Forum OpenACS Q&A: AOLserver Core Team (ACT) Nominees

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5: AOLserver Core Team (ACT) Nominees (response to 1)
Posted by Tom Jackson on 11/17/02 05:33 AM

As Simon has pointed out, it is time to vote. Below is the full list of Nominees with their bios. To vote, list your four choices and send them to Nathan Folkman shmooved@aol.com before this Wednesday!

The AOLserver Team has decided to set up the AOLserver Core Team (ACT) which will act as the main decision making body for the AOLserver Open Source project going forward. The ACT will be made up of 4 community members, and 3 from here at AOL. Each ACT member will serve a term of one year, after which time we'll do this all over again. 😉

The voting process will be very simple. Everyone who is interested in voting should send me (shmooved@aol.com) an email with their top 4 picks. You are only allowed to vote once for any particular person. I will then tally the votes and announce the 4 community core team members, along with the 3 that have been chosen here at AOL. Everyone is eligible to vote. The "polls" will be open until next Wednesday, Nov. 20. The results will be announced at the next AOLserver chat, that following Thursday.

Below is some information about each of the nominees who has indicated an interest in being a member of the ACT:

  • Dossy Shiobara
  • Jeff Hobbs
  • Scott Goodwin
  • Simon Millward
  • Zoran Vasiljevic
  • Tom Jackson

    Look forward to receiving everyone's votes!

    - Nathan

    Dossy Shiobara

    I started working with AOLserver back in 1999--2000, when it was first released as open source under the 3.0 release.

    I've since developed two database drivers (nsmysql and nsfreetds) and the beginnings of a session manager as well as an initial implementation of WebDAV extensions for AOLserver in pure Tcl.

    I also worked to package up the Win32 binary distribution of AOLserver 3.4. I plan to continue to work with the AOLserver community to ensure that Win32 support continues to be available in some form for AOLserver into the future.

    I now have AOLserver instances in production, the most significant of which is receiving more than 300K page views a day to a single instance. I now have a vested commercial interest in AOLserver development and continued enhancement.

    Outside of AOLserver development, I've worked in Tcl since 1998, primarily with Vignette's application servers, and have been working in web technologies since 1994. My programming background spans C, Perl, Tcl, Ruby as well as other languages. I've also helped implement Extreme Programming as the software development methodology in my current organization to help improve the software we build here.

    I believe I would make a good addition to the AOLserver Core Team because I will work towards ensuring that AOLserver remains a high-quality and reliable platform for application development. This means being sensitive to the community's desires while being aware of the impacts of the changes to the core software.

    Jeff Hobbs

    Jeff is the Core Release Manager for the Tcl language. He has maintained the TK Usage FAQ since 1996 and is a program committee member for the USENIX Tcl/Tk Conference. Jeff comes to ActiveState from Scriptics, where he was a Tcl Ambassador, responsible for communications liaison between Scriptics and the Tcl community and managing development of the Tcl core. Previously Jeff was also a software engineer at both Siemens AG and CADIX International. At ActiveState, Jeff is the tech lead for Tcl technologies.

    Jeff is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery, the Internet Society and USENIX. He holds a B.A. in Computer and Information Sciences and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Oregon.

    Scott Goodwin

    I have been involved with the AOLserver community since 2000. Since that time I have built and continue to maintain the nsopenssl module as a replacement for nsssl, adding outgoing SSL connections and a C and Tcl API. I have supported users of nsopenssl in figuring out problems and fixing bugs they've found. I've also documented nsopenssl fairly well at http://scottg.net.

    I updated the AOLserver 4.x nsv commands to use Tcl objects, have fixed bugs in the core, and have contributed to the managing of SourceForge, importing modules into AOLserver's SourceForge area and help ing maintain some of them, including nsexpat, nsxml, and nsldap.

    I have been vocal about AOLserver from the beginning, have worked both quietly and on the discussion list to bring about an AOL / Community relationship that is positive, focused and beneficial. I am committed to the AOLserver project and the community. I have a long-term vision of what AOLserver with modules can become, and all of it is good :)

    Simon Millward

    I feel that the core team definitely needs an OpenACS oriented member. The two projects have a lot in common and can be of great benefit to each other. I'm not aware of a larger community outside of AOLServer itself that makes such extensive use of AOLServer. As OpenACS is also inherently intertwined with AOLServer (it just couldn't work with anything else) that means the OpenACS community is in for the long term. I don't think the relationship has been close enough in the past, and I personally want to see that change.

    So why me? Well, I have extensive experience with TCL. My entire career has been based around it (>10 years). AOLServer is my companies prime product-of-choice and therefore again we have the relevant experience. And I *want* to do it ;o)

    But I think the most salient reason is commitment and demonstrable effort. I currently head up the Quality Assurance and Testing effort for the OpenACS community (all previous 4.x releases) and I will also soon be taking on the dotLRN QA effort as well (dotLRN is the first vertical application/project built on OpenACS4).

    As you will see if you visit the community, or ask any of the other gatekeepers, if I commit to something it gets my full attention. We have achieved a *huge* amount in terms of QA for OpenACS. We have taken this effort from nothing, with a code base littered with untested and unproved code, to a point where we have proper plans, teams, regression exercises and acceptance test servers for collaborative testing, evaluation and result recording. And its growing... I'm not finished yet!

    I have a great deal of commercial experience with both AOLServer and OpenACS and also have some very significant contacts in major corporations in the UK. This means I'm also an excellent channel to the industry and can act in a fairly evangelical way when it comes to AOLServer.

    My company has even turned AOLServer to new pastures. It now functions a a fully fledged GSM content server and our SMSBroker extensions allow it to handle high volume SMS/Text Message applications. We have even won an award in the UK for innovation, for a mobile application built on AOLServer. (have you used out SMS Broker yet??)

    I'd love to be involved. You'd get *real* commitment, you'd get the backing and support of my company, to whatever degree I am able to allocate such resources and funds but most importantly you'd get a team member who is absolutely dedicated to the continued success of AOLServer as an open source effort.

    I'm sure, if you wanted validation from the OpenACS community, you'd get it. I have cc'ed in some dignitaries from there who (I think) would back my case. (But please feel free to disagree if you do folks ;).. I may not be the most popular member of that community, but I'd defy anyone to question my commitment :o)

    I also have two colleagues who would support my efforts here, Jon Pike and Peter Harper, both of whom can bring a great deal of experience and commitment to the table.

    Plus, being in the UK would help give the project more European exposure, which I personally think it needs.

    Zoran Vasiljevic

    I'm 41 years old and have about 25 years exp. in SW-development. I currently work for Archiware, which is a company building backup and archive system using AOLserver as the general purpose application server (not necessarily only as web server). I have about 10 years experience in Tcl internals.

    Have been working with NaviServer at those pre-apache days (cern and ncsa, if you remember) and am actively working with the AOLserver as from the 3.0 version. I'm currently involved in several Tcl projects (tdom, a fast dom/xslt processor for Tcl, Tcl threading extension, which I'm maintaining, and XOTcl, where I'm looking after the AOLserver compatibility). I have good C and Tcl/AOLserver internals knowledge and been lately involved in solving some MT-stability and memory-related issues in the AOLserver code.

    Oh, yes, I'm from Munich, Germany; Oktoberfest and so...

    Tom Jackson

    Using AOLserver since before 2.3.3.

    Using ACS and OpenACS since those projects began.

    Active member of Photo.net web/db forum until OpenACS took over as the community voice.

    Active member of OpenACS community since March 13, 2000, with 360 postings, not all literate.

    Developed AOLserver Tcl modules:
    tclvhr -- tcl based proxy
    VAT -- virtual host abstract url templating module, predating the ACS request processor. Still works great.

    Developed AOLserver C modules:
    ns_ldap -- wrapper for ldap client library.
    ns_jabber and ns_xode --> modules which turn AOLserver into threaded jabber client with full access to the AOLserver Tcl API.

    Developed ACS modules:
    Mydomain.com -- one of the largest user communities of ACS (300,000 users).
    PkBuilder -- given data model builds Oracle pl/sql packages for create/delete/update/reset/object_p functions. -- also creates similar plpgsql functions.
    typing -- fun module that allows you to teach/learn typing skills.

    Developed OpenACS modules:
    cronjob -- runs every minute and checks a schedule similar to a cron facility
    query-writer -- handles conversion of simple db access calls to postgresql pl/sql and dml statements. -- provides secure generic form processing page. PkBuilder functionality included.
    merchant-system -- distributor ecommerce platform supporting customer accounts, multiple suppliers

    In development:
    Iunicycle.com -- integrated tool for unicyclists to log progress in skill development, learn, teach, plan routines, etc.
    Rmadilo -- "binary XML" data format and tools.

    Actually familiar with 3.x and 4.0 source code.

    Time to devote to AOLserver Core issues.

    Not great or fast at anything, just stick to it until it gets done.

    Big dumb idea for AOLserver: ns_tcp and ns_udp as generic ns_conn. Should be easy in 4.0.

    • So make your choices and vote today!