On Leaving BT and Osmosoft

[Jeremy Ruston]

After four and a half years, I've decided to leave BT in order to
return to working as an independent consultant. Osmosoft will continue
within BT under the leadership of Matt Lucht, and I'll be doing some
work back to Osmosoft to help out. The formal announcement is here:

http://osmosoft.com/#%5B%5BJeremy%20Ruston%20to%20leave%20BT%5D%5D

I'm hoping that through consulting I'll be able to work with a wider
range of people who are interested in TiddlyWiki, TiddlyWeb and
TiddlySpace. I also intend to focus some much needed time on
TiddlyWiki. I've started work on improving the content of
tiddlywiki.com, and am starting work on replacing the TiddlyWiki build
tools cook and ginsu with a more flexible toolchain based on node.js.
Once those two bits of infrastructure are in place then I'll pick up
TiddlyWiki5 again. I'm enjoying this work immensely; one of the
frustrating consequences of my position at BT was that I couldn't
spend much time coding.

I'm enjoying the feeling of decompressing. To be sincere and
constructive in working for an organisation like BT, you have to take
on the problems and perspective of the organisation as a whole. The
process is fascinating and instructive, and I've learned a lot from
it. But now I have the luxury of exchanging those concerns for some
much simpler ones: making TiddlyWiki good, and being able to earn a
living because of it.

I'll do my best to answer any questions,

Best wishes

Jeremy.

--
Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jer...@osmosoft.com
http://www.tiddlywiki.com

[Måns]

Hi Jeremy

> To be sincere and constructive in working for an organisation like BT, you have to take
> on the problems and perspective of the organisation as a whole. The
> process is fascinating and instructive, and I've learned a lot from
> it. But now I have the luxury of exchanging those concerns for some
> much simpler ones: making TiddlyWiki good, and being able to earn a
> living because of it.

I wish you all the best - and hope to hear about your new ventures on
these threads!
As you can read from recent posts there are a lot of
thinking(concerns) going on - on the same matter: "Earning a living
because of TW", "Using TW as the platform for a new single-page app"
or "making professional strategies with TW" etc ...

It's something of a coincidence that both Eric Shulman and You are in
a similar situation?!
Please get in contact and enjoy that you have some common grounds.
I believe we can all benefit from your ventures into the private
consulting business... - even if it's "just" some new plugins or a
"new application" based on TW.
Please ask if you need help of any kind..

Congratulations, good luck - and all the best.

Cheers Måns Mårtensson

[tiddlygrp]

Hi Jeremy,

that sounds like great news for yourself and tiddlywiki. I hope that
you new found freedom will give you the opportunity to develop
tiddlywiki further.

[twgrp]

First, I wish you all the best!

Second, a few questions :-) They are a mixed bag of questions, where
answering one may cancel out others so I'll just present them in a
pile:

Could you or someone explain a little about the "ownership" of TW and
it's various forms? I mean, as a regular user I see a risk of things
forking apart when the key developer goes his own way. What of TW is
left at BT? Will proprietary issues arise (BT owns Osmosoft, right) -
or is all things TW property of UnaMesa? Are there intentions (at
least from your side) to keep things compatible? As a general user, I
use vanilla TW but also many tiddlyspaces. Are you involved in the
latter?

...and, any elaboration on what "making TW good" means in your
perspective, ie. what would your focus be (browser compatability,
mobile focus, features, easier for newcomers, more commercial
designs, ...?) Hope this is not rude of me to ask but because you are
such a key individual for TW and it is a tool I use it would simply be
valuable to get a sense of direction. (I think this question becomes
extra pressing when it comes to open source projects driven by
individuals. When you have a commercial tool like, say, a Windows or
an Apple product, then you know the focus for them is to make the
products as user friendly and as commercially powerful as possible,
very carefully listening to the user needs. Not necessarily so with
open source of course.)

Again, all best!!!

:-)

[Maurpollio]

Hello Jeremy, I'm Italian and I do not speak English very well ... I
still want you to know that I consider your work exceptional. I wish
you all the best!

[Jeremy Ruston]

> Could you or someone explain a little about the "ownership" of TW and
> it's various forms? I mean, as a regular user I see a risk of things
> forking apart when the key developer goes his own way. What of TW is
> left at BT? Will proprietary issues arise (BT owns Osmosoft, right) -
> or is all things TW property of UnaMesa? Are there intentions (at
> least from your side) to keep things compatible? As a general user, I
> use vanilla TW but also many tiddlyspaces. Are you involved in the
> latter?

The copyrights and intellectual property in TiddlyWiki are held by
UnaMesa on behalf of the community. BT has the same rights to use the
software that you or I do.

I'll be working on TiddlyWiki alongside Osmosoft, who will also no
doubt be doing more TiddlyWeb and TiddlySpace work. I'll be working
closely with Chris and the rest of the community to bring some much
needed architectural and stylistic updates to the TiddlyWiki code.

> ...and, any elaboration on what "making TW good" means in your
> perspective, ie. what would your focus be (browser compatability,
> mobile focus, features, easier for newcomers, more commercial
> designs, ...?) Hope this is not rude of me to ask but because you are
> such a key individual for TW and it is a tool I use it would simply be
> valuable to get a sense of direction. (I think this question becomes
> extra pressing when it comes to open source projects driven by
> individuals. When you have a commercial tool like, say, a Windows or
> an Apple product, then you know the focus for them is to make the
> products as user friendly and as commercially powerful as possible,
> very carefully listening to the user needs. Not necessarily so with
> open source of course.)

To start with my goal is to update the TiddlyWiki build process so
that it's easier to work on the code. There's a lot of updating and
streamlining to do to make TiddlyWiki's basic functionality usable,
and I guess that will be the focus for a while. But as soon as
possible, I'd like to pick up TiddlyWiki5 (possibly under a new name):
a major new release that breaks backwards compatibility.

Best wishes

Jeremy

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[Eric Weir]

On Nov 9, 2011, at 9:00 AM, Jeremy Ruston wrote:

> I'm hoping that through consulting I'll be able to work with a wider
> range of people who are interested in TiddlyWiki, TiddlyWeb and
> TiddlySpace. I also intend to focus some much needed time on
> TiddlyWiki. I've started work on improving the content of
> tiddlywiki.com, and am starting work on replacing the TiddlyWiki build
> tools cook and ginsu with a more flexible toolchain based on node.js.
> Once those two bits of infrastructure are in place then I'll pick up
> TiddlyWiki5 again. I'm enjoying this work immensely; one of the
> frustrating consequences of my position at BT was that I couldn't
> spend much time coding.

Glad to hear you're sticking with TiddlyWiki. It's a great app whose potential remains to be realized. So few know of it.

I wonder also about possibilities for addressing what seems to me to be a major shortcoming, one that is a factor in its not being better known or as widely used as it should be: Documentation.

Without question there are technical writers who, working with a core of TiddlyWiki's amazingly creative and resourceful developer/users, could produce what is needed, something to help newcomers get started and serve as a reference and guide to established nonprogrammer users.

Sincerely,
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eric Weir
eew...@bellsouth.net

"Human coexistence and social life constitute the good common to us all
from which and thanks to which all cultural and social goods derive."

- Zygmunt Bauman