Marius Milcher » open-source

Open-Source Design. 2010 WordPress User Interface Plans Announced

admin — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 14:54:57 +0000

WordPress today announced it’s open-source design plans for 2010 of the WordPress UI.

The plan outlines the scope of the desired UI development for 2010 and offers a nice insight into how to conduct open-source User Interface design.

WordPress saw much success in the past with community developed UI (icon contest, graphic design component for Trac tickets, header refresh contest, etc.) However this year they are raising the bar and to my mind setting a standard by outlining and putting into motion their intentions of broadening participation, fostering communication and subsequently improving development.

Monthly Challenges.
Wordpress intend to run monthly challenges for UI contributors, such as Screen Layout Challenges.
Distributed Usability Testing
To be handled by a growing ‘UI/UX contributor team’
Dedicated Channels of Communication
To help foster the ‘UI/UX contributor team’ various channels of communication are being set in motion:
- Dedicated Mailing List
- IRC Chat: #wordpress-ui on irc.freenode.net is to provide ‘Watercooler’ Chat for UI/UX participants
- Dedicated Blog. To be launched in due course…

MySQL open-source future under threat as Oracle looms. Sign the petition now.

admin — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 16:48:11 +0000

For several years I have long been a keen and avid user of MySQL. A powerful, lightweight, freely available, open-source database. To me it has been the shining light, alongside Linux, Apache and Mozilla, of what open-source is capable of being. i.e. able to compete with the industry propriety heavyweights.

Having used MySQL as the foundation for building the SLIMS system alongside witnessing the growth of Facebook (powered by MySQL). In late 2006, I thought I was witnessing the birth of something truly magical.

When Sun Microsystems aquired MySQL from its parent company MySQL AB in 2008 it ensured that the database platform remain open-source.

However in the world of corporate takeovers and mergers, Oracle – the proprietary database behemoth – is now moving in.

SaveMySQL is the online campaign fighting to petetition against Oracle closing up MySQL and I urge all of you with any interest at all to go there and sign the petition now while we still have a chance.

In April 2009, Oracle announced that it had agreed to acquire Sun. Since Sun had acquired MySQL the previous year, this would mean that Oracle, the market leader for closed source databases, would get to own MySQL, the most popular open source database.

If Oracle acquired MySQL on that basis, it would have as much control over MySQL as money can possibly buy over an open source project. In fact, for most open source projects (such as Linux or Apache) there isn’t any comparable way for a competitor to buy even one tenth as much influence. But MySQL’s success has always depended on the company behind it that develops, sells and promotes it. That company (initially MySQL AB, then Sun) has always owned the important intellectual property rights (IPRs), most notably the trademark, copyright and (so far only for defensive purposes) patents. It has used the IPRs to produce income and has reinvested a large part of those revenues in development, getting not only bigger but also better with time.

If those IPRs fall into the hands of MySQL’s primary competitor, then MySQL immediately ceases to be an alternative to Oracle’s own high-priced products. So far, customers had the choice to use MySQL in new projects instead of Oracle’s products. Some large companies even migrated (switched) from Oracle to MySQL for existing software solutions. And every one could credibly threaten Oracle’s salespeople with using MySQL unless a major discount was granted. If Oracle owns MySQL, it will only laugh when customers try this. Getting rid of this problem is easily worth one billion dollars a year to Oracle, if not more.

Having embraced WordPress, here's my first post.

admin — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:29:05 +0000

Yes, OK… So I am a little late in my conversion. But finally, after several half-arsed attempts, I have dived into the world of WordPress and what a wonderful world this is…

WordPress, as Wikipedia puts it:

…is a free and open source blog publishing application and Content Management System.

It has been around for several years now. Previously I had felt like a kid trying to get the square peg in the round hole in my attempts to understand it. However as the platform has matured and the documentation grown, I felt that now it was finally time to grab the bull by the horns and embrace it.

With more clients requiring content management and my spare time shrinking, it was a simple decision.

It didn’t take long to grasp the basics and ‘port’ my personal site over. Using this excellent article and the corresponding example template on the Web Designer Wall. I spent an entire day geeking out, examining the code and cross referencing the WordPress Codex and then, Bingo!

I do not claim to be a WordPress guru…yet! Nor is my site an example of the finest WordPress design…yet! But be sure to venture back here in your cyber-travels to see how it progresses.

The three most useful codex articles I found where: