Messylaneous for 2010/03/14: complaints, events, iPad

I’ve been building this one up:

  • Marc Espie’s post about autoconf holds true; Linux is in danger of becoming a monoculture in itself, similar to Windows.
  • The BSDCan 2010 schedule has been posted.  (via)  Will this be the year I finally make it to BSDCan?  Maybe.
  • This post about communities (in general, online, not just software) is interesting.  So far DragonFly has managed to avoid the drama-with-a-capital-D that afflicts other communities over time.  Here’s a reason to not want growth…
  • Always have working backups.  ALWAYS.  (via)
  • I once went through almost exactly this, except it was a phone system that spanned several U.S. states and China/Mexico.  Asterisk is awful, except that every commercial phone system is worse.
  • A very on-target assessment of the iPad from a longtime Apple developer makes me think of something: will the iPad be good for open source?  Not as a platform, but as a way to push developers to open source systems, where program development doesn’t require approval from a single company with unclear guidelines.  Even the single interface port on an iPad is proprietary, and requires licensing.
  • It’s really nice to read about a successful open-source software business that did not hinge on investors or being bought out, but rather on, you know, actually doing business, as seen in this writeup of OpenNMS.  (via)
Chaos Communication Congress notes

Matthias Schmidt is posting to Twitter about his time at 26c3 with other DragonFly developers, on his own feed and in @dragonflybsd.  (if you are reading this via a Twitter link, you may already know that.)  Follow the #26c3 tag if you want to see all the news about the event.  A quick scan shows some interesting mobile phone security problems have been discovered.  There’s streaming video too.