Memories of contributing to Open Source

I was reminded of my first contribution to an open source project. It was a documentation patch to Perl about rand(0) being the same as rand(1). Here is the actual email with the patch. I waited with anticipation for the usual "Thanks, applied" from Jarkko. That came a few hours later, but if you look close enough at my email, some of you may notice the subtle typo in the email text. I did run spell check, and it came back clean. For those of you who still don't notice it, look up the difference between gentile and gentle. I got a private email back from a prominent p5p list member to me and to Jarkko asking if he had to smear bacon all over patch to make it gentile. My embarrassment quickly disappeared as the comedy of the whole thread. I responded with some lame attempt at humor that has sense been forgotten. Somewhere I have a copy of that email thread, and if I am able to dig it up, I'll post it here.

Yarr

In this months Dr. Dobb's Journal, there was an insert attached for the latest Microsoft Visual Studio ad campaign that might be sending the wrong message. The front of the insert (which is a very well illustrated map) can be seen in this post. When I think of software, and then pirates in the same thought, I think of software piracy. Showing a co-worker, and a few friends, they all came to the same conclusion, Microsoft seems to wants us to pirate their software. At least that is the impression given with this advertisement. After opening up the insert, there is a tag line that further enforces this idea. "Microsoft Visual Studio. Made for the likes of developers, and other scoundrels." It also has link to a website that has an online PDF of the map, with another PDF with game pieces and cards to make this a game.

Either the ad agency in charge of this either is clueless, or is trying to generate buzz with this approach. I am surprised that this got a stamp of approval from how ever many people that would have to give an approval to an ad campaign.

Just to be clear. I do not endorse, nor condone any software piracy.

You sure that price per ounce is correct?

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Originally uploaded by Larry Shatzer, Jr.

Someone needs to go back to math class.