Sidestepping The Will of the People, Bush sends Bolton to U.N.

Oh yeah, I changed that headline. The Will of the People, the legislative branch of the government, of which, the Senate is part, was completely sidestepped in Bush’s mad dash to appoint Bolton to the UN – a move NO one thinks is wise. Imperial – don’t you think?

See CNN.com – Sidestepping Senate, Bush sends Bolton to U.N..

Reactions in Technorati – which seems overrun with support for Bush’s move. Democrats seem silent.

Still Looking For An Open Source Project Manager

Cofax, an open source content management system that powered Knight Ridder newspaper’s online properties and is still in use around the world recently released V2.0 RC2. You can download it here. We are getting close to a full blown 2.0 release.

We need some help. We need two things right now: 1. Bug testers who can register them in SourceForge, 2. An experienced open source development project manager who can help us understand and utilize CVS and the tools at SourceForge in an effective way.

If you or you know someone else who is interested, e-mail me at: ().

It’s all about consequences

Acting and not acting. How, why, and when? Jonathon Delacour’s post, Consequences will get you thinking about Iraq, by sharing the viewpoint of a survivor of war-torn Japan.

Time Makes The Right Choice for Person(s) of the Year

Naming “the whistle-blowers”, Cynthia Cooper, Coleen Rowley and Sherron Watkins, as Persons of the Year, was the right thing to do.

I need your help

There is a content management system written in Java. It, at one time, was used to manage the websites of a huge newspaper chain. It is open source. It is free to use and deploy. It’s time tested. It performs. It’s users were happy, contented, and wanted more.

The newspapers migrated to a new version of the software, leaving this version as is. It has no dedicated staff, except for one who has a mandate to work on the project in his spare time.

That project is Cofax, and I am the one with the mandate. I need help.

I believe the project is worth maintaining and growing. Even with features a year old it is still competitive. But I need some help.

First – if fellow Java weblogers can download the software (CVS version please) and run it thru it’s paces and give me feedback – that would be an awesome start.

In particular – authors of weblogging tools – Cofax has the capacity to do weblogging but does not have a toolset per-se. It can do it – and was used for managing a very popular weblog before migration to the new platform. But I don’t want to see new weblogging tools built into it. I’d rather see Cofax interoperate with a pre-existing system. That way – we help each other out in the ecosystem.

Things that I know must happen for the project to do better:

  • Complete migration to JSP templating language. Maybe adoption
    of a popular templating system (Struts?)

  • Migration to Sun or Apache based logging
  • Integration with an open source weblogging package (Roller?). Maybe this will require adoption of SOAP or XML-RPC?
  • Documentation, documentation, documentation
  • Code cleanup, commenting, api refactoring (thankfully light – the API is Cofax’s strong suit by far)
  • Support community to monitor message boards
  • CVS expert to manage SourceForge

    e-mail your feedback directly. I will collect it and post a summary.

  • New source release of Roller

    This one includes a build script. Cool ๐Ÿ™‚ I’ll get my chance this weekend to download and run this puppy. I like what I’ve read so far.

    And speaking of new releases… Cofax is nearing another release. Alot of cleanup and testing needs to occur first.

    I really need to check out Roller

    Blogging Roller covers Java, programming and belongs on my blogroll ๐Ÿ™‚ But man, do I need to check out Roller itself.

    After I’m doing some bugfixing on Cofax… it’s going into a testing phase. I’ll give it a try then.

    Any SourceForge gurus out there?

    I’m reading the Free Software Project Management HOWTO as fast as I can…..

    CVS Best Practices looks good too.

    But I need help. In particular with developer roles and CVS management.

    Any other documents on open source, in particular SourceForge based, project management? Anyone who can give me some of their free time for a few questions?

    The Cofax Open Source project is taking off

    Wow! Lots of downloads at SourceForge. I’m now aware of two consulting companies using it to make money.

    I’m a newbie at project managing an open source project and this is certainly a new experience.