about two weeks after it was mentioned at oscon, microsoft has submitted 2 licenses to the OSI for approval.  you can read more about it here. i've previously mentioned i think this is a good thing and the OSI process of license approvals is a public one, allowing for comments and seeing the process vetted in the community, not just behind closed doors.  this will be interesting to follow. tags: oscon07 , oscon , oscon2007 , osi , ms-pl , ms-cl , microsoft open source , codeplex

what is windmill?  it is described as: Project Windmill was created with the intention of reaching 100% automated testing of heavy Ajax web applications after trying desperately to make existing solutions work. i'm eager to listen to this one.  i've used selenium as a web testing UI platform in the past and like a lot of what it offers...i'm expecting to see what windmill provides better/different and if it is more simplistic...here we go. the guys behind this are mikeal rogers and adam christian of the cosmos web project(?) which is now the...

forget it, i'm not calling it a keynote ;-) the morning session (which started out being a very, very thin crowd -- parties must have been good) started with a data visualization talk by ben fry.  honestly, i wish you could have been here for that.  the demonstrations were awesome.  the visualizations weren't pie charts, etc.  they weren't mashups.  think data meets industrial light and magic, pixar, or your favorite animation/special effect/interactive big-dog.  ben showed a cool visualisation of apache log files that looked like a flower blooming and you could create new 'stems' on it (best i can...

at oscon this morning, microsoft unveiled a new web site outlining positions on open source strategy.  the goal is to provide transparency into microsoft's perspective on OSS and a place where evidence and information can be shared. you can visit the new site here: Open Source at Microsoft. you might ask, 'what about port25, isn't that what it was supposed to be?' and you'd have a valid question.  port25 is the site for the open source software lab at microsoft.  it will continue to be a source for technical information with the oss technical community versus anything outlining...

what?! a session at oscon about generating microsoft office document formats?  has he gone mad?  that is what i wanted to know so i sat in on michael koziarski's session on this topic. recognize the name?  you should if you are a rails developer...koz is part of the rails core team.  great guy, smart dude.  fun to listen to -- very dynamic. anyhow, i went to this session as the description read that microsoft developers had been able to generate well formatted office documents for a long time, so why not bring some love to the open...

okay, now in a session for php developers -- or maybe rails developers...don't know yet. this session is from simon minnee from silverstripe, a cms solution provider.  simon quickly adds this disclaimer: this presentation is not intended to be a language war.  he admits that he is a novice with regard to Rails versus what he's presenting, etc.  de admits, in fact, that his understanding is naive.  he says "i just thought the title would be edgy.  forgive me." hmm...clever simon, clever -- got me in the door. he talks about their choice using PHP over...

i'm now sitting in a session entitled "hello? is there a user in the house?" with amy hoy.  amy is a user interface designer and has been around the block with regard to user centric design...something that is lacking in probably most software development processes. here's some of my raw notes/thoughts.  if you've done user-centric design before, most of this will not be new. creators == consumers (understand who they are building for because they are building for themselves) -- this is what makes some projects successful in the geek world -- we develop for what we want...

well the next session block had some to choose from.  i decided one of these was going to be my choice: who gets to decide what open source means open design, not by committee cross platform .net with mono open source voting i saw the .net/mono one was in the product/services track, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but usually means that it has a product twist on it.  frank w/novell...

i'm sitting in andi gutman's presentation at oscon about building rich internet applications in php.  my expectations will be that this will be talking about ajax and flex (given the nature of the conference). andi's first talking about the nature of ajax for rich applications in php.  what is cool is that he mentioned the micorosft ajax client library and the codeplex php kit in the talk so far.  he said he likes talking about it because it demonstrates the nature of ajax standards.  he also talked initially about simplexml as a mechanism for communicating with ajax...

this year, microsoft is a premier sponsor for oscon alongside intel and zimki.  i'm grateful that microsoft is a sponsor and excited about some of the things we'll be talking about this week.  open source conferences certainly are a different beast compared to microsoft big-dog conferences like PDC/TechEd/etc.  sure there are the little things like the halls being constantly filled with sugar and caffeine...not here at oscon (which is not necessarily a bad thing). sigh, here's my biggest beef with o'reilly conferences...abusing the keynote.  on two levels.  on the first level is a little bit of obessiveness of accuracy...

UPDATE: ironruby sourcecode released! this week i'm heading to one of my favorite cities, portland.  it is the week the open source geeks descend upon the oregon convention center for a week of open source-ness for OSCON. so why am i going?  i went last year and had a blast...and learned a lot.  this year i'm going to lurk a little bit more, try to get some candid thoughts of attendees and hopefully learn some more! microsoft will have a good showing this year, and i'm most excited about john lam's session on ironruby.  if you are headed to oscon,...

as seen on facebook... "John [Lam] is VERY pleased with the performance of dynamic sites in Ruby." (13 JUL 2007) see you at OSCON next week :-) tags: ironruby, ruby on rails, ruby, ironpython, dlr, dynamic language runtime, silverlight, oscon