Present Perfect

Another year, another GUADEC. I'll post more on stuff later when I'm awake again, because I'm completely wasted. It feels nice to have the support of a community behind you, thanks to all you people.

The one thing I wanted to mention right now, lest I forget, is that I kept thinking about Bruce Perens' heckling Dr. Edgar Villanueva Núnez. While Bruce's argument sounded reasonable, something didn't gel with me, and I couldn't put it under words.

When getting off of the plane in Amsterdam I noticed a guy carrying a really big carton box with Peru-Lima on the side, looking eerily familiar. So I stepped up to him and polished up my best Spanish to ask him about it, since at the talk his explanation might not have been very comprehensible with the ad-hoc translation, and I was very tired myself to follow.

Talking to him I realized what I felt was wrong with Bruce's attitude. Basically, Bruce's argument revolved around the idea that there should not be discriminating laws that favour open source, because it turns us into the bad guys. A choice should be made on technical excellence.

But you know, that argument is completely not relevant. Dr. Villanueva's mission statement is not to put free software on the map, or favour it, or have it prosper. People jumped on him making him a hero to the cause - a fact which he himself seemed most of all surprised at - and then he gets attacked by another hero.

What Dr. Villanueva is trying to do is to enforce laws to have free software because he wants his people to have the possibility of getting good software that doesn't have to cost much and they can look at and change. He's doing it for his people, not for the free software community. And really, wasn't that the point of free software in the first place ?
Sure, Bruce makes a good point, and I agree with him.

But Dr. Villanueva is not a free software hacker. He's a statesman trying to do right by his people. And to see a politician honestly trying to do right by his people is a refreshing sight. And on top, he seems like a very bright man and he took out the time to answer someone he doesn't even know in a private conversation and explain his reasoning. I hope Bruce after the talk yesterday did the same thing.

For those wondering, recorded Ogg streams will be online sometime soon. The hard disk is in my backpack and there's some basic splicing to do, and then they'll be out there.

Another year, another GUADEC. I'll post more on stuff later when I'm awake again, because I'm completely wasted. It feels nice to have the support of a community behind you,...

Doctor Edgar Villanueva, for your viewing pleasure, with live translation. I have to say I was sort of disappointed about Bruce Perens acting like a suit and upstaging him and basically reading out loud a huge question. It wasn't necessarily wrong or bad to bring up the point that using laws to force Free Software might not be the proper solution. But making it into a little show felt like the wrong way to do it. By contrast, the Doctor gave a very lucid answer, well articulated, clearly showing that this guy has very good ideas and expresses them very well too.

I hope he learns English, so he can make his talks even more interesting.

And I hope next year we do live translation subtitling :)

Doctor Edgar Villanueva, for your viewing pleasure, with live translation. I have to say I was sort of disappointed about Bruce Perens acting like a suit and upstaging him and...

Bdale Garbee, for your viewing pleasure. Finished three minutes ago at GUADEC, already on a webserver. Just because we like you.

Bdale Garbee, for your viewing pleasure. Finished three minutes ago at GUADEC, already on a webserver. Just because we like you.

Day two of GUADEC, setting up stuff in the morning is really smooth now. Though getting up at 7.30 still sucks. Next year we have to have some other people actually do the streaming using our stuff, so we can hang out and sleep :) We even had time to make sure we had the sound correctly, and the wicked parabolic mike to get audience questions should work now too.

Lots of supportive comments from everyone both on and off the GUADEC grounds. One guy mailed me with a screenshot saying "Yes, the stream is working and simply rocks! I felt like beeing there."

That's exactly what we're aiming for. This is our first time streaming video, and we've already taken notes for everything we can do better next time (especially, getting high-res slides in the stream, for one thing), but it's very motivating to spend time discussing "what sort of rocking things will we have ready for the next time" instead of "oops, what did we do wrong ?". We made it. All the while our little server that could was running close to 3% CPU. Hm, we need a bigger testcase I guess.

Some random statistics: yesterday's viewer's ratings high score were achieved by none other than Dave Camp, who had 60 people watching, and people asking questions for him on IRC which were proxied through some of the gnome hackers.
Given a stream roughly close to 60 kbyte/sec, that accounts for almost 29 mbit/sec. The server is on a 100 mbit/sec. I hope nobody here on the university minded much.

Day two of GUADEC, setting up stuff in the morning is really smooth now. Though getting up at 7.30 still sucks. Next year we have to have some other people...

The server project is just a *lot* of fun to hack on.

Here's

Wim yesterday fixing the overlay code and grabbing the logo.

Yesterday night's new code, today in production. Yes, we don't know what we're doing.

One more thing left to correct that's probably again due to caps negotiation (anything with more than three elements just needs fixed caps inbetween all over, this has to be fixed), and then I'm not touching the machines anymore.

The server project is just a *lot* of fun to hack on. Here's Wim yesterday fixing the overlay code and grabbing the logo. Yesterday night's new code, today in production....