BitTorrent, creators of the highly popular distributed peer-to-peer file sharing protocol, recently released BitTorrent Sync, a solution for syncing folders between machines based on the BitTorrent protocol. BTSync provides a fully distributed and encrypted alternative to services like Dropbox where all your data is synced through a third-party server. BTSync has been released for Windows, … Read more
Commit messages are an important part of how software is developed, debugged and maintained, and when done badly can become an unnecessary barrier to collaboration in open source projects. Bad commit messages make it harder to figure out where problems have been introduced, especially for newcomers to a project. The worst-case scenario for anyone trying … Read more
In November, Mark and I will be in Mannheim, Germany as part of the TYPO3 Marketing Sprint Week, where we’ll be facilitating an OSS Watch workshop focussed on communications in open source communities. Effective communication in all its aspects is crucial for a healthy open source community, and we’re excited to be able to pull … Read more
The BBC R&D labs have recently been busy working on a TV prototyping appliance called the egBox. The idea behind it is to create a minimum viable product of a HTML5-based TV as the base platform for experimenting with new features. The appliance uses HTML 5, the WebM video codec, runs services using Node.js, and … Read more
This week, Intel announced the Minnowboard, a small embedded development board akin to the RaspberryPi, BeagleBoard and similar devices. The point that grabbed my attention is that it’s being touted as an “open source computer”. The device is shipped running Ångström and is compatible with the Yocto project for building custom embedded Linux systems, but … Read more
In an earlier post Mark Johnson responded to recent commentary about unlicensed code on Github. Mark criticised the idea put forward by some pundits that developers not licensing their software project was some kind of movement. Instead Mark sees it as emerging from a lack of education (or, quite possibly, sheer laziness). He also reiterated the point that … Read more
One of the hot topics of commentary on open source development at the moment is the licensing situation on GitHub. When code is committed to GitHub, the copyright owner (usually the author or their employer) retains all rights to the code, and anyone wishing to re-use the code (by downloading it, or by “forking” and … Read more
At OSS Watch we periodically review all the resources on our main website to make sure they’re accurate and up to date. Last week it was time to revise our case study on Apache Wookie, which is a project I’ve been involved with for some time. OSS Watch became involved with Wookie while I was … Read more
Almost any software project involves working with dependencies – from single-purpose libraries to complete frameworks. When you’re working on a project it’s tempting to bring in libraries, focus on meeting the user need, and figure out the niceties later. However, a little thought early on can go a long way. This is because every dependency … Read more
One of the most annoying things that can happen to software is for it to become “abandonware”, particularly if its something you rely on. This is where the original developers of the software cease further development or support, usually to move onto other projects, or sometimes due to a change of employment or other personal … Read more