The state of Irish Open Source

Reading an article about how Europe is falling behind on open-source, I can’t help but think of the recent ICT Expo, which took it on itself to dish out “Industry Excellence” awards. Except it got so much wrong, it wasn’t even funny. It looked more like a bunch of old boys meeting together to congratulate each other than an actual representation of the Irish IT industry.

Ignoring all of the other categories and just focusing on the “Open Source Project of the Year”, we can instantly see that there’s something very wrong here. The two nominations were

1. Soft Telecom
2. Enovation

Soft Telecom

I have no idea what these guys do. Or did, since currently their website redirects to their Ensim administrator page. So, regardless of exactly what kind of open-source project they’re undertaking, this hardly reflects any kind of “Industry Excellence” so far.

Enovation

When the winners were first announced, I looked very hard, but couldn’t see what exactly Enovation actually did. If they provided open-source software, their site certainly didn’t mention it. Now they’ve got a large banner which explains exactly what they did to win the award - they set up Moodle for a college.

That’s it.

I mean, Jesus. This is frightening.

But thinking about it, what else is there? ILUG is a useful resource, but not particularly pro-active. Likewise, BUGI has been spluttering its way into actual usefulness for the past few years. OpenEir has potential, but is still in its infancy.

Are there any significant Irish Open Source projects?

Minor update

I’m still waiting for Irish Broadband to contact me about an installation date, so I’ve had four days away from a computer. And so much has happened.

Apple to use Intel Microprocessors beginning in 2006 Christ. This had been rumoured for a couple of weeks now (and a couple of years before then), but still… wow. John Gruber suggests that Apple may not transition to x86 chips. But then again, he also discounted the possibility of Apple releasing the iPod Shuffle and last week attempted to debunk the rumours of Apple switching to Intel. But this is so completely huge that it’s easy to understand why he was a litle skeptical. Apple say they’re looking at completing the transition to the Intel chips by the end of 2007.

Nintendo Revolution’s classic Nintendo games will be free Nintendo, who have been keeping quiet in this round of “Our console will have hi-def” “Ours will massage your feet while you play!” have dropped a bombshell in the form of massive amount of backward-compatibility for free! They will be releasing almost every game they published for their previous consoles as a free download, available from the launch of their new console, the Revolution. This includes things like Ocarina of Time, GoldenEye, Perfect Dark, Zelda II and one of my favourite games, Uniracers (Unirally over here). Miyamoto (the creator of Mario and Zelda) has said that he’s tired of sprawling epic games and is appealing to developers to create something unique and fun (but not neccessarily huge or big-budget) for the Revolution. I guess this is Nintendo paying attention. Update: Full list of games available for download

My copy of Difficult Questions about Videogames was waiting for me when I arrived in work today. This should give me plenty to chew through for the next couple of days, at least until GTA:SA and God of War arrive and start soaking up all my free time. Update: A few pages in, and I’m convinced of something that I’d always suspected - Kieron Gillen needs to find himself an editor.

Everything Bad is Good for You

I’m almost finished moving to my new apartment. It’s not quite time to crack open a beer and relax, but almost. In the meantime, I’ve taken my pastimes out of their temporary hiatus and once again started playing games (the beautiful, memorable Cruise for a Corpse via the wonders of Dosbox) and reading (Steven Johnson’s Everything Bad is Good for You). Although I’ll probably end up writing something about Cruise for a Corpse later, I’ve got a couple of things I’d like to say about Everything Bad is Good for You.

The last book I read before the move was Kevin Lynch’s Image of the City, a book about the theory of town planning. Most of that book is spent teaching us new ways to look at cities and helping us develop a new vocabulary for describing cities and town planning - most memorably, it introduces the idea of a city’s imageability. Dan Hill took this concept and applied it to videogames in his amazing essay Los Angeles: Grand Theft Reality - I would encourage everyone to read this, regardless of whether or not you are interested in videogames.

Stephen Johnson does something similar in Everything Bad is Good for You (EBIGFY). Like Lynch, Johnson also tries to teach us to look at videogames in a new way and give us the vocabulary to describe video game concepts. Johnson accurately and eloquently sums up the positive aspects of videogames beyond the oft-repeated “improves hand/eye co-ordination” nonsense, such as teaching us the art of making sense of chaos in order to achieve a game’s objectives (he calls this practice “telescoping”). He also describes, on a physiological level, why we enjoy playing games in spite of the fact that they tend to frustrate us for 90% of the time.

Although his section on videogames is barely 35 pages long, it provides a more succinct and lucid essay about the merits of video games than I’ve yet seen from actual videogame commentators.

Lazyweb: Broadband options

My girlfriend and I have been apartment-hunting for the past couple of weeks. We saw a fantastic apartment yesterday up in Stoneybatter that ticked all of our boxes (and a few we didn’t even know we had, like a Smeg fridge). Possibly the only thing I didn’t like about the apartment was the lack of a phone line.

We just got word today that the landlord is offering the apartment to us. Hooray! There’s a two-week overlap between our current place and the new place, so this gives us plenty of time to move our stuff up there and get everything ready. Since my girlfriend and I are both nerds, I figure it might be a clever idea to use these two weeks to arrange for some form of internet connection to be installed.

I was thinking of checking out Irish Broadband first, because it elimates the need for a phone line. But does anyone know what IBB’s service is like? Any horror stories?

When we moved into our current place, I asking IBB if they could provide service for us. The guy actually laughed down the phone as he gleefully told us “We’re not taking any more customers on that node! We’ve got enough! haha!” So, if IBB isn’t a goer, we’ll just have to bite the bullet; get a new phone line installed and go with one of the “traditional” providers. Any recommendations? Smart? Esat?

Please, Lazyweb. I need your advice.