theOlster.net

I have recently emailed the lugRadio team asking for help on an open source project that I want to start.  Since I’ve never started an open source project I could really do with some help.  The email went like this:

Hey Guys,

I’m a long time listener first time caller (well emailer anyway). A brief history of my Linux use is required before I move on to my main questions. I first got involved with Linux about 3 years ago, and although I currently have a FC5 server and watch all my TV on my (fantastic) MythTV box, I now use a Mac as my main desktop machine (please don’t bitch about this, not everyone has the time or technical skills to get linux to meet their requirements - and the Mac just works).

Anyway, in the true spirit of open-source I have a scratch-my-own-itch project that I want to start. The basic concept is (yet another) music jukebox program that downloads podcasts, and syncs with my Creative mp3 player (which iTunes won’t do since I’m not using an iPod or one of the other 5 non-apple devices which work). Since I was only recently given this player as a birthday present, | cannot afford/justify/want to replace this with an apple alternative - especially since they seem to be pretty shit compared to what I’ve got.

Through an Open University course I have recently completed the basics of programming in Java, and have looked into getting this project to work using this language, and it seems pretty viable. I’m also starting the Advanced Java course with the OU in Feb and could do with the programming practice. I plan to open-source this project, and want other users to get it to work on their operating systems too, Java seems ideal.

First question: Bearing in mind that I’d like my program to work on Macs and Linux (and if I can be arsed Windoze too), is there a more suitable language that would be better than Java (now open-sourced :-) ) and would be just as easy to create a decent gui?
Second question: Apart from say applying the GNU license, and releasing the code with the program on my website, what other things should I consider when open sourcing a project? Is there a beginners how-to for open-sourcing a project?

I may be a Mac desktop user, but I love Linux and look forward to the day when it just works and I don’t have to follow shit loads of complicated command line how-tos to get the OS to be usable. Keep up the good work, you guys provide great debate and info!

Because the last show did not have an emails section, they have not had the opportunity to respond to this yet. Hopefully I will hear from them in two weeks time. Anyway I wanted to extend the rough outline (from the email) of what I want to do for this project.

Purpose for the project
As an ex-windows/Linux user I have used a variety of music jukebox players (but mostly MusicMatch Jukebox on Windows) and have never been completely happy with any of them. Since moving to the Mac OS X platform, I have not really picked up iTunes. This is because although I would love be basic functionality, it  only really works if you use an iPod as a music player. As far as I can see there is no alternative/patch to get it to work with other players.

Functionality
1. To play music - specifically mp3 and ogg.
2. To quickly manually sync my music between three locations: the desktop/laptop computer, a network server (preferably by ftp), and a hard disk mp3 player such as the Creative MuVo.
3. To download podcasts and automatically sync these with the mp3 player.
4. I don’t intend to include CD ripping initially, but this would need to be included at the second revision stage.

Programming
I would like to program this project in Java. This seems to be the easiest way to write the program with a decent GUI, as well as maintaining cross-platform compatibility between a wide range of operating systems. My main programming background is as a website designer based around php/mySQL, Flash ActionScript, and I have only recently been introduced to Java though an Open University course. I have never used Eclipse for writing Java code, but this seems like good idea. Another limitation of mine is that I have not done any graphical/widget based programming and I’m not sure whether to delve straight into Swing or to use SWT (eclipse Standard Widget Toolkit? - whats the relation between this and Swing) which I have only recently discovered. Other than the GUI side of things, the code for the Music Library side of things is pretty much sorted (in my head) and shouldn’t take too long for me to sort out.

The GUI
GUIs should be simple and easy to use and appear to be familiar. I find that Linux apps tend to ignore this side of things and I hope to buck that with this app. Anyway here goes, this is the basic sketched outline with rough descriptions for functionallity: (click to see larger)

It seems that unlike my refusal to watch 24 in it’s first series (and after being lent this series subsequently losing about 17 hours of a single week), not watching Lost has paid off. Although I figured out the format for this program pretty quickly, and stopped watching it because I knew it would piss me off, I did have my doubts.

So I read stories like this one, with a little smugness!

Over the last year or so my internet browsing habits have changed considerably, mostly because of Wikipedia. Before this change started to take place, my starting point when approaching the world wide web was to visit the Google homepage. Google, probably the most used and effective search engine in the world provides listings for virtually every web site on the planet - but she has her dark side too.

I started to become a little dissatisfied with the results that Google was producing. They are now so riddled with adverts and that distraction feels a little force-fed. The results were also becoming more inaccurate, for example the top twenty highest ranked pages for any given search appear to be attributed to the sites who make the most effort to engage in ‘Black Hat Search Engine Optimization’ rather than the sites which most deserve to be ranked based on the search engine’s criteria. That is not to say that because I think these techniques are wrong, that they are not inevitable. The internet is as much about marketing as it is an information resource.

Which leads me on to Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia. Or for me not really an encyclopedia as much as just an information resource. After discussing Wikipedia with a friend of mine studying Medicine, he admitted using the website as the first port of call for the answer to a quick question - whether this related to his course or not. We discussed the pros and cons of the website as a resource, as well as the influence of vandals within the community. Our pros ran along the lines of constant praise based on how great is was to have a one-stop source of concise information dealing with topics as diverse as quantum computing and Richard ‘the hamster’ Hammond’s dragster crash. Our cons basically went along the lines of how little work we can get done once we start clicking on the links from one article to another.

Which leads on to vandalism or rather the mis-documentation of it. I’ve been getting a little frustrated with the number of news reports documenting vandalism on Wikipedia, and not because the vandalism is happening, but because they consider it to be notable news. The traditional encyclopedias may be keen to market the inaccuracies within Wikipedia, but the news websites really seem to have jumped on the bandwagon. I use Wikipedia every day for about a year, and to my knowledge I have updated a dozen Wikipedia entries at the most. These have been mostly because of slightly out-of-date articles or bad grammar or text. Most of the vandalism within Wikipedia has passed me by because these instances get corrected so quickly I don’t notice them.

What the news sites fail to acknowledge is the concept of a community based project, where errors are corrected by the community. With a website like Wikipedia anyone can edit it and everyone who uses it should! If a user finds inaccuracies they should be corrected by the user since there seem to be more genuine users than vandals. What we are actually seeing is visitors finding inaccuracies and publishing them rather than correcting them - thus missing the point. Their hype is a fallacy!
So, if I need to find out about a new piece of software and don’t want to read the commercial hype, my first stop is my friendly free online encyclopedia. I say ‘my’ because it belongs to me, and everyone else who uses and contributes - not the news websites who constantly miss the point. However, as I have seen with google, not every big thing stays big for ever - so I will keep my judgement eye wide open - I just can’t see any problems yet.