open source

I've been involved this summer in some exciting work with Development Seed on bringing their mapping technologies to the iPad. This has included their gorgeous MapBox tile sets, but also third-party data from the internet in the form of KML and GeoRSS. These are each file formats for exchanging geographic information along with content.

GeoRSS is pretty straightforward -- it's basically regular RSS but with a small amount of geographic information added in the form of extra tags such as <georss:point>. KML, however, is a completely different sort of format, written from the ground up for geographic data. It's probably most commonly known as the format that Google Earth uses to exchange geo info. Beyond Google Earth, it has been used in some exciting applications, from Development Seed's own Maps on a Stick tool to The Jane Goodall Institute's Gombe Chimpanzee Blog, which attaches KML data to every blog entry as a way to give it context and to allow the reader to explore the story a bit more.

Once I got started on the iPad work, however, I noticed that there basically was no parsing library for KML on Apple's iOS platform -- iPhones and iPads. Google puts the definitive library, libkml. It's written in C++ (a minor setback) but it also depends on libexpat, something that exists on Mac OS X but not on iOS.

That aside, I thought that it would also be nice to have a Cocoa-native KML parsing library, something that speaks in native Objective-C types like UIImage for icons and UIColor for colors without the need for conversion. So I wrote one!

This library, Simple KML, is now available as open source under the New BSD License, licensed jointly by Development Seed and Code Sorcery Workshop. You can find a basic usage overview in the features summary.

While Simple KML does make KML very simple to parse, it does not do any drawing for you. It's important to note that you will have to take the placemarks, styles, and structures in the KML documents that you wish to display and write your own drawing to display them. This could be on Apple's MapKit mapping library built into the SDK, external mapping libraries, or perhaps your own drawing on static map images. Simple KML just makes it easy to turn a KML file or a KMZ archive into data structures native to Cocoa for use in your own graphics work.

Since Simple KML is open source, I'd love to have any feedback or contributions that you might have to offer. Simple KML is up on GitHub, allowing anyone to create a free account, fork the project, and send me patches via merge requests.

(Cross-posted on the Development Seed blog)

I'm pleased to announce the winner of the A celebration of open source contest from earlier this week!

Michael Glass, Production Manager of TED Conferences, LLC, is the winner of the $250 USD gift card from Portland's own Powell's Books.

Michael says:

"I'm the production manager [at TED] and all my engineers and photo
editors are in love with [Meerkat].

Thanks again for both the gift certificate and the wonderful software.

I'm pleased that Meerkat can be used at such a great place -- I personally love the TED talk videos. It's pretty awesome to know that it's being used behind the scenes there.

Thanks to all the entrants, and thanks again to open source developers everywhere!

In honor of this week's Open Source Bridge conference, as well as in recognition of the role that open source software has played in the development of our business, we're pleased to announce that today, June 16, 2009, Code Sorcery Workshop is offering any open source contributor a free license to Meerkat, our SSH tunnel management application. We are also giving away a $250 gift certificate to the legendary Powell's Books. Read on for the details.

If you'd like a free copy of Meerkat, just leave a comment on this post linking to an open source project that you've worked on with a brief mention of what you did. It could be coding, but doesn't have to be -- it could also be documentation, helping new users, anything that contributes to the common good of the project. We'll collect all the info and send each contributor a full, unrestricted license to Meerkat, a $19.95 USD value.

However, if you'd like to instead try for the $250 USD gift certificate to Powell's Books, a purchase of Meerkat will make you eligible for this drawing. Just register Meerkat today and you will automatically be entered for the drawing. The winner will be announced in a followup post.

In both cases, you must take action by midnight Pacific Daylight Time tonight to qualify.

Meerkat is an application that adds a lot of Mac-specific value to SSH, an open source tool that ships with every Mac (as OpenSSH). And Macs themselves are built on a ton of open source software such as Apache, Postfix, CUPS, Perl, PHP, Python, Ruby, sudo, unzip, zlib, and many others. You can read more about Apple's commitment to open source as well as open source releases pertaining to Mac OS X.

I began knowingly using open source software in the mid-90s and started contributing by releasing my own projects on freshmeat in late 1999. I've always looked for ways to contribute to open source projects when I can, whether it's by bug fixes, new feature patches, documentation, or just community help. Most recently, I've been involved with the Drupal content management system.

Open source is the lifeblood of the internet. So many of the tools that we take for granted everyday have been developed in this way, by generous folks giving their time for the greater good. I am extremely thankful for the many ways that open source has enabled me to teach myself a lot of what I know today about technology, to provide economical solutions for clients who need it, and to make software better and better by degrees.

So, here's to open source!

I'll be attending the Open Source Bridge conference later this week here in Portland. I'm very much looking forward to it, partly because I love to use and contribute to open source software, but also because the conference itself has been run in an open source manner -- by volunteers, building open source conference software, and with the overarching goal of trying to answer a question: "What are the rights and responsibilities of an open source citizen?"

Before I moved to Portland, and before I was more regularly attending conferences, I had always wanted to attend OSCON, which was held in Portland every summer from 2003 to 2008. Part of this was to visit Portland and to feel the conference vibe in this city. Now that OSCON is moving back to California, and Open Source Bridge is here (as am I), I'm ready to help make this conference an awesome reason to explore open source in Portland.

Hope to see you there -- there's still time to register!

I recently had the pleasure of participating in the excellent Mac Developer Roundtable podcast, where the featured topic was open source software. I've been involved in open source software myself for about ten years, so it was great to, first, be asked onto the show, but also, to share my experiences and knowledge -- not to mention, to "meet" and discuss software with some great fellow Mac developers!

This podcast was particularly satisfying because it brought together the two main halves of my business -- Cocoa and Mac development, where I tend to use open source software, and Drupal and web development, where I tend to contribute open source software.

So, have a listen to the show and if you'd like to check out my main open source efforts, I have an info page with more details.