Open Source | why & how can I get involved

Not many people are ‘unaware‘ of open source in todays world but still they seem hesitant, confused, or intimidated to enter the open source community and start contributing to open source. Mentioned below are some excellent blog posts that I have read in the recent past around this interesting subject.

Why it is important for organizations to build an open source culture, the competitive advantages of the same & some ways on how it can be done.
http://intridea.com/2011/4/22/why-open-source-company-culture-is-important

Why should you, as a developer, actively contribute to open source? — including helping land your next job to writing better code, developing REAL reputation.. It also talks about the barriers to open source contribution
http://intridea.com/2011/4/28/you-should-be-an-open-source-developer

If you are a student, open source can surely help you jump start your career
http://mashable.com/2011/05/13/open-source-students/

And yes, even after all this, people will have 1001 million reasons on why they don’t get involved with open source
http://brandonhays.com/blog/2011/05/03/why-i-still-dont-contribute-to-open-source/

Yes, open source software programmers are ROCKSTARS..!!!
http://www.kbedell.com/2011/04/28/open-source-developers-are-rock-stars/

and finally, some steps on how we can get newbies involved in open source
http://brandonhays.com/blog/2011/05/23/getting-newbies-involved-in-open-source/
Happy reading…

Using Hadoop/Python/HBase for processing 2.6 million crash reports per day | A Mozilla story…

Every computer literate person, at some point or the other, would have faced an application crash and a message something similar to the following:

“xxxx application crashed. Would you like to send the details to the XYZ company to help make the product better…” 

I will be honest that I have seldom hit the ‘OK’ button but have at times wondered how would these crash reports get processed.

Now, here is a great insight into how Mozilla processes the browser crash reports it receives. The project is called Socorro & uses Hadoop, Python, HBase etc.

You can read a wonderful article here. A must read for all Techies, has a short demo video, a PoC showing how Mozilla could integrate Hazelcast into Socorro and achieve caching and processing 2TB of crash reports with 50 node Hazelcast cluster.

Caching and Processing 2TB Mozilla Crash Reports in memory with Hazelcast

Mozilla receives ~2.5K crash reports per minute during peak traffic & stores 2.6 million crash reports per day….!!!!.

PS: Am wondering how much crash reports Microsoft would be getting for it’s applications )