Blogging Roller

I've spotted several Roller based weblogs in the wild, but I'm not sure I should publish links here because they all look a little experimental. UPDATE: Matt Raible has gone live with three Roller-based sites. Very cool. Take a look at the slick new theme and theme switcher he has designed. Nice work Matt.

BTW, imho, "open source" is a vestige of dotcom mania. Sure, you can do anything with free money, but that's over, for good (fingers crossed) so let's get real, okay? Thanks ... There's lots of work to do. In Washington they're passing laws that any developer, whether or not he or she develops open source, should be working to stop.They love Apple, but why - Dave Winer

Open source is not an exclusionary country club and it is not a vestige of the dot-com boom-bust, it is just a way to license software, and it has been around for ages.  Some folks use open source licensing as part of a business strategy, some use it because they want to improve the world of software, and some use it because they want to "give back" to the open source community. Get used to it, open source is not going away.

And on the second point: open source developers are going to work with anyone and everyone, including commercial developers, to fight against the crappy legislation that is currently being purchased by the entertainment industry. Why would you doubt that? Seems to me, most open source developers are also commercial developers.

Why is Dave so vexed over open source? Did open source software eat his lunch, pee in his corn-flakes, step on his blue suede shoes, or what? Somebody please explain. BTW, I do not consider myself to be an open source zealot. I believe that both open source and commercial licensing have their places in this world. I develop, use, and advocate the use of closed source software.

Last year during my family's vacation to Ocracoke, I wrote the first draft of the Roller article. There is not a whole lot to do on Ocracoke Island (which is exactly what I like in a vacation) and I had a lot of time during "quiet time" and in the evenings after the kids had gone to sleep. This year, we vacationed at Folly Beach outside of Charleston. We had vistors during most of our vacation, and we made several trips to Charleston.  So I had enough time to read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy again, but no time for Roller development.

I took a laptop along with me on vacation and I'm glad that I did. Roller mailing-list activity really picked up during the week. In addition to the usual installation questions, several folks are getting serious about contributing to Roller development. Matt Raible contributed an XHTML/CSS based theme for Roller and some new Velocity directives for theme support. Bala Murali is studying the Roller architecture and is very interested in building an "enterprise aggregator" based on and integrated into Roller. JSP expert Lance Lavandowska has also expressed interest in helping out with development - once he untangles the crazy (and quite possibly too complex) Xdoclet web that I have woven.  I'm hoping all these eyes on the code and going to lead to some real improvements in the Roller code base and architecture.  I'm also hoping that some of these smart people are going to become Roller committers in the next month or so.

Dave is much, much smarter than me - a fact that will hit you over the head if you read this article he wrote on Roller for O'Reilly's OnJava.  Dave also sent along a link to another Java-based blogging app called CocoBlog (programmed by Ugo Cei)

Yes: I am incredibly intelligent, good looking, and also very modest  ;-)