Adventures in Open Source

Just a quick post between a lovely weekend at the beach and the Open Source Business Conference.

Last year I managed to visit Dresden where I saw for the first time, in person, the ampelmännchen. These are the rather unique street crossing lights that can be found in the former East Germany. It wasn’t the first time I was introduced to them, however. That was at the house of Jonathan Sartin (OGP) in the UK, where his son Eddie had plastic toy versions of them.

In fact, there are a number of shops dedicated to the symbols.

However, I was unable to find ampelmännchen cufflinks. Since I live in a area that has a high density of artisans, I decided to have a pair made.

I think they turned out rather well. They were made by Sandra McEwen in silver and enamel.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the new “opensource.com” website. I’m pretty happy with it and since they were looking for people to get involved I offered to write a column on running an open source business based on my experiences with OpenNMS.

I’m calling it “Open for Business”.

The first column was published today, and I love the logo they created for it. Please let me know what you think, but better yet, sign up on their site and post comments there.

The gang has moved up to monthly releases, so hot on the heels of the February updates are two new releases this week.

The latest stable release is OpenNMS 1.6.10. This release contains bug fixes and while not critical, all users of 1.6.x before 1.6.10 should consider upgrading.

The latest development release is OpenNMS 1.7.10. This has a rather large number of bug fixes and features, including the ability to use the remote monitors over HTTP, push collected data out over a TCP port, and the much talked about JasperReports integration.

Ben has included more information in This Week in OpenNMS.

Lots of events going on in OpenNMS-land. I thought I’d list a few here:

• Early bird registration for the OpenNMS Users Conference to be held in Frankfurt, Germany on May 6th and 7th ends tomorrow. This is the place to be to hear all about OpenNMS, and early registration can save attendees €60.
• Next week I’ll be at the Computerworld Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. Drop me a note if you are going and want to meet up.
• On April 10th, Jeff Gehlbach will be speaking at the Texas Linux Fest 2010 on using OpenNMS in enterprise environments. If you have seen any of his OpenNMS and Asterisk presentations in the past, you know how good they are and won’t want to miss this one.
• We once again have training scheduled in metropolitan Pittsboro, NC, USA for the week of the 19th of April. These classes are both a lot of fun and the best way to get started with OpenNMS.
• David Hustace, Craig Gallen and myself will be attending the TeleManagement Forum’s ManagementWorld conference in Nice, France, on 18-20 May. Again, if you use or are interested in OpenNMS and you’ll be at the conference, please let us know. We’d love to meet you.
• And finally, The OpenNMS Group is a platinum sponsor of the Southeastern Linuxfest to be held in South Carolina the weekend of June 12th. Since this is close expect a lot of the OpenNMS crew to be there, and I’ve submitted a couple of talks but haven’t heard back if they have been accepted.

Of course, I’m able to talk, in depth and at length, about OpenNMS pretty much anywhere and anytime (grin). Hope to meet you in person soon.

Just a quick post that pictures from Craig Gallen’s trip to Botswana are now available. He told me he had a great time, and perhaps I can visit one day.