FLOSS early and often

A few weeks ago I was asked by Chris DiBona to participate in a podcast that he and Leo Laporte put together called “FLOSS“. I didn’t know much about it but when I went to the site I was pretty flabbergasted to be included in such company.

I mean Jeremy Allison (samba), Rasmus Lerdorf (PHP), Guido van Rossum (python) and company are pretty much deities in the open source pantheon and I’m just a cheerleader. Not even one of those small deities like “goddess of the hearth” or “god of months without an ‘r'”, more like a sprite or gnome or whatever you would call those little nameless things who kind of get to meet the gods occasionally.

I pretty much started off the conversation (after Leo politely told me how to adjust the modulation on my headset mic) claiming they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel chatting with me, but they were really cool about it and made me feel welcome. Those who know me can also imagine that once we got rolling on OpenNMS it is a little hard to shut me up.

I was pleased to see that our chat ran several minutes longer than most, but since I haven’t listened to it I can’t tell if it was good or not. I hate the sound of my voice (the voice in my head is much more suave and refined than the one I hear on tape) and I’m just afraid that I will come across as the biggest dweeb on the planet. However, the one post on the site so far seems positive and several of my friends tell me it was good. Then again, my friends lie a lot.

Anyway, check it out if you are so inclined and let me know what you think (and please consider dropping Leo a few shekels by supporting TWiT). The fact that Chris and Leo were willing to talk to me at all makes me even more determined to make OpenNMS worthy of such company.

6 thoughts on “FLOSS early and often

  1. See, if I knew you were in Pittsboro before now, I would have come round and taken you for a beer (or whatever your favourite indulgence is), as thanks for all you hard work over the years! I’ve done a few small OpenNMS installs ove the years.

    I’ve been in Durham & Chapel Hill since July, but leave for home (Northern Ireland) on Friday!

  2. Wow. Same here. I live in Raleigh, but make the trip down 15-501 to Pittsboro to visit the folks (and get some Allen & Sons BBQ) all the time. Great to know some Open Source goodness is being cooked up right in my back yard.

    The group I work with currently uses Nagios for our network monitoring, but after hearing your interview I’m definitely going to give OpenNMS a try. Keep up the good work!

  3. You’re interview was as good as some of the others I’ve heard with the top dogs you mentioned. I’m very interested in your project, please tell me how I can collaborate.

  4. Taurus, I’ve been listening to FLOSS since its debut and yours was a terrific interview. As I was listening, I was thinking, “This guy is from somewhere in eastern NC”. I went to school in Raleigh and lived there for years, now residing in Asheville.

    I work for a firm with assetts in Asheville, Winston Salem, Decatur, GA, and Little Rock, AR. I’m definitely going to recommend OpenNMS to our network gods.

    Your do a great job summarizing the benefits of OS. It’s time to dust off my Java skills and get to work!!

  5. Thanks. You are way too kind. I’m just a cheerleader here. I have the pleasure of working with a very talented group of people who make OpenNMS what it is. OpenNMS 2.0 (coming out early next year) is simply amazing, and it will be the first real release created by the community as a whole. I’ve been using it at a client site all week (in its 1.3 development branch form) and while it currently has some bugs, it is just amazing.

    I grew up in Asheboro, NC, and I like to think that my accent doesn’t show too much (although I am proud of it). Asheville is beautiful, but after this week in Chicago I don’t think I want to be cold anymore. (grin)

    Thanks again for your comments, and I hope to see you on the mailing lists.

  6. I just finished listening to the episode. And it was great. I regularly use Nagios in my client’s networks but I will definitely give OpenNMS a try!

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