PyBindGen documentation

I have been prodded by the NS-3 guys, namely Mathieu Lacage, to provide more documentation for PyBindgen. Additionally he provided some nice and short examples of C/C++ code to wrap. I then wrote the PyBindGen code that wraps the C/C++ examples, and added everything to the repository.

I looked into it and decided to use epydoc to generate API docs. Additionally I wrote a small introductory section, just to get started (else it's easy to get lost with all the classes). So here it is, the first draft of PyBindGen API documentation. Enjoy.

RedHat conspiracy theories

It seems my last post was not taken well by the community. The thing is, I had not realized my blog would reach so far. Luis Villa and Jeff Waugh in particular think I should I apologize. I respect their opinion, one hand, and I the blog post had unintended consequence, potentially damaging Red Hat's image, on the other hand, which is not what I intended. Red Hat absolutely rocks as a company.

So, I apologize to Red Hat for the last blog post.

Conspiracy theories are always fun, but it seems blogging about them can have unintended consequences.

RedHat's open source community trick

OK, I am going to be a bit cynical here, so be prepared ;-)

I think one of the new genial tricks of late being employed by RedHat to great effect is the following:

1. Select a good open source developer, respected in the community but not affiliated with any Linux distributor company;
2. Secretly talk to the guy and offer him a job at RedHat in some months, but he has to agree to start an open source project doing this and that...
3. The developer agrees, starts the open source project, and starts developing it;
4. In time the open source project gets good community support, not only because of its good quality but also because it is perceived as coming from the open source "community" rather than a company;
5. After some months, the developer joins RedHat, and continues to maintain the project (which now has good community adoption);
6. ....
7. Profit!

I am trying to guess here, and could be wrong, but I am guessing this might have happened with projects such as Cairo (Carl Worth), Pulse Audio (Lennart Poettering), and more recently PackageKit (Richard Hughes), probably others in the past (I suspect Nautilus as well).

Well, if true, I think this is only slightly evil, anyway. I love RedHat, and I think they have always done a great service to open source in the past, and continue to be the leading technology innovators.

OK, if one was not being so cynical one might consider a scenario where the developer in question starts something cool on his own free will and the company simply sees the potential and decides to hire him. But I think I am too cynical to believe this :)