Daily Life in an Ivory Basement

I'm writing some proposals to expand support for Python infrastructure (think cross-platform build and test farms a la Snakebite) and for the Mellon Foundation application, I'd like to find out how Python is being used in the humanities. I found NLTK, the Natural Language Toolkit; what else is big?

thanks, --titus

I'd like to invite you to attend the last of the Michigan State University CSE colloquia for the 2008-2009 academic year: jointly sponsored as an AT&T Visiting Lecturer by the MSU LCT, and the CSE department, Sam Ramji will speak about

Open Source at Microsoft: The Past, Present and Future

in CommArts room 147, Friday May 1, at 11:00am. I encourage you all to attend and to forward this on to others who might be interested! As you know, open source software is playing an increasingly big part in education, academia, science, and business, and so I expect this to be a very interesting talk.

Contact me at ctb@msu.edu for further information.

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Abstract:

Since Microsoft established its Open Source Lab in Redmond more than five years ago, it has worked with many open source players to make Windows the best platform for all applications to run on. But this has not been without its challenges and there is a lot more work to be done on this front. This talk will cover the thinking behind Microsoft's current open source strategy and what this means for the software engineers of the future. It will also spotlight some innovative Open Source projects the company is supporting at universities across the world.

Biography:

Sam Ramji is the Senior Director of Platform Strategy leading Microsoft's platform strategy efforts across the company, including long-term strategic planning in the Windows Server and Tools organization. Sam's primary focus is to drive Microsoft's Linux and Open Source Strategy, working together with Microsoft technology development teams and open source communities to build interoperable solutions.

Prior to his current role at Microsoft, Sam was a Director of Emerging Business working on the Silicon Valley Campus where he managed relationships with Venture Capitalists and entrepreneurs. Prior to joining Microsoft, Sam led technical product strategy at BEA Systems, engineering teams building large-scale applications on Open Source software (at Ofoto.com) as well as hands-on development of client, client-server, and distributed applications on Unix, Windows, and Macintosh at prior companies.

Sam holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Cognitive Science from the University of California at San Diego, and is a member of the Institute for Generative Leadership.

Infoworld did a brief writeup of Snakebite; my only quibble is that MSU comes off as a more of a passive partner in the article than we actually are ;).

--titus

As Jesse writes, Trent revealed the existence of Snakebite yesterday. Snakebite is an "open network" of various machines that Trent and others (myself included) are making available to the Python community for build and debug purposes. I'm coordinating the MSU component, which basically means that I run interference for Trent with MSU higher-ups and provide power & network; Trent bought almost all of the machines himself on e-bay and has done 99.9% of the work so far.

And that's pretty much the entire story, minus the blood, guts, and delivery of excessively large quantities of excessively large boxes to my doorstep here at MSU...

There will be a discussion session about Snakebite at PyCon '09, so stay tuned.

Incidentally,one of the real pleasures of being a professor is that I get to throw my support behind worthy projects like this one. MSU has been amazingly good so far, and the Computer Science department in particular has opened their doors for us. Here's to an open source future here at MSU, and elsewhere too!

--titus