I For One Welcome My New BT Overlords
Jeremy Ruston
http://jermolene.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/i-for-one-welcome-my-new-bt-overlords/
)
After a few weeks of rather stressful, barely suppressed excitement,
I'm delighted to finally be able to announce that the mighty BT has
acquired my tiny little company Osmosoft Limited. I'm joining BT as
Head of Open Source Innovation, and I'll be building a crack open
source web development team called BT Osmosoft. To say the least, this
is big news for me personally, and I hope will have a positive and
lasting impact on the future of TiddlyWiki.
BT is becoming a remarkable thing: a truly internet-scale consumer
company that doesn't rely on owning "secret sauce" software for it's
business. At the most senior levels, there's an appetite to embrace
open source that wouldn't disgrace a web 2.0 startup. I'll be working
with a great many talented and interesting people, and I'm looking
forward to it immensely.
Meanwhile, TiddlyWiki has benefited from something rather magical: a
global community of eager people who have gathered around it and
generously contributed to it, striving to make it better in a spirit
of good-natured sharing. I'm regularly astonished by the inventiveness
and resourcefulness of this community; I feel a part of something much
bigger and more significant than I could ever manage on my own.
I've always kept TiddlyWiki fiercely independent -- for instance, not
carrying advertising (or indeed accepting venture capital
investments). I feel that to do anything else would be disrespectful
to the grass roots users and enthusiasts who make TiddlyWiki so useful
and intriguing. Now that I'm taking up a commercial position it's
necessary to take certain steps to enshrine that independence more
formally.
I have therefore legally assigned my copyrights in TiddlyWiki to an
open, non-profit foundation called UnaMesa. I think that TiddlyWiki is
at once too fragile and too important to be wholly owned by any one
player in the ecosystem; common ownership allows everyone to work
together on a level-playing field. There's a lot more to say about
UnaMesa, and I'll return to it in a later post.
I'm looking forward to being able to improve some areas of TiddlyWiki
that have not received enough attention in the past - like a better
plugin catalogue, automated testing, better accessibility, and easier
security. This won't be by BT taking over the project, but rather by
supporting the open source process and helping out with resources when
and where it can.
I hope BT's endorsement of TiddlyWiki will open up new applications
that we haven't thought of yet. To meet the challenges that they
bring, I'll continue to strive to keep the core of TiddlyWiki true to
it's origins as a lean, efficient non-linear personal web notebook.
I'm really quite excited, if I didn't already mention it.
Cheers
Jeremy
--
Jeremy Ruston
mailto:jer...@osmosoft.com
http://www.tiddlywiki.com
Simon Baird
After a few weeks of rather stressful, barely suppressed excitement,
I'm delighted to finally be able to announce that the mighty BT has
acquired my tiny little company Osmosoft Limited. I'm joining BT as
Head of Open Source Innovation, and I'll be building a crack open
source web development team called BT Osmosoft. To say the least, this
is big news for me personally, and I hope will have a positive and
lasting impact on the future of TiddlyWiki.
Congrats!
Simon Baird
NOW we have a logo.. ;) .. just kidding.. Best of luck, I hope you get an office with a nice view.. :)
Jeremy Ruston
http://www.urban75.org/london/telecom.html
But sadly it seems to be used for altogether duller telecommunications
infrastructure equipment....
Cheers
Jeremy.
dawn ahukanna
Well done and good luck.
Dawn.
Scott Elcomb
> I'm delighted to finally be able to announce that the mighty BT has
> acquired my tiny little company Osmosoft Limited. I'm joining BT as
> Head of Open Source Innovation, and I'll be building a crack open
> source web development team called BT Osmosoft. To say the least, this
> is big news for me personally, and I hope will have a positive and
> lasting impact on the future of TiddlyWiki.
Hey Jeremy,
It's certainly been a long time, but I am glad of this news. I've
been lurking on this a long time while I deal with my own situations
and projects, but I am very happy for you. My family and I wish you
(and the TW community) all the best in the future. =)
--
Scott Elcomb
"Our Founders' faith in the viability of representative democracy
rested on their trust in the wisdom of a well-informed citizenry,
their ingenious design for checks and balances, and their belief that
the rule of reason is the natural sovereign of a free people." - Al
Gore (The Assault on Reason, 2008)
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary
safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin
'"A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting
on its shoes." - Mark Twain
Saq Imtiaz
Saq
FND
I never knew BT was such a progressive company.
Just out of curiosity, have they acquired you primarily to advance TW
development, or will you mostly be working on other projects for them?
(That is, while TW is obviously the best app on the planet, I can't
imagine what BT might use it for - though you might not be allowed to
say anyway... )
-- F.
PS: As mentioned before in your blag, the nav menu in the lower left of
btplc.com is seriously b0rked, especially in Firefox...
google....@dfgh.net
CC
David Keltie
David
And can you get BT to up our ADSL speed nearer to the 8meg mark than
the around 1meg mark they currently give us (600 yards from the
exchange!) ;-)
On 5/29/07, Jeremy Ruston <jeremy...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
Jeremy Ruston
> Just out of curiosity, have they acquired you primarily to advance TW
> development, or will you mostly be working on other projects for them?
> (That is, while TW is obviously the best app on the planet, I can't
> imagine what BT might use it for - though you might not be allowed to
> say anyway... )
Good question. The quick answer is "both" - TiddlyWiki is front and
centre of our plans, both because it makes an excellent example of
open source project of the type that I want to replicate, and because
we believe that there are certain characteristics of TiddlyWiki that
make it a peculiarly interesting thing for BT.
I'm personally and professionally committed to continuing to develop
TiddlyWiki. For me, the emphasis over the next few months needs to be
on the work to strip the core back to it's elements, with much of the
current core functionality delivered as plugins. I'm also very keen to
sort out a decent WYSIWYG story for TiddlyWiki.
Cheers
Jeremy
Chris Lawley
On 30 May 2007, David Keltie wrote:
> And can you get BT to up our ADSL speed nearer to the 8meg mark than
> the around 1meg mark they currently give us (600 yards from the
> exchange!) ;-)
Oh, and I thought it was a job to do with making tomato ketchup
bottles and the like easier to use.
Well deserved Jeremy!
chris :-)
Chris Lawley
On 30 May 2007, FND wrote:
> imagine what BT might use it for
Why, the BT TW Phonebook, naturally.
Think of all the trees that can be saved!
chris :-)
christianhauck
Christian
bob
retire early
and move to Skegness ... ;-)
rni...@gmail.com
that's right up your alley... but the thing I was thinking about when
I read your post was the clear consistency in what you SAY you believe
and what you actually DO....
It seems we see so little of that these days, so I'll point that out
as an even better thing :)
AND I'm excited to see what you can do with TW in the future !!!
Rich
harsha
and thanks for developing such a nice application...
makiaea
warmest wishes, maki
Saq Imtiaz
Over the last few months there has been quite a lot of talk of features etc that are intended for TiddlyWiki.org. What would be nice is a list of such features, with a status report/plan. This would allow members of the community to volunteer to help out wherever they can in a more efficient manner. At the same time, it would be nice to get another list going of features/facilities that the community wants but are not 'on the books'.... so that others may work on them if they so desire. Quite often I'll get the urge to work on something, only to brush it aside since I dont know what the 'official' plan is for it. Anyway, I hope you realize this is not meant as a complaint, but more so as a suggestion to streamline things. What I see is massive community resources which are not being fully tapped into. Yes... peformance evaluation and optimization is part of what I do for a living. :)
Cheers,
Saq
DanG
a major telecom and the rewarding of a creative genious. Oftentimes a
great idea and a great inventor get overlooked, and I am happy to see
both invetion and inventor getting both $ and conceptual endorsement
from BT - there is hope that perhaps telecom may be progressing in
business wisdom. Being in America, and studying the ATT breakup in
college as well as implosions of Worldcom and Williams Communications,
I am encouraged to see a progressive telecom co. seeing the benefits
of Open Source and buying the best example and best mind behind the
concept.
Congrats Jeremy - TIddlyWiki truly is an innovation that deserves
capitalization and expansion. I'll drink a Strathisla to you!
Cheers, Dan Garrett
On May 29, 11:27 am, "Jeremy Ruston" <jeremy.rus...@gmail.com> wrote:
> (I'm copying this fromhttp://jermolene.wordpress.com/2007/05/29/i-for-one-welcome-my-new-bt...
Florian Cauvin
DenizenOfAsgard
A Big Congrats from me too,
Joe
On May 31, 12:50 pm, "Florian Cauvin" <florian.cau...@gmail.com>
wrote:
> Wow! Kudos Jeremy!!!
FND
> report/plan.
> At the same time, it would be nice to get another list going of
> features/facilities that the community wants but are not 'on the books'
I totally agree about that.
An official wiki page might be a good start*, though status tracking
would be a bit cumbersome there (as wikis are not - yet? - well-suited
for structured data).
To get around that, maybe the wiki could simply be used as a front end
for relevant tickets in the bug-tracking system. For example, planned
features and suggestions could be grouped into categories (like layout,
synchronization etc.), and then simply provide links to the respective
ticket(s).
-- F.
* maybe like this page (but with a better layout):
http://tiddlywikiguides.org/index.php?title=TiddlyWiki_redesign
Shona.I...@googlemail.com
Shona