The demand for productivity software seems to be endless, and as new products and paradigms for digital documents arise seemingly every month, one Open Source app holds on to a sizable marketshare of at least 150 million users. I refer, of course, to LibreOffice and derivative solutions (of which there are many), which is Governed and published by a German non-profit organisation named The Document Foundation.… Read the rest
Personal stats from 4 years at phpList
As announced today on phpList.org, soon I shall be leaving phpList.
For fun, here are some geeky statistics from my last four years leading the company:
- Total emails sent from ‘sam at phplist dot com’: 5,070 (instant messages discluded)
- My total commits across 21 phpList repositories: 1,726
- My participation in the phpList community forum: 502 days interacted, 932 topics read, 701 posts created
- Weekly all-hands meetings led: 200 (out of 205 weeks)
Note to self: code/hack less!
Open Source Product Development: from research to release
Later this month I will be speaking at the OSCAL 2019 conference about Open Source product development. Here’s the abstract:
… Read the restIn 1974 Fred Brooks argued that an app requires nine times extra work to take it from merely being functional, to being a usable product.
Software Freedom Kosova 2019 Conference
One of the most unusual cities I’ve presented in, Pristina in Kosovo again hosted the Software Freedom Conference (SFK), thanks to the youthful, hardworking volunteers at the Free Libre Open Source Software Kosova (FLOSSK) organisation.

This year I participated in a panel, and spoke about Open Source Product Management workflows.… Read the rest
“Nobody said Open Source makes you rich” and the economics of Open Source
Inside the historic pyramid building in Central Tirana (more recently museum to the nation’s life-long dictator), I concluded my speech on economic challenges to Open Source companies, and raised my eyes from the notes on my tablet to see a sea of hands.… Read the rest