16 Feb, 09
These are the slides, slightly modified from the presentation I gave at WordCamp 2009 in Jena. Comments welcome, PPT source available upon request.
Spread the News!
Habari, presentation, wordcamp and slideshare
20 Mar, 08
I finally moved over to this blogging platform thingamajick I’m writing with the great folks of the Habari Project. The theme is the wonderful Charcoal by Ali B. / dmondark with minor tweaks.
Habari unfortunately didn’t get accepted into this year’s Summer of Code, although we made the short list. Anyway, we decided we’ll just hold our own Summer of Love Habari Summer of Collaboration. We will try to get fancy t-shirts, too. Check it out.
Habari. Mzuri sana!
01 Apr, 07
Okay, seriously. Habari 0.1.1 Developer Release is now available for download and hacking:
The 0.1.1 version includes a fix for the search XSS problem and removes the misleading warning in the installer. I don’t recommend using it on a public site without being aware of the problems! At the very least, you should put your Habari install on a different domain that does not hold any important data.
You’re welcome to drop by on irc.freenode.net #habari and join us in our inspired fork… barbe… hacking!
01 Apr, 07
Hey, don’t worry! We’re just kidding! You’re reading Habari’s April Fools joke.
Update: ForkPress made 20,070,401 downloads already! I can’t believe it!
It started with great promise, great promises, and at an opportune time. Everyone and their mother were starting to get disgruntled with WordPress - it had its share of scandals, its codebase contained a lot of baggage from ye olde times, some of Matt’s decisions didn’t go over so well with people, and some didn’t like the whole dot-com stuff going on.
Habari promised everything - a complete rewrite, using today’s technology, under a truly free license, and with a meritocratic development process. And it had a number of big names behind it.
It was a nice idea while it lasted.
It is now obvious to me that both the meritocratic process as well as truly free licenses absolutely and utterly fail to produce open, free software.
You might think this to be a strange thing to say, considering Habari finally released the Developer Review version today. Well, see for yourselves:
If I appear to be angry, it’s because I am! Scott (skippy) and Owen - both cofounders of Habari - have left the very project they founded in the dust, choosing to pursue commercial interests instead. The best part is that the codebase for their fork is probably Habari, and our choice of license allowed - encouraged - them to just take the code! Considering the timing of this decision, and the polish that went into their new projects already, it seems obvious to me that this move has been planned since quite some time — taking the hard work of volunteers, and going dot-com. And the worst part? They probably won’t hire me either, just like Automattic didn’t! In short: WTF BBQ.
I must say I feel happy about Habari’s Development Review release, but at the same time, I feel utterly betrayed. On the bright side, it is a statement about Habari’s quality, but still…
Skippy, Owen… good luck with your new ventures — ForkPress and bbqPress.
Hire me?
Update: Chris J. Davis also talks about the topic.
24 Jan, 07
As you may or may not know, I’m now part of the core development committee of Habari. Habari is a next generation blogging platform written in object-oriented PHP using the model view controller design pattern. There, enough buzzwords?
Not having to support a huge installed codebase with a lot of legacy, we have a chance to “do things right” with Habari. Using MVC is certainly a good start, as is using PDO (now programming SQL injections takes effort). But the nicest codebase still doesn’t make a good product …
… which is why I’m asking you all:
Please feel free to write lengthy comments, send me mail, etc.
We are currently aiming for a developers preview release at the end of month, but there’s still a lot of work left to do. If you’re interested, have a look at the mailing lists, or just drop by on IRC, in #Habari on irc.freenode.net.
10 Jan, 07
Since the question has been raised how to pronounce Habari:
In X-SAMPA, it would be transcribed as
with stress on the second to last syllable (“ba”), and
My (admittedly rather bad) rendering is here:
[audio:http://moeffju.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/01/habari.mp3]
If you’re a native speaker of Swahili, please make a recording and send it to me!
10 Jan, 07
Habari is a new blogging platform being developed by a number of well known people, some of which are fed up with open source, others just looking for new challenges.
The thing about Habari is that is starts from scratch, and today. That means it doesn’t have to worry about a lot of existing legacy code and thus, downward compatibility. It is also being designed from the grounds up, using the latest available technology. Heck, it’s full OOP! It abstracts database access! You can plug in different theme engines (and, of course, there are plugins). In short, it could easily be the greatest thing since pressed words.
I wrote my first patches against Habari trunk today, one fixing a locale bug and making basic i18n work, the other mostly style changes. How could I resist joining the development frenzy!
Find me in the habari-dev group and on the Habari IRC channel, #habari on irc.freenode.net.
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