One More Week to Apply to Google Summer of Code!
Monday, March 31, 2008
This year, we experimented with the Google Summer of Code&trade program timeline, providing one week for students to discuss project ideas with their mentors and then a single week to submit applications. The good news is that we've heard that overall application quality is much higher this year and that students have really benefited from the opportunity to have extra time to discuss their ideas with their potential mentors. However, we've still heard feedback from the community that it would be useful to provide more time for students to submit their applications, so we've done just that. The new deadline for student applications is Monday, April 7, 2008.
For those of you who are wondering if this message is an April Fool's Joke, we assure you that it's not. How could we compete with Google Gulp?
AxsJAX: My Web 2.0 Application Is Feeling Accessible
Friday, March 28, 2008
Last November, we announced the release of the AxsJAX framework as an Open Source project hosted on Google Code. The convenience afforded by having HTTP access to the GoogleCode repository has meant that this project has neverneeded to make downloadable releases — as we build new enhancements, users automatically experience the benefits of what we create.
The AxsJAX project depends on a number of cutting-edge technologies — including the emerging browser support for W3C ARIA. Charles and I took advantage of the presence of over 4,000 attendees at the CSUN 2008 conference last week to expose as many end-users and developers as possible to the benefits of Web 2.0 technologies. Until now, these technologies have been mostly viewed as an obstacle to users with special needs; I therefore found it refreshing to turn things around and demonstrate positive benefits that emerge when the underlying web platform is used to solve accessibility challenges.
Those of you who ran into me or Charles at the conference probably noticed our AxsJAX shirts — thanks again to Google's Open Source Team for helping us spread the source! The last few months have seen the AxsJAX framework evolve rapidly, and in that process, the library has acquired significant functionality that drastically reduces the amount of code it takes to AxsJAX content-rich web applications. We would like to take this opportunity to open up the AxsJAX Challenge — we invite web developers to innovate on our work as you AxsJAX your favorite web applications. Let us know about the great work you've done and we will recognize your work with a cool t-shirt that sports the Google logo in Braille on it.
Introducing libkml: a library for reading, writing, and manipulating KML
Thursday, March 27, 2008
By Michael Weiss-Malik, KML Product Manager
KML has seen tremendous uptake as a GIS data presentation language, in large part due to its simplicity. The ability to quickly and easily read or write small bits of KML by hand helps newcomers to rapidly experiment with the language and learn it. That said, the most interesting and sophisticated KML documents generally aren't created by hand... instead, authors tend to write computer programs to generate data-driven KML en masse. Programmers are often forced to roll custom KML-generating code for each such project. Likewise, mapping application developers have traditionally been tasked with writing one-off KML parsers if they want to read in and visualize KML data.
Both KML authors and consumers should therefore be pleased hear about today's version 0.1 "preview" release of libkml: Google's open-source reference library for reading, writing, and manipulating KML. Our hope is that libkml will reduce the need for everyone to re-invent the wheel with a custom parser or serializer, by providing a single re-usable library that implements KML's semantics. This first release is focused primarily on the low-level details of the KML DOM itself, but it's our intent to enhance the library in the future by implementing more sophisticated operations like style resolution and balloon text templating. If you don't know what these are, I encourage you to check out Google Code's KML documentation.
Our initial release covers parsing and serializing of all elements in KML 2.2, which is currently pending acceptance by the Open Geospatial Consortium as an OGC standard. It's a C++ library that compiles and runs on multiple platforms, so C++ is the most direct way to call into it. If C++ isn't your thing, the library's build system can also generate (through SWIG) wrappers/bindings for Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Since the whole thing is released under a BSD license, you have complete flexibility in how you use our code and/or integrate it into other projects. Do note that we're labeling this a "preview" release on purpose: you should expect changes.
I encourage you to download and play with the library -- it includes several example programs that are worth the price of admission in and of themselves. And keep an eye out in the coming months, because this first release is just the beginning!
KML has seen tremendous uptake as a GIS data presentation language, in large part due to its simplicity. The ability to quickly and easily read or write small bits of KML by hand helps newcomers to rapidly experiment with the language and learn it. That said, the most interesting and sophisticated KML documents generally aren't created by hand... instead, authors tend to write computer programs to generate data-driven KML en masse. Programmers are often forced to roll custom KML-generating code for each such project. Likewise, mapping application developers have traditionally been tasked with writing one-off KML parsers if they want to read in and visualize KML data.
Both KML authors and consumers should therefore be pleased hear about today's version 0.1 "preview" release of libkml: Google's open-source reference library for reading, writing, and manipulating KML. Our hope is that libkml will reduce the need for everyone to re-invent the wheel with a custom parser or serializer, by providing a single re-usable library that implements KML's semantics. This first release is focused primarily on the low-level details of the KML DOM itself, but it's our intent to enhance the library in the future by implementing more sophisticated operations like style resolution and balloon text templating. If you don't know what these are, I encourage you to check out Google Code's KML documentation.
Our initial release covers parsing and serializing of all elements in KML 2.2, which is currently pending acceptance by the Open Geospatial Consortium as an OGC standard. It's a C++ library that compiles and runs on multiple platforms, so C++ is the most direct way to call into it. If C++ isn't your thing, the library's build system can also generate (through SWIG) wrappers/bindings for Java, PHP, Perl, Python, and Ruby. Since the whole thing is released under a BSD license, you have complete flexibility in how you use our code and/or integrate it into other projects. Do note that we're labeling this a "preview" release on purpose: you should expect changes.
I encourage you to download and play with the library -- it includes several example programs that are worth the price of admission in and of themselves. And keep an eye out in the coming months, because this first release is just the beginning!
Updates from the Free Software Foundation
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Google's Open Source Team is a proud supporter of many Free and Open Source technical and advocacy organizations. From time to time, we ask that these colleagues give an update to the community about their latest and greatest achievements. Peter Brown, Executive Director of the Free Software Foundation, was kind enough to write in to us:
The Free Software Foundation (FSF) recently held its annual members meeting at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A. The meeting is a chance to reflect upon the achievements of the year past and plan for the year ahead. Google has supported our work in the past through our corporate patron program, and this year they have just confirmed that they are renewing their support once again. This seems like a good occasion then to brief Google followers on what work we have been doing and what you can expect from the FSF in the year ahead.
The FSF launched the GNU GPLv3 on June 29, 2007. This was the culmination of an 18-month period to redraft the world's most popular free software license. I am pleased to report that not only have we published a license that protects free software from the latest attempts to make it proprietary, but we have also seen widespread adoption, including developer and corporate support. We have also updated and launched the GNU LGPLv3 and created a new license: the GNU Affero GPLv3. You may have also heard that the FSF, Wikimedia and Creative Commons are cooperating over the new GNU GFDL — the license currently used for all articles on Wikipedia. You can find out more about FSF copyleft licensing at the FSF Licensing and Compliance Lab.
With the release of the GNU AGPLv3, we have also started to make progress on how to tackle the issue of computer user freedom and web services. To that end, we recently hosted a summit, "Freedom for Web Services," as a launching point for a year-long community discussion on this topic. Reports from that summit will be published soon.
The Free Software Foundation sponsors the ongoing development of the GNU project — and many new GNU projects are added every year. GNU now stretches far beyond the core system components found in the typical GNU/Linux distribution. Apart from our own projects we also work to highlight those projects that have a strategic importance to free software. The FSF high priority projects list is currently under review following a recent rash of success, and we hope to relaunch in April with a new set of targets for software development.
In 2008, the FSF will be marking the 25th anniversary of the launch of the GNU project — the starting point for the free operating system GNU/Linux, and the free software movement. We are planning to mark the anniversary with a public awareness campaign. Expect to see lots of people talking about free software during the year ahead. In preparation for that campaign we have updated our website, www.fsf.org, with a new friendly look as we welcome a new audience of users to free software.
Speaking of celebrations, Happy Document Freedom Day! Our campaign for Open Document has been underway since October 2005, and we are helping spread awareness of the need for our public institutions to hold records in formats that we can all utilize. You can join us in this process by sending an email or letter to your national or local government officials or government agencies and politicians. Getting your voice heard on this issue will go a long way in preparing the political ground for the acceptance of free and open formats. There are many other ways you can get involved beyond our Open Document efforts. Head over to our campaign center now or look through our volunteer section to find something that you can get active with.
Part of our public awareness campaign is a major free software event to be held in Massachusetts in the summer of 2009. We are working in collaboration with local educational institutions and other stakeholders to develop an event that will bring developers and users together in a fun and interesting way. We also aim to use the event to highlight the need to draw more young women into computer science. Google's own Leslie Hawthorn has generously joined our planning committee, and you will probably hear updates from her later this year.
Google's support is great to have, but we receive the bulk of our funding from individual contributors and much of the work is done by volunteers. You can join the Free Software Foundation as an Associate Member — it's a great way to get involved and stay connected with our work.
Many thanks to Peter for this report.
LugRadio Live Comes to the U.S.A.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
When Jono Bacon told us he wanted to bring LugRadio Live from the United Kingdom to the United States, we were all for it. We'd heard great things from so many colleagues about how fun and community-oriented the show was, so we naturally asked, "How can we help?" When Jono let us know he needed a team on the ground to do the heavy lifting to make it happen, our masochism, er, love of Open Source firmly kicked in, and months of planning later LugRadio Live USA is on!
Join us on April 12 & 13, 2008 at the Metreon in San Francisco, California for two days of talks, exhibitions by local Open Source projects, live recording of the LugRadio Live podcast and, of course, free beer. Confirmed speakers include Miguel de Icaza, Matthew Garrett, Mike Linksvayer, Selena Deckelmann, Val Henson, our very own Dan Kegel and Robert Love, and many, many more.
Making LugRadio Live USA happen has been a joint labor of love, from the "Gents" tracking down speakers and exhibitors to Google's Open Source Team finding the space, rustling up bean bags, ordering power drops and making sure the chairs get there on time. Thanks especially to Cat Allman and Kynan Dent for everything they've done.
Take a moment now to register for the event. Folks who pre-register will also enjoy additional benefits at the show. Even better, if you cajole your friends to join you, you can win some fabulous prizes. We hope to see you there, and spread the word!