The Chandler Project Blog

PyCon 2004, March 24-26, 2004 in Washington, D.C., is a community-oriented conference targeting developers (both those using Python and those working on the Python project). It provides opportunities to learn about significant advances in the Python development community, to participate in a programming sprint with some of the leading minds in the Open Source community, and to meet fellow developers from around the world. The organizers work to make the conference affordable and accessible to all.

Mitch Kapor to give keynote address
Mitch, founder of the Open Source Application Foundation, will be the keynote speaker for the conference.

Chandler Sprint
OSAF will be running a Sprint from Mar 20-23 prior to the PyCon 2004 conference. The topics for the sprint will focus on the Chandler Repository. At the moment, these include Repository dump/restore functionality, and remote Repository sharing using WebDAV.

Ted Leung and Jeffrey Harris will be the coaches for the sprints, and will be doing brief tutorials for people unfamiliar with the Chandler Repository. We want to use the sprint to involve more people in the Chandler development process as well as accomplish some tasks that will be useful for Chandler.

If you are interested in participating in the sprint, please add your self to the ChandlerSprint page: http://www.python.org/cgi-bin/moinmoin/ChandlerSprint

What is a Sprint?
The sprint is a four day focused development session, in which developers pair in a room and focus on building a particular subsystem. A sprint is organized with a coach leading the session. The coach sets the agenda, tracks activities, and keeps the development moving. The developers work in pairs using extreme programming’s pair programming approach.

And a BOF too!
In addition, we plan to have an OSAF ‘Birds Of a Feather’ gathering during PyCon itself to answer questions about Chandler and socialize with Python developers.

This Wednesday, Nov. 19th, we will have a discussion of the status of agents in the Chandler world. Stuart and Andrew Francis will give us their thinking on where they stand and what is in the works. Andrew has been volunteering with Andy Hertzfeld on the agent framework for some time and wrote the Notification Manager. Stuart was hired by OSAF a short while back with an initial focus on implementing agents for Chandler.

On Wednesday, Nov. 26th we’ll have a discussion of feature prioritization and recent design decisions, led by Chao Lam, our product manager. Chao has been focused on these areas lately. Mimi Yin, our UI designer will most likely chime in as well.
You can find the updated IRC Chat Schedule and information on how to join in at: http://wiki.osafoundation.org/bin/view/Main/ChatSchedule

Both chats will be at 11am Pacific Standard Time, which is 1900 GMT.

Starting Wednesday, November12, 2003, OSAF will host weekly open office hours via IRC chat ( instructions on how to join the #chandler IRC chat channel ). from 11am-noon Pacific time.

We will often schedule discussion topics for the IRC Office Hour, but these sessions are always open for ad hoc questions and comments. The topic for Wed. 10/12 is: The current state and plans for the Chandler data model/repository.

Other topics to be scheduled will include:
* Community participation and people’s impressions of us
* Feature prioritization
* Agents
* Design and UI

Mitch Kapor willl be speaking at the SDForum at 6:00 on October 23 on “Ubiquitous Open Source: What Does It Mean for the Software Industry?”. The event takes place at Xerox PARC in Palo Alto. Details here.

Discounted admission $10 in advance, $15 at the door, if you mention you’re part of the OSAF community of interest.

Mitch’s slide presentation from the event is posted on the OSAF website. Notes from the speech and comments by Chris Gulker have been posted online in the IT Manager’s Journal article, Kapor: Why the old development model is history.

This presentation provides a general overview, a demo of Chandler’s capabilities, and a discussion of some of its innovative features. Speakers: Andy Hertzfeld, Katie Capps Parlante, Chao Lam, and Mitchell Baker, OSAF staff.

The slides can be viewed here in pdf format (640KB). Our thanks to Ed Chao, an OSAF volunteer for preparing the slides for our presentation.

Over the past few years, open source software has become critically important in the server rooms, and on the workstations of enterprises everywhere. In this keynote, OSAF founder and chair Mitch Kapor asks if the same collaborative development methods that created success in the corporate arena can now make open source software central to the consumer desktop.

The full report can be viewed and downloaded from the OSAF website Linux on the Desktop Report (400K pdf file)

NB: The Report’s author Bart Decrem has updated the material from the original report a year later (June 2004). The updated material appears in an article published in Queue Magazine, May 2004, under the title “Desktop Linux, Where Art Thou?”. Copyright 2004, Queue Magazine. A draft of the article (100K pdf file) is posted on the author’s blog.

Mitch’s presentation slides are also available as a rather large pdf file (it’s a 3.8 MB file! We will have a smaller version later for those of you with a smaller pipe)

Mitchell Baker our open source community coordinator and the OSAF developers will be on-line to discuss the latest Chandler Status Update. The session starts Thursday at 2 PM Pacific time. Come on and join in!

Our online discussions are held using IRC (Intenet Relay Chat). To join, you’ll need an IRC client. You can find a range of IRC clients at the irchelp.org website, along with information about IRC. If you use the Mozilla Application Suite, you have an IRC client already; go to the “Window” menu item and select “IRC Chat.”

Whatever client you use, type
/attach irc.osafoundation.org
in the text input field to connect to OSAF’s IRC server. Once you are there, type
/join #chandler

You can chat real-time with the OSAF developers. The Chandler Wiki page, the IRC Chat Schedule lists the scheduled topics and which developers are going to participate.