Woke up & read this r/linux thread where Ian Murdock [Debian Linux project founder] tweets are mentioned. Ian says he is committing suicide. I will be more than happy if these tweets turn out to be hoax or coming from someone else who gained control of his Twitter account.
This incident got me thinking about one of the biggest issue we all have gone through in our life i.e depression. We can easily track number of well known faces we have lost because of going in depression.
These are some advice I got when I was in depression, most of these worked:
Don’t just stay alone, talk to parents/friends.
This will pass, its just a phase
Listen to some good music
Exercise & meditate
Avoid alcohol & eating junk
Travel, connect, eat, meet, see newer part of this world.
How did you fight with your depression & came out from it?
We are entering in 2016, my journey to open source started in 2004-05 when i attended one of the Linux User Group meetup in New Delhi, India. Those days we had to pay one$ for surfing internet for an hour, having a dial-up internet at home was considered luxury.
What was the scene those days?
Linux user groups were more happening, we had demo days and most open source software developers were under single roof.
We were more glued offline for beer/kebab/pizza and hangouts.
To on-board new users to open source we were regularly conducting workshop across colleges and cities.
We had mailing list, IRC, wiki [they still exists]
How are things now?
Internet is everywhere & is part of our life.
Mobile usage has exploded, information about everything is one tap away.
Installing Linux & open source software has become much easier, internet & advanced GUI development gets credit.
The whole open source ecosystem got divided into different camps & all started organizing/mentoring its own users/contributors.
Web and social media platforms quora, stackoverflow along with free MOOC courses are loaded with all information.
Online conferences like ubuntu developer summit summit and live streaming of conferences gave more wider audience.
Github, Slack, Gitter are new cool among developers.
2016 & beyond new user on-boarding.
We don’t have to spoon feed anymore, most of the information are available on the web. This generation is way smarter then us.
We don’t have to go for extreme evangelism because web has enough information those who are interested will find a way.
All we have to do is to mentor & help only if they need it.
PS: This is not a rant against all those who are still working on building a open source community in 2000 style, this is my thought & i might me wrong here.
People say success & failures are complementary. It is like two side of coin & both co-exist. Over last few years I have noticed in every spectrum people are celebrating failures be it cover page of famous magazine, online portal, help/advice avenues like Quora or social media portals like Twitter, Facebook, Medium or LinkedIn.
I have nothing against them, these are my thoughts :
Weather its absolute NO in love/relationship.
Not clearing interview of your dream job
Failing miserably after taking enormous amount of funding from external investors.
Got backstabbed by best friend or business partner.
I have gone through some of these & all I can say is coping up with failures is not easy. It can hit you hard & at times it can cost your life.
I have learnt from my past & moved on. I am not going to write a best-selling book glorifying my failure because someone has done so, in the end it is a failure. I don’t need extended coverage defining my celebration but an extended coverage of how I fixed my failure, my only hope with this is that it will help others not take the same route.
Few months back I celebrated 29 years of my existence. I have been thinking for sometime, what are we here for. This is my list which I am always reminded to :
Parents & Family: Everything I have right now is because of my parents & awesome family around.
Friends: Its good to have few friends closer to you, they are the ones who will be there for you in every phase of life be it good or bad. So please choose your friends wisely.
Helping everyone: I consider myself lucky to be the guy who is in position to help. This help can be mentoring, motivating to providing monetary help to those who are in need of it.
Society: Society is like movie script, it has well written protocol & one has to follow it. Society will always be on up as watchdog & pointing at our wrong doings. The question for me is how can i live in this world with society affecting least to my happiness.
Have you ever given thought on Purpose of your life?
OpenStack is over 5 years old now. I have seen the project from days when many pundits claimed its not needed or it is a dead project or what not. These are some of my thoughts about the overall project & where it i s headed.
Community: I think OpenStack is one of the biggest project so far written in python. The latest release has over 5000 developers. Every release has followed a cycle & delivered timely.
Marketing Hype: OpenStack no more enjoys the hype it used to years back, tech scene changes so rapidly.
Foundation: I think forming OpenStack foundation was one of the best thing happened to the project. The folks are working really hard to push project forward in whatever best possible way they can.
Foundation Members: OpenStack has almost every enterprise backing, check this link if you don’t believe me . All these organization wants to make money out of it & hence they all have aspirations. Most of them have full time employes hacking/contributing to upstream OpenStack code.
Definition of OpenStack: It has been over 5 years & we have not come to a conclusion what components must/must-not have to make the product “OpenStack Powered” I know Rob & others been working hard on this, not sure when will this be finally a reality.
VC’s putting $$$: Vc’s believed in Openstack & startups building services around OpenStack ended up getting funded over a billion $. Source
Acquisitions & Closures: In this 5 years tenure we saw a lot of these smaller startups getting acquired by traditional vendors like Piston, CloudScaling, BlueBox. At same time we heard about Nebula closing down & HP public cloud getting shut.
Job Market: OpenStack created a great job market & even 5 years down the line being an OpenStack developer can get you good $$. If you have contributed upstream then companies will be after you to hire.
The dream of Federated Cloud: I am still waiting to see if I will even be able to share my workload simultaneously on Rackspace, IBM Cloud or others with single OpenStack dashboard. This dream which was sold to us, I don’t see happening at all. After fighting with Simon all these years over API I have to agree having Amazon API support as native would have increased OpenStack’s adoption.
Too many install Options: I have to agree many ways to do the same thing can be confusing. Installing OpenStack is still hard and perhaps will always remain so. I won’t be surprised if someone writes a detailed thesis on the installation procedure & options [with comparison to all devOp tools] for OpenStack & upgrading OpenStack.
Pain of managing Install/API doc: Every new release has 100+ new flags & coordinating with developers or upstream contributor is not an easy job. Anne & team are doing excellent work. They will love to see your contribution & this is the best place if you want to get started with contributing to OpenStack project.
PS: I was one of the core OpenStack documentation contributor & still a community coordinator for OpenStack project in India.
Leaving an organization is extremely difficult especially when you have been part of it from day Zero[or before] or a 1st/2nd hire. But as someone said every great thing comes with an expiry date hence here I am writing my post on my last day of work at The New Stack.
The Journey
I got to know Alex [Founder of The New Stack] via Krishnan met in Portland during OSCON & got to know about this opportunity. I was more than happy to take the task as my work included getting website developed with remote developers, find interesting authors/contributors & spread word about The New Stack, building an awesome community via social media, offline mediums, meetups.
Learning
It was great almost 2 yrs journey with Alex & The New Stack team. The team has grown so does our visibility, people talk about us & quality of our published content.
I got to meet so many amazing people & made few good friends.
Great amount of learning & mentoring from Alex[he will continue doing so 🙂 ] and rest of the team.
Keeping nerves in place during situations like server downtimes or verbal arguments with people loaded with Egos.
Getting more work done with being empathetic with co-workers
I have my own podcast channel now, credit goes to Alex for the pep talk. [Be humble, honest & let the people talk.]
I feel being more confident, relaxed, happy about everything in Life
Personal Goal
I am an average writer so plan is to keep working on my writing skills & occasionally submit some contributors post for The New Stack[considering my writing skill qualifies :D]
Last Not The Least
OpenStack project has been one common connection or reason I got this gig or met Alex & Krishnan. I am thankful to the folks for pulling up such a brilliant project & uniting so many like minded folks on planet. I have not written about it in long a separate blog will be posted soon.
Nepali politicians are thick skinned. They are part of every deal be it taking bribe from India or China for giving contracts or channeling money to personal pocket out of millions received from world as aid in recent earthquake. Be it Oli, Prachanda or Madheshi all are same living in distant world. Why at very first place the constitution got passed with having severe discrepancies?
Why is ruling government not taking correct measures to restore peace in Tarai part, why are protesters getting shot on point blank? Can you all calm down, quit your ego & think for the starving family out on remote hills or the poor farmers/laborers in Tarai. All these while you been appointing naxalites & murderers to top position, is this how you are aiming for progressive Nepal?
Indian Government
I have high regards for prime minister Mr. Modi but what is this blockade going on? Why are our diplomates so useless & what has we got to do with Nepali constitution? Don’t we have enough problem in our own country which requires immediate attention? Nepal has moved on, stop being big brother to them, the new leaders think they are more happy keeping equidistant relationship b/w India & China. What is wrong with that?
Nepali Police
Stop treating protesters like dogs, they are as Nepali as you are. You have already killed 50+ so far, how many more is the target? Do let us know if there is a bounty/prize/medals Prachanda or Oli is giving you for the same or is it Chinese arms manufacturers?
Chinese Government
If China thinks by they can get into minds/nerves of ordinary Nepalis & replace it India its not happening. India & Nepal has 100+ years of cultural bonding. China should come clean with its intention, we all know how much ruling politicians are aligned to them.
Nepali Journalist
Well Nepali journalists are competing with Indian counterparts. I am yet to find a single journalist sitting in Kathmandu asking tough question from Oli on constitution amendments to killing of protesters to excessive force in Tarai. All this while they been governments cheerleader & throwing muds against India. My request to all of them is just grow up & think beyond being Anti-Indian or Anti-Madhesh. What have you done about human rights violation happening in Tarai?
Journalism is considered 3ed pillar of democracy but all these days what you folks are doing is hate mongering, racist slur, spreading lies & propaganda. Can you all stop spreading lies & do fact checking before sharing it among your followers on social media & writing for you newspaper?
Nepali People
Can we stop fighting with each other & discriminating on basis of origin Dhoti VS Pahadi
Ask tough questions from your government be it blockade or constitution or equal rights for women
Agitation will do no good & will harm overall country.
Everything has a price & India as well as China knows about it.
Stop wasting time on free NCELL plan fighting over unnecessary issues & burning blood on social media platforms. Your government is not listening, next time go vote & select right candidate/ministers.
Also stop blaming India for all your problems we been your friends for century & helped you in all good/bad situations.
China can only compliment to an extent with resources [arms, petrol or bribing politicians], it cannot replace Indo-Nepali ties. Stop living in dreams & believing in what your media or politicians are saying.
My friend Binaya reminded me of John Lennon — Imagine, embedding the same here.
When I was a little kid we only had Doordarshan, India’s national channel & It had limited hours dedicated for news. Currently we have 25+ hindi & english channel catering 24/7 news. If we add up entertainment/lifestyle/sports the list will go over 200. It is same with newspapers.
I have not purchased a newspaper in last 3-4 years nor owned a TV. I will chalk down my thoughts & reasons for the same.
The quality of Media content has gone low, editorial has no substance & TV debates are like cat fight.
TV or newspaper are all about creating sensation.
Instead of being source of information they have turned as infotainment.
Most of these newspapers or TV channels are run by politicians with a specific propaganda.
I get to know more about brand with 10 page of advertisement or multiple TV breaks instead news that i can relate to.
Do you like reading newspaper these days or watching debate on news channels? How do you keep up with it?
