Out of a job. Kinda. (And thankful!)

In 2006, CollabNet, Inc. helped the committership of the Subversion open source project organize and incorporate for the purposes of having a legal entity tasked with protecting that software, its intellectual property, the solidity of its brand, and its general well-being. I was elected as one of the first Directors of the newly formed Subversion Corporation, and served as its Treasurer for the entirety of the Corporation's existence. Today, I can speak in the past tense about that existence because…

Subversion Corporation is dead!

Now that Subversion — I mean, Apache™ Subversion® — is wrapped up in the loving and protective arms of the Apache Software Foundation, there was nothing for the Subversion Corporation to do anyway. So the membership voted to dissolve the corporation, and for the past ten months I've been working with my fellow Directors and the fine lawyerly folks at the Software Freedom Law Center to do exactly that.

So, I guess I'm out of a job now. Or, at least, that job. I'm grateful that the Subversion developer community trusted me with the position I uniquely held for the past four years. But honestly, if the opportunity to do it again came 'round, I think I'd have to decline. I'd much rather be coding.

Long live Subversion! Long live the Apache Software Foundation!

"Sita Sings the Blues" comes to Cabarrus County

I was pleasantly surprised when I read the latest edition of In & Around Harrisburg (Issue No. 15, Jan. 13-27, 2011) and spotted a listing for an upcoming showing of Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues at the Davis Theatre in Concord, NC.

Why "pleasantly surprised"? It's not simply that this film is beautifully done, with all the bright colors of Indian culture vividly parading across the screen at a dazzling pace. It's not even just the hilarious, almost Monty-Python-esque narrators' dialogue. Nor is it the incredible soundtrack of Annette Hanshaw's 1920's-era tunes. Let's forget for a second that the story itself is a lovely one and is told here in a lovely way. I'm intrigued by the story behind the story.

Now, you can read for yourself the film's crazy history at the film's official website, http://sitasingstheblues.com. But the synopsis runs something like this: girl has cool, creative film vision; girl creates film to match her vision; girl runs smack dab into the ugly copyright culture's prohibitive approach to … everything; girl goes into more debt to get legally upright; girl then does something completely unorthodox — she gives her work away for free. Oh, and girl and film are arguably more popular now than they likely ever would have been under traditional distribution models.

As someone who makes his living writing (for the most part) free software — that is, software which itself costs nothing and for which the original source can be readily acquired and used and modified and redistributed by anyone who wants it — I constantly see the benefits of this permissive, sharing-oriented mindset. But it's been interesting to learn of Paley's own growing awareness, ultimate adoption, and now outright evangelism around the same permissive distribution model as applied to audiovisual works of art.

So if you find yourself looking for entertainment that's both fun and culturally educational (Sita… is a retelling of the epic Indian Ramayana tale), consider checking out this free showing of the film on January 20. For details, see the official showing information page at http://cabarrusartscouncil.org/news/?p=355. [Parents: It's been a few months since I saw the film, but I seem to recall that it had some elements that, in my family, at least, would earn it a PG-13 rating.]

Merry Christmas, CollabNet

This holiday season, with so much reduced staffing, reduced scheduling, and outright unemployment in the workplace, I find myself especially thankful to have a job. And not just any job, but a job I genuinely enjoy. (Who wouldn't enjoy a job where you get to work — from home, even — on awesome free software such as Subversion?!) I've made some of my dearest friends and experienced some of my favorite moments through this job. That's just cool.

But as I reflect on the season — on the birth of Christ, on goodwill and peace on earth, and so on — I'm especially thankful for a job at a company that doesn't embarrass me. I don't find myself wrestling with my own conscience as I accept that paycheck. Sure, there have been times when I questioned certain methods or approaches, but (as I told my immediate supervisor this morning, actually) I've always been permitted to do so freely, always found my management chain very receptive to my input, and always found that — at least in the interactions I've been privy to — behaving honorably was the desired goal even when doing so might cost us a sales lead or a nice press release opportunity. As society ages and the almighty dollar continues to amass worshipers, I suspect that it is becoming increasingly more difficult for employees to say nice things about their employers (with a straight face, at least).

So thank you, CollabNet, for providing me the luxury of not just a great job, but one which doesn't force me to make ethical compromises. I don't know what the future holds for our relationship, but my family and I are grateful for the ride thus far.

Working For Good

For as long as I can remember, I've heard Romans 8:28 heralded from church pulpits with no small amount of regularity. Here's the text, if you don't know it already:

And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (KJV)

And again, in another translation (the one I most commonly read):

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,^a who^b have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

What a powerful verse, right?! And so many applications, from motivation to comfort to conviction (at least according to the various pastors I've heard speak about the verse). Check it out:

• Is life without meaning? Nope. God has a purpose for you.
• What do I get out of loving God? Good stuff happens!
• Why did God make SOME_BAD_THING happen? It wasn't really a bad thing, you just haven't seen the good in it yet.
• Nono. It's really a bad thing. So why did God make SOME_BAD_THING happen? Um... are you not loving God enough? KA-BOOM!

Pretty cool stuff, huh? It's like a spiritual bat utility belt (Bible Belt? Ewww...).

But did you notice those footnote markers up there in the NIV version? I didn't. At least not until tonight. The footnote markers each denote different ways that the text could have been interpreted and translated from the original sources. Check out how the verse reads if you substitute the alternate translation marked "b":

And we know that in all things God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good—with those who have been called according to his purpose. — Romans 8:28 (NIV)

Whoa! It's like a whole different verse now. Suddenly the responsibility for bringing about good in the world falls back in our laps. We no longer just get to live a detached existence, loving God in a vacuum and ignoring those around us and then reaping all the resulting good stuff. Now we have to work — with God, who we of course still love — to bring about that good for ourselves and for others.

Quite honestly, I rather like that interpretation much better. It somehow seems more… logical; more consistent with the action-demonstrated kind of faith championed elsewhere throughout Scripture. What do you think?

Shooting Stars

Youth soccer season is here again, and my youngest son couldn't be happier. His team (and seventeen others in his age bracket!) will take the field this Saturday as the first matches of the Harrisburg Parks and Recreation Fall 2010 Youth Soccer season take place. Okay, I confess — I'm pretty excited, too. This is my first season as a head coach in this age bracket, but I've assisted at this level for two years now. I easily have as much fun as the kids do!

This season, our team chose the name "Shooting Stars" (which was actually suggested by my wife), and as has become the routine, I managed to squirrel away 30 seconds to whip up a general logo design (once again composed on the table cover at Supper Restaurant) and then a couple of hours of digitization time.

Here's the final Shooting Stars Soccer Club logo:

… and the sketch that served as its humble roots:

UPDATE 9/7/2010: My patch order is in. Once again, the fine folks at Team Jedi Marketing have done a great job with the order:

Hot Lava

I caved. I couldn't take the pressure. In a moment of Crayola insanity — an opportunity once again afforded by the wait for delicious food at Supper — I submitted to forces beyond my control and scratched out a logo design for my son's soccer team, the Hot Lava:

I snapped the above photo with my not-so-featureful-or-powerful camera phone and emailed it to myself on the spot. Later, I took the image and used it as a template to work up a vector graphic representation of the logo idea. This was a much less complicated bit of work than the Flaming Dragons logo I recently did, but that's okay — these are 5- and 6-year-old kids.

Here's the final work:

The team's head coach seems to like it, at least if I'm correctly interpreting "DUUUUUDE!!! THAT ROCKS!!!!! I LOVE IT!!!!!". So I guess it's a "go". I really enjoy doing these simple little projects. The smiles on the kids faces easily justifies the minimal cost I put into creating the logos.

Subversion Chat at CollabNet Virtual Conference

Tomorrow, April 15, 2010, CollabNet is hosting its first ever virtual conference. Entitled "Agile ALM for Distributed Development", the fully virtual event is focused around the methodologies and products which make Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) possible and efficient, especially where geographically distributed teams need to collaborate seamlessly.

I'm hosting a "scheduled chat" on Subversion at 7:30am PDT. So, if you're available and online tomorrow around that time, and you'd to chat live with me about Subversion, then do the following:

1. Register for the conference. (Now! Go do it!)
2. Login at the appropriate time to the conference using the instructions you receive from the registration process.
3. Once logged in, visit the "Communication Center".
4. Click the "Scheduled Chats" item.
5. Click the "Subversion for the Enterprise" chat item. (It will only become a live link at the time of the session.)

This is a free-form chat with no agenda, so come with your questions. See you there!