In the Spotlight - Alex Russell

I’ve been in Portland since Saturday, first attending FLOSS Foundations meeting which was very productive, and now attending meetings and tutorials and such. I’ve been a bit disconnected from the rest of the world due to The Conference Effect, but Nikolai from Uxebu gave me a heads-up that today they’ve announced a new Dojo + Django integration project called Dojango. A lot of the Dojo community thinks the Django guys have done a lot of things right, so this kind of integration makes tons of sense. I can’t wait to see how it evolves.

While here I also got wind that Sun has quietly announced a new version of the Java Communication Suite with a rich, Dojo-based web interface. I don’t know if it’s running publicly anywhere, but it looks like an impressive win for Sun’s Communication Suite customers.

If you’re in Portland, I hope you’ll join us for tonight’s dojo.dinner(), 6:30pm at the Chesterfield (and RSVP for it by by sendng us mail).

I’m leaving tomorrow for my yearly trek to Portland for OSCON. If you’re going, don’t hesitate to drop me a line if you want to catch up or RSVP for the Dojo meetup/dinner on Wed evening.

Speaking as a member of the OSCON program committee, I’m very happy about the quality of the talks in the web-ish tracks this year. There’s even a Dojo talk – even though for the first time in a long while, I won’t be giving any talks. The inimitable Matthew Russell, author of ORA’s Dojo: TDG will be giving an awesome talk on 2D drawing with Dojo’s GFX system. I know he’s got some awesome demos worked up, so I can’t wait to see the talk. Gavin Doughtie, occasional contributor to the GFX system, is also giving several talks that you’ll find me in. Should be a lot of fun.

On a more macro scale, though, I’ve started to become concerned that “Open Source” as a brand has lost its way. Those who would speak for Open Source have focused narrowly on licensing and have largely ignored the other social processes and artifacts that define what it means to contribute to OSS projects and how those artifacts lead to success or failure of projects, and therefore, of the movement such as it is. There’s a huge disconnect between what the letter of the Open Source law dictates (the licenses) and the social and process constraints that are required to build high-quality, trustable communities that ensure 100 point OSS products, and many businesses have struck on these differences as a way to use the Open Source brand to imply or insinuate that users should trust their products more than is warranted. OSI’s failure to address this brand erosion has had some troubling effects in the small JavaScript corner of the OSS world of late, and I know we’re not alone. OSI has also proven completely impotent in preventing license proliferation, further eroding the Open Source brand. There are, of course, lots of folks who are also concerned about these thing, and so I’m excited to see David Recordon (of OpenID, etc. fame) giving a talk which looks to talk about some of the community aspects. I tend to blow off “community” talks at conferences, but given David’s use of the phrase “Open Web” and his unique perspective, I’ll be interested to see what he says. I’ll also be curious to see if and how any of this is discussed at the FLOSSCON meeting of OSS Foundation leaders tomorrow and Sunday.

If you’ll be in Portland next week, don’t hesitate to join us for the dojo.dinner() on Wed. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone again and talking though the issues. Should be a great time.

Go! Go right now to and watch Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog (if you aren’t already compulsively refreshing the page in the hopes that they post episode 3 a tad bit early). Joss Whedon does it again.

Note: this post is far afield of my usual discussions. In the interest of not distracting those who read this blog because I usually discuss web-oriented things, the content of the post is beyond the jump.

(more…)

As Dylan just posted over on the official Dojo blog, we’re having our next bi-annual Dojo Developer Day event in Boston just prior to the Ajax Experience conference.

Like previous DDD events, the first day will be somewhat contributor-oriented, and many decisions about the direction of the project are likely to get made there. The Monday event will be community focused with tutorials, presentations of new work, time to present your Dojo-based apps, and opportunities for Q&A with the developers who are hacking on the features you use every day.

Sound interesting? Sign up!