I remember asking my brother a while ago what programming language people would still use in 10 years. I was suggesting Ruby, and since he’s into .NET, I thought he’d say C# or asp. To my surprise, Javascript was his immediate answer.

That was before words like AJAX or javascript libraries were mainstream. Javascript is now used in all sorts of flavour on the web, from dynamizing user interfaces, up to powering whole websites like gmail or 280Slides. In 2008 alone, we’ve seen the apparition of stand-alone javascript web frameworks like SproutCore or Objective-J.

A new service called the Reasonable Smart Platform aims to push further boundaries, by offering a platform for web developers that will host their application and store the data for them.

In practice, you open an account by using OpenId. You can then start a new host, or clone existing ones, with files hosted on RSP through git. Other programmers can also clone your host, and then push changes.

There is currently a minimal set of features. HTTP requests are taken care by bootstrap.js; you can also access the filesystem, store, retrieve and search data, and manage sessions. All of this is done with javascript; which is executed on the RSP server upon user requests.

If you go through the website, it seems raw; but the service is already functional. The website in itself uses RSP. Here is for instance a sample application done today, a demo made just for this post. It’s a board where visitors can leave a message, like what they are doing currently. If you have a RSP account, the code is hosted at http://mtw-demo.reasonablysmart.com:81/ if you want to play with it.

I’d like to believe that this is a strong contender to other cloud computing companies. They are actually looking for investors to fund and develop the project; it’s for instance a direct competitor to 10gen. Of course, there are many shortcomings (such as lack of documentation and examples); but I know how talented they are, seeing them working at blitzweekend so this shouldn’t be a problem.

Mini … minimalism

Marc-André Cournoyer has just published Invisible (link to the GitHub repository), a ruby web framework that aims to be as minimalist and compact as possible, with the core code taking 2k lines.

Yes, you’ve read it well, it’s a web framework and it’s under 2000 lines of code. In comparison, in other web frameworks like Ruby On Rails, there are base files that are well beyond 2000 lines (here or here for instance)

Thanks to its simplicity, I imagine the web framework could be used to get a simple website in a minimal amount of time, such as a website that has only a dozen or so (static) pages. It might not be production ready though for web developers, since it has minimal no support for stylesheets, javascripts, or any other fancy web2.0 effects.

In related news, the prolific Marc-André Cournoyer also released a while ago Thin Turbo, aiming to speed up Thin.

There are no clues if the author aims to release one day a web server or a framework coded in one line, or in assembly

Control Yourself, Inc. has launched officially today Identi.ca, an open microbloggling service that takes a radical approach on how new social web services should be built and used.

Identi.ca is Evan Prodromou’s take on current SaaS and web applications practices. He writes in great detail about identi.ca’s inception in a blog post today. He writes for instance about walled gardens, mentionning how web companies such as Google or Yahoo are accustomed to suck in your data and history, and how most of them don’t allow data portability between different services.

Identi.ca in itself is a service similar to Twitter, in the sense that you use it to tell your network of “friends” about your current activity. The beauty of the system though lies with laconi.ca, a AGPL‘d software that anyone can install on their own servers. Once setup, you can exchange data friend updates with other laconi.ca servers.

If you sit back a while and think about the concept, it solves many problems. It’s for instance an immediate solution to Twitter’s scalability problems — the flow of activity streams are now handled by the users’ servers and not by one single and monolithic web company. It also allows users to customize, add, improve their own version of laconi.ca, opening new ways to use the service, for those who want more security, more flexibility or maybe an in-house closed version.

I foresee laconi.ca as the wordpress of microblogging platforms but in many ways, better. It’s also the only service I know of that has implemented OAuth with a new microblogging standards named OpenedMicroBlogging, used by laconi.ca to authenticate and publish updates to other connected servers. I haven’t myself tried out laconi.ca; as I am still trying to understand the ins and outs of OAuth. Anyways, it’s great to see such innovation, and congrats to Evan!

Codefest is a 3-day event due next week, from May 16th to May 18th. The event’s tagline is “2 days to optimize and improve your favorite free / Open Source project”.

I have been to the last codefest and here is a glimpse of the event:

The last Codefest gathered consultants, programmers from various IT companies, students, as well as various Free Software advocates. There isn’t really a definitive way to qualify those who attended the event, I’d just say that most were curious on building new tools and trying out new things. In this regard, Codefest is reminiscent of Blitzweekend, although it doesn’t put a focus on “business issues”. It also puts more focus on the community aspect; as there are no “teams”, projects are shared informally. Another way to put it is that Blitzweekend is focused on the end-result, while Codefest is focused on the coding and work-sharing process.

While there was a majority of php developers at the last event, the upcoming codefest is presented as open to other languages and projects (drupal, typo3, tikiwiki, python, ruby etc.). The event is also opened to contributions by the community and sponsors — if you are a company looking for talented developers, it’s a great way to reach them.

This looks like a great event that should be a blast, if you are a developer and want to hone your skills. Or you could just want to meet similar-minded people.

What: Codefest, a weekend-long coding session
When: May 16th, May 17th, May 18th
Where: Pub sans génie, Ecole de technologie supérieure

Note: Thanks to Jevon McDonald for the inspiration for the title. We are indeed working towards a MontrealTechWatch 2.0, although the website will have a permanent “beta” status.

As posted earlier, I’ve taken a few steps back to consider what MontrealTechWatch means on the long-term. We’ve done an open meeting at Laika too last wednesday, many showed up, and there were lots of suggestions. Thanks to everyone who commented or went to the meetup!

I’ve found out that this was in fact related to the essence of “blogging” in general, and its viability. MTW is dedicated to a small (albeit very active) community, and its success relies on reporting about latest news and on relevant insights on what those news means, beyond simple facts reporting.

And that’s where the problem is. “Relevant insight” means you have to be an active actor of the industry, someone who innovates/designs/codes/markets products and then have the necessary background to give those insights. Which means blogging has to be restriced to a few hours, and can never be a full-time occupation.

I am sure this is a balance problem that many bloggers stumbles into, at a specific point of their lifespan.

My position on this is that I still want to contribute actively on MTW, but make no mistake, I will continue to design/develop/work on new innovative projects, and that’s not negotiable.

And my vision for MontrealTechWatch is a beacon of light, for technology and innovation, where entrepreneurs/hackers/students get inspiration and aspire to work on great projects.

Can the two visions/positions be compatible? Although I have no final answer, I’d like to think (for the moment) that it’s possible to do so.

A solution that rose during the last meeting was getting more actors of the “community” to contribute to the blog. See this for instance:

In this chart, there would someone taking care of developing MTW and all sorts of business-related/administrative stuff like getting partners, such as entrepreneurship centres or technology clusters, be it in Montreal or outside. This is not necessarily me, and I’m thinking about meeting a couple of persons here in Montreal who would rise to the challenge.

Then, there would be an core team of 3 to 6 persons, who contribute weekly/daily to MontrealTechwatch. Patrick Tanguay wrote about having clusters, and that what we’re going to have:
- a section about entrepreneurship/startups
- a section about technology events (democamps, blitzweekend, breakfasts, etc.)
- a section about mobile technology (mobile platforms, telecommunications, mobile computing etc.)
- a section about video games
- a section about hacking + open source, which would be dedicated to the coder folks
- a jobs section
- and ideally, also a guide section, where posts like “Web entrepreneurship for students” or any other resource would be published.
If you would like to be part of this “elite”/official team and if the vision of MTW appeals to you, shout an email at news@montrealtechwatch.com or tweet a direct message at @mtw

Ideally, there should also be at least one person who would write in French, although as I wrote earlier, it’s difficult to do so in technology.

Around the core team, every other member of the community that MTW is geared to will also be invited to contribute, whether they post specific articles on a solution they worked on, or report news that might have been overlooked by the core team.

Next, there are the active readers, people who subscribe or comment on articles.

Now, here are the next steps that will be worked on, in no particular order:

• getting UI improvements done on MTW to allow more interactivity and more user-generated content
• finding the project leader / executive person for MTW, - work with other organizations like Alliance Numeriq, TechnoMontreal, universities and other partners
• write and publish a chart / a “declaration” to clarify the vision and the objective behind MTW,
• moving the MTW to a dedicated server, and also get an official status for MTW and all of its activities
• work out the workflow for the groups/teams as described earlier and publish this.

Note: if a company want to be an official sponsor (such as sponsoring development, or sponsoring gear or any other activity), shout an email at news@montrealtechwatch

We are also launching startupdrinks next week, either wednesday or friday late afternon (stay tuned for the final date/hour). The goal is to gather everyone interested in startups to get over a drink at a bar. No schedule, simple, free, an open source event, I will talk about MTW, but you are free to talk about anything you want to whoever you want.

I hope this will give you a better understanding on the future of MTW. I know there are some things that should still be worked on, but as one says, it’s about the journey, not about the destination. So here’s hoping you will enjoy the ride…

OK, here is the story: MontrealTechWatch was never destined to be the one-stop destination for new technologies in Montreal. Personally, this was my first blog (well to be 100% correct, I started heri.madmedia.ca 2 months earlier) and was exploring then what was a blog and how it could be used.

1 year later, MTW turned into a full-fledged web destination, that people referred to get news, to see upcoming events, see pictures of local events, … there is even a job section. This is all very good, and personally quite exhilirating, but I feel I learned all I could from the initiative.

Now, what I would like MTW to be is to turn it into an independent, self-sufficient entity, that would cover new technology, entrepreneurship, hackers, video games, events in Montreal and beyond. Also being a media entity is not a viable business model these days, so MTW is going naturally to take the path of working with local entrepreneurs and other members of the community.

Now, this is not going to happen overnight, and I am inviting everyone interested into participating into an “open” meeting, over a drink. If you also have ideas, come and expose them at the meetup. If you would like to be part of the core team of the future MTW, come and we’ll talk about this. Details:

What: MTW open meeting. brainstorming about the future MTW. gathering ideas.
Where: Laika, 4040 bvd St-Laurent, Montreal
When: 7.30pm, 16th April, over a drink

Update: if you want to come, please leave a comment + your ideas about MTW so we’ll get a more productive meetup and come prepared

Photo : Road to heaven

Savoir Faire Linux, a company dedicated to Linux and Free Software solutions, has sued the Régie des Rentes du Québec this week, for choosing Windows Vista for its computers, without call for bids.

The Régie des Rentes du Québec is using currently Windows 2000 for its systems, but as support for the OS is phased out by Microsoft, the agency must now migrate to another OS. The Régie des Rentes chose Windows Vista, viewed as a natural “software update”.

Savoir Faire Linux’s position is that Windows Vista is a major migration and a change of OS, which should then be done via a call for bids. Furthermore, Savoir Faire Linux says current versions of Linux are more than capable of serving the agency’s IT needs, and that they will also save millions of dollars in the process.

This is the first time in North America that a governement agency is sued for not using open source software. There are previous cases though in Europe, most notably in Germany and in France where whole governement agencies and ministries are now running open source software.

In this case, Vista was not the wisest of choice for the Régie des Rentes, as it is an OS widely known for its shortcomings. However, Savoir Faire Linux is not the white knight either in this case. They are service providers specialized in Linux, and should the systems be migrated to Linux, they would be amongst the first to benefit financially from the deal.

I cam currently at CodeFest, a weekend sprint gathering developers and whose goal is to implement open standards in existing applications, and which is also sponsored by phpQuébec. This year, it’s organized by good fellow Marc Laporte, main developer for TikiWiki, and who wishes to make Montreal a “central place for technology”.

This event started very slowly. I learned at my own expense as I turned up at 9am, which seems to be an hour where every other Montreal developer is still asleep. (!)

Nevertheless, everyone who signed up eventually came and the intensity of the event rose. We had a brainstorming session about microformats and its usage, what is the state of the art, differences between web services consuming each other’s data via microformats and end-users consuming data published on a web page.

If you are curious, here is a (short) list of the projects being developed/brainstormed currently at La Bande Passante:
- Morgan Tocker is implementing XFN and hCards at Crash at mine, a nomadic open source application,
- Stephane Daury and me are working on a wordpress plugin which can send hReviews to a central server
- Marc and Nelson are working on introducing hCal for Tikiwiki
- Stéphane wants to have Geo and hCard templates for MediaWiki
- Robin Millette is working on a hEvent Drupal aggregator

All of this is done very organically, some are more conceptual than other, while others are nearly done. This seems to be like an open R&D lab with all sorts of excited scientists developers.

La Semaine Québecoise de l’Informatique Libre, which I freely translate to “Québec Week of Free Software”, has begun today. You can see a list of activities on their website, such as Ubuntu install parties or the local celebration of the Software Freedom Day.

Free Software and Open Source Software is at the basis of most of the new craze we see today in the Internet:

1. First, by the use of open source frameworks, librairies and software that most developers use to build a website. Apache, MySQL, Linux, php, Ruby on Rails, Django are all popular open sourced software that are commonly used. Without these tools, it is undeniable that we would not have as much innovation as we see today, as engineers and entrepreneurs would have had to buy some kind of proprietary and closed technology, possibly reinventing the wheel each time. Even if you do not deal with technology, you might still use Open Source Software like Firefox or Wordpress that are proven to be highly superior to their “commercial” equivalents.
2. Second, the Open Source philosophy has gone beyond software, and is more or less the basis of the “web2.0″ movement. Wikipedia, youtube, blogging, citizen journalism, they all give the power back to the individual, who can contribute and make the overall product better.

Even though both movements were and are criticized for lacking “business models”, they are here to stay and individuals, developers, marketers, designers, etc. have to integrate it in their plans. For SQIL, what I found most interesting is the 2-day conference on “Free Culture, innovation by networking” where the Open Source movement’s impact is discusses on the technological and social side. But there are many other happennings in Montréal, so if you have time (and speak french), go to one of panels or activities.

This is the second part of the interview of Robin Millette, and as mentionned previously, is part of a series about the upcoming SQIL 2007. You can find the first three questions on a previous post, where he answered preliminary questions about his background and about SQIL.

4. Is there an area in Free Software in which Québecers are good contributors?

This is a hard question to answer. One project I have on the back burner is a Sourceforge spider to try and determine the level of Québec’s participation. I have to mention the PHP Conference organized every year by Yann Larrivée and PHP Québec that brings international visitors to Montreal. Canonical’s user support for Ubuntu is based in Montreal, so I’m guessing we’re good at that too :)

Tiki-Wiki wouldn’t have 300 developpers (I could exaggerate a little, I haven’t checked the numbers lately) if it wasn’t for Marc Laporte’s leadership. AlternC won a Trophée du libre last year in an international contest and Antoine Beaupré from Koumbit is a main contributor to that web hosting project.

I also think the MILLE project and other initatives in the education sector are showing the path, and the recent launch of Logique Libre for the business sector will also help gain contributions from diversified sources.

I’m probably forgetting obvious contributors, I’ll let you know if I ever launch my Sourceforge spider.

5. Open Source Software has been adopted by a wide range of public and private organizations, especially in european countries like Germany and France. Can you describe the situation in Québec and what the future looks like? Will we see the Québec governement adopt next Open source software?

I’m not sure about other countries, but here, the lobbies seem very strong and forceful. The CLLAP (Conférence sur les logiciels libres en administration publique) will be back in 2008 and shed further light on the topic.

The current government is happy to have umbrella contracts with the largest companies to allow it to automatically change the version of the software it uses. In Le Soleil’s April 10th 2007 edition, Guy Chouinard, acquisition director at the Centre des services partagés du Québec, recognized that the actual conditions aren’t favorable to free software.

Cyrille Béraud, president of Savoir-faire Linux, just published “La longue route du logiciel libre au Québec” on this topic for the SQIL.

Another growing player in this field, the Techno Centre Logiciels Libre, started as a network of service providers in Québec, is doing everything in its power to show the government it can handle its business.

6. What do you think of the trend of using the word “Open Source” everywhere, and not only for software? we see it in emerging conferences like barcamps, in terms like “crowdsourced ideas and media”, and even in design and art, like opensourcecinema.org in Montreal. Do you see it as beneficial for the Free Software movement or is it just a misappropriation of the word?

I rarely use “open source”, it’s always “open source software” and usually preceded by “free software”. In french, I keep it simple, with “logiciel libre”. We automatically understand “free market” doesn’t mean every thing is given away, I don’t see what’s wrong with using “free software”, even if you need 3 more seconds to explain you don’t mean “gratis”. But that wasn’t the question, was it.

Another project I have is to elaborate on all the uses of the word “open”, and there are lots (which is why I’m not done yet). Take “open source journalism” for instance. Does it mean the article uses open sources (like public stats, etc.) or are we talking about citizen journalism?

One of the most important aspect of Free Software and the concept of copyleft is its transitivity. The first degree collaboration/participation is one thing, but the emphasis is generally on enabling long term participation by building on the available body of works. Lots of uses of “open source” concentrate only on the first level of direct participation. Lots of creative commons works are published with a non-derivative clause, or worst, a sharealike (copyleft) + non-commercial clause. That’s devious, because on the one hand it encourages collaboration, but on the other, it makes it harder to share if you can’t charge for the copies you make or can’t include it with other works without that commercial clause. Where’s the free market here?

Getting closer to your question now… and I’ll conclude with this.

Free Software is multifaceted. So much it grew a new name, Open Source Software. It’s not just a single community anymore, but many, many. Wikipedia showed what can happen on an immense scale with an encyclopedia, and although it has certain flaws, its a project we can all be proud of. Same goes for Creative Commons and the Art Libre Licence for various kinds of works. Software is special, in that it’s covered by copyright while it’s a functionnal work, so it needs special treatment.

Free Software didn’t invent sharing, communities, participation, collaboration, helping a stranger, etc. These values have been part of us since the dawn of ages. But if it can serve as an example to enable us to get more freedom, better control and the involvment of larger masses, I’m all for it, in any field. Just remember, seeing the source is just a precondition to freedom.