Removing Launchpad’s “Mentoring” Feature.
Published by Karl Fogel September 15, 2009 in General
This is a last call for user experience data with Launchpad’s “Mentoring” feature for bugs and blueprints.
We’ve seen only limited usage of this feature, and haven’t gotten much positive feedback on it. Right now, it’s dropped from our 3.0 redesign; but before 3.0 is finalized, we’re interested in hearing people’s experiences with mentoring.
If you’ve used the Mentoring feature, either as a mentor or a mentee, please leave your feedback as a comment here. We’re particularly interested in answers to these questions:
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Would you say that Mentoring caused any difference in the rate of resolution between mentored and non-mentored bugs? (It could be a positive or a negative difference; both are interesting to us.)
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For people who offered mentoring: in your experience, did you have responses on your mentoring offers? Were you successful in integrating the mentee’s changes?
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Do you have any thoughts on how to improve the feature?
Please note: this is about Launchpad’s specific implementation of Mentoring, not about mentoring features in the abstract. We’re interested in your experiences with what’s actually been available in Launchpad. If a few people found the Mentoring feature useful, but most who tried it did not, then we will probably leave it out of Launchpad 3.0. On the other hand, if we hear something very unexpected from the feedback, that could affect our decision of course.
Xibo: open source signage
Published by Matthew Revell September 11, 2009 in Projects
Xibo is a free software signage system. I asked its lead developers, Alex Harrington and Dan Garner, about the project.
Matthew: So, does Xibo power the sorts of display we see in train stations and airports?
Alex and Dan: Yes, and in shops, post offices, schools, universities, colleges, churches or hotels. Anywhere there is a need to display information to the public or employees via a screen or projector. There’s over 150 Xibo installs worldwide that we know of, running 250 screens — however the Launchpad download stats suggest the actual install base is much larger.
Xibo allows organisations to build up collections of images, videos, RSS feeds, Flash, Embedded or External HTML and Microsoft Powerpoint presentations and combine them together into presentations which can then, in turn, be scheduled on to one or more of the displays attached to the Xibo system.
Matthew: We’re pretty used to seeing the Windows blue screen of death on public displays. In building Xibo, what have you done to ensure high uptime and to avoid rather public, embarrassing, error screens?
Alex and Dan: The current stable release of Xibo (1.0.3 at the time of writing) comprises a server application written in PHP and a client application written in C#. The client is written with resilience in mind, and is capable of operating over poor quality internet connections or running offline for periods of time.
The classic BSOD FAIL images from digital signs are often the underlying operating system crashing rather than the signage application itself. To that end, the client attempts to be as light as possible on system resources to keep the workload on the OS manageable – We have a production client running on a Via EPIA Fanless Mini-ITX system.
Looking forward, we have a new cross-platform (Linux/Win/Mac) client coming written in Python using the libavg engine which is guaranteed BSOD free! It uses OpenGL to do a lot of the screen rendering which opens up a lot of possibilities for cool-new-shiney-bits later on.
Matthew: What’s the competition for Xibo?
Alex and Dan: There’s huge competition in the digital signage market place, however we’re frequently told that our offering is better than a lot of the commercial signage applications people have used before. In terms of Open Source competition, there is the Concerto Signage Project who are based at the Rensselaer Polytehnic Institute and released under the GPL v2.
What we’re hoping to bring to the DS market place is a Free solution translated in to many languages with a thriving community of contributors working together to make Xibo the best it can be. An example is the new Xibo Layout Exchange. Here you can download contributed artwork for use in the Xibo system but eventually we plan to allow people to share whole bundles of content.
Matthew: Are you building a business around Xibo?
Alex and Dan: The Xibo application is Free and we have no plans to change that. There are many options available to monetize Xibo (content creation, hosting, support, custom development etc) but there’s nothing in the pipeline at the moment.
Matthew: Why did you select the AGPL 3 as Xibo’s licence?
Alex and Dan: Xibo is written with SaaS (Software as a Service) in mind. We’re very happy for businesses to take Xibo, rebrand it and sell it as a service to their customers, but the freedom needs to be two-way. We wanted a license that ensured that modifications these companies made would be accessible to the end user, for the greater good of the project. AGPLv3 offers us those things, while being compatible with a lot of existing library code.
Matthew: Is there a community of people interested in developing an open source signage system?
Alex and Dan: Xibo currently has two main developers. We’ve had code contributions from a few other people to date, but there’s a fair learning curve which presents a hurdle for prospective developers. We’re working towards a more modular architecture which will allow people to develop plugins to the server and client to extend it’s functionallity, which should lower the barrier to entry significantly.
There’s an active support community already in the Forum and in Launchpad Answers. We’re also taking art submissions for the Layout Exchange, and there is already a huge list of blueprints in Launchpad for future development, contributed by many people.
At least one of the developers is planning to be at LugRadio Live 2009 and Oggcamp in Wolverhampton later this year — just as a visitor, we aren’t exhibiting, but they’ll be suitably dressed so come over and say hello!
Matthew: Heh, see you there. So, why did you choose Launchpad?
Alex and Dan: We have used Sourceforge and Subversion before, but we wanted to use Bazaar for the RCS and Launchpad gave us Bazaar hosting and a good bug tracker. The translations support has been a huge bonus as has Blueprints and Answers. It rolls almost everything we needed in to one convenient package. It also acts as an OpenID provider so we can give the community secure access to edit the wiki and authenticate with the forum.
Matthew: What have you found particularly useful in Launchpad?
Alex and Dan: I think possibly the single most useful feature is merge request tracking – allowing us to fix bugs in individual branches and then queue the fixes up for merging later on. Answers has been great for doing user support – especially where there’s four or five of us helping someone it gives a good overview of which issues are outstanding, and a clear progression to a bug if needed. The bugtracker integration with bzr is great too for keeping track of where fixes went.
Matthew: What would you like to see added to Launchpad?
Alex and Dan: In the early days it would have helped us a lot if Launchpad had provided a wiki too. Now we’ve got our own system in place migrating over makes less sense though. I’d love to see a “Convert to Blueprint” button in Answers, as we get a lot of people making feature requests there.
Matthew: Thanks both!
Launchpad meet-up: 28th September, The Warwick, London
Published by Matthew Revell in General
Our first Launchpad meet-up is happening on Monday the 28th September in London. Come along to meet some of Canonical’s Launchpad development team and other members of the Launchpad community.
Come drink a beer/coffee/mineral water with us and get your hands on a Launchpad t-shirt — if you arrive before we run out 🙂
If you came to the London release party for Ubuntu Jaunty you’ll know the venue, which is The Warwick just off Regent Street in London. Google Maps reckons it’s a three minute walk from Picadilly Circus Tube Station. We’ll be there from around 7.30pm, in the upstairs bar. You’ll be able to tell who we are from the snazzy Launchpad t-shirts we’ll be wearing 🙂
When: 7.30pm onwards, Monday 28th September 2009
Where: Upstairs at The Warwick, 1-3 Warwick Street, London, W1B 5LR
Nearest tube: Picadilly Circus
If you’re definitely coming, mail me with your t-shirt size — XS (female only) S, M, L, XL, XXL (male only).
Meet Deryck Hodge
Published by Matthew Revell September 10, 2009 in Meet the devs
Recently, Deryck Hodge took over from Bjorn Tillenius as the leader of Canonical’s Launchpad Bug Tracker team. That seemed like a good chance to catch up with Deryck. I’ll post an updated interview with Bjorn soon covering his new role as Launchpad Technical Architect.
Matthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?
Deryck: I work on the bugs application in Launchpad and am also, as of two weeks ago, the bugs team lead.
Matthew: Can we see something in Launchpad that you’ve worked on?
Deryck: I’ve been doing Ajax work on the bug page mostly. All of the inline bug subscription work is by me, and the inline description editing as well.
Matthew: Where do you work?
Deryck: I’m in Dadeville, Alabama, a very small town no one has everheard of. It’s not far from Auburn, a university town in Alabama. It’s a nice rural community around Alabama’s largest man-made lake.
Matthew: What can you see from your office window?
Deryck: The short answer is my drive way. The longer, more accurate, answer is a Barbie go-kart and two little tyke
four wheelers (of which none of them run), a pile of old lumber, some cardboard to take to recyle, and my dog, lying under the steps of my porch. I’m hesistant to tell all this as it makes me so much of a Southern cliche here in the U.S.
Matthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?
Deryck: I worked for several media companies. I worked for a company in Las Vegas called Greenspun Media most recently. And before that, I worked for the Washington Post Company and Scripps. I worked on all manner of web apps, but I had particular experiences in social applications — Facebook Platform, Open Social, iPhone, etc. I was even Emmy nominated as a developer if you can believe it (along with two colleagues) for a project I did while at the Post.
Matthew: How did you get into free software?
Deryck: Initially, a friend of mine gave me a RedHat CD. He was a Samba dev and was constanly talking with me about FOSS, so I knew a bit just from conversations with him. I was interested in learning to code and really getting into the
personal freedom FOSS granted. I tried RedHat for a while, then left it. Then, I came back to Linux as I was learning more about coding, spent some time on Suse and then settled on Ubuntu early on after it appeared.
Really, my interest in coding and FOSS are intertwined. I wouldn’t have learned to code had I not had access to free software and friends in FOSS who mentored me.
Matthew: What’s more important? Principle or pragmatism?
Deryck: I’m pragmatic in my pursuit of principal. 🙂 Seriously, though, principal drives everything for me, but I think you have to be pragmatic in achieving the goals that are derived from your principals. Some things are possible now, some in the future, and I try to be realistic about what can be achieved in the pursuit of my principals.
Matthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?
Deryck: I have been a Samba Team member for a little over 5 years now. I don’t work on Samba itself, but I have done a fair amount of work in supporting the project through maintaining its web sites, web apps, and related servers. I have some
minor, older contributions to Samba itself for SWAT and a couple of the VFS modules. I also have done some small contributions to Django in the past. I wish I could get back to helping on Django more. It’s one of those projects that’s just close to my heart.
Matthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about.
Deryck: It’s open source! Okay, so maybe some people have heard of that, but we should say it again. Launchpad is open source! Come hack on it with us!
Matthew: One of your favourite bands is Marillion. They’re about to release a stripped-back accoustic album. Are you ever tempted to take a stripped-back, simpler, almost “accoustic” approach to your code?
Deryck: I would love to be simpler, more “accoustic” as you say. But I wonder if my code isn’t more like Marillion’s Brave — a bit winding with some personal digressions, but (hopefully) a satisfying piece of work all the same.
Matthew: Okay, Kiko’s special question! You’re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?
Deryck: I’m addicted to buying online. I’m an easy sell for digital work — music, books, art. Anything I can carry on my phone, ebook reader, or laptop. I’m a bit of a virtual worlds addict, too. So I probably spend too much on Second Life. I’m the poster boy for funding the web via micro payments. 🙂
Matthew: Thanks Deryck!
New guides to translating your project
Published by Matthew Revell August 27, 2009 in Translations
I’ve revamped our guides to translating your project in Launchpad, with help from Jeroen and Danilo. You can find them here:
https://help.launchpad.net/Translations/YourProject
Let me know if you think there’s anything missing or that could be better explained.
Wear your badge with pride
Published by Matthew Revell August 24, 2009 in General
Want an easy way to direct people to your pages in Launchpad? Whether it’s for yourself or your project, you can pop one of our new badges on your website:
You can choose badges from 160px wide to 250px and we even host the badge for you, so all you need is to copy and paste the image URL.
Take a look at our badge kit page for the legal details and also to see the image URLs.
Screencast: generating and adding a PGP key to Launchpad
Published by Matthew Revell August 21, 2009 in General
You’ll need a PGP key registered in your Launchpad account if you want to use the bug tracker’s email interface, sign a Code of Conduct or upload a package.
There’s a guide in the help wiki and also now this screencast!
MySQL at Facebook on Launchpad
Published by Deryck Hodge in Projects
I spotted this link in my Facebook news feed yesterday: MySQL at Facebook is a Launchpad project to which Facebook publishes its patches for MySQL. There is also a Facebook note announcing the new project.
Surely Launchpad’s social networking credentials are in order now, and it’s just fun to point to a Facebook page on Launchpad rather than a Launchpad page on Facebook.
Screencast: sharing translations between releases of the same project
Published by Matthew Revell in Translations
Danilo blogged recently about Launchpad’s new feature which shares translations between releases of the same project.
Here’s a screencast showing how it works!
Screencast: exporting translations to a Bazaar branch
Published by Matthew Revell August 19, 2009 in Translations
As a follow-up to yesterday’s screen cast on importing translation template files from a Bazaar branch, here’s how to get Launchpad to regularly export your project’s translations to a Bazaar branch of your choice.
