The conference will feature 2 tracks, one targeting WordPress UX topics and issues, and the other targeting strictly development issues. The day will also be host to a WordPress Un-Conference where participants are encouraged to pitch talks and join in discussion.

The conference is open to all WordPress Developers and Designers interested in learning about practical, applied WordPress development by industry thought leaders and local WordPress practitioners.

WordCamp:Developers is part of the Vancouver Open Source Week.

We hope to see you there!

http://wordcampdevelopers.com/

This is not PHP.net, this is http://takien.com/

takien.com is NOT php.net

This is not Takien.com, this is PHP.net

This is not taiken.com, this is php.net

First the ugly:

Now the Beautiful:

Here are my photos, taken in an empty colo facility, just sitting there, waiting for a reason to go to work. The collocation facility was built, and then never used:

This location is in a Canadian town, originally built by 360 Networks, which built a number of these buildings, built to identical spec, to service its fiber optic trunk line.  360 is long gone and the property was part of an assets liquidation deal. The photos are from about a year ago, and I dont know what happened to the property. But what you are looking at is a beautiful dream job, with a super redundant clean power system, with a truck sized diesel gen set to feed the batteries. And its right beside a railway track, so you could even roll up a diesel car beside the generator for long term supply. Naturally, all the power is routed through the battery bank, the facility has air cleaning and conditioning, cooling, and the location can be cooled by ambient air 8 months of the year. It has a secure entry system, high quality trunk line, pure copper and silver components in the power system; the bank of batteries alone must be worth over a million dollars.

The collocation facility was built, and then never used…

http://www.globaltvbc.com/video/index.html?releasePID=F2c99hC0V1kc4WrGZu0sZguKx_83_IuT

Editors,
As a web developer experienced with WordPress, I know you have made errors in your understanding of the software. If the mayor has really broken some law with regards to the bidding process, then that is another matter. It is however hard for people to find good, skilled web developers and themers, on a per project basis, when a quality website is needed.

A quick consultation of the home page of http://wordpress.org would show you that this free open source software is used by the New York Times, Wired.com, and many many other individuals and corporations much larger than Global TV. Suffice to say if it is a good choice for NYT then it is probably a good software choice for Mayor Robertson. Actually it is not even so much about the software, but the developers who take steps to ‘harden’ the software from security intrusions during the development and deployment process.

It is a shame that a member of the press such as Global TV does not understand the parallels between freedom of speech and of the press, and the openness of the Free Open Source Software community, and how both are so effective in exposing lies and moving towards the truth.

Free Open Source Software such as WordPress is free as in speech, not free as in beer. Indeed, WordPress is just one software package among thousands of others that the Internet and the World Wide Web rest upon. But I realise by the comments in your report that you are unaware of the massive worldwide movement to create and distribute Free Open Source Software. While the cost of the software may be a factor for the contractors, as it is in every other business, it is the openness that is really important. The openness of the software and the community allow for the exposure of security problems, and then expedites their repair to the entire community of WordPress users. It also allows for such things as the enforcement of high technical standards, and the independent development and release of thousands of additional software add-ons to boost and customise software functionality.

Shawn Moore of thinkprofits.com claims in the news piece that he can quickly hack and steal information submitted through the contact form on Gregor Robertson’s website. Instead of just claiming this, he should prove it. I say this because security breaches in general take more time to manifest themselves than Moore implied when he said ‘quickly’. And if Moore does know of a current security exploit WordPress, he should do the right thing and contribute the exploit to the WordPress development community, or to the head company behind WordPress, Automaticc, so that the patch may be written and released.

It is a shame that a member of the press such as Global TV does not understand the parallels between freedom of speech and of the press, and the openness of the Free Open Source Software community, and how both are so effective in exposing lies and moving towards the truth. You should be really educating your viewers on the benefits of Free Open Source Software instead of insinuating that WordPress is merely a ‘cheap’ alternative.

As I said in the beginning, I dont know if the mayor broke any laws or not. But please understand that good developers may be harder to come across than you think. Neither are they cheap. Please also educate yourselves on the benefits of Free Open Source software because it is in use widely and in many roles across the Internet.

• GST Only: 5%
  • Alberta
  • Quebec
  • Manitoba
  • Saskatchewan
  • Prince Edward Island
  • Nunavut
  • Yukon Territories
  • Northwest Territories
• HST 12%
  • British Columbia
• HST 13%
  • Ontario
  • New Brunswick
  • Newfoundland
• HST 15%
  • Nova Scotia

From what I have learned, you charge the buyer the tax rate relevant to their local. You may be in BC but you charge them HST 15% because they live in Nova Scotia.

Disclaimer:  I am not a fan of taxes. Just trying to help fellow developers out.

#!/bin/bash
# run this script with chmod 755 permissions.
# modified grep script
#

grep $1 $2 * | grep -v “\.svn” | less

You will still get booted, but at least you can get right back to where you were when you reconnect by replaying the above command.

you probably know mysql command line access if you are on this page. You have to know how to work with this because a database can exceed the size allowable for transfer over http, making into phpMyAdmin impossible. But a goodie that I found is that case when you want to wipe out all the tables in a db, but not the db itself, in order to preserve all the privleges, and access credentials. The following line can save a step:
#mysqldump -uuser -ppassword –add-drop-table –no-data dbname | grep ^DROP | mysql -uuser -ppassword dbname

Another way to wipe out everything:
#find . -name ‘*’ -print0 | xargs -0 rm
this means find here, the name of all, dont print it to stdout, then redirect the output to as an argument that the rm command will execute on.

#svn import codebase file:///home/user/pathtorepositorydir/repository_directory -m “initial import”
check out your remote repository into your local machine at the command line:
#svn checkout svn+ssh://user@domain.com/home/user/repository_directory/trunk .
local:
#svn checkout file:///home/user/pathtorepository/repository_directory html/

now you are checked in and out, you can delete codebase directory.

svn export works in a similar way. It pulls out the files from the repository sans .svn directories.
#svn export svn+ssh://user@domain.com/home/user/repository_directory/trunk

Check out the Acquia build of Drupal, from their svn repository:

svn export –force https://svn.acquia.com/drupal/branches/1.x-6.x/  .

GourmetPregnancy.com website

Notes for development

When creating a WordPress site, I now generally attempt to pull in all the resources I can in one go, as I find this saves a large amount of time. I have a small project in github for automated installation of WordPress, which I would like to keep telling people about. Grabbing all the resources for a project is a very regular, standard task, and this process can be automated. There are other projects like it for other applications, like Drush for Drupal.

When developers get into new packages, they start off by downloading zips and tarballs. A little more skill and confidence and people start pulling down the software from the SVN or CVS repository. My github project is a shell script with the commands captured for obtaining the WordPress core, as well as a host of the common plugins and themes that I am going to use. Its a very simple idea, but one that is a huge time saver when you use it. It takes about 2.5 minutes for the script to run on my local Ubuntu desktop, in the shell. Its not perfect, but it is just meant to be a massive time saver over the tedium of grabbing the source, and then browsing through plugins and themes. A script like this can save untold hours.

So after that the site was a matter of layout and enabling plugins, creating a copy of the arras theme to hack on, configuring the cforms contact form page, and a host of layout fixes, for which Joe Hewitt’s Firebug plugin for Firefox is invaluable. Even so, there are multiple style sheets in the system and it was found lower down in the details that there was 1 or 2 conflicts. The Arras theme is more of a ‘feature’ theme as opposed to a ‘news’ theme, but still we spruced it up by removing columns and expanding the main area. Incidentally, the cformsII plugin required a complete rebuilding when the site was launched in the root domain. It didnt like me hacking the serialized array directly in the db.

You replace the instance of ‘the_excerpt();’ with ‘the_content();’ to get your full posts for the category. Search engines and users will thank you for it.

The home page in the theme has a Jquery slide show and dynamic feature boxes. There is always a question of the tools you have to do the presentation and we decided to swap out the slide show for a flash object, and replace the lower boxes with static content, since they will never change. The theme does provide for page & post options in in the slide show and sections on the page, and the options within the theme and plugins would have an influence over the content design, meaning what content gets defined as pages and posts. There is the time factor to consider in straightening out all the little issues between our layout and their theme, so after some investigation the static chunks and flash object was how we did it.

The header navigation took some time to master, but it came out looking nicely. The multi-level navigation plugin was in the end, not needed.

The book page has a light box plugin working, which works quite well.

The site has two post categories, News & Reviews and Recipes. The one important change for posts was a simple one line change to the template. It seems that in WordPress themes the post category listing displays only an excerpt by default. This doesn’t do much for usability or page ranking. Home pages, as I have on other news & blog themed WordPress sites, show the latest posts from all categories. You would expect that navigating to a given category should present like the home page, but only for that given category. That is not the case, but the fix is a one liner. You replace the instance of ‘the_excerpt();’ with ‘the_content();’ to get your full posts for the category. Search engines and users will thank you for it.

• Windows: 42%
• Linux: 38.5%
• Mac OS X: 19.1%
• Everybody else: 0.4%

The Register is only telling half the story. 38.5% on Linux is a fantastic percentage. I for one am a happy Ubuntu & Gnome desktop user and I haven’t depended on Windows desktop for at least 6 years. Its a shame though that so many employers and technical people still use Windows desktop when Linux Desktop has everything you need, its free, and its not crap either. Funny that the circling vultures at The Register would focus so much on how PHP coders are still on Windows, and fail to point out that as a group they are agressive adopters of Linux Desktop. Visitor stats for websites indicate that Linux desktop is a lot less than 38.5%.  PHP developers are helping lead the way for Linux as a choice for the desktop that is fast encroaching on Windows turf. That turf will soon be taken away from Windows by Linux. Somebody should have pointed that out. Guess that is what I am doing.

Linux dominates the web server world, and it makes darn good sense to see run the same system on the desktop as for the server for reasons of uniformity and behaviour. Its an obvious right choice to make. Learn to work well in the Linux shell on the desktop and you can use all those skills on the server.

Oddly, The Register reported all this but did not supply a reference to the source report on Zend.com

Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/02/17/php_windows_linux/

santas storm my quiet web cafe

santas storm my quiet web cafe

There goes the neigborhood. Who the hell let these guys in anyways?? Pwned by Xmas!

Relative Cost Of A Software Bug Fix

Slide credit: Barry Boehm, “Equity Keynote Address” March 19, 2007.

This chart is intended for developers, to decide how best to spend ones time. Ever wonder why, as a developer, fixing bugs is such a pain and a kludge? There is something not simply tough about fixing bugs, there is something fundamentally wrong about putting any effort at all into repairing them. But the chart is also a message to the paying client, the person whose dime it is on. A client may be only thinking in the short term to make the software work, but it is the most expensive and unproductive path to the realization of goals.

The effort to fix bugs is great and the rewards are minimal. Frustrations are high, satisfactions are low. The website suffers from some sort of performance penalty, users are inconvenienced. Bugs must be dealt with with some amount of procedural overhead no matter what, and when the bug is fixed and submitted, very little was ever really accomplished. It is really far better to think of a better solution to all your problems together rather than to continue fixing things one at at time. It will cost the customer less and they will get more. So when bugs become a staple of the work load, its time to persuade the client to accept a rewrite.

…with the software in production, fixing bugs is akin to repairing a car while it is driving down the road, long after it has left the drawing board, the assembly line, and the dealer lot. Its as expensive to do as it can possibly be.

Developers still have a great deal in common with the clients they perform work for. They charge money for their work so they think in terms of the cost in terms of labor time (actually, developers also think this way when they work on their own software). The question every developer asks is, “What is the simplest, easiest, and fastest way to get something done?” The answer could be open to interpretation, but that is because the long view must be taken into consideration, and that is why software makes use of functions, templates, classes, objects, and design patterns. The work is needed now, but how will it be possible to understand the software in a few months time when noone is mentally fresh? How do I share my ideas with other people? How do I take the long view into account?

Despite the love a client may have for their own project, nobody is interested in working on the same software forever. After all, software developers are creative people who really want to expand their skills and take all that they have learned and apply it to the next project, instead of keeping something half dead on life support.

I enjoy attending talks from the best people in the world in my business, because they are very good at exposing the importance of planning and organizing the overall picture, and are very knowledgeable in all the concepts that make projects produce a top quality result in an efficient manner. They also point out the simple mistakes people make that cost them so much. When we are at the far right of the graph, with the software in production, fixing bugs is akin to repairing a car while it is driving down the road, long after it has left the drawing board, the assembly line, and the dealer lot. Its as expensive to do as it can possibly be.

Developers should try to understand the message of this graphic before going further fixing bugs. If you are put in a position fixing bugs, it is time to change the way you work, because you are the one bearing the cost in terms of your own time performing the least valuable, most expensive, and least meaningful work.

Web developers as they learn start by downloading packages in zip and tar.gz archives which is fine. A pro technique is to pull in the resource via SubVersion (svn). Svn provides additional features such as svn externals and svn hooks. Svn externals allows for the pulling in of external resources into a defined project in a svn repository. Svn hooks is for additional labor saving scripting that allows for the automation of repeated tasks such as a script that can pass along data from commit messages into other resources in the project such as the bug tracker. Learning these tricks allows for labor savings at every step in the production cycle. We can take these practices to the next level with capturing the commands in a bash script and then organise all the features of a website in a deployment script, something that is done all the time at software majors.

This script is a big-ass time saver.

I took the time to sort this out recently because I had some web development requests from people who have simple websites that could be converted to WordPress easily enough, but I wasn’t interested in going fishing for plugins and themes twice, and again when the next people come along needing the same thing. The job of a software developer should be to automate processes. I say often that the credo of developers is not to work for a living, but to eliminate work. But this idea is not always employed by developers in all the places it could, and its sometimes even a harder to get a client on board to make full use of methods and procedures that automate tasks and eliminate work.

…the credo of (software) developers is not to work for a living, but to eliminate work.

Lets at least cover the benefits in point form:

• The script takes a couple of minutes and you save hours.
• You dont repeat the labor, but you can repeat the use of the script, deploying anywhere else.
• All your stuff is there at the beginning. Useful for planning, development, and policy across teams.
• You are organised, and you can develop variations. Svn export may be good enough for your needs.

In pseudo code, here is what your script will do:

• Set up your repository.
• Make your directory structure for your project.
• Check out your repository.
• Run procedures for svn externals for core WordPress.
• Run procedures for svn externals for plugins, iterating through data in an external file resource.
• Run procedures for svn externals for themes, iterating through data in an external file resource.
• Grab additional resources in an array, iterate through them using wget command, extract them.
• Cleanup.
• Commit message.
• … anything else you can think to do.

The bash file, save as getallwpsvn.sh:

#!/bin/bash
# run this script with chmod 755 permissions.

workPath=$(pwd)

rm -rf filerepository repository www *.zip # this line cleans dir for testing, comment out when done

svnadmin create repository

mkdir -p filerepository/{branches,tags,trunk/{html,db,cron,scripts,themes,plugins,project,selenium}}
# got anything to import into those directories under trunk?
# import into the directories under trunk now
# before the next step
svn import filerepository file://$workPath/repository -m "initial import using getallwpsvn.sh script"
rm -rf filerepository
svn checkout file://$workPath/repository/trunk www
cd www
svn rm html
svn commit -m "rm html temporarily for clean propset"
svn propset svn:externals 'html http://core.svn.wordpress.org/trunk/' .
svn up
cd html/wp-content/
# get plugins from repository http://svn.wp-plugins.org/
# plugins listed in svn.plugins.externals
svn propset svn:externals -F ../../../svn.plugins.externals plugins/
#svn commit "plugins propset" # no commit if no local repository
svn up
# themes repository: http://svn.wp-themes.org/
# themes repository is a bit of a ghost town, none grabbed here
# browse the site and get the zip
# themes listed in svn.themes.externals file, if there are any
svn propset svn:externals -F svn.themes.externals plugins/
svn up

cd themes
# load up on themes
#more human readable format for array

THEMESITES[0]=http://dev.digitalnature.ro/fusion/fusion-wordpress.zip
THEMESITES[1]=http://ericulous.com/?load=googlechrome.zip
THEMESITES[2]=http://ericulous.com/?load=internetcenter.zip
THEMESITES[3]=http://ericulous.com/?load=redbusiness.zip
THEMESITES[4]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/elegant-box.4.1.1.zip
THEMESITES[5]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thirtyseventyeight.4.0.zip
THEMESITES[6]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thirtyseventyeight.4.0.zip
THEMESITES[7]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/constructor.0.6.4.zip
THEMESITES[8]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/jq.2.4.zip
THEMESITES[9]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/ahimsa.3.0.zip
THEMESITES[10]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/retromania.1.3.zip
THEMESITES[11]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/skinbu.1.0.3.zip
THEMESITES[12]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/mystique.1.16.zip
THEMESITES[13]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/lightword.1.9.3.zip
THEMESITES[14]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/monochrome.2.3.zip
THEMESITES[15]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/thematic.0.9.5.1.zip
THEMESITES[16]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/hybrid.0.6.1.zip
THEMESITES[17]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/new-york.1.0.1.zip
THEMESITES[18]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/f8-lite.1.3.zip
THEMESITES[19]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/simplex.1.3.1.zip
THEMESITES[20]=http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/download/cleanr.0.1.2.zip

for s in ${THEMESITES[@]}
do wget "$s"
done

FILES="*.zip"
for f in "$FILES"
do unzip "$f"
done

rm *.zip
rm *.zip.*
cd ../../../
svn commit -m "load in of plugins and themes complete"

cd $workPath
cp $workPath/www/html/wp-config-sample.php  $workPath/www/html/wp-config.php
chmod 777 $workPath/www/html/wp-config.php
chmod 777 $workPath/www/html/wp-content #temporarily, for cache
mkdir $workPath/www/html/wp-content/uploads && chmod 777 $_
touch $workPath/www/html/.htaccess && chmod 777 $_

# do any post processing, other importing now, and commit it if you did.

Set the file permission to chmod 755, and run it from the shell command line as in ./getallwpsvn.sh.

The file you save as svn.plugins.externals:

all-in-one-seo-pack http://svn.wp-plugins.org/all-in-one-seo-pack/trunk
advertising-manager http://svn.wp-plugins.org/advertising-manager/trunk
cforms http://svn.wp-plugins.org/cforms/trunk
google-sitemap-generator http://svn.wp-plugins.org/google-sitemap-generator/trunk
sociable http://svn.wp-plugins.org/sociable/trunk
stats  http://svn.wp-plugins.org/stats/trunk
ultimate-google-analytics http://svn.wp-plugins.org/ultimate-google-analytics/trunk
vipers-video-quicktags http://svn.wp-plugins.org/vipers-video-quicktags/trunk
wordbook http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wordbook/trunk
wp-flickr http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-flickr/trunk
wp-super-cache http://svn.wp-plugins.org/wp-super-cache/trunk

The svn.plugins.externals file is a name – resource listing, one per line, when you have more than one resource to define with svn externals.

Please note that you may not need all of this; comment whatever out you want. You dont need to create a local repository, that is only if you are doing team development, or perhaps custom development on themes and plugins. I found though that it was necessary with svn propset directives to create a top-level directory structure wherein is stored all the different directories. The point of this exercise is a pull-in of public resources in a step that you can repeat automatically over and over. It also need not be a very sophisticated script to get the benefits from it.

I had of course heard of svn externals before but a little explanation really enlightened me. You can multiply your power as a developer with svn externals. Alongside your own project under svn control, you can add in other remote projects from remote svn repositories with the svn propset command and they will naturally remain current as you run updates on your own repository.

You can multiply your power as a developer with svn externals.

In the struggle for project housekeeping it can be a chore to keep libraries, plugins, middleware, and other goodies up to date. In general we as developers have a mindset about keeping a project managed by version control, but its an idea that I have seen stopping at the project in question. The project is under svn, the rest of the libraries are from static resources like tarballs. By just extending the power of version control just a little bit further, we have a big labor saver, and we are opened up to the great universe of software. Svn externals gives us mighty lever, because we then have the power to keep in step with all of the other bits and pieces that go along with a project.

Your main project is under version control, but your rich html editor, TinyMCE, is not. Well it can be. Lets use it as an example.

test$ mkdir tmc
test$ cd $_
test/tmc$ mkdir html
test/tmc$ mkdir project
test/tmc$ cd $_
test/tmc/project$ mkdir branches tags trunk
test/tmc/project$ cd -
/home/pbg/websites/test/tmc
test/tmc$ cd html/
test/tmc/html$ ls
test/tmc/html$ emacs index.php
test/tmc/html$ cd ../
test/tmc$ cp -rf html project/trunk/
test/tmc$ ls
html  project
test/tmc$ ls project/trunk/
html
test/tmc$ ls project/trunk/html/
index.php  tiny
test/tmc$ ls
html  project
test/tmc$ rm -rf html
test/tmc$ ls
project
test/tmc$ svnadmin create tmcrepository
test/tmc$ svn import project file:///home/pbg/websites/test/tmc/tmcrepository -m "initial import"
Adding         project/trunk
Adding         project/trunk/html
Adding         project/trunk/html/index.php
Adding         project/branches
Adding         project/tags
Committed revision 1.
test/tmc$ ls
project  tmcrepository
test/tmc$ svn checkout file:///home/pbg/websites/test/tmc/tmcrepository/trunk .
A    html
A    html/tiny
test/tmc$
/test/tmc/html$ svn propset svn:externals 'tinymce https://tinymce.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/tinymce/tinymce/trunk' .
/test/tmc/html$    svn commit -m "propset"
/test/tmc/html$    svn up
/test/tmc/html$

So that is how its done from bash with a vanilla website and one repository checked in for your pleasure. Tips to know include wrapping the directory and resource in quotes, don’t create the directory, specify it in propset and let svn create it for you. Go to a directory somewhere else on your system and test your checkout. In the example above the remote repository trunk is checked out. However, you are also able to check out specific branches or even specific revisions if you want the bias more to stability over new features. You can also specify multiple remote repositories by creating a text file with directory and remote resource pairs and point svn propset at that file. Be prepared to handle things that you flub up using svn propedit. Your repository is not broken, but you may have to know how to fix a thing or two that you didn’t do the first time. That is why doing a vanilla procedure like what is described above helps show what the right way is.

So Imagine having a repository somewhere with all the tools you like to work with as part of your own best practices, sitting there, in one place ready to go with one checkout. That whole kit and kaboodle becomes your blank slate from where to start from, but you are already miles ahead of the competition because you already have tabs on all the resources you are going to use in your project. Having it all on hand saves labor and helps foster better practices as a developer.

• Zend Framework, CakePHP, Symphony, PEAR or whatever middleware turns your crank
• PHP Unit, or SimpleUnit, or some other unit testing suite
• WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, or of course any of the related themes and plugins
• Tiny MCE
• Jquery, Scriptaculous, Dojo, whatever floats your boat with javascript
• XDebug,
• phpmyadmin
• Integration testing software like Selenium or Molybdenum
• bloody well anything from sourceForge, or anything else for that matter public and under svn control.

Links for this blog post:

http://www.superwebdeveloper.com/2008/10/08/essential-cheat-sheet-of-shell-commands/

http://devzone.zend.com/article/9930-The-ZendCon-Sessions-Episode-26-Best-Practices-of-PHP-Development

http://beerpla.net/2009/06/20/how-to-properly-set-svn-svnexternals-property-in-svn-command-line/

http://blogs.gnome.org/johannes/2008/02/20/svnexternals-for-noobs/

We had thousands of possible beers to choose from, but we were most attracted to the pumpkin beers from local microbreweries from the taps. We enjoyed a down home meal of mussels, beef, and a crab cake sandwich and fries. A few things to point out in the pics above: Not the skull foam in the beer glass, the chocolate cake, the double chocolate stout, the elephant tap, the cans in the wall, some familiar faces from the php community, and the trappist ale. So never mind the fine dining in DC, go for the soul food and beer.

The conference was great, I learned stuff, I learned what I know, what I dont know, what I need to know, and more. I met a great group of people and traded lots of business cards.

Dr. Geist is Canada’s leading technology law expert and the guru of the Canadian movement to prevent copyright restrictions from infringing on key free speech principles including parody, artistic use, fair use, and device transferability.

A national innovator in using Web 2.0 tools like blogs and Facebook for campaigns for law reform and policy change, Dr. Geist’s advocacy, in partnership with Cory Doctorow, resulted in more than 30,000 people joining a Facebook group opposing proposed Canadian copyright law changes and ended in the tabling of the proposed changes by then Industry Minister Jim Prentice.

To learn more about Dr. Geist’s work, visit his website at www.michaelgeist.ca.

Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=147315202089

What you can do at FreeGeek:

• Donate hardware, books.
• Recycle.
• Take short courses in hardware and software, or teach them if you have the background.
• Mentor someone.
• Volunteer for 24 hours and take away your own computer.
• Shop the computer thrift shop, for super affordable computers and peripheral devices.
• Learn to hack computers and technology, everything an engineer learns how to do.
• Learn about Ubuntu Linux, and attend the Vancouver Ubuntu User Group meetings.
• Take part in cleaning up the environmental problems generated by e-waste.
• Receive a grant of computer hardware as a non-profit community organisation.
• Donate money or materials for the FreeGeek wish list.
• Apply for a paid position, or join it as a board member.

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Drupal Community Support Is Now Upside Down

Drupal creator Dries Buytaert has made some copryright changes that are now pissing off the web community. The new trademark policy, indroduced at the end of August 2009, now forbids the registration of domains like drupalSucks.com, and any site using Drupal in the name now must fork over $$$$$. WTF? Its a baffling move from such a well known member of the community, who has prospered from the concept of free software, sharing and free expression.

…it is a pretty impressive piece of software. But people should be free to criticize it in any way they see fit, including the registration of domain names that are less than flattering. (source).

Unfortunately, these greedy assertions in a community that functions because of the freedom of expression, sharing and openness usually only serve to anger people so much as to go out and register domains like drupalSucks.com which they use to spread the word about what a stupid idea this is.

Fallout is starting already. Free Drupal Hosting which, like the name sounds, provides free hosting for drupal sites, may not be willing to do so in the future.

There are draconian restrictions on the use of the word ‘drupal’, which would require us to give up a good part of our income, the truth is that the income from the ads is so low that we barely make enough to pay for hosting and bandwidth. We would not mind that but we refuse to make a loss on this service because of a silly trademark, with restrictions that – if they weren’t so sad – border on the hilarious. (source).

Creating a domain name that uses a preexisting name in the case of drupalSucks.org is covered under ‘Nominative Use‘, as an affirmative defense to trademark infringement. The Drupal community will be set to scream long and loud over this. And companies who market their services using Drupal, making sites with Drupal, and companies that write code in the Drupal framework are bound to think twice about whether they want to use it due to these new restrictions.