Monthly Archives: February 2011

One Year of Contributing to WordPress

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Today is the one year date from my first substantial contribution to an open source project. I documented the process of getting my first patch accepted last year. Since then, I’m glad to say I’ve also encouraged and assisted some others in preparing patches. In honor of this day, I thought I would write a bit about why I contribute to WordPress and open source software in general.

My software has rights. Much like I have the inalienable right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the software I contribute to has the inalienable rights to be used, modified, and learned from in any way that the user decides. It feels good for my code, my small contributions to join with the work of 217 others for WordPress 3.0 and 180 others for WordPress 3.1. I feel a part of something bigger. When I meet friends of friends and they talk about blogging, it’s nice to hear they run a WordPress site. All in all, I’m happier today than a year ago just because I contribute more and feel like I’m a part of something big.

Since then, there have been 44 instances of “Props Jorbin” on WordPress trac. I’ve also contributed to the WordPress IRC Bots and the WordPress PluginDirectory Slurper. My WordPress contributions have made me a happier, better developer. Contributing to a project that is used on millions of sites. My goal between now and my second anniversary is to help 10 developers contribute there first patch to an open source project. If you interested, please let me know so I can help you.

Always check your diffs

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One habit that I’ve gotten into that has saved me from looking like an idiot nearly as often is to always look at a diff before I commit. I don’t do this as much in Mercurial, but with SVN when you do automatic deployments to testing servers, a stray alert in your javascript or var_dump in your php can screw up other people’s work. I wrote a small bash script to make it easier for me to check my diffs. Feel free to make it your own. If you have any suggestions for improving it, I’m always looking for ways to improve my dev process. I call it difff for:

Differentiate
Improvements
From
F***ing
Failures

difff() {
  svn diff > ~/diff.diff
  vim ~/diff.diff
}

EDIT: Make sure to check out the comments below to see Jon Cave’s take on this.

Wisconsin Gov. Walker Ginned Up Budget Shortfall To Undercut Worker Rights | TPMDC

Wisconsin’s new Republican governor has framed his assault on public worker’s collective bargaining rights as a needed measure of fiscal austerity during tough times.

The reality is radically different. Unlike true austerity measures — service rollbacks, furloughs, and other temporary measures that cause pain but save money — rolling back worker’s bargaining rights by itself saves almost nothing on its own. But Walker’s doing it anyhow, to knock down a barrier and allow him to cut state employee benefits immediately.

via Wisconsin Gov. Walker Ginned Up Budget Shortfall To Undercut Worker Rights | TPMDC.

Barack Obama at Northern Michigan University

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My Alma Matter was paid a visit yesterday by President Obama. He talked about the efforts NMU is making to improve access to broadband internet in a rural area. He also spoke of how investment by the government helped to create the internet and now must invest to make sure everyone has access to it. This is the first time in 100 years that a sitting president visited Marquette, Michigan for a non campaign event. I watched the speech and all I could think is: It’s a great day to be a wildcat.