Changes

Early on in his talk, walkah discussed how blogging evolved from these large walls of text written by an individual to these smaller, shorter “microbloggings” with a higher level of interactivity between individuals. As more microblogging services became available and opened up their APIs, cross-site micro blogging began. Once these social internetworks began to form, other services began to crop up. Rather than updating each distinct social network, [http://ping.fm/ Ping.fm] allows for all your social networks to be updated with one fell swoop. As individuals began to comment on microbloggings on sites other than the source, the need to have comments “swim upstream” arose and the [http://www.salmon-protocol.org/ Salmon] protocol was developed. With so many social networks that an individual may belong to (Ping.fm boasts support for “Over 100 web and desktop apps”) a common identifying key was needed and the [http://webfinger.org/ WebFinger] protocol came into use. The main focus Even with all this, site-specific jargon may still remain in some posts. He gave the great example of the majority of his talk was then shown a user's Facebook messages coming from Twitter loaded to the brim with @ signs and # tags, and how one rare instance when he discussed their solution: the open [http://status.net/2010/03/07/understandinguser wrote a Facebook-ostatus OStatus] protocol. Like most other protocols (HTTP using TCP/IP) StatusNet doesn’t remake originating message a Facebook friend had commented on how it was the wheel and makes use first of many existing protocols to accomplish something. The their microbloggings (Atom-implementedstatus updates) protocols are:that they could understand.

The main focus of his talk was then shown when he discussed their solution: the open [http://status.net/2010/03/07/understanding-ostatus OStatus] protocol. Like most other protocols (HTTP using TCP/IP) StatusNet doesn’t remake the wheel and makes use of many existing protocols to accomplish something. Through the reuse of existing and well-established protocols, Atom syndication feeds and custom development they have a microblogging solution that promises to be free of these problems. The chosen protocols are: * Google’s [http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/ PubSubHubbub] (PuSH) protocol is an open protocol which allows internetwork inter-network communication between servers and the pushing of stories from publishers to subscribers. This is a more lightweight way of achieving real-time (real enough time) updates than for the client to constantly hammer the server for update requests only to receive the same information over and over again. This can be thought of as the networking equivalent of the [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_pattern Observer] Design Pattern in software development and was really quite novel to learn about.

With these protocols combining forces to form OStatus, StatusNet serves as an open source version of Twitter that minds it's messages, where they come from and where they go. The fact that they offer this product free and with a great deal of support on how to integrate it into existing systems is terrific. If another microblogging system isn't supported, it can be simply added in as a patch either from the system owner or from StatusNet themselves. Either way, further functionality is integrated into the system to create a larger whole. The open and extensible nature of it all is great too, considering the scope of it's efforts in inter-networking many dynamic and constantly changing services. What I find really neat about this specific product is that not only does the open source product gives back to its community in that it may provide the mechanism of communication to allow that community to function.

Both Walkah and Matt appreciate different things about open source, but both serve the same ends. Walkah is a web developer who likes technology, making things, and buildings applications up. He likes community and is actively involved with many a great number of social networks online, though it seemed his real passion was developmentto develop. Matt on the other hand, is not a developer, but still likes to build and make things happen. Matt takes to the other side of the open source coin: community. He builds community, gets discussion and conversions flowing and through their communication then the software products are born around which the communities can stay, grow and become self-sufficient. While Matt and Walkah come from completely different backgrounds and have different roles in the open source world, they both do essentially the same thing: build and make things happen. From this, and that the two parts feed into each other, it can be said that open source is not just about development any more than it is about community. It is about both: they have a dependency on one another which gets and keeps the open source wheels churning and software continually coming.

Coming into FSOSS, my views on FSOSS open source were more or less what I'd understood through observation. Distributed programming, communication for collaboration, and organization for production and long term goalswere all integral parts. I knew community was important to open source life, but reflecting on FSOSS challenged some of those ideas and reinforced and drove others home. Community promotes a sense of belonging, kinship and ownership to glue the people together around a project. Through communication and collaboration software is developed. With the foundation of code base and community built, the iterative nature of software development then works its magic not just on the code but on the community as well, continually building both. These two sides, community and coding, feed into each other and are dependent on each other to accomplish anything larger than a single person may be capable of. I realized open source is like an engine. Ideally, a great many parts work together in symphony to produce work and make things move. The code serve as the gears and are the components that grind and work and produce force and exhaust. The people that work on the code are fittingly the fuel for this engine. But even with those two, the machine will not function. Lots of work may be done but the gears will seize and the machine will go nowhere. The point that I'd already known but was really driven home at FSOSS was the necessity of the third element: oil. The communication, collaboration and organization of the people involved greases the wheels and allows the fuel to work with them.

This is how some projects such as the Linux kernel have stayed alive for 20 years strong, while others like Mozilla Firefox and the openings it made allowed for other browsers have unearthed Microsoft's hold on the browser market from the 95% it once held by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table one third]. In fact, some busy sites like W3Schools even show Firefox as having [http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp one and a half times] the traffic of Internet Explorer. As Walkah discussed that open source allows others to build and connect, Matt discussed it's a way of making a change for the better. Both of these were instrumental in the success of Mozilla, Linux and StatusNet.