J5’s Blog

The Open Video Conference just ended yesterday. I attended the first two days and just stopped in briefly during the hack-fests yesterday before having brunch with some old highschool friends and heading back to my parents house where my dog and car were stashed.

I can say without a doubt the turnout was amazing and even though not everything I heard all weekend was positive it was a giant leap forward in then understanding of the importance of Open Video and culture. I won’t put a figure on how many people attended but some of the upstairs talks were standing room only and after the first day some of the organizers were lamenting that then needed to get bigger rooms (consequently some of the talks were swapped the next day). Speaking about the organizers, they ran an incredibly smooth ship and should be thanked and praised for their efforts.

The Good

Apps

I was mainly there looking to see what video producers wanted from FOSS application developers and to support the PiTiVi/GStreamer teams on behalf of the GNOME Foundation. It is amazing to see the PiTiVi non-linear video editing app at such a usable state. While Edward Hervey (bilboed on irc) gave his mini presentation on PiTiVi I was busy hacking up a “How To Make Chocolate Truffles” video from pictures and clips I had laying around.

Afterwards I showed him some of the bugs I encountered in the 0.13.1 release and he just rattled off, fixed in git, fixed in git, fixed in git…etc. Sadly the releases are tied to GStreamer releases (which is a good thing from a development/bugs standpoint but not so good from a user standpoint given the early stages of PiTiVi) so we won’t see an official release soon. I plan on trying to automate a Fedora Repository at some point just to be able to view the progress without breaking my system.

The point is PiTiVi is about 90% there (and perhaps 100% in git) to be able to support my needs for basic video editing in terms of stability and basic tools. That should be pretty reflective of those who need to do things like screen casting and interview style video blogs. Some advanced features like effects (look at Cheese for some examples of this already working in an app) already exist in GStreamer and just need to be integrated in PiTiVi’s UI and rendering pipeline.

There was also a show of Cinelarra but more interesting is the GTK+ fork Lumiera which unfortunately is not usable yet but the direction they are going in (GTK+ interface and some GStreamer integration) looks like a great re-start in the case of pro level editing tools.

Also of interest in the pro level space was Blender which seems to be the pro project with the most momentum and features for pro’s. At least that was the initial reaction from some on the Red Hat media team. The dev’s did admit that the functionality is limited to what they needed during production of Big Buck Bunny (and other productions currently in the queue) but that in those areas it is rock solid. It is interesting to see a UI designed with different usability profiles. For instance one of Blender’s usability criteria is the avoidance of repetitive strain injury. To combat RSI mouse clicks are evenly divided between left and right mouse clicks.

Bassam Kurdali, one of the Blender developers and animators, came up to me later in the conference and said he had noticed me using PiTiVi to edit my video. He was impressed at the simplicity and slickness of the interface and how far along it is. There is plenty of room for different approaches and a real potential for cross pollination between the pro tools and the every day end user tools.

What Content Producers Want

Speaking of end users we got to hear from a bunch of them who let us know how we could support them. One of the biggest themes was that Windows tools suck and those who taught others couldn’t just tell them to go out and buy a mac (praises were heaped on iMovie and Final Cut Pro). They really want an easy to use tool, with the unfortunate note that it would have to run on Windows. One really good thing is that a lot of the non-tech content producers understood the need for free codecs. However in the end they just want a simple way to render down to DVD, You Tube, Daily Motion, iPhone, etc. and don’t want to deal with formats.

I ended up collecting a bunch of buisness cards and am toying with the idea of starting a feedback group with content producers which would get them involved in improving GNOME App usability from the perspective of those who are not yet familiar with the GNOME workflow. If we are serious about expanding our reach we need to go beyond our current self selecting internal feedback loops. The goal wouldn’t be to get these people using GNOME (though giving them a way through the apps wouldn’t be a bad thing). It would be more about getting groups outside of GNOME/Linux to be part of the process of improving GNOME. Will it be fruitful? I don’t know but it is an interesting experiment with a potential huge payoff for a little bit of effort.

Sita Sings the Blues

This good section wouldn’t be complete without the mention of Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley which is a feature length (82 minutes) animated film released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. You have complete rights to watch, screen, remix and redistribute the film as long as you abide by the license. I do suggest you watch it and if you like it buy the DVD or simply donate to encourage more works like this (I bought the DVD for $20). Not only is Nina a content producer but she is heavily involved in advocating her distribution methods, going as far as documenting the process that went into releasing Sita under a creative commons license and in her work with QuestionCopyright.org.

Mozilla and the Open Video Contest

I was very impressed with Mozilla’s involvement and their push for Ogg Theora to become a base line codec for the HTML 5 video tag. They are also helping launch the upcoming Open Video Contest which would see the winner flown to the 2010 South by Southwest conference. We should probably run some sort of sister contest to encourage GNOME users to submit entries.

The Bad

It wasn’t all roses. While I feel we are reaching independent content producers way more than I would have though at this point, some of the big companies still don’t get it or are afraid of Open Video implications.

Adobe

It must be said that Adobe has been somewhat good at working with the community over long periods of time but that they just never get around to resolving key issues. What really surprised me was when on one of the industry round tables the Adobe representative pointed to their release of the Flash documentation as a shining example of this relationship. After checking with a developer of an alternative flash implementation I was told those documents are pretty much useless. Due to bugs, some of the spec just doesn’t work as written and other issues makes it impossible to write a third party Flash player.

YouTube/Google

While reportedly Chrome will ship with Ogg Theora support their flagship video site YouTube seems afraid to do so. Their rep at the round table stated some pretty audacious things such as continuing the myth that Theora wasn’t good enough when clearly that argument was directly debunked (the side by side comparisons were even playing on HDTV’s at the conference).

Even more of an issue was the representative’s idea on what Open Video meant. He declared that they would love to support Open Video but that it meant letting anybody do whatever they wanted and that doesn’t work from a buisness perspective.

Open Video isn’t about wild west, trample on rights. If anything it is about balancing the rights of content producers, end users and fair use. From what I read, YouTube’s position is that they are the 1000 pound gorilla in video distribution and at the end of the day they only believe in a user’s and content producer’s freedoms if it is walled behind their own servers. “All the world’s video” indeed.

The solution there is to drive traffic to sites like Daily Motion and Blip.tv which understand the issues involved.

Conclusion

Nothing is perfect, but we are off to a really good start. In the end it is up to us to keep the momentum going and eventually produce a better experience within the complete Open Video stack, from content production to delivery. The web was built and exploded around the concept of open technology. Let’s continue to make sure this is the case going forward. The last thing we want is the web to become the domain of a few, with creativity being stifled by restrictions in the non-open parts of the stack.

Dear Foundation Members,

In the past, by this time, the Board would have already sent around the GUADEC call for hosts. In largely closed door meetings it would have been decided where next year’s GUADEC would be held, announcing it at the current year’s conference. Since this has been a year of significant change (this is the first year GUADEC is being co-located with Akademy) we would like to get more input into the process and find out what our members want to see come next summer, as well as how to best pick the winning location.

We have decided to postpone the call for proposals until after this year’s GUADEC has concluded. We fully expect to discuss the topic during GUADEC at the foundation AGM, as well as on the foundation list to find out what you, the members, would like to see happen next year. Please feel free to talk about your likes and dislikes about this year’s conference and if you don’t get a chance to attend, what would make you more likely to attend next year.

As for those who wish to make a proposal, a formal call for hosts is not a prerequisite for starting the process. If you can, we encourage you to meet with us and other attendees at this year’s conference and get a head start by starting the drafting process sooner than later. You may also contact us with questions you may have.

On behalf of the board,
John (J5) Palmieri

As a culmination of all the positive momentum that has been going on the past few years all the important Open Video players will be gathering at NYU’s law center for the first of hopefully many Open Video Conferences on June 19th.

The interesting part of this conference is it isn’t exclusively a tech conference. According to their website:

Open Video is a broad-based movement of video creators, technologists, academics, filmmakers, entrepreneurs, activists, remixers, and many others. When most folks think of “open,” they think of open source and open codecs. They’re right—but there’s much more to Open Video. Open Video is the growing movement for transparency, interoperability, and further decentralization in online video. These qualities provide more fertile ground for independent producers, bottom-up innovation, and greater protection for free speech online.

If we have any hopes of success in bringing the general public an understanding of our views on the importance of openness and freedom, forming a larger community with like minded content creators is the next logical step and another piece of the puzzle.

I will be attending the conference as a representative for GNOME. Others should consider registering and attending to represent their own media minded project. I hope to see you there.

On the heals of having my talk accepted I’ve booked my flight to this years GUADEC/Gran Canaria Desktop Summit. Much thanks goes out to my manager Tom “spot” Callaway for finding funds for my airfare. I think it shows a lot of support and commitment from Fedora/Redhat even though I am not in the Desktop group anymore.

My talk is happening sometime during the core days and I will be talking about Open Web Services, open data exchange between projects and melding server side and client side to build an open community of applications. After working on d-bus and seeing the success a standard IPC platform has brought the richness of our desktop I believe it is time we expand that meme to include standard application interaction across the physical barriers of the Desktop. It is time to bring the (N)etwork back into G(N)OME while keeping true to our Free and Open Source roots.

Dear Foundation members,

The 2009 yearly budget has been released. For the past couple of years the GNOME Foundation has been running a healthy surplus in contributions. As a result, year after year we have been expanding GNOME related activities and events. Last year we had the opportunity to further increase the Foundation’s value to its members by hiring the highly respected Stormy Peters as our Executive Director. When that decision was made no one could have predicted the global economic downturn and the impact it would have on our industry.

While Stormy has managed to get a number of new corporate sponsors and we have enough to keep paying her for this current budget cycle, we are still projecting that without a significant influx of steady contributions we will be unable to keep an Executive Director on the payroll without cutting into the activities budget.

As the economy persists on this roller coaster of ups and downs, the Foundation is rolling with the punches and looking for ways to best serve our members. While we can look at this downturn as a time to tighten our belts, I would much rather look at this as an opportunity for the community to take a stake in the future of the Foundation and show that we are not exclusively reliant on corporate coffers to grow GNOME.

If you haven’t donated in the past, now is the time to start by becoming a Friend of GNOME or donating at any of the contribution levels. If you do currently donate to GNOME, look to see if you can contribute a tiny bit more on a monthly basis. Every little bit helps. Remember these funds go to programs like hackfests and putting on local conferences. It also goes to paying for our staff of two who along with the part time and overworked board construct the strategies for facilitating the growth of GNOME.

The Foundation has served us well over the years and will continue to serve us regardless of the outcome of the current economic climate. The real tragedy would be to no longer have the funds to retain Stormy’s services. Stormy’s contributions in kicking our butts to finish ongoing projects as well as start new ones and bringing in new streams of funding are remarkable in themselves, and even more so in the current climate. Losing Stormy now would be sort of like having this shiny new plane but neglecting to build the runway long enough for it to take off. The best of what Stormy has to offer has yet to be seen. I can tell you for a fact that without her the Foundation will be less effective in its mission.

Please go to the Friends of GNOME site to donate. We need your ongoing support. Donations allow us to accelerate the adoption and development of GNOME while our paid staff allows us to be more effective with those donations. Whatever you can give will ensure the continued good works of the GNOME Foundation.

Thanks on behalf of the Board,
John (J5) Palmieri

For only cents a day, less than a cup of coffee, or Brondo(it’s got what plants crave) , you can make sure a GNOME hacker has all the resources they need to hack late into the night and into the early morning.  So become a friend of GNOME and donate $10 a month.  Doing so will make you elegeable to receive a signed  postcard from your favourite hacker (only valid for participating hackers) .  You can even watch their progress through their personal blog and see what a difference you have made.  Remember, as of today I am not just the GNOME Board’s Treasurer, I’m also a Friend because everyone needs friends.

Disclaimer: Donations do not go to individual hackers you specify (though feel free to thank them directly via a gift or even better, a thank you and pat on the back - just not when they are sleeping, that is kind of creepy).  The money you donate to the Foundation goes into the general Foundation budget and helps ensure that GNOME continues to be a free (as in libre) and open source desktop by providing resources to developers, software and education for end users and promotion for GNOME worldwide.

We see bad design around us all the time.  Often adequate design wins over great design .  In a ecosystem based on limited resources (time, money, component parts, etc.) at what point does a better design start giving diminishing returns?  Is this a good thing? - That problem has been solved we should move on to the next - or is it a bad thing?  - The solution to that problem causes adverse side effects but the cost of fixing it is too high.  In a world of limited resources it often takes a large catalyst or new markets to disrupt entrenched adequate design. I suspect there are good and bad sides to every decision here with some situations leaning further one way or the other.

That is a good leeway into my next thought about design in that decision making is a huge part of good design.  Decisions are hard.  Avoiding them has its cost.  My favourite is that collectively avoiding a decision makes it harder for other decisions to be made down the road.  You need to decide if it is worth the cost.

About dialogs with credits are important.  In the past when developers were developing for developers it was a way of getting acknowledgement for hard work put into an application.  Getting your name and e-mail in an about dialog was a badge of honor.  It also notified would be developers on who to talk to to get info on contribution or sending a patch.  This was when people were mostly in ‘the know’  about e-mail net etiquette.

As more and more people start using Linux on the desktop, many of who have different cultural norms shaping their net etiquette behaviour, we run into the issue of having to kindly tell people that it is immensely annoying to get spam from people seeking support.  Sometimes we are in a bad mood or our own style of writing can be interpreted as hostile when trying to point people to the proper support channels.  This could leave a first time user feeling like Linux isn’t worth the hassle of getting seemingly abusive replies when all they want is to get their computer working.  If we want Linux to be easy we need to be able to easily point users to resources where they can get help on using their system.  Asking them to innately understand cultural norms that we take for granted (I go to bugzilla for bugs, forums for distro help and mailinglists for development ideas) is asking for our userbase to consist of just Linux enthusiasts.

My simple suggestion.  Add a big old I need support button to the about dialog which pulls a URL or text blurb which is set by the distro vendor.  I like the idea of a URL where it can send users to some sort of wizard on the distros website (heck I would like a standard wizard module which sends upstream issues upstream and distro issues downstream but that is just wishful thinking).  Paid customers of a commercial distro would get their support site (heck an IT department could even set all their desktops to filter to an internal support request form) and the community distros can get casual users to their resources.

Note that Ximian back in the day used to do something similar where each app had a way to get to an irc support channel.  The idea was good but in reality I think the one time I tried it out there was only a bot in the channel. Taking that similar idea and instead pointing users to appropriate support sites would be the bee’s knees and save me from having an aneurysm when someone e-mails me asking for a network driver for such and such a device because they found my e-mail in the NetworkManager about box.

I was driving up to work today and thinking about productivity and how I utterly fail when having to switch contexts between say, web programming to desktop programming to filling out status reports (which I avoid for this same reason) to working on finances for the board.  The problem isn’t that I can’t switch contexts fast and effectively.  When there are tools around, say a fairly nice IDE, I can easily jump from hacking on Python TurboGears controllers, to ToscaWidgets to plain old HTML, CSS and JavaScript.  If items are organized properly jumping from task to task, even in the middle of an ongoing task, is pretty much a non-issue.

 The Promise of the Desktop

Computers in general were created to simplify our lives but the Desktop was created to simplify the lives of office workers by taking the papers on a desk metaphor and adapting it to a digital world.  What we ended up with was the same (metaphoric) clutter that happens on any physical desktop, requiring us to manually reorganize our Desktop every once in awhile.  In this scenario we start out very productive but then that productivity starts to decline as the clutter builds up from every day use.

Good applications however have a way of focusing us on the task at hand.  To clean up in an application one can simply start from scratch.  After one task is done a fresh new slate awaits the next task.  Applications for the most part are fairly targeted at doing a specific task well, and if well designed presents the tools you will use for that task in a well organized fashion.  Mind you there are a lot of bad applications out there and the good ones could get much better but we can agree that they are in much better shape in terms of organization and focus then the Desktop.

Traditionally Desktops are places for launchers, various bits of information and a place to stick your most used data for easy access.  This is all well and good, and a tool for organizing oneself but the problem is the Desktop is global so that each task has to deal with the cruft from the last task.  There is no clean slate aside from clearing all of your tasks and with the more tasks a user has to deal with, productivity starts to decelerate at an exponential rate.

If the desktop wants to be smarter it will have to think and present itself as an application which organizes a user based on tasks.  Pagers take a first stab at this by allowing the user to organize open applications per workspace.  Whenever I have a different task - say communications (e-mail, irc, blogging) - I open the applications up on one workspace and then switch to another workspace for say development.  I still however get the same launcher and same files on the desktop, 99% of which I don’t use for this particular task.

I was pretty excited about the GNOME 3.0 mockup for workspaces in which the user had to specifically add a workspace by clicking a button.  By making workspace creation explicit instead of implicit it meant people who don’t need this feature don’t get confused when all of their windows disappeared, but also that the user has a chance at discovering why multiple workspaces are convenient.  The problem is the scope of the workspace changes were targeted at fixing the issue of confusion and not at making the user more organized.  It is a step in the right direction but in my opinion does not go far enough.

If the Desktop was an application to organize the tasks I needed to complete, a created workspace would allow me to first name it for easy reference, un-stick itself from modifying the global Desktop state and let me customize it for the task at hand.  I could then switch between tasks and have only the data I care about and the launcher for applications which would be used for the task at hand, present.  The Desktop would then allow me to delete a workspace when I will no longer be performing the task it was setup for and even save the workspace so it is no longer in my rotation of tasks but still available for recall in the future when I have a similar task come up (e.g. taxes require organization to do effectively but only consume at most a month of my thought each year).

But, but, but, you can do this with fast user switching today.  Well, yes and no.  Completely separate sessions would archive what I am looking for if it were fast and actually worked.  There is a laundry list of other features needed which fast user switching can’t provide:

• Users would have to be able to be setup and removed on the fly with little fanfare (e.g. the add workspace button in the GNOME 3.0 mockups)
• I still would want the ability to share a home directory and copy and paste data from one task to another
• Switching to a “subuser” would need to be as easy and fast as ctrl-alt-arrowkeys are which means a spacial layout and no password dialog every time I switch

With the ability to setup a desktop focused on a task and tear it down or start from a clean slate without effecting other tasks, switching between the many hats one needs to wear in a typical day becomes much less cumbersome.  It also slows down the effects of productivity sapping cruft which will always build up over time.  True there is some overhead in setting up and managing each desktop but I tend to see this happen constantly.  As people switch their task priorities their desktop changes with it.

We use so many external and non-integrated tools to organize ourselves already, wouldn’t it be nice if task organization was built into the desktop and applications such as a todo list could key off the current task without any extra configuration?  Perhaps there is no good UI for this sessions in a session idea and it would in fact make life a lot harder for people.  Think about it anyway - if a Desktop is supposed to make the user more productive by giving them tools to organize their work, why not have that built in?  Why not make the Desktop and applications one big integrated application (not one big process mind you) for getting work done?

They have the details up on their web site.  Apparently it is a way of creating local applications using either Gecko or WebKit.  The remote part of the equation isn’t there and it isn’t clear if they will be perusing this angle. Right now the code only supports clients but by the look of their documentation, they are planning on creating the ability for JavaScript services which would be cool.