Wk 3 – On Blogging

Class was rather enlightening for me yesterday. It’s been over 2 weeks since my first blog post.

I find blogging difficult. I’m learning a lot of new things, and I’m trying to draft a concise and cohesive post while I’ve got a bunch of thoughts flying off in so many different directions. Trying to sit down and focus long enough to write them down is proving difficult for me.

Dave’s discussion on blogging helped a lot. Gusti mentions the difficulties of making ideas in larger blog posts flow, and Scott suggests breaking the post into smaller paragraphs. Breaking the post up is so much better than what I was trying to do – force myself to write a nice paragraph before I’d publish anything to the blog (ty, Scott!). That, and hearing someone else describe blogging as ‘painful’, probably got me to sit down and write this post. ‘Painful’ hit it right on the head.

While trying to motivate myself to blog (before the discussion) I started with Dave’s post Why Blother? and ended up at Matt Jadud’s the busy student’s guide to project blogging. Using the blog to capture thoughts that are still in-progress and blogging a brainstorm are things I’ll need to get used to. I’m too accustomed to keeping something hidden until it’s complete.

First Post! + Revolution OS

Hi, I’m Crystal!

I had my first Open Source Dev. (OSD600) class on Tuesday. Besides using FireFox and a brief stint with SUSE Linux and OpenOffice, I did not know much about Open Source – I thought I had the gist of it, but I now know that I did not. I related free software only to money, as in, I could download this, not pay, not get in trouble, and not feel guilty.

The first thing I did off the To Do list was watch Revolution OS. I came away with a few things:

1. The real meaning of ‘free’ – freedom. Freedom to fix an error. Improve an application. Study code. It did not only refer to money.
2. Open Source is also a philosophy, not just a methodology.
3. One guy wanted to change society for the better.

One day later, and all I remember is how passionate Richard Stallman is about the free software movement. Dave’s talk in class about the open source community was really inspiring, yet, made me suspicious. A community where everyone is working together, and are passionate about what they are doing. Everything seems too nice. It’s one of those things you want to believe but know it’s probably too good to be true. It’s the way communities should work, but all too often don’t. I am glad I watched Revolution OS, mostly because I got to see Stallman and many others talk. Putting faces to names does not usually happen on the web. It personifies the community for me, and I could see how passionate many of the speakers are. When Stallman says that he only wants to change society for the better, I can see and I believe that he genuinely means. It all helps me understand how the open source community may actually be what Dave describes it to be.

This is it for my first post. Thanks for reading!