OStatic

In late December, the Linux Foundation announced its I'm Linux promotional video contest. Though early submissions were welcomed, today is the day the contest officially gets under way, sporting a new name and a panel of judges hailing from all over the open source and media industries.

Bugs, system conflicts, and errant bits of code add unique challenges to the technical area of open source development. They also affect a project's community -- and as any community manager can tell you, developing a healthy community is often more difficult (and has higher stakes) than rogue code.

Management is tough all round, but managing open source projects is different still. Most developers are giving their time because the project interests them, and non-developers join because they find the project useful, and they want to share their enthusiasm. But a community not being any one remotely homogenous group means that passions sometimes run high, and it's not always easy to keep a project's community -- it's life -- moving forward.

It may have just gotten easier. Ubuntu's Community Manager, Jono Bacon, announced his upcoming book, The Art of Community will be available later this year.

Open source software is inextricably tied to the idea of giving it away. Projects open their code for a number of reasons -- to better the codebase, or to allow others to bend an application to their own needs. Maybe the reasons are entirely altruistic, or maybe the altruism is the happy side effect of more project-centric decisions.

Of course, the open source approach doesn't just help code, or simply act as the framework for strong applications. The desired end result of any application is to improve the life of the user in some way. It sounds like hyperbole, perhaps, but if an application isn't making work in some way easier (or play more fun), it's not an application you'd want to use again.

One of the most appealing aspects of open source software is its ability to be almost everything to everyone. Fine, it's hyperbole, but flexibility and access to the source code means a wide array of needs can be met for diverse groups of people -- and the shared efforts benefit developers as much as those who've never written (or seen) a line of code. I've been enamored of the Moblin Project for some time, simply because it so clearly demonstrates that open source can be as hands-on (or off) as you'd like.

On Monday, the Moblin team announced its Moblin V2 Core alpha release was available for testing. Tariq Shureih, Moblin Linux Engineering Manager, says that this alpha release is the first chance the wider community has to really kick the tires on a number of new features, including package and core interactions, the Fastboot feature, new user interface development and connectivity tools, and a new iteration of the Moblin Image Creator.

Hindsight, it is said, is always 20/20. The OLPC has traveled a turbulent path for quite some time, with its latest stumble coming in the form of drastic staff and development cuts.

Four years on, many are analyzing the choices the OLPC made, and some contend it was a bad idea all around.

The Ubuntu team has revealed the schedule and events for its next Developer Week. Ubuntu Developer Week events are traditionally held online to introduce new developers (or new to Ubuntu developers) to the Ubuntu development process.

The next Developer Week is slated for January 19th through the 23rd. Events start daily at 16:00 UTC, and occur hourly until 20:00 UTC. The first two scheduled events for Monday (at 16:00-18:00 UTC) are introductory events that will be conducted in several languages.

In Friday's OStatic Buffer Overflow, Sam linked to a Phoronix write up on Compiz's uncertain future.

Compiz, the project that brought eye-candy to Linux (with effects ranging from useful to breathtakingly beautiful to why would I want to do that? ), has been in trouble for some time. It's not yet had a stable release, though it has branched (and merged) several times.

If it's confusing for an end-user to figure out what branch of Compiz they're using, think about developing when branches and re-merges fly out of nowhere, like flames behind a mouse pointer, forcing code re-writes (or rendering months of work useless).

Kristian Lyngstol, a Compiz developer, says while the current situation is rather dark, it is not without hope. He doesn't sugarcoat the situation, and proposes what's next for project survival. Maybe not exciting, but his statements are precisely why Compiz still has a fighting chance.