project in the Canary Islands
ReciclaRed finished last December. During a whole year 20 students have been working hard to install and configure 14 computer labs in some public schools placed in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Canary Islands, Spain, as part of a project financed with EU funds through the Canary Islands Employment Department of the Regional Government.
This project was assigned to FUNDESCAN, a well known local foundation. Grupo CPD, the company I work for, was the technological partner. For ReciclaRed, a director, some teachers and one administrative were employed.
Beside cabling and building up the network of every computer lab, the students recycled hundreds of computers donated by public administrations and private companies and configured them as thin clients, using software libre to do so.
Students also learned to install and configured distros like Debian, Kubuntu or CentOS. All thin client systems had KDE as the default desktop with KOffice and KDE-Edu apps installed, among others. Software like LTSP, XEN, Mediawiki, Joomla, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc were also used.
This project wouldn't be possible with propietary software and it has been a clear success story with local media coverage (check this article in spanish). Some wiki pages written by the students and teachers has been already published. The rest will be public soon (with free license).
This project was assigned to FUNDESCAN, a well known local foundation. Grupo CPD, the company I work for, was the technological partner. For ReciclaRed, a director, some teachers and one administrative were employed.
Beside cabling and building up the network of every computer lab, the students recycled hundreds of computers donated by public administrations and private companies and configured them as thin clients, using software libre to do so.
Students also learned to install and configured distros like Debian, Kubuntu or CentOS. All thin client systems had KDE as the default desktop with KOffice and KDE-Edu apps installed, among others. Software like LTSP, XEN, Mediawiki, Joomla, Firefox, OpenOffice, etc were also used.
This project wouldn't be possible with propietary software and it has been a clear success story with local media coverage (check this article in spanish). Some wiki pages written by the students and teachers has been already published. The rest will be public soon (with free license).
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
We have linux on schools, so now what?
Teachers usually prepare their classes at home, so they need the same software there that it is installed at the school they work in, with the same version of any app. As they do with books, teachers need to make agreements on the software they install in computer labs. This is not just a pedagogical, but a technical and a management need. This is the first problem the have to face.
In Spain, due to political reasons, regional governments are in charge of the technical issues that deals with computers involved in education. So they select most (or all) of the apps you find in a computer lab of any public school. This is one of the reasons we have been so successful in promoting free software at schools. It is a political decision and teachers support it (although it takes time). But other countries do not have global solutions for this, since each school or teacher have independence for choosing the applications to work with at school. This is not an advantage from a managing or a supporting point of view (it doesn't have to be a disadvantage either if there is a good coordination).
Let's assume that this problem is solved.
Supporting the software and creating documentation around a single app is hard to do and takes time. To teach teachers and students to use the software chosen takes a while too, so it is impossible for edu projects to follow short release periods, as software libre distributions do. They soon get out of date, unsupported. So teachers and students end up having at home newer versions of the software they have at school. This is already a problem for those teachers that already have good skills using linux.
In addition, each distro have its own politic related with repositories and versions of packets they include and support in any release. Even if a single (or group) of schools follow it, still there is a problem with what people have at home.
One of the things that should be done by schools or regional govs. in order to reduce the impact of this problem is to create and maintain their own repository of packets to ensure they all use the same version of the same app they have at school. This is a good point for students also.
In my opinion, this repository should be distro independent, so teachers (or students) can install the distro they want (from the official distro repository, or from a installation CD), and add this edu repository, so they have the same version of any app. This can also include Windows versions of edu apps. This doesn't work at 100% but there are technical ways of getting close.
This is a better approach than preparing a complete edu distro and having to support the installation process, hardware drivers, desktop configs, etc.. Distros already take care of that and they do it well because they have the experience.
What makes the difference if you use KDE, and I think the best thing this can be done, is to be able to download and install from the edu repository the profile (configured with kiosk mode) you have in school (if you use KDE), with all the apps, so teachers have the same configs and apps in a semi-independent desktop.
By doing this, what people in charge of edu projects can do, is to put more effort on spreading their experience selecting and configuring the desktop (improving usability), on promoting a community around the software they install and on connecting that community directly with distro, desktop and apps communities, instead of putting so much effort on technical stuff related with live CD installation, hardware configurations, release periods etc. in uncontrolled environments. To deploy, update and maintain the software on computer labs and other dependencies in schools (controlled environments) is already a huge project that takes many resources.
This is not the politic big edu projects are following in general. They are promoting that people at home install the same complete distro they have at school, adding an unsustainable and non scalable effort to the technical people they have. That politic have to change if we want to give response to the increasing demand we gonna face during the following years. Specially, if computer stores begin to sell machines with linux preinstalled, so regular users won't have to install that whatever linux operative system they (or the store) choose anymore (probably different than the one they have at schools).
Saturday, December 01, 2007
wiki, kile, kontact, RT...and voila!
Wikis, kontact, RT and kile are four of the basic tools I use everyday. Some of the guys I work with have been worried for a long time about integration of tools in one interface so they can work with them in a wiki way.
When I first heard about this I didn't think it was a great idea, but now I'm 100% convinced about the need of such a tool.
When people begin to use computers need clear and easy to use interfaces, where all the information is placed in text boxes with big names with one screen for each concept, like kontact does. Is the groupware way. Kontact is a great tool because integration between tools has always been a concern for the developers. Part of it success is because of that.
Wikis are terrific tools. They make the difference, specially when you are part of a big team. Bugtrackers are also useful in those cases. Is not only a tool for developers but for all kind of people. Workers are much more efficient when they can list the activities they have to accomplish ordered by priority. To coordinate teams is much easier when you can take a look to everybody's contributions in a wiki and list their assigned work.
Kile is a basic tool for me. It makes easy to use tags in LaTeX.
So, why not to take the best of each one of them in a single tool (or a single interface)? I want a tool like kile but not for writing LaTex but for writing in a wiki.
Let's say I'm writing a text that I want to send to somebody, so I select that text and introduce a tag (|body| my text|/body|). When I press save, the tool detects the tag and, since I haven't specified basic information to send the e-mail, it ask me, lets say, in a panel at the right side of the screen. Of course I could have defined it while writing the text with the tag |to|e-mail address|/to|, for example. The same can happen with names, phone numbers, etc.
All the information tagged can be found in the wiki page where I wrote it but, since the tool recognice the tags, specific information can be listed in a specific page automatically. So if I look for the name of a travel agency, for example, it shows me all the names (information tagged with |name|) associated to the information tagged with |company_type|. I also can decide which information associated with the tag |company_name| I want to be shown.
This works very well with bug reports. We integrated long time ago Twiki with RT by defining specific tags in the wiki that opens or close new bugs (tasks) in RT, all identified with diferent colours (red for open tasks, green for closed tags, etc). We cannot live now without it.
The calendar can work perfectly this way. I can define a meeting by writing in a wiki page something like this: |meeting|Talk about KDE|/meeting||hour|8:30|/hour||place|tenerife|/place|. Since it is hard to remember the tags(there would be tons of them), we need an kile like interface to list them all. There has to be a special wiki page where you can list all the meetings or list what you have to do today, ordered by priority, date or whatever. You can also assign tags to information that relates it to other information so you can list it all together in one wiki page. Wikis do this quiet well with a whole contribution, but it should be possible to do it with a single piece of information.
The point is be able to introduce different kind of information without switching from one interface or tool to another one. You have them all in one (from the user point of view).
This is a more natural approach than the one we use now. When you are in front of your computer, you begin to write a text, for example. Part of that text has to be sent as an e-mail (so you tag that part as |body|) where you have included a contact and a task (you tag both). Right now you have to copy the text and paste in a new e-mail (you open a mail client), then open the tracker and create one task, write the contact information in a specific tool (so you keep record of it) and attach it to the e-mail and then send it. Too many interfaces for basic actions, in my opinion.
Making such a tool attractive to beginners would be hard, I know. Anyway, I want something like this so I asked for it to the Three Wise Men.
Have you get the idea of what I want? Is it an impossible dream? Do you know a good approach to this idea?
When I first heard about this I didn't think it was a great idea, but now I'm 100% convinced about the need of such a tool.
When people begin to use computers need clear and easy to use interfaces, where all the information is placed in text boxes with big names with one screen for each concept, like kontact does. Is the groupware way. Kontact is a great tool because integration between tools has always been a concern for the developers. Part of it success is because of that.
Wikis are terrific tools. They make the difference, specially when you are part of a big team. Bugtrackers are also useful in those cases. Is not only a tool for developers but for all kind of people. Workers are much more efficient when they can list the activities they have to accomplish ordered by priority. To coordinate teams is much easier when you can take a look to everybody's contributions in a wiki and list their assigned work.
Kile is a basic tool for me. It makes easy to use tags in LaTeX.
So, why not to take the best of each one of them in a single tool (or a single interface)? I want a tool like kile but not for writing LaTex but for writing in a wiki.
Let's say I'm writing a text that I want to send to somebody, so I select that text and introduce a tag (|body| my text|/body|). When I press save, the tool detects the tag and, since I haven't specified basic information to send the e-mail, it ask me, lets say, in a panel at the right side of the screen. Of course I could have defined it while writing the text with the tag |to|e-mail address|/to|, for example. The same can happen with names, phone numbers, etc.
All the information tagged can be found in the wiki page where I wrote it but, since the tool recognice the tags, specific information can be listed in a specific page automatically. So if I look for the name of a travel agency, for example, it shows me all the names (information tagged with |name|) associated to the information tagged with |company_type|. I also can decide which information associated with the tag |company_name| I want to be shown.
This works very well with bug reports. We integrated long time ago Twiki with RT by defining specific tags in the wiki that opens or close new bugs (tasks) in RT, all identified with diferent colours (red for open tasks, green for closed tags, etc). We cannot live now without it.
The calendar can work perfectly this way. I can define a meeting by writing in a wiki page something like this: |meeting|Talk about KDE|/meeting||hour|8:30|/hour||place|tenerife|/place|. Since it is hard to remember the tags(there would be tons of them), we need an kile like interface to list them all. There has to be a special wiki page where you can list all the meetings or list what you have to do today, ordered by priority, date or whatever. You can also assign tags to information that relates it to other information so you can list it all together in one wiki page. Wikis do this quiet well with a whole contribution, but it should be possible to do it with a single piece of information.
The point is be able to introduce different kind of information without switching from one interface or tool to another one. You have them all in one (from the user point of view).
This is a more natural approach than the one we use now. When you are in front of your computer, you begin to write a text, for example. Part of that text has to be sent as an e-mail (so you tag that part as |body|) where you have included a contact and a task (you tag both). Right now you have to copy the text and paste in a new e-mail (you open a mail client), then open the tracker and create one task, write the contact information in a specific tool (so you keep record of it) and attach it to the e-mail and then send it. Too many interfaces for basic actions, in my opinion.
Making such a tool attractive to beginners would be hard, I know. Anyway, I want something like this so I asked for it to the Three Wise Men.
Have you get the idea of what I want? Is it an impossible dream? Do you know a good approach to this idea?
Tuesday, November 06, 2007
Are we trying to beat one monopoly by supporting another one?
Lately news about the support Mozilla is receiving from Google has made me think...
Firefox is a great tool, specially is you use Windows. With Linux or Mac/OS you have more good choices.
I promote firefox everywhere I go, specially in courses where I teach. Most of the computer labs I teach in have Windows XP, so one of my objetives when I teach beginners is to break the Windows+MSN Messenger+Hotmail+Windows Live+MSNSearch association that most of them love (because it is the only thing they know).The combination Windows+Firefox+Google+Goolge talk+Gmail+Blogger is a natural option but...
Am I fighting against a monopoly by supporting another one?
I've decided I'm going to change some of the exercises and introduce more tools to avoid this situation I'm worry about.
Firstable I'll use Yahoo again, like in the early days, once in a while, so students get confortable with it as well as with Google. Almost nobody uses Yahoo in Spain. I'll also use Opera, not just Firefox, until I find another browser libre (kde browser for windows?) that I like. I'll try to use pidgin or PSI as a IM client (kopete for windows?) and, by now, I'm not going to promote any webmail but Gmail or any blog tool but Blogger. I'll think about it anyway.
By doing this, I hope my student get more open to try different tools and I calm my worries about what it looks like it can happen in the near future.
If you have any suggestion, I'm open to read and consider it. Maybe switch to linux + KDE....right?
Firefox is a great tool, specially is you use Windows. With Linux or Mac/OS you have more good choices.
I promote firefox everywhere I go, specially in courses where I teach. Most of the computer labs I teach in have Windows XP, so one of my objetives when I teach beginners is to break the Windows+MSN Messenger+Hotmail+Windows Live+MSNSearch association that most of them love (because it is the only thing they know).The combination Windows+Firefox+Google+Goolge talk+Gmail+Blogger is a natural option but...
Am I fighting against a monopoly by supporting another one?
I've decided I'm going to change some of the exercises and introduce more tools to avoid this situation I'm worry about.
Firstable I'll use Yahoo again, like in the early days, once in a while, so students get confortable with it as well as with Google. Almost nobody uses Yahoo in Spain. I'll also use Opera, not just Firefox, until I find another browser libre (kde browser for windows?) that I like. I'll try to use pidgin or PSI as a IM client (kopete for windows?) and, by now, I'm not going to promote any webmail but Gmail or any blog tool but Blogger. I'll think about it anyway.
By doing this, I hope my student get more open to try different tools and I calm my worries about what it looks like it can happen in the near future.
If you have any suggestion, I'm open to read and consider it. Maybe switch to linux + KDE....right?
Saturday, November 03, 2007
Desktops libres help to introduce other (libres) technologies.
In Gran Canaria's College (ULPGC) we are going to give a course about Ruby on Rails during the following days. The point is where are we going to do it. The computer lab has a nice structure based on one server with CENTOS4 + XEN + 4 virtual machines with Debian, and another server with W2k.
There are some thin clients and some new and recycled PCs on the computer lab. The windows server will be used to check (through rdesktop) that everything it is done by students works on Internet Explorer. Validation goes through the old NIS the college has. This computer lab is called Aula Sostenible (something like Sustainable Lab).
If you analyze the ratio cost/power of these kind of structures compared to similar ones with propietary software (Windows, IBM or Solaris, for example) you find out why we are so strong. But most of this technology is some years old. We could configure something like this (or close) three or four years ago. What has happened for us to be able to sell these kind of solutions much easier now than before?
Mature free desktops help us to convince many people that software libre is 100% usable. That allow us to promote other technologies and solutions, like virtual machines, thin clients or monitoring software, for example. From a marketing point of view, KDE is a very strong way of breaking walls so many people open their doors by giving free software a chance. Many times you convince more people to buy software libre by showing your laptop instead of talking an hour about the benefits of this and that. This is something I live more and more frecuently.
- The first virtual machine has the LTSP system.
- The second virtual machine has user's home directories.
- The third one has some free desktops.
- The fourth one has the monitoring system
There are some thin clients and some new and recycled PCs on the computer lab. The windows server will be used to check (through rdesktop) that everything it is done by students works on Internet Explorer. Validation goes through the old NIS the college has. This computer lab is called Aula Sostenible (something like Sustainable Lab).
If you analyze the ratio cost/power of these kind of structures compared to similar ones with propietary software (Windows, IBM or Solaris, for example) you find out why we are so strong. But most of this technology is some years old. We could configure something like this (or close) three or four years ago. What has happened for us to be able to sell these kind of solutions much easier now than before?
Mature free desktops help us to convince many people that software libre is 100% usable. That allow us to promote other technologies and solutions, like virtual machines, thin clients or monitoring software, for example. From a marketing point of view, KDE is a very strong way of breaking walls so many people open their doors by giving free software a chance. Many times you convince more people to buy software libre by showing your laptop instead of talking an hour about the benefits of this and that. This is something I live more and more frecuently.
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
What a day for standard formats and free software...
Today 3 news has came along related with standars and free software that I hope it gives light to people in general and local politics here on the Canary Islands, Sapin, about what's going on:
1.- German Foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, supports ODF.
2.- Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for
South African government communications.
3.- Becta, the government's education technology agency, has today made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for alleged anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in the schools software marketplace and in relation to Microsoft's approach to document interoperability.
...I want more days like today. By the way, thanks KDE for letting me become part of such an amazing project.
1.- German Foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, supports ODF.
2.- Open Document format (ODF) yesterday became an official standard for
South African government communications.
3.- Becta, the government's education technology agency, has today made a complaint to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) for alleged anti-competitive practices by Microsoft in the schools software marketplace and in relation to Microsoft's approach to document interoperability.
...I want more days like today. By the way, thanks KDE for letting me become part of such an amazing project.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Why software libre and not free software
Reading Richard Dale's post about, among others, this issue, and after having a conversation about this with some of the people invited to II Jornadas de Software Libre conference, celebrated last week in Tenerife, I want to describe some arguments that make me say that we should stop talking about free software and begin to talk about software libre.
- Free is an english term that has two major and popular meanings, free as free beer and free like liberty. Libre in spanish has this second meaning only.
- Software libre is a mixture of an english word (recornized already in the spanish dictionary) and a spanish word. So it is a good international mixture.
- Libre is a simple word easy to identify in many languages and, above all, easy to pronunciate for non spanish people.
- software libre cannot be confused with open source any more since we have taken away the relation with the concept free as free beer. In spanish there is no confusion about this as there is in english.
- Libre is easy to write. Free is not, since many people make mistakes with the two final e.
kdisser + latex beamer
Kdissert is an awesome app behind a simple idea. Giving talks and product presentations, you realice how hard is to make non linear presentations. When the complexity of an idea is high, sometimes you cannot express it linearly.
Kdissert help you to simplify what you want to say. After you make clear your ideas, it generates automatically a latex beamer presentation. I'm still fighting against the template, but hey...I don't have to do it everything at once. For this presentation I'm working on, I've made some progresses. Hopefully, by the end of the year I will be able to make presentations a lot faster than right now, using latex beamer from scratch.
If you are tired of making complex presentations, this is a good approach: kdissert + latex beamer.
Kdissert help you to simplify what you want to say. After you make clear your ideas, it generates automatically a latex beamer presentation. I'm still fighting against the template, but hey...I don't have to do it everything at once. For this presentation I'm working on, I've made some progresses. Hopefully, by the end of the year I will be able to make presentations a lot faster than right now, using latex beamer from scratch.
If you are tired of making complex presentations, this is a good approach: kdissert + latex beamer.
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