My Involvement

Thus far I’ve only talked about my work with CKEditor, however back in high school I was involved with another project called ALP (Autonomous LAN Party). I found it when I was searching for LAN party software and became interested in it. When I discovered it, a first version had been developed but had since fallen into disrepair. I made a few modifications and found another guy who had made a few modifications and together we took over the project and developed it for awhile. To this day, it still (more or less) works, although the last version was released about 4 years ago.

We got to the point where we had outgrown the original slopped together version and needed to do a total rewrite. Unfortunately, the prospect of so much work and the lack of people to do it caused the project to fall apart in the planning phase. Nevertheless, all our work is publicly available and maybe someday I or someone else will pick it up and keep going.

CKEditor, just finished a rewrite and is much better off for it. Although this means it’s not totally mature yet and has a few bugs still lurking around. I encountered some of these and they were easy enough problems that I could hop right in and fix them. Thus it was quite easy for me to get involved in the project.

The hard part, however, was running the support forums (I just tried to answer a lot of posts). I ended up fielding about 7 posts a day. Some of the problems were legitimate or valid debugging things. I helped people work out their configurations and do things I had been through when I first setup the editor. On the other hand, some were face palmingly stupid questions which could have been solved by 2 minutes of effort or simply using google. I often had very little patience in these topics.

My feeling is that you should at least be able to understand the software you are using and how it works before asking questions. There were people who simply needed to find a configuration option (Which is all given on a single page on the site’s support area). They just hadn’t looked around before asking. While those cases are stressful, it’s also nice to see the people who say “oh thanks!” when they solve their problem. Those are the people who have actually worked through their problem before asking.

In any case, working on this project has given me a better understanding of the software, a better understanding of javascript, and made me feel like I’ve contributed to the project. Sure in a week I probably will never touch the project again, but that’s how it goes. Next month some new developer will have to use the software and will begin stomping bugs right where I left off.

The whole process is really an art though. There’s open-source software to manage open-source software, I.E. Trac. It’s the program almost everyone uses to “trac” bugs and manage source code. Most interestingly though is the fact that everything has to be so well thought out. Since none of the developers ever really see each other, there’s a remote code review process, standards have to be employed, and the whole project has to be well documented so that at a moments notice someone new can step in and start contributing.

It’s a fantastic process and one that I really support. If anything, it’s made me want to assemble a team to redevelop ALP. In summary I guess the open-source ideal, to me, seems to define a certain type of social norm. The tragedy of the commons doesn’t apply because even by being selfish, people will still help the project; It's impossible to use up all the open-source resources. Rather than not supporting the project, people will use the software for free and, when they themselves find bugs or make changes, will send their changes back into the commons helping future users.

Nevertheless, there are things that cost money in these projects. There is also the matter of incentive to develop. So next time you find one of these projects useful, consider sending $10 to help support it's development. After all isn't that better than having to pay hundreds of dollars for some commercial software? Support community development, choose open-source!

Pros/Cons

In case you haven’t caught on to how open-source software works, we’re in the middle of a lengthy discussion about how it all works. Next stop, pros and cons. Let’s get the biggest pro out of the way. IT’S FREE. Horray. But there are, of course, some downsides too.

With commercial software, support and follow-through must be exemplary in order to maintain your customer base for future releases. However with open-source, because the software is free, the developers have very little incentive to provide technical support. The support for CKEditor was a little lackluster (non-existent), it’s also quite poorly documented. This made it very hard to figure out what I was doing wrong without digging around and debugging the code. A lot of people will opt for commercial software because it’s already been extensively tested and will (usually) function very well out-of-the-box.

CKEditor might be an exception in this regard however, since normally open source projects will document every single function. Why spend all that time writing wikis and APIs? Because the hope is that if the program is well documented, it will be easier for people to alter the software on their own and thus more contributions will come back to the program. Still, support is often the blind leading the blind.

The upside to glitches in open-source software is that they are usually fixed quickly and the software tends to have more releases than its commercial counterparts. In addition, customers usually have the option of three different types of releases. Stable, Beta, and Nightly. Stable is the equivalent of a commercial release. It's supposed to be extremely stable and polished. If, however, you want to have the newest features and bug-fixes sooner, you can opt for a beta version. These versions tend to have some kinks that still need working out, but generally function quite well. Finally, there's nightly. This is basically a copy of the source code (From the SVN, remember?) which is built automatically every night.

Even though nightly builds are supposed to be quite unstable, CKEditor usually has very good nightly packages. This is because all code changes are reviewed before they are committed, thus changes tend to work with 95% certainty as soon as they are in the code base.

Features can be another huge factor in choosing. Again though, it’s a two part problem. While commercial software might have more features initally, it’s usually easier to request new features in open-source software and to have those changes made. (Try asking Microsoft to add 16-bit support to 64-bit OS’s, I dare you).

Here’s the sticky part though. Remember way back when we talked about licensing? Well that means that any part of an open-source program can be reused (Under certain licenses). Thus Microsoft could, in theory, use some part of CKEditor for it’s own nefarious purposes, however the same is not true in reverse. Commercial companies can use these things called patents to exclude anyone else from using the software. Despite the short 10-year lifespan, this is an eternity in computer terms and effectively means that commercial applications can have features that no one else does.

In fact, this problem is most present in video codecs right now. Remember when I said that linux was 100% open-source? Well that is except for one video codec. The problem is that it’s commercial and thus doesn’t have to include its source code. This is also a problem for HTML5 video tags (New way of playing videos in browsers more or less), people cannot decide on a standard codec to use because one is commercial (and a bit better?) but one is open source. Thus, due to asymmetric information…this round goes to commercial. Nevertheless, more and more companies are starting to give back to the open-source community in various ways. So keep an eye on this tussle in the future.

I think now you can see why not everyone is using open-source software. It sometimes isn’t available, especially in niche areas where there wouldn’t be enough developers and sometimes it just doesn’t get the job done as well as commercial products. I still HIGHLY encourage you to give it a try! Take the OpenOffice challenge and try to use the free program for 6 months instead of Microsoft Office. You'll see that OpenOffice is really really good, but probably be so used to Microsoft that it will be hard to use.

Anyways, next time, we’ll get into my involvement and experiences with open-source projects.

This is part two in our look at open source software, this edition covers how open-source software comes into being and is developed essentially for free!

Contributing:

Normal companies like Microsoft, Google, etc. pay people to develop software, but yet there is often comparable software (Linux, OpenOffice, etc.) which is free, if not better. So how do these free applications stay free? Well in the case of large projects such as Linux and Firefox, they are supported by foundations which collect donations and solicit support to help fund the core developers and to pay for the overhead of running a website.

Most projects, however, begin with a spark from one individual or a group which does the initial development. For small things, maybe it’s just some guy who made a tool for himself and decided to share it. For medium sized projects, the initial release is often sloppy and bug-ridden as it is developed (and thus tested) by a small number of people.

As the project gains popularity (If it ever does), people will start to complain about the bugs and to request features. The developers will usually prioritize those requests and work on them in their free-time (I.E. Slowly). As a project becomes more stable and useful however, individuals and companies (like myself) will start to use the projects. Those people may have different requirements than what the software does out of the box. For instance, my company wanted to be able to use IFrames in CKEditor. Thus it became my job to develop a plugin which could handle this task. When I was done, (and since I’m a very classy open source guy), I sent my work back to the project.

Now it isn't as though anyone can just waltz in and alter the code. Usually the code is stored in what's called an SVN system (Subversion Control System). This system is the perfect solution for managing projects. Here's why. First, everytime a new file is saved, a copy is created. Thus if I were to commit some bad code, it could just be rolled back to an old version, no problem. Second, it can do "branching" of code. This in effect creates a second copy of the code which people can work on for specific reasons. For instance, when a large new feature was introduced to CKEditor, it was first created in a branch so that any problems stemming from this feature could be isolated from the rest of the code changes.

It all sounds complicated, but it's really easy to use. To keep things sane, only the core developers can approve changes to the source code. So once they approve my plugin, it will eventually be integrated in and redistributed as part of the program. Thus even though my company didn’t pay for the program, we paid for the program indirectly. Because my company pays me, and it became my job to work on the project, the project as a whole benefits.

More generally, because each user wants slightly different things out of a program. They will expand the program in the direction of their needs. If we look at the entire user base, this will have the effect of eventually expanding and bolstering the project in all directions.

From a companies/users perspective, they could pay 1000$ for a commercial solution, or could pay their developers 400$ to take open-source software and alter it to fit their needs. For the company/user, this is often more lucrative because they are permitted to directly change the program and will benefit from future development, which is not always the case with commercial software.

So how does the software perform head-to-head? That’s something we’ll look at next time.

Every now and then I get the urge to build a 5-star tower, listen to the power line sound effect from Sim City 2000, or report heavy traffic from the cockpit of SimCopter. So when the latest urge struck, I immediately headed over to Abandonia to pick up some games, but quickly ran into problems.

First off, you've probably heard that downloading games is illegal. Well that's usually the case. However when you get as old as I am, some games start to expire and fall into a category of game called Abandonware. It's a moving definition, but generally includes games that are too old for the original manufacterer to distribute it anymore (Or to make a profit from it). Searching abandonware will yield plenty of sites distributing games.

After downloading, SimTower, SimCity, and SimCopter, I tried to install them, only to find they would not install. Now these games are old. They are from the 16-bit game era. Most modern operating systems since Windows 95 are 32-bit, and now the move towards 64-bit systems is occuring. The problem is that Microsoft doesn't include 16-bit support in their 64-bit OSes. Since I have Windows 7 64-bit, I cannot natively play 16-bit games. Well that just wouldn't do so I set off to find alternatives.

Solution:
After a bit of looking, I came across two options. The first is called VirtualBoxing. It is essentially running an OS within an OS. Usually this requires you to have the second OS, but I came across VMLite which auto-installs Windows XP for you. (Windows XP supports 16-bit software). Minutes later, I was off!

I also ran across a second (Un-tested) solution. This essentially kills off the current OS while your program is running, so not as useful, but easy to try, lightweight, and no risk! If something goes wrong hit ctrl-alt-delete, bring up task manager, go to data-new task, and put in "explorer". Anyways:

Take the below code, save it as a .bat file (Batch File), save and run!

taskkill /f /IM explorer.exe
(Put your app.exe here)
pause
start explorer.exe

Hope it works for you. Let me know. Also, I've listened to the noise 200 times and I'm 90% sure that the power line noise is actually a guy just going "BZZZZZZZZT".

UPDATE: After experiencing numerous problems playing simcopter with "An unrecoverable error has occurred and SimCopter must quit. Do you want to try and save the game". I found the following thread:
http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpost.php?p=7047874&postcount=17
Turns out fast CPUs break the game (Which I should have known from trying to play Jetfighter 3). The solution? Just burn off extra CPU cycles using CPUGrabber. The link in the thread doesn't work, but you can google it. Ahhh, the good old games that go as fast as your CPU can...love it...

This week has been an absolute orgy of revolutionary technology. Between E3 and all the gadgets surrounding that, things might never be the same again (Mainly because of Portal 2). Anyways, today I want to highlight two changes closer to home that will forever change the way you work on the web. How do I know that? Because if you're like every other person in the world, you use Facebook and Youtube.

Let's ease you into the revolutions by starting with facebook. As I just discovered while uploading my photo album from Dachau...in the past month (Or even more recently), Facebook has finally solved one of the cruxes of the entire website: photo uploading. If you try to upload photos now, you should find a new popup message telling you about the upgrade. What it is, is a small application (At least for windows) which you can install on your computer and acts as a proxy for the photo uploader.

Put simply, you can upload photos in the background of facebook. YA RLY. Go try it. Create a new album and the new window will pop up where you can upload photos. After selecting them, you'll be taken back to the facebook homepage while your photos upload in the bottom right corner. Another minor note on these changes: If Facebook programmers are worth their wages, your uploads should be faster since resizing is done client-side (It might have been through Java too) and hopefully your photos will FINALLY auto-rotate. Someone try it and let me know!

Ok but now brace yourself for this one, because it's huge. I was unable to reproduce this on any computer other than my work computer, so it might not work for you...yet. Youtube has re-programmed a bit of their site so that if you search while watching a video, the video will continue to play alongside your search results.

Let the sink in.

Gone are the days of accedential searches where you were actually in the active window and shoot, now you have to rebuffer the whole video. Here are the days of being instantly ready to continue your late-night youtube bing in a single window. Don't believe me? I don't either, so here is a screen shot showing the new layout. I searched for something while watching a video, and that was all.

Well that's the big news early on in the week. Go check out E3 news on a tech site if you want to see some cool video game motion-tracking (Xbox) or incredible games (Portal 2) throughout the week more is sure to come!