Glancing back at ‘07
January 6, the Feast of the Epiphany, more popularly known as “Three Kings Sunday”, marked the end of the Christmas season. As the hustle and bustle of the holidays finally settles down and as regular life settles back in, it’s kinda nice to sit back, relax, and take a look at how the past year went, the highlights and low points, lessons to be learned and things to be forgotten. Luckily, I have a blog to remember the important points. 
(Warning: longish post. Still I hope you find it interesting to some degree.)
January 7, 2008 was supposed to be my second Linux birthday, if I had remembered it… I did nothing special to celebrate it, not even something like a bug triaging session of last year. Although last week I did manage to switch my Source Mage system from stable to the test grimoire (a.k.a. testing branch). I’d probably consider that a major change. I also noticed that January last year was the first time I’ve ever mentioned Source Mage, which happens to be the main distro on my desktop for quite some time now (Kubuntu still exists in some places and some forms, as Hardy). More on that some other time. 
Come February, I applied for Kubuntu Membership. This membership basically means “contributor” in many ways, developing, packaging, community, advocacy, etc. At that time, my main area of contribution was user support, mostly IRC and then some in the forums. I also became a channel operator in #kubuntu (and much much later on in #kde) @ irc.freenode.net. Lately though, I’ve been slacking even in that area, due to my decision to lessen my IRC activities at times (to preserve sanity and what little productivity I have left). But I’ve still been silently monitoring how the community grows quite beautifully. New names, new contributors, fresh blood. It’s been interesting and fun to watch community dynamics such as this.
I did try later on to try out Debian/Kubuntu packaging, even tried to start a sort of journal. Unfortunately, I never really got the hang of it. It’s not really that difficult, but it can be overwhelming during your first attempts. With practice, you’ll improve. But I lacked that consistency, so almost everytime I have an urge to fix something, which happens almost every 6 months, I have to relearn the basics. During the course of getting intensely involved with Kubuntu development, I learned some lessons to keep in mind. One of that is that, whether you’re just a programmer trying to fix or add a feature, you will have to learn how to package. I guess this applies to any distribution. I believe that DEB is an excellent binary package format and it has excellent package management and creation tools. But the price of its quality is a bit of complexity (IMHO), so it can be daunting at first glance. But it’s not impossible. All you need is a bit of patience and perseverance, two traits I seem to lack.
This year I was also treated to my first two “geeky” (a.k.a. software/technology-related) events. One was a two-day seminar on FOSS and e-Governance, and another was the worldwide celebration of Software Freedom Day 2007. They were not as geeky as I hoped they’d be, and probably rightly so, since neither were really developer or hackfest events, but more advocacy-oriented. Still, it was fun to finally meet some of the people behind the IRC nicks, and to get to know other people involved with FOSS in the country. I was also treated to a different face of FOSS from what I’ve been used to in my limited world of the Internet. FOSS in the Philippines, and generally in South/East/Southeast Asia, takes on a more “social” face than what is common in the U.S. or in Europe. Here, the concerns are more on human development, empowering local government units and small enterprises, education, social awareness, and all that.
I’ve also been lucky enough to have made a small presence on the blogosphere, being added to Planet Ubuntu (perks of being a member) and Planet KDE. It has, of course, given a boost to my previously non-existent readership, but has also given me a chance to express some concerns or issues, learn new things from other people, and hopefully get to help others as well. I was also able to write my first (and so far only) “marketing” article about KDE, which found its way to dig, probably generating the most traffic on my site. I wanted to follow it up with a poster as suggested by one comment, but never got around to actually doing it (besides the fact that I seem to lack some decent amount of artistic talent). Still, I was glad that I wrote it and that it reached a lot of people, even those not reading my blogs and the Planets, since there seem to be some people who have only discovered or re-discovered those wonders of KDE.
Life in 2007 was not always this rosy for me though. Unlike 2006, which was exciting and uplifting, 2007 was stormy and stressful. I guess everyone reaches a sort of “burnout phase” in their involvement with FOSS projects. I guess I reached mine a bit early, just less than 2 years into it. First burnout happened around August, when I decided to take a sort of retreat for a while. I came back, but it has been a recurring problem. These periods of “depression” (for lack of a better word) has also brought into light certain personality problems that I didn’t know I had, or I did know I had them but didn’t bother. I’ll have to face my dark side sooner or later, and the sooner, the better.
One side-effect of this low periods is that I seem to have developed a talent for ranting during the last months of the year. So much that I’ve turned it into an art, called “blonting”, blog ranting (credit goes to Sho for the term, of course). I had a lot to rant about, and boy did I rant. Ranging from Kubuntu-KDE relation, to Kubuntu identity crisis, to No LTS for Kubuntu, any issue that was worth scrutinizing, I was there. The positive side to these blonts were that it created some discussion and some awareness about certain issues. On the down side, I kinda slowly distanced myself from Kubuntu a bit, probably contributing to even less presence in my usual areas of support. I haven’t left Kubuntu, of course. But suffice it to say that the honeymoon phase is a bit over. I’ve also learned to widen my horizon, perspectives, and experience. As usual, balance is the key. Let’s hope I can do that.
2007 hasn’t been adventurous only for me. It has equally been exciting and at the same time tumultuous for KDE and Kubuntu. With the release of Kubuntu 7.10 (Gutsy Gibbon), Kubuntu has been scrutinized more for some of its differences with its older sibling, Ubuntu. With the release of KDE 4.0 delayed, and a few bumps on the road to getting there, KDE has also been put on the spotlight. But lo and behold, KDE 4.0 will be released in a few days, and the next version of Kubuntu will have two KDE offerings, as well as other new features that will (hopefully) keep it on par with Ubuntu.
2007 has indeed been exciting, adventurous, and eventful. Goals were set. Some were met, and some were not. Some things changed, some remained the same. New horizons were opened, other roads were closed. Do I have some regrets? Do I wish I could have done some things differently? Of course. But I’m also looking forward to a fresh and refreshing start for 2008. Many new things, new opportunities, and new endeavors lie ahead. So here’s to hoping for the best, and doing what it takes to make that come true.
