Like a lot of people, I too wonder what will happen to the MySQL, Java, and hardware once Sun is integrated into Oracle. I have opinions but those opinions alone aren't worth a hill of NetBeans. Luckily, people like Gavin Clarke know what they're talking about. Clarke has written an excellent article at The Register titled, Sun and Oracle: end of a beautiful dream.
Earlier today, Packt Publishing announced the winners of their 2008 Open Source CMS Most Valued People Award. The MVP is a new category for Packt's annual Open Source CMS Awards. In this category, "names were put forward by members of the Content Management System's development team and community and represent the exceptional support, guidance, and sheer amount of time that the MVPs have given up to support the development and growth of the respective CMS".
Instead of just copying the winners list from Packt's site, I had hoped to do something different here. I started with a goal to look for each of the MVP's personal blog or project site, I had hoped to find acknowledgments of the award was given by the MVP themselves or by someone else on their behalf. Evidently I started searching a little too early and I only came across mentions of the awards from three four of the projects: Drupal (Earl Miles), Joomla! (Johan Janssens), and XOOPS (Onakazu). Plus... Plone.
Below are some excerpts from or about these open source MVPs. If you are aware of more of the award winners recognizing or being recognized for their contributions...I would appreciate a link to the post. Open source contributors like these MVPs deserve all the recognition we can give them.
Seth Gottlieb, Content Here, recently turned me on to Sacha Chua and her blog. Sacha is an Enterprise 2.0 consultant and application developer for IBM and she also happens to be a very good blogger. What makes her blog interesting, besides being well written, is her posts on corporate use of social technologies given from the perspective of her generation, the Millennials (latest hip word for Generation Y).
While some organizations are still debating about introducing Web 2.0 technologies to their employees, this newest generation now entering the workforce is likely to expect that such technologies are already available to them for use in their daily work tasks. While the use of information technology is often viewed by companies in terms of staying competitive and a requirement for implementing strategic plans, the technologies are also increasingly becoming an essential tool for the human resources department. If you're expecting to attract and keep bright educated Millennials such as Sacha within your organization, you then need to better understand how people in her work cohort are likely to process the work given.
Jeff Robbins from Lullabot recently interviewed Drupal developer Earl "MerlinofChaos" Miles for an audio podcast. Earl Miles is the lead developer for some of the more popular contributed modules found at Drupal.org. The podcast focuses on his Drupal module work which includes Views, Panels, and Node Queue. Jeff Robbins also managed to ask some non-Drupal questions in the 88 minute recording that I found just as fascinating. Personally, I always enjoy opportunities to get to know more about the developers behind the software I'm using.
I'm hoping that later today the American version of ComputerWorld will carry the Dries Buytaert article I came across on their Australian site. The article is an interview with Dries and titled, "Drupal: from a drop in the ocean to a big fish in the CMS World". Yes, it's a catchy title for the interview, but I like sub-heading even more.
When open source projects becomes more popular the project leaders often need to increase the time spent on their projects. The increasingly popular Windows-based content management system (CMS), mojoPortal, is no exception to this rule. mojoPortal's project leader, Joe Audette, recently announced on his blog that he is currently making career changes show he can better nurture the mojoPortal project along: