- Hey, what are guys up to?
- We are just enjoying some porn
- Hope you’re not doing Java and open source
- No!

The hilarious trailer of JAVATAR makes a brilliant psychological observation of human beings approaching different or new technologies. The technological emotions syndrome as pictured here is funny and scary at the same time. Had there been no emotions expressed about IT, we wouldn’t observe all the holy battles trolled out loudly out there.

- Dad…I have a confession to make
- I use…

Alternative link to the trailer.

Linux vs Windows. FOSS vs Proprietary. C++ vs Java. OSGeo vs ESRI. Python vs PHP. <your favourite technology> vs <your hated technology>

The funny part is the situation comedy being pictured. The worrying thing is, had the comedy not been pictured, we wouldn’t see it’s a comedy. A kind of drama, actually.

I’ve just submitted abstract of Boost Geometry presentation for FOSS4G 2010. I’m looking forward to spreading the word and give Introduction to Boost Geometry Library at the FOSS4G conference. Fingers crossed!

“See the turtle of enormous girth!
On his shell he holds the earth.” — Stephen King

Infrastructure supporting a project becomes insufficient, maintenance is difficult, release process is a full-time job and situation has taken a lot of the fun out of participating. Population of users and developers has grown. As the Community gathers appreciable portfolio of masters of the software development craft, it is in constant state of snowball war exchanging fire of ideas, new projects and discussions. It’s truly a pleasure to learn about them but, well, it pours oil on the fire of entropy. Here we come to the crux.

Gain of entropy eventually is nothing more nor less than loss of information — Gilbert N. Lewis

Today, David Abrahams posted, somewhat provocative, e-mail to the Boost project mailing list. It is titled Boost, Decoupled and Accelerated and delivers the following message: It’s time to make Boost development fun again.

It may sound like yet another internal discussion within an Open Source project. There are zillions of similar debates archived around. Yes, indeed, but not exactly. In fact, David announced something that may be of wider interested. It is

a system called Ryppl to decentralize development, testing, release, and installation of interdependent projects

followed by yet more interesting comment

I believe this project has the potential to change the face not only of Boost, but of open-source software in general.

One may think, well, it seems related to the issue of the current trends or we’re suffering redundancy in IT prophets. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps… but what I know for sure is that David Abrahams is one of my favourite and highly regarded software developer and author. I can hardly recall any of David’s comments, observations or suggestions that would be lacking of point, I mean a very rational point.

I have licked a bit of experience myself of working with or maintaining complex projects or projects that feel complex. I think I wouldn’t risk anything saying David has a point. I’m looking forward learning more about the whole idea.

I hope I’ll be able to confirm it myself while listening to David’s presentation at BoostCon’10.

Here I go we a bit delayed announcement: http://barendgehrels.blogspot.com

Hehe, and I didn’t do it because I expect to be given back with a kudo from RMS or Torvalds. I did it because I appreciated the bloody good software development works they do: my favourite C/C++ compiler from GCC, one of my favourite text editors GNU Emacs and my favourite operating system – Unix for Masses and my favourite version control system Git.

By the way, I crafted AX_LIB_LIBKML macro for Autoconf. This macros checks for headers and libraries of specified version (or newer) of Google libkml library and defines compilation and linking flags.

I submitted the macro to GNU Autoconf Archive. It is the new incarnation of well-known autoconf-archive.cryp.to. Peter Simons announced not long time ago that

The archive has moved to Savannah: http://www.nongnu.org/autoconf-archive/. Version 2009-04-26 was the last to be released at autoconf-archive.cryp.to.

Happy detecting libkml!

At 4:30, I am going to be interviewed for FLOSS Weekly.
The chat is here:
http://irc.twit.tv/
The video is here:
http://live.twit.tv/
Should be going on some time around 4:30 EST.

It’s on now.

UPDATE: FLOSS Weekly 111: CMake archived audio podcast

A few words about GIS-Lab from their website:

GIS-Lab – informal non-commercial community of GIS/RS specialists, we grow ourselves and help grow others.

GIS-Lab exists since April 2002 as an independent online resource specializing in geographic information systems (GIS) and remote sensing (RS). At present, the site is primarily oriented towards Russian-speaking GIS community, however, we do our best to translate as many materials as possible into English.

The GIS-Lab is the very first blog in Russian language syndicated with the Planet OSGeo, what makes the planet yet more international geo-caffee.

It is:

• Chaipat Nengcomma posts content that a part of Thai OSGeo local chapter about FOSS4G distribution in Thailand
• OTB Team developing the Orffeo Toolbox – a library of image processing algorithms developed by CNES in the frame of the ORFEO Accompaniment Program.

Welcome to the Planet OSGeo!

Update: Thanks to Hugo from Nabble for importing all archives of the ggl mailing list.