[isf-wifidog] A picture of how far the wifidog project has advanced in the last two years

[Vacio]

My heartfelt thanks to everyone.  Here at the North Sacramento Chamber 
of Commerce, we are all about rebuilding a troubled part of town and 
supporting the neighbors and artists who live here.  Almost 2/3rds of 
our folks couldn't afford internet access at all.  Today, thanks in big 
part to wifidog because it works so well, almost 100 users per day enjoy 
free broadband from our 9 access points. 

I'm justly accused of being overly hopeful, but I do know the day is 
coming when I hear from a business owner here that their business 
survived because of free wi-fi or a from a kid who is off to college 
because she could do her homework online because of free wi-fi.

You are making a huge difference for us:  Thanks to all.

Rob Kerth
President
North Sacramento Chamber of Commerce
Benoit Grégoire wrote:
> We often talk about unsung heroes;  individuals who toil quietly, content to 
> leave all the glory to the group or endeavour that they embraced.  But 
> sometimes, even the endeavour itself can be unsung and taken for granted.
>
> Two recent events made me realize how little known the efforts (or even the 
> existence) of the multitude of wifidog contributors have become, even to some 
> people right at the heart of the wireless community movement!  Some had even 
> built the perception that progress of the wifidog project as a whole slowed 
> after Île sans fil (around march 2006) stopped maintaining it two years ago.  
>
> Those who know me in person know how much of a loud mouth I can be.  But I 
> also have a very low key working style.  I do stuff and don't brag about it 
> when I complete a task.  Quite frankly, I don't like braggers, and I am 
> always afraid of being branded as one.  Unfortunately, it seems I have 
> imprinted this style on the wifidog project, and that's not a good thing!
>
> Today's Internet is a world of appearances, black and white opinions based on 
> first impressions, soundbytes and short attention spans.  So in this world 
> demonstrating how lively the wifidog project really is just plain requires 
> bragging, soundbites and thanking every contributor individually (if 
> possible):
>
> So here it goes.  All that follows occured ONLY in the last two years:
>
> * 151 bug reports and feature requests were closed with status fixed!
>
> * 34 new organisations have listed themselves on as using wifidog, bringing 
> the total from 15 to 49
>
> * 17 individuals deserve our thanks for making code contributions:
> -Max Horvath (max)
> -François Proulx (fproulx)
> -Benoit Grégoire (benoitg)
> -Rob Janes
> -Dana Spiegel (dana)
> -Lokkju Brennr (lokkju)
> -prospere
> -Damien Raude-Morvan (drazzib)
> -David Bird (david)
> -Philippe April (papril)
> -Alexandre Carmel Veilleux (acv)
> -leandro
> -tdb
> -Josephus
> -jguevara
> -David Young
> -dc.ml
> -Medea
> As it has been demonstrated over and over, in a software project with a full 
> lifecycle (including Open source) the majority of the required effort is not 
> coding!  And indeed we have quite a few more people to thank, whithout whom 
> the wifidog community as we know it simply couldn't exist:
>
> * 13 translators maintained translations and brought the number of supported 
> languages from 3 to 10!
> -Frederic Sheedy, French
> -François Proulx, French
> -Benoit Grégoire, French
> -Frederic Sheedy, Franch
> -MiguelCMA, Portugese
> -Nikola Petrov (nvp_online), Bulgarian, Greek
> -Gabriel Hahmann, Brazilian Portuguese
> -Ricardo Jose Guevara Ochoa, Spanish
> -Max Horvath, German
> -leandro at texnet.it, Italian
> -florida, Italian
> -taedu AT ninjin-net DOT net, Japanese
> -Christian Svensson, Swedish
>
> * 51 Wiki editors (there are also many anonymous editors) improved our 
> documentation, our picture of our own community and humm ... our spelling.
> -Robin Jones
> -Benoit Grégoire
> -Alexandre Carmel Veilleux
> -Philippe April
> -Shyju Kanaprath
> -Andrew Hodel
> -bener
> -risc
> -Paul Scollon
> -coolbeansdude51
> -manuignatius
> -Joe Bowser
> -Mark Stephens
> -wad
> -flazcano
> -wmaalouf
> -Michael Lenczner
> -Gilbert Fafard
> -Florida
> -taedoo
> -disasm
> -Pascal Leclerc
> -paul
> -simon
> -gcrumb
> -flazcano
> -pk
> -Gabriel Hahmann
> -Max Horvath
> -golden_rock
> -Pascal Charest
> -rnissley
> -Gabe Shawney
> -gregs
> -Caleb Phillips
> -cfd
> -Benjamin
> -masked
> -Damien Raude-Morvan
> -Pascal Rullier
> -Mathias Houngbo
> -ludo
> -jguevara
> -ifoude
> -datamile
> -mmemeteau
> -François Proulx
> -matt
> -sam
> -ronit
> -amccann
>
> * All the people who took the time to open tickets and report bugs or suggest 
> features in the first place.
>
> * Thanks to everyone hanging on IRC.  At any given time there's about 10 
> individuals in the channel, which has become the primary way we help new 
> users and developers.
>
> * Thanks to all the people answering questions on the mailing list, not to 
> mention the 234 people who care enough about wifidog to stay subscribed and 
> let us fill their mailbox on a regular basis.
>
> * Thanks to Île sans fil for providing Servers and bandwidth
>
> * Finally, thanks to the following organisations who made financial 
> contributions (that I know of) to the development of wifidog:
> -Obx Labs
> -Less Networks
> -ZAP Sheerbrooke
> -Max Spot GBH
>
> All of you in the last two years decided to go beyond merely using the work of 
> others or fixing your immediate problem and have taken the time to give back, 
> so others can in turn build upon your contributions.  It takes years to build 
> a viable Open source development community around a project.  It's especially 
> challenging in a very small niche like captive portals, where most of the 
> work is not visible to the end users.  But we have certainly have come a very 
> long way!
>
> There are great opportunities ahead for the community wireless movement, now 
> that the storm of Muni wireless (at least as a threath to community groups) 
> has blown over.  There are also great challenges, from increasingly hostile 
> legal environments, changes to the economic environment of procuring Internet 
> bandwidth to the increasing variety of mobile devices.  Also, wifidog is used 
> more and more by private corporations.  
>
> Finding good and lasting technical solutions to such real world problems, and 
> implementing them using such a diversity of priorities and interest will 
> continue to require a great deal of foresight and diplomacy.
>
> But we are not alone, and if we work together, it's not even that hard ;)
>  
> Keep up the good work, and give yourselves a pat in the back, you deserve it.  
> There is no contribution too small, if only to remind the other contributors 
> that they are not alone.
>