Blogging Roller

I'm supposed to be on vacation today and I'm doing my best, but I just wanted to point out that something interesting has quietly appeared in the Glassfish Update Center. Why so quiet? Well, it's an EA2 release and the emphasis is definitely on the E. I'll post some more details later, perhaps after winter break. I've still got shopping to do now and I'm supposed to be on vacation.

Interested? If you haven't done so already grab yourself a copy of the new Glassfish V2 UR1 release. Run the updatetool and install the latest EA2 release of Social Software for GlassFish.

See also: Something fishy.

Today, I've got a couple of additions to my powered-by-Roller list:

• GMJ Designs : Apache Roller 4.0 Released
  "I love the interface and it works great."
• Toast Technology Blogs : Weblog
  SOA and business portal consultancy blogging with Roller
• Limlom.com company blog
  Business solutions and J2EE consultancy blogging with Roller
• Biblical Recorder journals
  Blogs and Baptist Planet all powered by Roller

More about the opening of the Social Networking platforms of the world:

• Dare Obasanjo: Thoughts on the Opening of the Facebook Platform
  "looks like Facebook plans to assert their Intellectual Property rights on anyone who clones their platform"
• OpenSocial API Blog: Let's get this Shindig started
  "We're thrilled to tell you the initial commit to the Shindig repository is in"
• Ruminating on DiSo and the public domain
  "I’m hopeful about projects like Shindig that call themselves “open source” and are able to be sponsored by stringent organizations like the Apache foundation. But..."

And some more about the intersection of corporate interests and community open source:

• InfoWorld: Open source and the corporate elephant (FOSS.IN coverage)
  Danese Cooper: "Having a well-read blog is the best defense you can have against any problems you may encounter"
• eWeek: Sun Open-Source Support Questioned
  "The only reason anyone should be surprised by anything Sun does with [the open-source projects] it controls is because that person has fundamentally created an expectation that access to source code meant more than just that—and that is a flawed assumption."
• Reg Developer: Bruce Perens on the OpenDS spat
  "In general open source is only going to work if you let it be a community led project. Sun has had a hard time learning this, and some of their open source projects have had a hard time getting outside contributors, because Sun has insisted on owning the [project]"

I'm off to the NC mountains and away from internet access so you won't see a blog, link, photo or tweet from me for a couple of days. Have a nice weekend. Over and out.

<img src="http://farm1.static.flickr.com/3/3769990_67318a793e.jpg" alt="NC mountain house" />

In part one I explained how to create a theme directory and add the required template and resource files. Now I'll wrap things up by explaining what goes into a theme.xml theme definition file and how to deploy your new theme. [Read More]

Anne Zelenka, Gigaom: Could open-source blogging platform WordPress serve as your next social networking profile? Chris Messina, co-founder of Citizen Agency, thinks so. He’s started a project called DiSo, for distributed social networking, that aims to “build a social network with its skin inside out.” DiSo will first look to WordPress as its foundation.

This could be the next step towards the unified social graph that some technologists wish for. WordPress suits the purpose because it provides a person-centric way of coming online, offers an extensible architecture, and already has some features — such as an OpenID and a blogroll plugin — that can be pressed into social networking service. And its users represent exactly the sort of audience that might appreciate the permanent, relatively public identity that DiSo aims to offer.

Interesting. I think that blogs should be the corner-stone of social networking and I'd much rather have my blog be my social network profile rather than some page inside somebody else's container. Then again, as a blog server developer I'm pretty biased.

The Roller 4.0 Template Author Guide explains how to customize your Roller theme by editing the page templates that define, but it doesn't explain how to create an all-new Roller theme. This is the first of two posts that explain how to create theme for use with Roller 4.0. [Read More]

• snellspace.com: Sync!
  "Within the course of implementing several Atompub servers, the issue of “feed synchronization” has come up repeatedly"
• Paul Fremantle's Blog: A new kind of (SOA) Registry
  "as we looked at the REST space, we kept noticing how close the [AtomPub] is to our needs"


• OpenSocial - Berlin Web 2.0 Expo
  Google API evangelist Pat Chanezon's OpenSocial presentation
• opensocket - Run OpenSocial Gadgets in Facebook
  An OpenSocial container written as a Facebook application.
• Ruby on Rails: OpenSocial container plugin 0.0.1
  "This is a very early version, but it is under very active development "


• IBM's Carol Jones on Web 2.0 Research and Collaborative Software
  Redmonk video discussion of Lotus Connections, Dogear, internal/private vs. external bookmarking
• Wayne Horkan's weblog eclectic: Weblog language translator
  With Roller specific functionality. Based on JavaScript and Google translation API
• ZDNet.com: Social nets and identity fragmentation
  FaberNovel Consulting has mapped out some trends in social networking and digital identity"
• Postgres at Hi5: June 2007 user group preso
  How unique features of PostgreSQL helped Hi5 scale (PDF presentation)
• Scaling Java and PostgreSQL with Hyperic
  Another perspective on PostgreSQL scalability at Hi5 (PDF presentation)
• Skrentablog: Scaling Facebook, Hi5 with memcached
  "discussion of high volume [sites] using memcached as a critical scaling tool"

Finally!

Apache Roller 4.0 has been released and is now available for download.

This is a major new Roller release which includes easier blog theme customization, a much more simple installation/upgrade process, infrastructure improvements and numerous other small fixes. You can get the release files and the official documentation via the Apache mirrors at this page:

http://roller.apache.org/download.cgi

And you can read about the new features on the What's New in Roller 4.0 page of the Roller wiki.

Project releases are approved by vote of the Apache Roller Project Management Committee (PMC). Support for a release is provided by project volunteers on the project mailing lists. Additional free support is provided by many other volunteer subscribers to the list. Bugs found in a release may be discussed on the list and reported through the issue tracker.

Roller is a Project of the Apache Software Foundation (ASF), formed by a resolution of the ASF Board of Directors. As an ASF Project, Roller is subject to the ASF Bylaws and the direction of the ASF Board. The user mailing list and issue tracker are the only support options hosted by the Apache Roller project.

Cross posted from the Roller project blog.

I'm always happy to see Roller used in new sites, projects and products. Here's an interesting new example that I've been meaning to blog for a while now. Phillip Rhodes is working on building what he calls OpenQabal a "social software operating system." The project integrates a set of social software applications, including Roller and JavaBB, via Single Sign-On (SSO), a common look-and-feel and Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities (SIOC). He explains it all in an lengthy and informative blog post on the project's JRoller.com blog.

I'd never heard of SIOC before. Here's the executive summary:

Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities SIOC or is a framework aimed at connecting online community sites and internet-based discussions. Currently, online communities (boards, blogs, etc.) are like islands - they contain valuable information but are not well connected. SIOC allows us to interlink these sites, and enables the extraction of richer information from various discussion services.

Sounds like it could be pretty darn useful. But then again, I spent a little time exploring the list of SIOC enabled sites with the SIOC Firefox plugin and didn't really find any examples of interlinked communities or conversations. Am I missing something?

We've got the votes to release our tenth release candidate as Apache Roller 4.0. I'll make formal announcements after I've put files in place and updated the various release and docs pages.

One of my five ApacheCon EU 2008 proposals was accepted. I submitted a couple of proposals for customizing Roller, one for advanced Roller and one on RSS/Atom. The advanced Roller talk was accepted. Here's the abstract:

Apache Roller is a popular open source blog server designed to serve the needs of large multi-user blogging sites and typically used by large corporations, universities and government organizations. This session for managers, sysadmins and developers will goes beyond the Roller installation guide and explores the advanced issues of planning and executing a Roller deployment, including deployment architecture and configuration options as well as options for customization and automation.

I just registered for the 2008 NC Science Blogging Conference and I'm really looking forward to another excellent BlogTogether production. I attended the first edition of the conference last year and learned a lot about how scientists are using blogs, how they'd like to use them and the issues they're facing with both the medium and the software tools, very useful stuff for a blog software developer like me. I'm itchin' to learn more, and to get another chance to hang with the BlogTogether folks and science bloggers from far and wide.

If you're interested in science or blogging, check it out.

Here's the conference wiki

Here's the conference registration page.

And here's the conference sponsorship page.

Here's a sampling of governance docs from some of Sun's many open source projects. I've listed them in order of what I feel to be, the most progressive (i.e. community governance) to least progressive (i.e. corporate control). I've also listed a key quote from each doc and made a brief comment about each.

• OpenSolaris governance: "The OpenSolaris Community has the authority and responsibility for all decisions" - seems to approach ASF style governance.


• OpenJDK interim governance: "The [board] shall be comprised of [5 and ] shall conduct its affairs in accordance with democratic principles and shall represent the interests of the Community. Two [members] shall be employees of Sun" - not final, but looking good.


• Netbeans governance: "In the case of an irresolvable dispute, there is a governance board of three people, who are appointed for six month terms." (2 appointed by community, 1 by Sun)." - sounds pretty good, but the doc seems a little vague.


• SunGrid governance: "The Board positions include the Community Leader, the Community Site Manager, and four general members, two Sun members and from the independent developer Community." - sounds good, again doc seems a little vague.


• Glassfish governance: "The GlassFish project has an overall Project Lead ... appointed by Sun" - Sun has final say.


• OpenSSO governance (draft): "Project Managers make the final decision ... are appointed by Sun" - Sun has final say.


• OpenDS governance: The OpenDS project has single, overall Project Lead [who is] appointed by Sun Microsystems." - Sun has final say.


• Mobile and embedded: "Sun may change its appointed Governance Board members at any time" - Sun has final say.

Looks to me like the trend is towards community governance and the most important projects are the ones getting the most attention and the most progressive governance. That's good and I sincerely hope the trend continues.