Snowed In

For reasons that I will not get into, this site, created by this man, excites me to no end, though it will probably excite exactly zero of my readers.

Viva la revolucion!  I am not alone!

Some recent press/blogging about Forkolator:

• Sandy Armstrong, a maintainer of the Tomboy note-taking app who I met at BarCamp San Diego, wrote up his response to the project.
• That post showed up on Planet Gnome, prompting Colin Walters, who is a Red Hat developer working on Gnome Online Desktop to add his thoughts.
• At which point the article got picked up by Jake Edge at Linux Weekly News, who wrote a lengthy (and great!) writeup of the project.

And this summer Paul McDonald of the Google Mashup Editor team weighed in. It’s exciting to see people talking! It certainly increases the pressure on me to keep things moving.

Google released Google Mashup Editor today, which is an online IDE in the spirit of Forkolator. Google Docs is pretty similar to a design I had been playing with too. I guess Google and I have similar goals. The difference is, they implement their ideas, and I often just blog about mine.

But I’m getting a little scared. Google building a great, functional platform that’s going to entice a lot of people to spend the bulk of their time in Google software. But when we use Google products, we have no control over the software we’re using. We can’t change it. We can’t even prevent it from changing. Google has the keys to the car.

As a free software advocate, that’s scary.

As a user, it should be scary too. Yes, Google seems altruistic enough, but the fact is, they have interests. Often their interests align with the interests of many users, but what if you’re in the 5% whose interests are not being served? Your only option is to choose another product. Maybe find something from Yahoo or Microsoft.

But that’s not good enough for me.

And that’s why Forkolator is still important, even in the face of Yahoo Pipes, Microsoft Popfly and Google Mashup Editor. Forkolator is about giving people total control over the software they use, and encouraging uninhibited exploration of possibilities. Microsoft actively constrains our freedom to change our software. At best, Google is granting us a few limited freedoms because they’ve deemed those freedoms useful to some large segment of their user base. And because in this case, GME drives more traffic to their services.

Despite this minor detour towards proprietary software, I really believe the future of software is total Freedom. But for that to be true, we need to build infrastructure to compete with Google and we need to do it fast.

This is version 0.2 of ForkCode, the web-based IDE that I’m working on. IDE is an acronym that means “software for making software”.

There are a bunch of fun geeky turns of phrase that apply to what I’m doing right now. First, ForkCode can “bootstrap” itself which means I’m using ForkCode to create ForkCode. You know, like “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!”

The second thing I’m doing is “dogfooding”. That means I’m using the software I’m writing. The term refers to eating your own dogfood, which is, ostensibly, what the head chef at a dogfood factory must do to ensure a quality product.

Lately I’ve been feeling like I should be moving forward, faster on things that’ll lead to my 2nd year project. But I’m not raring to go on those things, for better or for worse. So I decided: Erik, just do the project that you’re dying to do. And right now, it’s this. And maybe I’ll fall behind, but it’s better to do something than nothing.

And honestly, truly… I love this project right now.

My strategy in the new year is to take on a huge pile of new years resolutions. I’ve been compiling this list since December 28th. I might add stuff too. And make no mistake, all of these are getting done.

I’m going to volunteer for Computer Clubhouse in L.A.

I’m going to join a choir and start making friends with more chorus geeks. Update: As of Jan 8, I am part of the La Jolla Symphony Chorus!

I’m going surf a bunch with Allison and Lauren

I’m going to start a veggie dinner coop immediately and have people over for food All The Time!

I’m going to sign up for a food box w/ Lauren and Grant

I’m going to focus my scholastic energies on:
* The body/tool division
* An EUP tool for animated infovis
* Publishing BusyBodies
* Publishsing Underbelly
* Doing something awesome for Adaptive Dynamics
* Making Foundations of Neurobiology as painless and quick as possible
* Keeping far ahead in teaching obligations

I’m going to spend a little time on forkolator every now and then.

I’m going to always be aware of the state of my finances

I’m going to eat awesomely: just enough, veganesque,

I’m going to not miss concerts that I’d love to see

I’m going to write two letters a month. One to my gramma and one to someone else.

I’m going to call my mom at least once a week.

I’ll find more new music I love.

When people don’t want to kiss me back, I’ll be OK with it.

I’m growing out my beard and my hair so that I’m thinking about what my appearance represents to me, not how it looks to other people.

I’m going to spend the summer in Mexico

I’m going to start a feminist zine.