OSSWatch Vacancies

OSSWatch are recruiting two new posts for their team in Oxford, a Development Manager and a Community Manager. Details here: http://osswatch.jiscinvolve.org/wp/2012/06/10/jobs-at-oss-watch/. A couple of great opportunities for people wanting to get more involved in open source here in the UK.

open source in the public sector

The issue of open source adoption in the UK public sector has been bubbling away for years, but perhaps things are finally coming to a head. There have been various noises made previously, but little of substance seems to have been born out of them. Back in 2002 the OGC published the following guidance for organisations considering open source:

http://www.ogc.gov.uk/assets/images/OGCOpenSourceSoftwarePolicy.pdf

The government revised its policy on Open Source in 2004 as can be found here:

http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/oss_policy_version2.pdf

And this year the Cabinet Office has published not just a revised policy, but also a more concrete action plan (PDF and HTML versions available below):

http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/documents/Open%20Source%20Final.pdf
http://www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/government_it/open_source.aspx

Why is this year different from those previously? With a new policy comes renewed interest and so for a brief moment there exists another opportunity to drag the public sector into the 21st century from a technology perspective.

http://www.conservatives.com/News/News_stories/2009/01/Improving_IT_procurement_and_encouraging_open_source_software.aspx
http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/2009/02/government-levels-the-playing-field-for-open-source/

BECTA and the Liberal Democrats are in attendance at this years Open Source / Public Sector event in London. I look forward to reading the write-ups published after.

http://www.kablenet.com/ke.nsf/0/CEECC1110A6481848025751300563D0D/$file/OPEN%20SOURCE%20BROCHURE%5B1%5D.PDF

OGC is still not listing any open source companies directly, but surely this year we will see the list of approved suppliers branch out into new open source territory ...

Continuous Integration

Over the last few weeks I have found myself reflecting on the progress my team and I have made in migrating learndirect over the last few years. It is strange to think that I will have spent almost 10% of my working life nurturing the next decade of online learning for the learndirect community. We still have quite a few more releases to go, but I find myself surprisingly relaxed about every release we provide to our QA department.

In previous companies I have seen the day of release of a new version of software treated with trepidation by the testing team and with relief by development. Some developers might consider they had earned a brief respite having worked round the clock to hit the build target, others would be relieved to be able to finally share their hard work. Few would be prepared to second guess what the result might be in testing. In my experience the last month of development is often as much about sleep deprivation as anything else.

For those that feel this way I can strongly recommend a good dose of continuous integration. It may not quell all of your headaches, but it has served my team and I well for years.

CruiseControl

Adding automated unit tests to the continuous build is a great second step, but if you can work on a more thorough approach to script the compilation, packaging, deployment, installation, data seeding and integration of your system(s) you wont regret it.

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Experimenting with NAS drives

http://comedyfriday.gotdns.com/photo/

Scribefire

Isn't technology wonderful. Download a few plugins and all of a sudden your browser is an application suite.

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Post Conference Update

JBoss have now posted up all the presentations delivered during their sessions. A lot is changing around both Red Hat and JBoss so there's some good reading in there.

http://www.jboss.com/events/presentations

Freebies, photos and fly home

The event has proven incredibly useful. It has answered a lot of the questions I had around JBossCache and JBossRules, as well as questions I had not expected to be able to ask like JBossSX and SSO. The conference has probably raised more questions than it has answered, but then that is the nature of events like this.

It has been fascinating meeting so many of the people that work for JBoss and Red Hat, many of whom I had only previously read about. I dropped off the Ufi CD with the JBoss marketing team. Who knows if anything will come of that, but I thought it would be interesting for them at the very least.

Meeting the other delegates was also invaluable, hearing what they do, for whom and why. One or two may be in touch, let's hope so.

The conference itself was run incredibly well, and with an amazing focus on the fine detail. It was a pleasure to have been in Berlin, and the free JBoss top and bottle of German wine wasn't bad either ;)