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.

For the record, I'm not much of a podcast listener but I found myself listening to the entire recording this afternoon. Both Jeff and Earl have a good sense of humor that keeps you wanting for more. It also helps that both speakers have a genuine interest in Drupal and software development. So while you're reading some very fine articles here at CMS Report, I'd encourage you to also encourage you to start up the Lullabot podcast.

IBM developerWorks: One of the most dramatic changes in software development practice over the past ten years is the building of "composite" software systems -- a combination of homegrown, open source, and third-party components, which allows teams to rapidly deliver advanced, comprehensive solutions. However, the unmanaged use of open source and third-party components adds risk. It can violate intellectual property rights, create unknown royalty obligations, increase maintenance costs, and introduce unidentified security vulnerabilities.

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The Google Highly Open Participation Contest ended after a hive of stunning work over two months. SilverStripe begun with 60 tasks, and because students get paid for each successfully completed task, SilverStripe had to seek numerous times for Google to increase the funding to enlarge the contest based on unanticipated student demand. In the end, about 180 tasks were completed, three times the initial expectation.

Coach Wei, Java developer, asks the following question on his blog.

Here is a question that I have been pondering on and off for quite a while: Why do "cool kids" choose Ruby or PHP to build websites instead of Java?

At work we're actually moving many of our in-house desktop applications from Python to Java. I wouldn't be too surprised to see us migrate more PHP Web applications over to Java too for some of the reasons Wei gives in his blog post. But I have a theory as to why PHP and Ruby could be considered "cool" and it has less to do with Java's features and more to do with the culture of open source.

I was looking for variety in the CMS headlines to excerpt/post at my site, but everything is coming up Drupal this morning. Not such a bad thing if you like Drupal, is it?

What I hadn't expected was a discussion of Larry Garfield's benchmarking of PHP magic over at Jeff Moore's Professional PHP Blog. Garfield has been collecting some benchmarks in preparation for Drupal 7 development. Drupal 7 "will open up developers to PHP 5 functionality when it is released next year" and likely break Drupal's compatibility with PHP 4.

"I was a freelance web developer once (both full- and part-time.) I remember my 1-person thing being exceptionally uncomplicated. Project work was easy to find, and money wasn’t my key motivator. I did it because I enjoyed it.

Eight years later (today,) I co-own a 10-person thing called Electric Pulp. As much as I prefer the new thing to the old, it’s far less uncomplicated (that was a double negative for anyone keeping count.)

A recent conversation has me thinking just how different the two efforts really are. EP is far more ambitious than anything I ever did as a freelancer. But while the business aspects of what we do seem to scale really well, there are other aspects that have gotten a little crazy.

How so, you ask? Let’s count…"

"He's very right about why you should choose to use an open source project. But what about why you should start one, or release your own code open source? As a developer, that's a far more interesting question for me.

The answer is simple, too: I want the opportunity to show that I'm the best. Not just be the best, but put my skills to the test against others."