The ASF's Board of Directors - interview with Bertrand Delacretaz
Rich Bowen interviewed me on how the world, and the ASF, have changed in the 14 years I spent in its Board of Directors, and why you might want to serve on it.
There's more videos of my talks and interviews on the pressbook page.
Youngsters who might be interested in doing an apprenticeship with us were
in the office this week, and I spent an afternoon teaching them the
basics of programming.
Favorite posts
Here's a list of my 47 favorite posts. Milestones, writings that I'm proud of, etc., going all
the way back to the early 2000s, when I started my first tech blog.
Speaking of Web Components, this script lists the
[custom elements](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/Web_Components/Using_custom_elements)
registered on a browser's current page.
Youngsters who might be interested in doing an apprenticeship with us were
in the office this week, and I spent an afternoon teaching them the
basics of programming.
This being the year of COVID-19, many of us are recording videos for online conferences.
While I cannot claim to be a professional video producer, by far, I _did_ work for a video studio during my studies (a long time ago - Betacam days, yes)
The below message is from 2000 but I think it still applies to open source collaboration in the 21st century.
I wasn't part of the Apache Jakarta story myself but have heard of that a few times over the years...
As open source comes of age and becomes mainstream, more and more job postings include "open source skills" in their requirements.
But do you really want to hire someone who spends their time exchanging flames with members of their own community in public forums? Someone who greets newcomers with "I have forwarded your question to /dev/null, thanks" and other RTFM answers?
I'm amazed at how many so-called "enterprise software systems" do not embrace the Web model in 2010, making them way much harder and much less fun to use than they should be.
I have recently started making parallels between this and music teachers, and the analogy seems to work. Don't ask where the parallel comes from...weird connections in my brain I guess.
I originally published this article on SD Times, republishing it to keep it around for posterity...
If you’re looking at embracing open source today, you might be a bit late to the game. Using open-source software is mainstream now, and being involved in open-source projects is nothing to write home about either. Everybody does it, we know how it works, its value is proven.
My current Fiat Punto Sport is the second Diesel car that I own, and I love those engines. Very smooth yet quite powerful acceleration, good fuel savings, a discount on state taxes thanks to low pollution, and it's very reliable and durable. And fun to drive. How often does Grandma go "wow" when you put the throttle down in your car? That happens here, and that Grandma is not usually a car freak.
