Lucas' Refuge

From the get go and what changed

2014-01-11T00:14:00.001-03:00

Hi all,

it has been a long time since my last post. A lot had happened and my interests shifted quite a bit as well. Firstly, I am not contributing with free software actively, like in the good and fun days tinkering with Amarok about a year and a half ago. The point is, desktop development, in general, does not makes me tick anymore. Especially when that involves front-end development. KDE is a great community and the knowledge I had acquired by contributing, for two years, certainly surpasses ordinary desktop development assumptions. It certainly entails good software development practices, agile methodologies, build systems, tests, revision control, community building, software licensing and the like.

But then things changed. I got an internship at The Networking and Telecommunications Research Group (GPRT) to give some dynamism to my undergraduation. My desire was to find something more closer to the bare metal. And that was what I found. The opportunity to toy with a new and challenging area, commonly called the Internet of Things (IoT). Or, as IBM like to puts it, the Internet of Everything. Actually, the Internet of Things is, as every buzzword, drawing a lot of attention from tech guys and gals around the world. With new startups appearing here and there with the promise to solve the several obstacles hindering IoT's envisioned future to become a reality.

Coding for wireless sensor network (WSN) nodes with specs such as 16Mhz - 16 bits Texas Instruments' MSP430 MCUs, 8KB of RAM and 92KB of ROM, among other tasks were part of my daily routine at GPRT. And believe me, embedded device programming can be very challenging. It was not uncommon, at the very beginning of my internship, to find out that, after compiling, your program did not fit in the scarce node's ROM. Several months revolving around WSNs, routing protocols, addressability, wireless interference, energy usage and the whole new set of problems that appears when you are dealing with such wireless low-power devices. Zigbee, IEEE 802.15.4, Contiki, TinyOS are some of the commonplaces when dealing with this kind of technology.

Afterwards, my focus changed to developing middlewares to coordinate those wireless resources-limited devices. Leveraging on ZeroMQ, that amazing free software socket library that acts as a concurrency framework, it was pretty easy to develop a distributed middleware that could scale horizontally. Because everybody knows, scaling vertically is too old school. It is much better to just buy commodity hardware, like Google and every sane company dealing with high processing requirements, instead of wasting tons of dollars to put all your highly expensive servers on steroids.

Scalable systems are a must for IoT, as every WSN node has to somehow report their sensor's measurements. Usually in a timely manner. There are alternatives to that, but I will not enter into the merits of them. To give a feel of envisioned WSN proportions, the academic literature mentions numbers close to three thousand or more nodes in a single network. And standards like IPV6 for Low-Power and Lossy-Networks (6LowPan) and Rooting over Low-Power and Lossy-Networks (RPL), where developed to address these scenarios. Obviously, the field is recent enough for me to doubt that anyone uses WSNs that big in production. Curiously though, one of our industry partners has a network of similar proportions, but it still uses wires. Have you ever wondered how hard is to manage all that wires as the shop floor is reassembled. Their case, however, is very specific. Since shop floors tend to suffer from severe interference in the wireless spectrum, mainly due to soldering and the presence of metal everywhere. Despite this kind of harsh environment, IoT adoption is most a matter of how cheap are those nodes and how we overcome the existent technical difficulties o the wireless world. Cause, in the end of the day, industry traction around new technologies is just a consequence of their economic effectiveness.

And believe me, tons of data flowing can be really precious when decision making is at stake. Curiously, decision making is actually the biggest paradox limiting IoT adoption by ordinary people. While data can help a professional to make a decision based on available data about a phenomenon, being that common in several disciplines like engineering, economics, administration and so on, that is not actually what most people expect from a home automation system for instance. Technology already provided us with too many gadgets to tame and I suspect that no one wants more.

Companies like SmartThings and NinjaBlocks, which are in the home automation niche market, face this kind of problem. Requiring users some input in an "if this than that" format, in order to adjust the system for the end users needs. Therefore, end users have to know in advance what it would be interesting for the system to do if something happens. Should the lights be turned off if nobody is inside the house? Should this? Should that even if x happens? Managing all that can be pretty tedious and it is, in my humble opinion, the biggest challenge that these IoT era home automation systems have to copy with, in order to really succeed in the long run.

Despite that, I have been also exploring the realms of Big Data. From NoSQL graph-based databases (Titan for the win o/) to map-reduce architectures for our new research project at the internship.

In the end, my next post will cover details about my personal project to analyse the data from the Brazilians' 2012 Municipal Election with Python, that initiative aims to provide me the means to master the art of data analysis. And, I hope that it can be somehow informative to both people interested in the data analysis process and Brazilians politics.

[GSoC] Transcending the sharing of thoughts in Amarok

2012-08-21T23:59:00.000-03:00

Hi folks. For the general happiness, herein I announce that my GSoC project achieved what I'd proposed three months ago. Although this post is inspired in this project, it doesn't focus on its results. Today's topic is about sharing.

As usual in free software communities, Amarok has always been open to new ideas. Their flow from the most unexpected places and some of them often becomes real. Our software development and design is sustained by collaboration, but are ideas and processes the only things that could benefit from it?

Up to now, in Amarok, we were able to bring some "collaboration between softwares" by the means of some well-known web services. Last.fm, Jamendo and so on. They provide lots of functionality that can enhance the interactivity between you and other people around the world. However, these functionalities often provides no more than a way to access their content and use to restrict some functionalities (e.g. upload content) to the web interface. And since these web services are usually proprietary, we don't have much to do besides providing limited interaction in our desktop applications.

That is, as always we can't rely on proprietary software for anything different from what makes them profit. Even though they have their merits, "part-featured" APIs and imposed limitations makes them as useful as a crutch. You would use one only if you can't walk on your own.

Tomahawk guys understood this problem better than anyone before. They pushed their ideas forward and, as a result of this, we now have a ground-breaking music player with the interactivity that an application from the web 2.0 era deserves. And, fortunately, Tomahawk is free software.

This single characteristic made possible for me to adapt part of their source to fulfil my needs. My GSoC project is done and we now have two players that are able to share music in a decentralised manner. Both can synchronise and stream tracks from each other seamlessly. With no leecher, between the endpoints, to stop us from doing what our society value(a.k.a. sharing) by "rough consensus".

Finally, LibTomahawk isn't perfect yet, but nothing can resist to hard work. It's only a matter of time ;}. Also, if you want to know more about my project, its future, timelines, then just keep in touch with this blog and consider adding it to your favourite feed reader ;}.

[GSoC] Amarok gets more social

2012-07-15T00:38:00.000-03:00

Hi everyone. To those who didn't remember, my project objective is to integrate Tomahawk social features with Amarok. By social features, I mean that Amarok would be able to share user’s music files with online friends, thereby allowing them to listen to one another’s tracks.

Actually, Amarok is already capable to listen to other peers' tracks, but keep in mind that it still has performance issues. From now on, I intend to improve its performance while I provide support for tomahawk playlists.

I guess most of you are anxious to see this project current state, so let me show you how the Tomahawk Service is going to be used in the first place. To begin with, the user will have to enable Tomahawk Service in Amarok's settings dialog.

The next step is to add your accounts and/or to choose which of the connection plugins you want to be enabled.

You can also change your network settings if you're having connectivity problems.

Besides that, you only have to wait while the Tomahawk Service synchronises its data with other peers. As soon as both databases are synchronised, the other peer collection will be available in Amarok.

Here you can see Amarok playing one of my brother's tracks. It's worth pointing out that he was using Tomahawk for windows.

And if you still sceptic, then look at this track location to verify that it's not part of my local collection.

I also added facilities to control some of the service features. Such as a menu that the user can use to force Tomahawk Service to connect/disconnect its connection plugins or to don't let others to know what you're currently listening to.

Last but not least, I was able to pass mid-term evaluations. All these results wouldn't be possible without the support that the community gave me. I'm really thankful to everyone that believed that I was up to the job.

LaKademy's Logbook: Day 3 and 4

2012-04-30T20:02:00.000-03:00

Everyone here have been working very hard these days. And the difficulties and doubts that appeared gave me the opportunity to learn a lot with the KDE overlords we have here. Yesterday morning we stopped the coding/translation activities a bit to plan what we'll do this year to promote KDE in Latin America.

KDE Promo BOF

During the Promo BOF, Alvaro said that the KDE community is too small in Argentina and it made us remember that the Brazil situation was very similar around 2008. Five years later, we're here at LaKademy with thirteen Brazilians improving KDE in many different ways. The point is that nothing resist to work and we're doing our best towards the strengthening of the KDE communities in Latin America.

Other subjects in question were: the change of the KDE-BR portal from Wikimedia to a CMS format, events that we plan to represent KDE, strategies to reach both the common user and possible new contributors, how to raise money to support our activities and so on.

Most of these topics needs a more careful discussion, so we'll continue it later in the mailing list.

The official Latin America KDE Tux insisted to have a photo with his big brother in the Penguin's Bar.

In the night we gone out to have dinner, tell jokes and to have fun. It was an amazing night and we definitely laugthed our head of when Luis performed his standup show "Metaphor-oriented programming". These meetings makes me like KDE even more. Not only for the software, but for people involved as well.

Today I'm here trying to solve a struggle between Amarok and libtomahawk for my GSoC. It's sad that I'm leaving tomorrow, but on the other side I've renewed my energies to keep working for the community even more.

So, that's all ;}.

LaKademy's Logbook: Day 1 and 2

2012-04-30T09:19:00.001-03:00

The flight from Recife to Porto Alegre wasn't really comfortable. The airplane had to stop over in both Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. And since I leaved Recife at 00:37 it was hard to sleep with these stopovers and people getting in and out the airplane.

Although the majority of the participants didn't take long to appear on day 26, some of us had had problems with delayed flights due to the bad weather in Porto Alegre. Fortunately, I didn't had such problems, since I arrived in Porto Alegre in the beginning of the morning.

During these days, I started to program what will be the Tomahawk service in a near future. It's part of my of my GSoC project and I'd show it in this blog when I get ahead to something more mature.

Besides that, I'm enjoying very much the experience. People here knows a lot about all the sort of stuff you may think. Besides that, they're are very funny and we're having a great time in this LaKademy.

Alvaro, Ronny, Lucas(Me ^^), Aracelle, Filipe, Sandro, Lamarque, Camila, Henrique, Wagner, Josie in the hostel living room.

Once in a while we remember that human beings need to feed, so we leave the hostel in order to find something to eat. The time outside is perfect to know everyone better and to relax after hacking KDE for a while.

On day 2 we gave a short talk at Porto Alegre's FLISOL and its staff gave us a room for we to stay during the day. It was open for anyone to arrive and to ask about any aspect of KDE. For instance, some people got interested in translation activities and we promptly explained how they could help KDE.

LaKademy's room at Porto Alegre's FLISOL.

As a matter of fact, these events are good to see that many people still have doubts about KDE stability and performance due to the problems we had in early stages of 4.x versions, although were far more better since KDE 4.3. We explained that KDE 4.0 was almost written from zero, so more bugs than usual were initially expected.

Major changes and software instability go hand in hand. Gnome 3 is suffering the same that our users complained in the past for example. As professor Sandro Andrade said, people will only forget KDE 4.0 problems in the KDE 5 era.

By the way, one funny thing we noticed when were working at the hostel was the curiosity of the other hostel's guests. I wonder what they might be thinking of a bunch of strange people spending almost all the day on their notebooks.

Surely there are much more to say about LaKademy, though I believe that it's enough for a post ^^. So, just wait for subsequent news...

Let's rock this GSoC

2012-04-25T12:16:00.000-03:00

Hi everyone. After one successful GSoC a year ago, I'm going to work with Amarok again in one more GSoC. My proposal objectives are harder than last year's, though I'm also more experienced with Amarok and its associated technologies.

Basically, I'll have to integrate Tomahawk player social features with Amarok. This will be done through the creation of a new Amarok service by making the use of some Tomahawk code. This service would make possible to share user’s music files with online friends, thereby allowing them to listen to one another’s tracks. Now, lets answer some questions...

What is Tomahawk?

Tomahawk is a cross platform, open source social media player that allows users to share music seamlessly and listen to it anytime, anywhere. Specifically, one of the key features of Tomahawk is the ability to connect to other's music collections.

Will this service be compatible with Tomahawk?

Certainly, I'm taking all the precautions to maintain compatibility with Tomahawk network protocol.

How much time do I have to wait to see this service in Amarok's master branch?

The "pencils down" date is on August 20, so probably after three weeks at the very most.

By the way, I want to congratulate the other four Brazilians that were accepted to work with KDE in this GSoC. Two of them study in the same university as me and I'm going to meet another one tomorrow at LaKademy (Latin America Akademy) tomorrow.

Aside from that, I would like to mention that I'll be mentored by two experienced floss developers: Dominik Schmidt and Teo Mrnjavac. The former will be helping me with Tomahawk matters while the latter will be guiding me in the Amarok side.

So, that's all for this post. All hail the KDE!!!

P.S.: Just don't forget to keep in touch with this blog. Stay alert, the next steps will be reported here and I sincerely hope to receive feedback from interested people. Please, let me know your opinion!!!

To LaKademy and beyond

2012-04-11T21:37:00.000-03:00

Last month I received an invitation, from a Brazilian KDE fellow, named Filipe Saraiva. For my surprise, I was one of the suggested newcomers for the first LaKademy ever. As I said in one of my previous posts, to be more involved with the community is a must-do for this year, so this invitation came at the right time.

I already had confirmed my participation and I'm really eager to meet, in person, some of those that contribute with KDE in so many different ways.

From April 27th to May 1st, LaKademy will take place in Porto Alegre city. The event aims to reunite elder KDE members and to give the opportunity to me and other novices to personally interact with our near KDE fellows. The participants are mainly from Brazil, but there are also people from Argentina, Peru and Colombia.

Besides the social activities inherent to a Akademy, we're intending to produce code contributions like in a traditional sprint. I'm plenty of ideas and expectations, but I won't give details in this post ;}.

Finally, if you're curious about what happens when a bunch of crazy hackers join forces then just wait. I'll be posting about the experience during the whole event.

Translation: I'm going to LaKademy

How I started to contribute...

2012-03-18T21:31:00.000-03:00

Hi everyone. The ideal of sharing propagated by RMS and his fellows has fascinated me for more time than I could remember. I've been always concerned about both the technical and the philosophical side. Therefore, It's resoanable to suppose that I'm also a kind of intellectual property geek.

Moreover, I felt that I could do something different from the boring tasks that my university imposes to me. The knowledge itself is good and I'm very grateful for a lot of things that I've learned in the university. But there is too much effort to make we professional problem solvers, whereas nobody really cares about how to encourage us to search for problems ourselves. Long things made short, what the point to be the best problem solver if you can't even recognise one by yourself.

So as to find my "own" problems, I've decided to contribute with a "real world" thing since the early days of my computer engineering course. FLOSS projects were my first choice, but how I could get into one remained unclear to me for some time.

By the mid of 2010 I already had solid C/C++ skills and a basic QT knowledge. I have been studying C/C++ by myself for a long time. I really liked the way how C/C++ gives more power to the programmer in exchange for requiring more computer operation awareness. Besides that, I'm also really concerned about portability and transparency, so C/C++ with QT was the right choice for me.

More than once I remember catching myself imagining FLOSS contributors as some kind of programing semi-gods. That's probably why I took a long time to realize that I already could be helping directly.

Fortunately, last year an opportunity to make the difference appeared. I happened on something called Google Summer of Code(GSoC) and it was exactly what I had been looking for. A blog, that I can't remember now, provided the basic informantion about this amazing program and for my own luck there were three weeks before the beginning of the students application period. Then I decided to apply and to definitely learn the most I could about FLOSS related subjects.

To make things happen I choosed Amarok as the project to work with, since it was one of the softwares that I use most in my daily activities. For years I have been using it and I felt that I should have chosen a project that would encourage me to keep helping afterwards. By the way, I made the right choice or I wouldn't be contributing with Amarok since then.

In order to be accepted as a GSoC student I would need something more than my wish to help a specific software. So I promptly picked the project idea I liked most from KDE GSoC Ideas Page. Basically, the project goal was to integrate gpodder.net web service with Amarok podcasting functionalities.

I cloned amarok master codebase and explored the files related to the picked project idea. A lot of doubts appeared, so I got in contact with Bart Cerneels, the guy who would mentor that project idea, and I took the role of a curious child for a while. After a week of code exploration, the big picture got clearer and I was able to continue with my plans.

The next step was to write a good proposal. I remember to see Lydia Pintscher, who was the kde org admin in 2011, saying to someone that most students who tryed GSoC with KDE use to fail due to a bad written and rough proposal. With that in mind I made an effort to write something good, so as to cause good impression. As soon as the first draft got ready, I sent it to Bart. He pointed some errors and suggested things to improve.

Others amarok fellows helped too, like when Lydia Pintscher and Stefan Derkits also reviewed my proposal. Definitively I couldn't say that my proposal was done exclusively by myself. It wouldn't be as good if it weren't by others help.

As said in my previous posts, my proposal was accepted and I had gotten through last year GSoC. Thereby learning a lot about software development, Qt, C/C++, git and teamwork. But you're mistaken if you think that everything went smoothly. There were a lot of problems to make this whole experience as difficult as possible, but they were handleable. In addition to the intrinsic development difficulties there were also the necessity to conciliate the GSoC with my university duties. Unfortunately, Brazilians doesn't have summer vacations in the same period of a American student.

Finally, I'd like to advise everyone that feel that isn't ready to do something not to procrastinate it. Be more pragmatic and keep your mind open to new opportunities.

That's all ^^.

New times demands new blog

2012-03-05T23:24:00.000-03:00

Hi everyone. A lot of things had changed since I started to post on "O Pinguim Engenheiro". It was created by me with two other university colleagues. Our initial purpose was to write about tecnology, nerd stuff, programming and GNU/Linux.

After some time my friends lost their motivation to keep contributing with it. Since things here are a reflect of my own opinions and beliefs, I had decided to change the blog to something that referred more to me. Thereby "O Pinguim Engenheiro" no longer exists.

From now on, this blog will be called "Lucas' Refuge" and herein lies my virtual version of myself ^^.

[GSoC] Missão Cumprida

2011-09-04T19:11:00.000-03:00

Olá pessoal. Desculpem-me por não postar sobre o projeto por tanto tempo. Contudo, durante esse período eu estive mudando e discutindo coisas relacionadas ao código fonte do projeto e à interface do usuário. Ademais, foram feitas várias otimizações e correções de bugs. E para alegria de todos, eu gostaria de anunciar que as funcionalidades do gpodder.net foram integradas com sucesso no Amarok.

Funcionalidades adicionadas:

Sincronização das inscrições de podcast.
Sincronização dos status de podcasts.
Lista com os podcasts sugeridos pelo gpodder.net.
Lista com os podcasts mais populares do gpodder.net.

As dificuldades:

De fato, estudei muito sobre QT. Contudo, sempre haverá erros inerentes ao uso do QT devido a ausência de conhecimentos específicos.
Ocorreram vários bugs e suas origens foram difíceis de serem detectadas. (Challenge accepted \o/).

O futuro:

Receber o feedback dos usuários para que a integração com o gpodder.net seja cada vez mais aperfeiçoada.
Manter-se informado sobre a evolução do mygpo e do libmygpo-qt, para que novas funcionalidades possam ser incorporadas, se possível, ao Amarok.
Continuar contribuindo com o Amarok. Corrigindo bugs e adicionanado novas funcionalidades.

Como pode ser observado, os objetivos da minha proposta foram satisfeitos e eu estou feliz por dar minha contribuição ao KDE. Eu estive literalmente "experiencing freedom" por tantos anos sem desempenhar nenhum papel ativo no ecossistema do KDE. A despeito disso, a coisa mais valiosa que eu aprendi foi que desenvolvimento de software não se trata apenas de "fazer" código. Assim, como um apoiador da causa livre eu já tinha pensado sobre isso, mas há coisas que você so entende depois de passar por elas.

Por fim, devo dizer que esta foi uma experiência que carregarei por toda minha vida. E portanto, continuarei contribuindo com o Amarok, desenvolvendo ainda mais minhas habilidades tanto de hacking quanto de programador e cidadão voltado para as questões sociais. Ademais, pretendo continuar desenvolvendo códigos de qualidade para todos (É o que eu espero ^^).

Agradecimentos:

Gostaria de agradecer ao google pelo apoio as comunidades livres e open, ao pessoal do KDE pelo maravilhoso ambiente gráfico, as equipes do mygpo e do libmygpo-qt pelas coisas relacionadas ao gpodder. E gostaria de fazer um agradecimento especial para o meu mentor, Bart Cerneels, pela paciência durantes esses três últimos meses de apoio.

[GSoC] Mission Accomplished

2011-08-30T22:13:00.000-03:00

Hi folks. Sorry for too many weeks without any post about the project. During this period, I have been changing and arguing things related to the service source code and to the user design. Also, there was a lot of optimizations and bug fixes. Nevertheless, to the joy of all, I'm here to announce that gpodder.net features are now successfully integrated with Amarok.

Added features:

Podcast subscription synchronisation.
Podcast status synchronisation.
Browse through podcasts suggested by gpodder.net.
Browse through gpodder.net top recommended podcasts.

The difficulties:

Even though I had studied many things about Qt, there will be always some weird problem due to a lack of some specific knowledge.
Lots of bugs with no appropriate way to search for the root of the problem (Challenge accepted \o/).

The future:

Get users feedback, in order to fix bugs and so on.
Keep tracking mygpo and libmygpo-qt evolution, so as to analyse what new features could be implemented in gpodder service.
Keep contributing with Amarok team. Fixing bugs and adding new features.

So, my proposal objectives were fulfilled and I'm happy to give something back to the KDE community, since I have been literally "experiencing freedom" for so many years without any active role in KDE ecosystem. Besides that, the most valuable thing that I learned is that software development is not just about code. As a FOSS supporter, I already thought about it in the past, but there are a lot of things that you can only understand when you face it yourself.

At last, I really have to say that this whole experience has been one that I will carry with me for my whole life. So, I will keep contributing with Amarok, thereby further developing my hacking/coding/social skills and making great code for all users (Or, at least, I hope so ^^).

With all that said, I also want to give thanks to google for all the support to FOSS communities, to KDE people for the great desktop environment, to mygpo and libmygpo-qt team for the gpodder stuff, and to Bart Cernnels, my mentor, for the patience during the last three months.

[GSoC] Podcast Subscribtion Synchronisation - Reloaded

2011-07-19T15:47:00.010-03:00

Hi folks. First and foremost, I want to apologize for the absence of posts for two weeks now, since I was a little occupied at the end of my university semester (lots of projects and tests) in a way that was difficult to update this blog about the project. Besides that, I have two good news to compensate the delay.

The first one is that the subscription synchronisation is finished. In my last post, I had explained some of the behaviour and features of the subscription synchronisation, so I will continue with the explanation, giving focus to the gpodder service configuration dialog.

(Figure 1) GPodder service configuration dialog fresh initialization.

Here, we have the configuration dialog of the gpodder service before any usage. To proceed with our tests, we must fill the username, fill the password and click at the "Test Login" button. If, for any reason, Amarok fail to connect to gpodder.net, then it will show an error dialog.

(Figure 2) GPodder service configuration dialog after a successful login.

As soon as we logged into gpodder.net, there will be the possibility to subscribe our local podcasts into gpodder.net. We only have to select some local podcasts that we want and click at the “Synchronize” button.

(Figure 3) Yay, now it's time to enjoy.

Notice that Amarok will alert you if selected podcasts subscription into gpodder.net succeeds, or show an error dialog otherwise.

The second good news will be released in two days, since two good news in just one post is too much for our readers heart XD.

All hail the KDE!!! \o/

[GSoC] Sincronização de Inscrições de Podcasts

2011-07-11T10:24:00.000-03:00

Faz duas semanas desde a minha última atualização sobre o progresso da integração do gpodder com o Amarok, então aqui vamos nós.

O Amarok é agora totalmente capaz de receber os podcasts do gpodder.net e sincronizar-los com os seus podcasts locais, e vice-versa. Cada podcast, do gpodder.net, será sincronizado com o seu respectivo podcast local, usando a sincronização de playlist implementada na primeira parte deste projeto.

Agora, olhe alguns screenshots e liberte a sua imaginação:

(Figura 1) Antes da sincronização de podcast começar.

Perceba que quando o Amarok foi iniciado só existia um podcast nos podcasts locais.

(Figura 2) Logo após o processo de sincronização de podcast terminar.

Após um breve intervalo de tempo, o serviço do gpodder prontamente sincronizou todos os podcasts, do gpodder.net, com os seus respectivos podcast locais, desse modo adicionando os que faltavam.

(Figura 3) Remoção de um dos podcasts locais.

Se você tentar remover um podcast local, que está sincronizado com um podcast do gpodder, então o Amarok vai perguntar-lhe se você deseja remover o podcast do gpodder.net também. De maneira similar, assim que você adicionar um novo podcast, aos seus podcasts locais, você também poderá escolher se quer adiciona-lo as inscrições do gpodder.net.

Próxima semana estarei de volta com mais notícias. Lembre-se de continuar visitando este Blog.

Saravá KDE!!! \o/

[GSoC] Nada é em vão na comunidade do software livre

2011-06-28T23:32:00.000-03:00

Semana passada, eu estive tentando configurar um servidor mygpo no meu notebook, assim como foi dito no meu último post. Foi uma tarefa bastante difícil, principalmente quando eu não domino nem python nem django, portanto eu acabei falhando ao tentar realizar está tarefa.

A despeito disso, eu gostaria de expressar toda minha gratidão pela ajuda que o pessoal do mygpo me deu, especialmente para Stefankoegl e HorusHorrendus. O melhor de ter falhado é saber que o meu trabalho alertou-os dos problemas que fazem o mygpo ser difícil de instalar e configurar :). Este é um exemplo claro que nada é em vão na comunidade do software livre, já que todo trabalho pode ser recombinado por alguém e aplicado em diferentes contextos (+1 para a inteligência colaborativa).

A propósito, é bom fazer parte de um projeto que envolve mais de uma comunidade, estar constantemente tentando manter o diálogo entre elas, deixando e recebendo feedback. Integrar as idéias de todos em uma funcionalidade sólida é, definitivamente, uma atividade bastante prazerosa ^^.

Próxima semana estarei de volta com mais notícias. Lembre-se de continuar visitando este Blog.

Viva a supremacia da inteligência colaborativa!!! \o/ \o/ \o/

[GSoC] Podcast Subscription Synchronisation

2011-06-27T23:28:00.003-03:00

It’s been two weeks since my last update about progress on gpodder integration with Amarok, so here we go.

Amarok is now fully capable to receive podcasts from gpodder.net and to synchronize them with your own local podcasts, and the other way around. Every podcast, from gpodder.net, will be synchronized with it respective, from local podcasts, using the playlist synchronisation implemented in the first part of this project.

Now, take a look at some screenshots and free your imagination:

(Figure 1) Immediately after Amarok initialization.

Notice that when Amarok started there is only one podcast on local podcasts.

(Figure 2) Right after the subscription synchronisation process ends.

After some necessary delay, gpodder service promptly synchronized all podcasts, from gpodder.net, with your local podcasts, thereby adding the missing ones.

(Figure 3) Removal of a subscription from local podcasts.

If you try to remove a local podcast, that is synced with a gpodder podcast, then Amarok will ask you if you want to remove it from your gpodder.net subscriptions too. In a similar manner, once you add a new podcast, to your local podcasts, you will be asked if you want to add it to your gpodder.net subscriptions too.

So, remember to keep in touch with this blog. Next week, I will be back to update you with fresh news.

All hail the KDE!!! \o/

[GSoC] There is no vain attempt in free software community

2011-06-12T23:37:00.000-03:00

This week, I had been trying to set-up a mygpo server in my notebook, as said in my last post. It was a difficult task, principally when I am no expert at neither python nor django, so I had unfortunately failed.

In despite of this, I want to express all my thankfulness for the help provided by the mygpo team, specially for Stefankoegl and HorusHorrendus. The best of this failure is to know that my work has awared them of the problems that makes mygpo difficult to install and set-up :). This is a clear example that there is no vain attempt in free software community, since all work can be recombined by someone and applied in different contexts (+1 for collaborative intelligence).

By the way, It is good to be part of a project that involves more than one community, to be constantly trying to to keep the dialog between them, leaving and retrieving feedback. To integrate everyone's ideas in a solid feature it is, definitely, a very enjoying activity ^^.

So, remember to keep in touch with this blog. Next week, I will be back to update you with fresh news.

All hail the collaborative intelligence supremacy!!! \o/

[GSoC] Está na hora de integrar com o gpodder!!!

2011-06-04T19:23:00.000-03:00

Olá, caro leitor. Até agora consertei a sincronização de playlist do Amarok, portanto, tudo está indo como planejado e a primeira parte do projeto está "aparentemente" terminada.

Neste momento, a sincronização de playlist não tem um jeito de mostrar apenas um subconjunto predeterminado de episódios de podcast. Nesse sentido, veremos alguns episódios que estavam presentes antes da sincronização, mas que não deveriam aparecer no Amarok. Esse comportamento será corrigido assim que nós finalizarmos as prioridades atuais, haja vista que esse bug não impede o uso.

Nessa semana, tentarei criar um servidor gpodder assim como foi sugerido pelo nosso comparsa e desenvolvedor da libmygpo-qt HorrusHorrendus. A finalidade é de tornar a próxima parte do projeto mais fácil de testar. Além disso, pretendo continuar programando a infraestrutura do plugin para integração do gpodder com o Amarok.

Aguarde, o Amarok

terá todas as funcionalidades

que o GPodder tem ;}

A boa nóticia é que de agora em diante será mais fácil mostrar os resultados deste projeto do que foi na parte de sincronização de playlist devido a possibilidade de tirar screenshots demonstrando as funcionalidades de integração do gpodder.net.

Próxima semana estarei de volta com mais notícias. Lembre-se de continuar visitando este Blog.

Salve, salve KDE!!! \o/

P.S.: Agradecimentos especiais ao pessoal do #gsoc-br@irc.freenode.net pelo cadastro no Planet GSoC BR.

[GSoC] Now it's gpodder integration time!!!

2011-05-31T22:10:00.000-03:00

Hello, fellow reader. Up until now, I had fixed the playlist synchronization in Amarok, hence everything is on schedule and the first part of this project is "apparently" finished.

At this point, podcast playlist syncing doesn't have a way to show only a subset of predetermined episodes, for this reason we will see some episodes, from before the synchronisation, that should be not shown in Amarok. This will be fixed as soon as we get some priorities done first, since that bug don't prevent usage.

This week, I will try to run a gpodder.net server, as suggested by our libmygpo-qt comrade, HorrusHorrendus, in order to make the next part of this project easier to test. I also plan to continue coding the existing skeleton of the plugin infrastructure for the gpodder integration with Amarok.

Just wait,
Amarok will have all features
that GPodder has ;}

The good news is that, from now on, will be easier to show the project results than was in the playlist synchonization part, because of the possibility to take screenshots demonstrating gpodder.net integration features.

So, remember to keep in touch with this blog if my project interest you. Next week, I will be back to update you with fresh news.

All hail the KDE!!! \o/

[GSoC] Sincronização de Playlist para o Amarok

2011-05-14T20:13:00.002-03:00

Olá pessoal. Eu e meu mentor, Bart Cerneels, discutimos bastante semana passada devido a minha concepção errada em relação a implementação correta da sincronização de playlist.

Na segunda metade da semana, conseguimos chegar a um consenso sobre como manter a sincronização flexível a mudanças futuras e simples de trabalhar para, ao menos, a maior parte dos tipos de playlist.

No momento, a sincronização entre dois tipos diferentes de playlist está plenamente funcional (se você não sabe do que estou falando apenas ignore ^^). Meus últimos commits estão disponíveis no meu scratch repository, caso seja do seu interesse, mas alerto ao fato que tudo isso ainda não tem nenhuma utilidade para o usuário final.

Em outras palavras, a sincronização de playlist do Amarok não é algo muito visível para os usuários, ao menos no meu projeto, mas será necessário para que a integração com o gpodder.net funcione como planejado.

Próxima semana estarei de volta com mais noticias, então lembre-se de continuar visitando este Blog se o meu projeto lhe interessar.

Saravá KDE!!! \o/

P.S.: Agradecimentos especiais ao Felipe Saraiva, do Blog Liberdade na Fronteira, pela cadastro no Planet KDE PT-BR.

[GSoC] Playlist Synchronisation for Amarok

2011-05-09T19:19:00.010-03:00

Hi fellows. Last week, I and my mentor discussed a lot about playlist synchronization, mainly because I was getting the wrong idea about the correct implementation.

In the second half of the week, we had achieved a consensus about how we can keep playlist synchronisation flexible to future changes and simple for almost all kinds of playlist.

At this moment, I had fixed the synchronisation between two different kinds of playlist (if you dont understand this, just ignore ^^) and this commit was already uploaded to my scratch repository (it has no utility for a normal user now indeed).

Basically, Amarok playlist synchronisation is not a noticeable feature for common users, at least for my project, but it is neccesary to our planned implementation of gpodder integration as an Amarok service.

So, remember to keep in touch with this blog if my project interest you. Next week, I will be back to update you with fresh news.

All hail the KDE!!! \o/

Meu Projeto para o KDE no Google Summer of Code

2011-05-06T12:27:00.011-03:00

Olá a todos. Estou aqui para falar um pouco sobre o meu projeto no Google Summer of Code(GSoC) - sim, ele foi aprovado e estarei trabalhando em conjunto com a comunidade do KDE e do gpodder.net ^^.

Basicamente, o objetivo do projeto é integrar o serviço web gpodder.net com as funcionalidades de podcast, já existentes, do Amarok. Agora, tentarei deixar as coisas mais claras...

O que é gpodder.net?

O gpodder.net é um serviço web grátis e livre que pode ser usado para fazer buscas, sincronização de status e sincronização de inscrições dos seus podcasts favoritos.

Quais são os benefícios desta integração?

A integração tornará possível coisas como:

Sincronização dos podcasts inscritos no gpodder.net com qualquer dispositivo que suporte o Amarok ou aplicação compatível com o serviço web explicitado (como o GPodder).
Também teremos a sincronização de status. Logo, será possível começar a escutar um podcast no seu notebook, parar tudo para pegar o ônibus e continuar, no mesmo ponto onde você parou, em qualquer dispositivo que suporte o serviço web gpodder.net.

É so isso?

É claro que não, haverá mais uma funcionalidade, a tão esperada sincronização de playlist, que parou de funcionar há muito tempo. Então prepare o seu pendrive, MP3 player, cartão de memória ou outro dispositivo de armazenamento para a música UU (Tutz Tutz Tutz).

Considerações finais...

Além de toda a grandiosidade do projeto aqui mencionado, devo falar também que por trás de cada programador existe um melhor ainda XD. E essa pessoa, geeks e freaks, essa pessoa é Bart Cerneels, o desenvolvedor que deu ao Amarok o suporte a podcast e meu mentor até Agosto.

Então, isso é tudo para este post. All hail the KDE (ou Saravá KDE ;})!!!

P.S.: Não esqueçam de acompanhar o blog. Fiquem alerta, pois os próximos passos do projeto serão postados aqui. Além de que espero sinceramente receber feedback de pessoas interessadas. Me deixe saber qual a sua opinião!!!

My KDE Google Summer of Code Project

2011-04-28T00:18:00.020-03:00

Hi everyone. I'm here to talk a little bit about my Google Summer of Code(GSoC) Project - yes, my project was approved and I'm very happy. YAY ^^.

Basically, the project goal is to integrate gpodder.net web service with Amarok podcasting functionalities. Now, lets answer some questions...

What is gpodder.net?

The podcast web service gpodder.net is a free, online and open source application that can be used for podcast searching, subscription and status synchronization.

What are the benefits of this integration?

The integration will make possible things as such as:

Synchronization of subscribed podcasts between any device that supports Amarok or other application compatible with gpodder.net (like GPodder).
There will be, also, status synchronization too. So you can start listening one podcast in your notebook, stop to get the school bus, and continue at the same point you stopped in any other device that supports gpodder.net web services.

Its only this?

Off course not, there will be another feature, the long-waited playlist synchronization, that was not working for a long time. Just prepare your pendrive, MP3 player, flashcard or any storage device to the music guys UU.

Final remarks...

Despite all the greatness of this project, I must say that behind every programmer there is a better one XD. And this man, geeks and freaks, this man is Bart Cerneels, the main developer of Amarok podcasting functionalities and my mentor until August.

So, that's all for this post. All hail the KDE!!!

P.S.: Just don't forget to keep in touch with this blog. Stay alert, the next steps will be reported here and I sincerely hope to receive feedback from interested people. Please, let me know your opinion!!!

Toda Cultura é ReCoMBiNAnte

2010-11-20T23:50:00.011-03:00

Olá pessoal, encontrei umas imagens legais, no blog do Sergio Amadeu, que me chamaram bastante a atenção, e que portanto faço questão de compartilhar com todos.

A alma do copyleft é o que estas imagens representam, aqui eu posso dizer, sem sombra de dúvidas, que uma (ou duas) imagem vale mais do que mil palavras XD.

Para quem não sabe o Sergio Amadeu é um dos grandes promotores do Software Livre no governo brasileiro. Ele já teve até alguns problemas curiosos com a gigante Microsoft.

Abaixo segue algumas postagens do grande colunista do dicas-l, Rafael Evangelista, que fez dois ótimos artigos sobre o caso, que embora sejam meio antigos (ano de 2004), vale a pena ler e reler:

A Pisada do Gigante, por Rafael Evangelista

Eles querem viciados, por Rafael Evangelista

Enfim, acho que esse post acabou virando uma verdadeira "salada" de assuntos diversos. Recombinem e me digam suas opiniões!!!

!!Atenção!!!

O Pinguim Engenheiro de http://pinguimengenheiro.blogspot.com/ é licenciado sob uma licença

"Copyleft - all rights inverted"

Uma análise do software livre e de sua história

2010-07-22T00:36:00.020-03:00

Introdução

O software livre tem aproximadamente três décadas e era, inicialmente, muito desacreditado na época. Poucos especialistas acreditavam no seu sucesso, mas com o passar do tempo, o amadurecimento das tecnologias, o aumento das áreas de aplicação prática, a melhora no modelo de desenvolvimento e a atualização e gerenciamento do software livre, possibilitaram que o mesmo tivesse um crescimento contínuo e estável, suficiente para que seu uso se tornar-se viável nas mais diversas áreas da computação.

Assim, também leva-se em consideração, sua importância no âmbito filosófico e o porque dessa variável ter contribuído para a criação de uma imensa comunidade de membros voluntários, e que até o presente momento, são seus maiores colaboradores.

Hoje, o software livre se expandiu para além do mundo seleto dos experts em informática e passou a ser uma aposta que vem ganhando cada vez mais o mercado e investimentos privados. O software livre parou de ser só uma promessa e mostra-se agora como uma aposta para o futuro. Entretanto, para que se entenda o por que do sucesso do software livre, precisamos conhecer mais um pouco da sua história.

O software antes de 1983

Em meados das décadas de 50 e 60, o software era desenvolvido pela academia e por pesquisadores de grandes corporações, sendo comum na época a distribuição do código fonte por causa da frequente necessidade de adição de novas funcionalidades e correção de bugs. Esta cooperação "primitiva", bastante similar a como funciona o software livre atualmente, era facilmente constatada em vários softwares para o IBM 701, que eram desenvolvidos e mantidos por um grupo de usuários voluntários conhecido como SHARE, e para os computadores da Digital Equipment Corporation, sendo estes desenvolvidos e mantidos também por outro grupo de usuários voluntários, chamado de DECUS(Digital Equipment Computer Users' Society).

Mas o fim da década de 60 trazia consigo uma mudança inevitável:

Os custos do desenvolvimento de software estavam crescendo bastante, uma grande indústria de software estava competindo para que seus produtos fossem colocados "gratuitamente" pelos fabricantes de hardware nos seus equipamentos (quando se fala "gratuitamente", deve-se ter em mente que o preço do software estava embutido no hardware).
Os computadores eram arrendados e necessitavam ter um suporte do software, mas que não proporcionavam qualquer receita para os mesmos.
Já se começava a ver, alguns consumidores que de alguma forma conseguiam suprir melhor suas necessidades e que não queriam pagar pelos custos do software "gratuito" que era embutido no hardware.

Assim, um acontecimento bem interessante em Janeiro de 1969, demonstrou a insatisfação com os softwares embutidos, neste ano, o governo dos Estados Unidos moveu um processo contra a IBM, o governo alegava que a prática de vender hardware com software embutido era anticompetitiva.

Nesta mesma época, já se percebia um crescimento nos softwares que eram vendidos, enquanto que alguns softwares continuavam como eram, livres. Nos anos de 1970 e no início de 1980, começava a percebe-se que a indústria do software estava a tornar comum práticas para impedir que os usuários pudessem estudar e modificar o código, práticas estas que representavam os interesses da indústria do software que, em 1980, conseguiu junto a justiça a extensão da lei de copyright aos programas de computadores.

O rumo que o software estava tomando não estava mais agradando os desenvolvedores da velha guarda.

Nascimento do Projeto GNU

A partir de 1984, Richard Stallman, membro de longa data da comunidade hacker, anunciou o projeto GNU no laboratório de inteligência artificial da MIT, dizendo estar frustrado com os efeitos na mudança de cultura na indústria do software e de seus usuários.

O objetivo inicial anunciado, com as próprias palavras de Richard Stallman, era o de se desenvolver "uma base de software livre suficiente [...] para que fosse possível sobreviver sem qualquer software que não fosse livre" e para que esse objetivo fosse conquistado, o Projeto GNU começou a trabalhar em um sistema operacional chamado GNU(GNU's Not Unix), que deveria ser compatível com o UNIX, mas que ao contrário deste seria possível qualquer pessoa ter direito de usar, estudar, modificar e redistribuir o software e seu código fonte, desde que garantindo para todos que o tivessem, os mesmos direitos.

A partir de 1984, Richard Stallman e vários programadores, que abraçaram a causa do projeto GNU e de sua filosofia do software livre, vieram desenvolvendo as partes principais de um sistema operacional, como um compilador, um editor de texto, um debugador etc.

Visando manter o software livre sempre alimentando e incentivando a comunidade fez-se necessário ter mecanismos legais que protegessem a modificação e redistribuição de software livre, com isso em mente, Stallman começou a popularizar o conceito de copyleft, que foi publicado por Stallman no GNU Manifesto e que foi feito para garantir a liberdade nos softwares para todos, permitindo que fosse possível o direito de distribuir cópias e modificações das mesmas, mas que mesmo assim continuariam livres.

Para ajudar nessa empreitada, Richard Stallman fundou a FSF (Free Software Foundation), que se dedica à eliminação de restrições sobre a cópia, redistribuição, estudo e modificação de programas de computadores e para promover o desenvolvimento e uso do software livre em todas as áreas da computação.

Os valores pregados pelo copyleft do projeto GNU foram então condensados, em 1989, na GNU General Public License (GPL), que nada mais era do que uma licença de software que garantia as liberdades que o projeto GNU defendia, a mesma foi inaugurada no mesmo ano de sua criação com o lançamento do editor de texto EMACS.

Em 1990, os membros do projeto GNU começaram a desenvolver o GNU Hurd que seria o kernel do sistema operacional GNU e que ainda precisava de muito trabalho para chegar a um estágio de uso em larga escala, tendo em vista que a maioria dos aplicativos que funcionariam sobre o kernel já estava pronto.

Atualmente, o GNU Hurd ainda está em fase de desenvolvimento, em grande parte devido a ambiciosidade pretendida pelo projeto GNU à seu kernel e também devido ao pequeno número de colaboradores e distribuições que os disponibilizam.

GNU/Linux

Em 1991, um estudante finlandês chamado Linus Torvalds anunciou o lançamento de seu kernel baseado em sistemas UNIX, e que justamente por ser tão parecido com o UNIX começou a surgir uma grande quantidade de colaboradores.

Convenientemente, o kernel podia ser combinado com os softwares existentes do projeto GNU para fazer um sistema operacional completo, e foi isso que acabou acontecendo. Linus começou o devolvimento de seu kernel como um projeto puramente particular, inspirado pelo seu interesse no MINIX, um pequeno sistema UNIX desenvolvido por Andrew S. Tanenbaum. Ele limitou-se a criar, nas suas próprias palavras, "um Minix melhor que o Minix". Este kernel ficou conhecido como Linux, contração de Linus e Unix.

Embora a maioria das fontes costumam chamar o GNU/Linux de Linux, para se referir ao sistema operacional de uso geral, que foi feito com uma junção do kernel de Linus e de várias ferramentas do projeto GNU, há muitas controvérsias em relação ao seu nome, na comunidade do software livre.

Richard Stallman argumenta que não usar o 'GNU' no nome do sistema operacional não é justo, pois faz as pessoas esquecerem o valor que o projeto GNU tem, além de que promove uma separação entre o software e a filosofia do projeto GNU. Mas o próprio Torvalds discorda da nomenclatura GNU/Linux chamando seu sistema operacional de Linux. A discussão e desentendimento entre Stallman e Torvalds prosseguem acerca da correta nomenclatura a respeito do Sistema, arrastando também as opiniões dos inúmeros usuários e desenvolvedores do Sistema GNU/Linux (ou apenas Linux).

Inicialmente, o GNU/Linux foi desenvolvido e utilizado por entusiastas, mas tão logo se viu a imensa aplicabilidade dele, embora isto não tenha sido intenção de Torvalds ao fazer o Linux, já se começou a ver grandes empresas interessadas em colaborar com seu desenvolvimento e a explorar o seu potencial, empresas como a IBM, Sun, HP, Red Hat, Novel, Oracle, Google e a Canonical.

O software livre

Como o próprio Richard Stallman frequentemente menciona, "software livre é uma questão de liberdade, não de preço. Para entender o conceito, você deve pensar em liberdade de expressão, não em cerveja grátis".

O software livre quer garantir a liberdade dos usuários executarem, copiarem, distribuírem, estudarem, modificarem e aperfeiçoarem o software. Mais precisamente, ele se refere a:

A liberdade de executar o programa, para qualquer propósito (liberdade no. 0)
A liberdade de estudar como o programa funciona, e adaptá-lo para as suas necessidades (liberdade no. 1). Acesso ao código-fonte é um pré-requisito para esta liberdade.
A liberdade de redistribuir cópias de modo que você possa ajudar ao seu próximo (liberdade no. 2).
A liberdade de aperfeiçoar o programa, e liberar os seus aperfeiçoamentos, de modo que toda a comunidade se beneficie (liberdade no. 3). Acesso ao código-fonte é um pré-requisito para esta liberdade.

Costuma-se dizer que se um software garante todas essas liberdades ele pode ser chamado de software livre. Portanto, você deve ser livre para redistribuir cópias, seja com ou sem modificações, seja de graça ou cobrando uma taxa pela distribuição, para qualquer pessoa em qualquer lugar do mundo. Ser livre para fazer essas coisas significa (entre outras coisas) que você não tem que pedir ou pagar pela permissão.

Deve-se também ter a liberdade, tanto para pessoa física quanto jurídica, de fazer modificações e usá-las privativamente, de utilizá-lo para qualquer tipo de atividade e de redistribui-lo na forma de executável(que é dispensável pois algumas linguagens não suportam este recurso) junto com o código fonte, sem que seja necessário avisar nada a ninguém. De modo que a liberdade de fazer modificações, e de publicar versões aperfeiçoadas, tenha algum significado, deve-se ter acesso ao código-fonte do programa. Portanto, acesso ao código-fonte é uma condição necessária ao software livre.

Para que essas liberdades sejam reais, elas tem que ser irrevogáveis desde que você não faça nada errado; caso o desenvolvedor do software tenha o poder de revogar a licença, mesmo que você não tenha dado motivo, o software não é livre.

Entretanto, certos tipos de regras sobre a maneira de distribuir software livre são aceitáveis, quando elas não entram em conflito com as liberdades principais. Por exemplo, copyleft é a regra de que, quando redistribuindo um programa, você não pode adicionar restrições para negar para outras pessoas as liberdades principais. Esta regra não entra em conflito com as liberdades; na verdade, ela as protege. Portanto, você pode ter pago para receber cópias de algum software livre, ou você pode ter obtido cópias de graça. Mas independente de como você obteve a sua cópia, você sempre tem a liberdade de copiar e modificar o software, ou mesmo de vender suas próprias cópias.

Software livre não significa que você não pode comercializá-lo, não é incomum ver pessoas ou empresas provendo serviços ou cópias de softwares e ganhando bem com isso.

Conclusão

Logo, o software livre conseguiu, apesar de todas expectativas pouco agradáveis, superar as dificuldades inicias e demonstrar seu potencial técnico e a luta por liberdade que ele representa. Também, se viu que apesar de ele ser gratuito, isto não exclui as aplicações mercadológicas, é possível ganhar dinheiro com software livre, apesar de como Richard Stallman disse, este não é o objetivo principal. Software livre é uma questão de liberdade, não de preço.

Bibliografia

P.S.: Também disponível no portal VivaOLinux !!!