img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/launchpad-heading.png alt= pa href=https://launchpad.net/~barryimg src=https://help.launchpad.net/BlogImages?action=AttachFile#038;do=get#038;target=baw.jpg alt=Barry Warsaw mugshot //aOur previous emMeet the developers/em a href=http://news.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-paul-hummerinterview/a was with a man known by his irc nick coderockstar/code./p pOn the Launchpad team we have another rock star, the a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/bass/index.htmlbass/a playing Mr a href=https://launchpad.net/~barryBarry Warsaw/a!/p pstrongMatthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong In general, it is my life#8217;s work to see a href=http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.htmlZawinski#8217;s Law/a fully realized in everything I touch. To that end, most of my Launchpad work has been to add spam vectors, er, I mean mailing lists to Launchpad. I don#8217;t know why anybody would think a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/software/index.htmlI know something about mailing lists/a, but there you have it./p pThese days, the basic mailing list features are working pretty well, so I#8217;ve been concentrating on other things, though often email related, such as the recent #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature./p pstrongMatthew: Can we see something in Launchpad that you#8217;ve worked on?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong If you#8217;ve used the Launchpad mailing lists, you#8217;ve used stuff I#8217;ve worked on. If you try out the new #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature in Launchpad 2.1.11, you will be using my stuff. Well, that#8217;s only if you like those features. If you hate them, someone else did it./p pstrongMatthew: Where do you work?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong I work out of my home in Silver Spring, Maryland USA. Well, I emdid/em up until about a week ago, when I moved into a temporary rental house while we#8217;re doing some work on our real house. I live about a mile walking distance from Washington DC./p pstrongMatthew: What can you see from your office window?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Right now, not much other than the side of my neighbor#8217;s house, but when I#8217;m back in my real home, I have a somewhat less boring view of the neighborhood. I can see all the way up the street leading to my house, so I#8217;m always prepared when the Fedex truck drops off the latest awesome mugs and hoodies from the a href=http://shop.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu store/a (/me waits for his endorsement bonus check)./p pstrongMatthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Directly before coming to Canonical I worked at a company called Secure Software, incidentally with Mailman#8217;s original inventor John Viega, though we were not working on Mailman. Secure built products around static analysis of C, C++, and Java code for security vulnerabilities. It was very cool software and allowed me to do a lot of C, C++ and Java hacking as well as the usual big pile of Python. I also did more Windows development than I#8217;d ever done before, and let#8217;s just say it#8217;s nice to be working for the makers of Ubuntu now! Unfortunately mdash; or maybe strongfortunately/strong mdash; Secure did not overwhelm in the market and, here I am!/p pI#8217;ve been pretty lucky to work at some great places, though my career has been pretty eclectic. I#8217;ve been able to do a lot of open source and free software, both officially and incidentally in my career. I won#8217;t bore you with the ten page resume though./p pstrongMatthew: How did you get into free software?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Well, I#8217;m an old timer so I#8217;ve actually been into free software probably before the term was even invented! My first real software job was as a summer intern at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), a US Federal research lab in suburban Maryland. I was hacking on homebrew graphics systems for robotic real time control and visualization, and most of the work was in FORTH. There was a pretty vibrant FORTH community and we shared lots of code, often by 8#8243; floppy disks, 9 track tapes and over the original ARPAnet and uucp. I continued with NBS/NIST after I graduated college and our lab eventually migrated to early SunOS systems. By that time I was learning C and hacking Unix, Emacs, window systems, etc. Back then at least, the software that US federal employees wrote was not subject to copyright (because it was taxpayer funded), so it was easy to give away, and it#8217;s always seemed very natural for me to share code./p pA few years ago I searched some of the various Usenet archives for early postings of mine. I think my first public post was of some Emacs trinket I wrote in 1985. It was probably what eventually became Supercite. In any case, tapping into that culture and its social interactions really got me hooked. I made a lot of friends online and I#8217;ve been very luck to keep many of them and even meet some of them in the real world./p pstrongMatthew: What#8217;s more important? Principle or pragmatism?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/The Zen of Python/a says #8220;Practicality beats purity#8221;./p pstrongMatthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?/strong/p pYes, quite a few actually./p pThese days I#8217;m most active in a href=http://python.org/Python/a and a href=http://www.list.org/GNU Mailman/a, though there are probably a dozen or so FLOSS projects I contribute to in various ways. I used to contribute a lot to Emacs and XEmacs, but these days I prefer to just be a (l)user. I also tend to scratch my own itch, and hosting projects on Launchpad and using Bazaar makes that just incredibly easy. For example, I needed an email robot on some of my public email addresses, so I wrote #8216;a href=https://launchpad.net/replybotreplybot/a#8216; which tries to do that totally anti-social job in the most standards-compliant way possible. Even though the package is published on the a href=http://pypi.python.org/pypiPython Cheeseshop/a, all the project management happens on Launchpad. In fact a href=https://launchpad.net/mailmanGNU Mailman itself is hosted on Launchpad/a now too./p pstrongMatthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=https://help.launchpad.net/Code/ReviewMerge proposals/a are my latest kick. We use them a lot on the Launchpad project, and I think they#8217;re a great way to manage branches, review code, and link them to bugs, milestones and releases. I#8217;m not yet sure how useful all that stuff is for smaller projects, but for a large complicated beast like Launchpad, merge proposals are really great./p pstrongMatthew: Four string, six string or fretless?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Ah, what a great question, but those are not either/ors! img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I firmly believe that if you can#8217;t play a 4, you have no business with more strings. Guitar players would be wise to heed that advice. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I played bass for almost 25 years before I got my first 5 string, and it#8217;ll probably be another 25 before I get a 6. My grandkids will have to slap and pop that hi C string for me though./p pFretlesses are very cool, and I played a 4 fretless (with a hipshot) almost exclusively for many years, though I am no Jaco. A good #8220;mwaahh#8221; just makes me so happy. My main axe these days though is a fretted MTD American 535. Having that gut rumbling low B string is just too much fun, though you have to use it tastefully. I#8217;m still saving up for a fretless 535 to match my main axe, but it#8217;s much harder to sneak those things past my wife these days. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / /p pstrongMatthew: a href=https://launchpad.net/~kikoKiko/a#8217;s special question! You#8217;re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Okay, this is a family show, right?/p pI do purchase a lot of stuff online. I hate going to the malls and I really hate shopping so if I can get through the holidays without getting in my car, it#8217;s a success. One of our favorite places is Zappos because you can just order like $10,000 worth of shoes, keep the one pair you like and send them all back for free. I do buy the occasional software, but not too much ongoing services, though I#8217;m currently looking at encrypted, secure online backups. I do tend to like to roll my own though, since hacking is so much fun./p pThanks for listening!/p