Malaysian Airlines has impressed me, yet again. Last week, in The Star, they reported that Sharul Isahak, a MAS employee, has helped save the airlines close to RM70 million (about USD$21 million), thanks to his use of open source software.

The software is meant to help airline maintenance, i.e. to keep track of parts and records of maintenance works. The web-based solution, is E-Promis (read the blog entry, its pretty interesting, as he takes you through the planning stages - it also seems like he’s still the only developer).

?This meant looking at open-source solutions. Instead of platforms such as Microsoft or Sun, we chose LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP)?

I couldn’t help but grin …

Today marks a big day in the history of the Malaysian Government - they’ve released their first fully open source software package, MyMeeting.

Poking around their Trac installation, they use PHP and MySQL 5 (5.0.51a from Ubuntu, even!). Of course their install documentation suggests a lot of Windows usage, but this is a step in the right direction.

Give it a twirl. Report bugs. How many more governments out there are writing and releasing open source software packages? Or is this a first?

Whether an online comic, or not, the New Straits Times is one of the three English dailies, that still cost some amount of money in Malaysia. Their Computimes pullout, now better known as Tech&U, featured Raj Kissu, a Summer of Code 2008 participant for MySQL. While the article itself, fails to mention MySQL, he describes what he’s working on:

I?m doing a project on binary large objects in database. Basically, it is aimed at allowing people to file or stream files online. The program is based on open source.

Kudos to Raj, kudos to Google, kudos to phpMyAdmin, and kudos to MySQL. As for the reporter, as usual, old medium journalism tends to be somewhat of a fail….

MySQL is featured on the Google Open Source Blog
Just after leaving JavaOne, Leslie pinged me on IRC to inform me that the MySQL project was featured on the Google Open Source blog. Go on, read Moments of Inspiration.

In other news from mentors, Colin Charles, former mentor and 2008 organization administrator for MySQL dropped a note to let us know that their Community Bonding period is moving along swimmingly. So well, in fact, that their students are already delivering weekly status reports. Colin mentioned that …

First up, I want to say, I’m truly impressed with Brazil. One day I will visit this amazing place, and spread the good word of open source with projects that are close to my heart: MySQL, OpenOffice.org, Fedora, and in due time, a lot more. This is a live-blog, from a most interesting talk, at JavaOne 2008. As I wrote on Twitter, “Brazil, simply impresses me. Their use of open source in government, makes me think that the rest of the world has a lot to learn from them”.

Free and Open Source Software: Use and Production by the Brazilian Government
Rogerio Santana <rogerio.santanna@planejamento.gov.br> +55 61 313 1400, Logistics and Information Technology Secretariat
Planning, Budget and Management Ministry
Brazilian Government

Households with Internet access: 70% in the US4k household income range. …

Note: these are live notes. It was a great talk, I’d rate it as excellent (and I’m not just saying that because Josh and I work in the same group at Sun). I’ll have to also comment on his thoughts and talk, in due time. MySQL, as an open source project, has a lot to learn.

Ten Ways to Destroy Your Community
A How-To Guide
Josh Berkus, Community Guy

Part 1: The Evil of Communities

• you may attract and will be unable to get rid off a community
• they mess up your marketing plans, because the community goes out and does its own marketing and PR and distributes your software in places you didn’t expect to
• they also mess up your product plans, because they contribute to code and features to your project, with unexpected innovation!
• communities are never …

I’m headed to the OpenSolaris Developers Summit right now.

After that, I’ll be at CommunityOne, with the rest of the MySQL team. Just check out the schedule (its in PDF format though). Its truly packed, so if you’ve not signed up to come, do so, immediately. I’m also particularly interested in participating in the RedMonk Unconference. All in all, I think CommunityOne looks like it would be well suited for a week-long event, rather than a day-long event - so many places to be, so little time!

And after that, JavaOne! Its going to be packed all week long, but the good news is that I’ll be in downtown San …

The MySQL User Guide is worth looking at. Its not the reference manual (which is excellent - kudos to our Documentation Team). Its target audience are users that are new to databases or users that are new to MySQL in general.

What’s really interesting about the MySQL User Guide is that you can help shape it. You, the community, can participate in writing it!

I for one, know that this is the easiest way you can start contributing to any open source project. Documenting it. Soon, you will realise that you’ve become an expert (writing documentation, or giving training, will always keep you sharp). Some move on to then delving in coding, some go on being consultants, and some end up being hired by the company that sponsors …

Hi! So this is completely my notes taken from the conference, without my thoughts attached to it. I should definitely post a lot more about this, and how the community can “improve” in time. Just not today. Believe me, sitting in the talk, was highly painful, and I’m wondering where my aspirin stash might be. The slides will be available soon, and lets just consider this a learning experience. It reminded me of the time Eric Raymond came to the Fedora Project’s very first FUDCon in Boston 2005 (probably the only session without available video :P).

What MySQL can learn from PostgreSQL
Joshua Drake

Compared us at OSCON 2007. MySQL lacked technical meat, compared to PostgreSQL. Since 2005, PostgreSQL booth had most visitors besides Mozilla.

MySQL Community is a second class citizen. MySQL AB does not advocate. They promote, they …

Who is the Dick on my site?
Dick Hardt

Most interesting keynote. About 1,000+ slides. Many slides per minute. Definitely a new way of presenting :)

• What is identity? What is Identity 2.0?
• Identity is a complicated topic, and you normally get the tip of the iceberg. Identity changes during your stages in life.
• Works at SXIP Identity.
• I wondered what the German’s thought about identity. Identat. “They’re German” <applause>
• Answers.com had the best answers for identity.
• There’s lots of different personas about a person. Women really are the masters of different personas (clothes, wife, mother, etc.). Reinventing oneself.
• Identity allows you to predict behaviour…
• When someone is in a “role” (fireman, etc.), you think you can predict behaviour. Is this identity? It’s who …