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Red Hat HQ
Editor, writer, and developer. I wear many hats, including the red one. Graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill School of Journalism; long-time interest in all things geeky. Editor of Red Hat Magazine and grizzled industry veteran, including time as an archivist for SunSITE UNC (now ibiblio.org) and ten-plus years at my current gig. I love:
- vidya games and other dubious online experiences (Second Life, WoW, DDO, Rift--started out with Zork, IRC, and old-school BBS and MUDD/MOO/etc. groupings... old school nerd!)
- cooking, crafting, and creativity
- smart people
- openness, transparency, honesty, and trust
- coffee in all its delicious forms
I loathe:
- giving the web a version number
- social media "experts" (who send me spam)
- proprietary thinking about thoughts and ideas
- soggy cake or bread
- greed, selfishness, and a lack of humility
Authored Comments
<p>I don't find it embarrassing--I was certainly thinking about these things, even if they didn't come through as clearly. When I'm talking about StatusNet and identi.ca, (though not calling out diaspora by name, it was certainly among tools thought about and tried) these are tools I'd choose, and I'm sure Paul's looked at. But the problem isn't just with what you choose, but also with what your network uses, what has mass adoption, and picking from those the best functional solution per communication need, per audience or correspondent. You have to be able to reach the people you're talking to, and not have too much duplication of effort in the attempt.</p><p>In Paul's case, a fair number of the people he has to communicate with are students. Many of them are smack in the middle of that young demographic for whom Facebook, Twitter, and text messages are the communications lifeblood. The same is true for opensource.com. We use FB, because that's where a lot of people who are interested in what we're doing are. Not everybody chooses an open source app for every task, or is even aware of open source options. That is part of why we're here, and what we're talking about. And why we hope to see folks like you who bring even more of them to our attention. :)</p><p>That being said, FB is by no means an openly licensed project (though <a href="https://developers.facebook.com/opensource/">some parts</a> of the project and certainly large parts of the code it's based on are), and certainly has IP privacy and ownership issues. But the idea of what FB represents in terms of choice (data in and out, to some extent) is useful. I don't think FB isn't the final answer, either, but at the moment it has the idea, functionality, and adoption to make it very useful to lots of people. I'd love to see an open source solution grow in the same space, or even better an open social standard that sticks and works and allows a seat at the table for everybody. </p>
No. Because this is the internet. ;P Gaming systems is oft considered a hobby.