gefira blog

(This is a re-post of what I sent to python-announce@ but with several screenshots attached)

I’m very happy to announce the first release of Zato, the next generation ESB and application server, available under a commercial-friendly open-source LGPL license.

https://zato.io

What can you expect out of the box?

• HTTP, JSON, SOAP, Redis, AMQP, JMS WebSphere MQ, ZeroMQ, FTP, SQL, hot-deployment, job scheduling, statistics, high-availability load balancing and more
• Incredible productivity with Python
• Painless rollouts with less downtime
• Slick web admin GUI, CLI and API
• Awesome documentation (several hundred A4 pages)
• 24×7 commercial support and training

Project’s site: https://zato.io
Download: https://zato.io/download/zato-1.0.tar.bz2
Support: https://zato.io/support
Docs: https://zato.io/docs
Architecture: https://zato.io/docs/architecture/overview.html
Tutorial: https://zato.io/docs/tutorial/01.html
GitHub: https://github.com/zatosource
Mailing list: https://mailman-mail5.webfaction.com/listinfo/zato-discuss
IRC: irc://irc.freenode.net/zato
Twitter: https://twitter.com/zatosource
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=5015554
Diversity statement: https://zato.io/docs/project/diversity.html

Spread the news and enjoy

Cheers!

@fourthrealm

I wonder if anyone is willing to somehow tackle the idea I’d like to introduce in this post. Or maybe just tell me it’s all crap, doesn’t make any sense and maybe even sounds fine but will sure get hairy when one gets into details.

So the deal is, among other sites, I happen to have a user account over at Launchpad and Ohloh too. Fair enough. Now the thing is, there’s this karma concept associated with having an account. Basically, the more work you do at the site – be it resolving bugs, dealing with user questions, committing to repos, etc. – the more karma points you receive. The points can’t be traded for anything, no I guess it’s just a more or less interesting way to reaffirm one’s importance in this cold world full of people making quick judgements based on brief and cursory acquaintances, if you’re into that sort of things.

Anyway, about the karma. The nicer citizen of the open source world you are, the more karma you have, quite simple. But the trouble is, when you go to a new site, you need to build it all up from the very bottom, you have no karma in that new place. You’re the same person but the site doesn’t know you so it doesn’t give a fig about your having collected oh-so-many points on other sites – which is of course just another trivial example of the mismatch that underlies the difference between proving that you are yourself and that the computer you used at a certain time was really operated by you. Now, I couldn’t care less about it all – and still I’m not sure what to think about the idea for that matter – but the issue that I’m really thinking about is that the new sites sometimes require your proving that you’re a sane person, usually in the sense of not being a spammer. For instance, there are some forums that require that you post at least one message without links before you can post something that contains links – which is a simple and probably efficient spam protection. So what I had to do the other day at one forum was to post a silly message in a thread that I wasn’t really prepared to take part in before I could post a release announcement of one of the projects I participate in. I’m sure you can see where I’m coming from, had the forum known that I wasn’t that much of a jerk they wouldn’t've asked me for anything, they would’ve just somehow fetched my karma information, would’ve nodded to it and would’ve let me post the message just like that. And I think it could work in a general case. Why should you require me to prove I’m not a moron if your good friends over at the other great open source hub have already come to the conclusion that I’m an OK person?

I’m not really that convinced it should be done but I can see at least that one point about posting links that could be made easier with the concept we’re talking here. It’s likely that it could be useful whenever there’s any sort of reward dependent on the user’s reputation involved, that scenarios are likely candidates. And I certainly don’t want to even think how to properly implement it, I haven’t even written a single karma-providing system like the ones mentioned previously so I have no clue what kind of a common data model we’re talking about and how useful a generalization of what particular sites use could be. Just throwing out some idea, nothing more.

@fourthrealm

Like the title says, am I the only one to realize that a little kitty dies in a horrible way whenever someone says “experience” instead of “user interface”? I didn’t even know how widespread it was prior to reading the Mark Shuttleworth’s article and all the replies on various blogs.

But now, I have this uncanny feeling that I’m in a minority and all’s lost, no one except for me can see the utter absurdity of saying  “The user is always able to install a different experience”. Say what?! To install an experience? I understand installing a different window manager can instill an experience of some sort but installing one? Isn’t that going too far?

What bothers me in it is that the first time I saw it was when I was installing some proprietary software and the thing asked me if I was interested in anonymously sending the installation’s experience to the company producing said software in order for them to improve my experience next time. I don’t know if I can even fully appreciate the ridiculousness of such a request. My experience is mine and is bound to be so and can never be expressed anonymously, that’s the whole deal about experience, that it’s so personal. Leave out the person and you’re left with a corporatesque gibberish meant to attract clueless victims so that they can be squeezed out of any juices left.

That’s why I was so disappointed to spot the damn term when people were talking about open-source software, I mean come on! You can do better! You don’t have to sound like some PR people speaking out to customers instead of people. I know it sounds boring and a bad style to use the same word or an expression over and over again but really, snatching the worst of what the proprietary world has to offer and using it in open-source environment sounds slovenly beyond any hope my friends!

Ciekawe podcasty serwują Panowie Greg Turnquist i Russ Miles. Na pondjumpers.com na razie można posłuchać o Springu, Pythonie i Spring Pythonie, Lifcie i Groovim. Autorzy są programistami poliglotami, a podcasty najwyraźniej dotyczą tego, na czym się dobrze znają, więc kolejne odcinki też powinny być miłe dla ucha. Dla twittujących jest z kolei @pondjumprs (w przeciwieństwie do @pondjumpers ).