Inicialmente, la comunidad trabajaba exclusivamente proyectos de localización de productos de Mozilla, pero actualmente el trabajo se ha orientado un poco más hacia el desarrollo. El objetivo de la comunidad de Mozilla Colombia ahora es iniciar contribuciones con código fuente, reporte de errores, soluciones de bugs, Localización de articulos técnicos, School of Webcraft y Drumbeat.

¿Por que Cambiamos nuestro objetivo?
La mayor parte de las comunidades de software libre Latinoamericanas y especialmente las Colombianas, centran su trabajo en la difusión y organización de eventos. Aunque es un punto bastante importante para reclutar personas y posicionar marca, existe una tendencia a limitarse solo a ello. Aprovechando la facilidad que tenemos los colombianos y colombianas de animar hasta un velorio, decidimos centrarnos en aquello que no estamos mostrando lo cual es de gran utilidad tanto para el proyecto como para la vida personal de sus miembros: “El aporte técnico al proyecto”

¿Cómo puedo contribuir si no se programar?
Existen muchos proyectos dentro de Mozilla en los cuales no necesitas saber sobre programación como la localización de artículos, páginas y productos, en difusión, escribiendo artículos para publicar en la página de Mozilla Colombia y/o Mozilla Hispano, organización de eventos (el hecho de que no nos queramos centrar en esto no quiere decir que no sea necesario). Pero, si no sabes programar y quieres aportar código fuente, puedes tomar los cursos de School of Webcraft (SoW) y aprender a programar para la Web!

Asi que, si sabes programar, o no sabes programar, o no quieres programar o te gusta organizar eventos o traducir textos o te gusta buscar contactos para patrocinio o si ya los tienes o simplemente quieres hacer parte de una comunidad, te gusta internet y quieres apoyar la Web Abierta, pública y accesible para todas las personas, te gustan los productos Mozilla (no tienen que gustarte todos) y su filosofía, entonces llegaste al lugar indicado.

Fx4Bogota parte

Hablamos un rato, rompimos el hielo y tomamos unas cuantas cervezas.  Después llegó la segunda parte de la fiesta: La chiva. Una chiva es un bus muy inseguro donde los campesinos colombianos acostumbran a transportarse junto con sus productos (vejetales, frutas, animales etc) esto hace que la chiva sea un bus muy amplio, con ventanas sin vidrios y algunas veces sin puertas para facilitar la movilidad de las personas y todas sus cosas (incluyendo animales). Actualmente las chivas se adaptaron como “discotecas ambulantes” para las ciudades, avanzan a velocidad muy baja (por aquello de ser un bus muy inseguro) con musica a muy alto volumen. Las chivas suelen tener un nombre, la nuestra se llamaba “La Vagabunda!”

Chiva

Asi que, nos subimos a la chiva y recorrimos el norte de la ciudad. Mientras la chiva avanzaba, cantabamos, tomabamos aguardiente y repartiamos mercancia de Firefox a las personas (aprovechando que las ventanas no tienen vidrios).

En el Parque de la 93, en la zona de los restaurantes y discotecas más reconocidas y concurridas de la ciudad hicimos una parada. Nos dividomos en 3 grupos, 2 para repartir mercancia de Mozilla: Jefferson, Philipp, Ariel y yo formamos un grupo, Jeff, Potch, “la gata” y Offray eran el segundo grupo.  y Los demas el tercer grupo, se quedo en la chiva gritando: “firefox… firefox… usa firefox!!” . La chiva seguia avanzando, no podía parar por orden de la policia y la alcaldia, asi que al terminar nos toco correr,  alcanzarla y subirnos mientras paraba en un semáforo.

Repartimos toda la mercancia, TODA, hasta los botones que teniamos en nuestras camisetas, no quedo nada (ni para nosotros). Al finalizar el recorrido, buscamos un bar y nos quedamos ahi, hablano mientras nos marcaban las 3:00 am, hora en la cual todos los bares y discotecas deber cerrar por orden de la policia y el alcalde. El dueño del bar y la mesera que nos atendian, resultaron ser usuarios de Firefox, asi que, nos pidieron lo ultimo que nos quedaba, un afiche de Firefox 4 y lo pusieron el la barra del bar!, ese fué el cierre perfecto de una noche Firefox.

Conclusion de la jornada: 11 nuevos miembros muy interesados en trabajar proyectos. Una reunion pendiente para organizarnos y tratar de incluirlos en Mozilla Hispano, mucho, mucho trabajo, muchas ideas que compartimos con Philipp, Potch y Jeff y muchas muchas fotografias.

Iniciamos la conferencia como es debido. Nos presentamos, hablamos del proyecto Mozilla, Mozilla corporation, Mozilla Foundation, Mozilla Messaging, las filiales, Mozilla Colombia etc.  Pero fue hasta que mostramos el video de la entrevista realizada a Guillermo Movia de Argentina en el Summit 2010 que las cosas cambiaron.

Guillermo habla de aspectos muy fuertes como el monopolio de la red, monopolio de la información, redes privadas, importancia de los estándares abiertos y de la web abierta, la importancia de las localizaciones de los productos y  la importancia de la participación de la comunidad en el proyecto Mozilla. Pudimos notar después de ver el video, que muchos de ellos se sentían engañados o dudosos de las herramientas que usaban, por lo cual decidimos responder preguntas sobre el video y fué esta entrevista realizada a Guillermo lo que nos sirvió como excusa para iniciar un debate en medio de la conferencia (cosa que no estaba en nuestros planes), donde las mismas personas que asistieron a la conferencia realizaban preguntas y algunas veces nosotros respondíamos o los mismos asistentes respondían.

A medida que el debate avanzaba, introducíamos  otros aspectos a demás de la filosofía: HTML5, CSS3, nuevas funcionalidades de Firefox 4, AddOns, Jetpack, localizaciones, Mozilla Dumbreat etc.  Estos aspectos se fueron concatenando de tal forma que al final, sin que nosotros los conferencistas lo mencionáramos, se llegara a una conclusión sobre la importancia de proyectos como Mozilla.

Finalmente, surgió una pregunta de uno de los asistentes que en mi opinión fue la más importante y con la que pudimos sintetizar toda la conferencia:  Por que debería yo entonces usar Firefox en lugar de otros navegadores.  En que lo diferencia técnicamente y filosóficamente para que tú me digas que es mejor? Mencionamos tres aspectos bastante importantes:

El aspecto técnico, donde la respuesta fue bastante fácil: Respeta e implementa estándares, se preocupa por la navegación ética, es open source, existen proyectos al rededor de firefox que tienen en cuenta lo que el usuario desea y trata de amoldarse a sus necesidades y gustos, por eso existen proyectos como Jetpack, los AddOns y el más popular: Personas.

La parte filosófica: No se trata de usar una herramienta solo porque es bonita o más rápida. Hay que ver un poco más allá de nuestra nariz. Existen herramientas gratuitas que realmente no lo son, navegadores gratuitos que en realidad vigilan nuestros hábitos de navegación y envían estos datos a multinacionales que analizan estos hábitos para generarnos consumo y dependencia. Muchas navegadores pueden hacer cosas que no sabemos, los instalamos en nuestras máquinas, los usamos para leer y enviar nuestros correos, les ponemos al alcance de nuestra información e identidad y no sabemos que hacen con ello, pero los usamos porque son gratuitos, cargan rápido y son bonitos. es como comprar un carro solo por que la cubierta y las sillas se ven bien .. Que pasa con el motor? Comprarías un carro sin ver el motor, solo porque las sillas son bonitas?

La parte comunitaria: Mozilla es uno de los proyectos más grandes que existe en el mundo open source. Su comunidad es enorme y muy diversa (de esto me enteré en el Summit, por eso lo decía con tanta claridad y seguridad) También se puede constatar que la comunidad juega un papel muy importante dentro de las decisiones que toma Mozilla para determinar el futuro de sus aplicaciones. Dejar en las manos de la comunidad cosas como los AddOns y las localizaciones constatan eso.  La opinión de la comunidad es fundamental en los proyectos, lo cual indica que el futuro de las aplicaciones lo deciden los usuarios que son quienes realmente usan las herramientas, los usuarios dicen lo que necesitan, los usuarios ayudan a implementar lo que necesitan y se empoderan de las herramientas, generan o evolucionan productos según sus necesidades y no según las necesidades de otros grupos económicos.

Todo esto se puede constatar en la filosofía de Mozilla, en la forma en que trata y se esfuerza por ser consecuente entre sus acciones, la comunidad, la parte legal, misión y visión.

Finalizando la charla, muchas personas comprendieron, preguntaron, hablaron al respecto. Tal vez no se unan todos a la comunidad, pero comprendieron la importancia de usar este tipo de productos.

Finalmente, tuvimos 4 nuevos miembros interesados en participar de la comunidad (esperemos que activamente) y muchas más con un aspecto más claro de lo que es Mozilla y lo que implica usar un navegador o cualquier herramienta.

Todo inició un día en que Debora me pregunto si era posible para mi ver la  página  http://www.neuquen.edu.ar/ funcionando correctamente.

Ingrese a la página, posteriormente al enlace “Planta funcional docente” y después de ingresar un usuario y contraseña de pruebas, debía seleccionar una escuela.

Respondí a Debora: El proceso se detiene! no continua la navegación!

Comenté a Debora que los desarrolladores utilizan JavaScript mayoritariamente para realizar validaciones en las páginas, ventanas emergentes o crear componentes interactivos, pero existen ciertos navegadores web que no respetan los estándares de los lenguajes script, admiten atributos adicionales o permiten que se o bien algunos importantes o modifican los retornos de los métodos entre otras cosas. Esto implica que muchas aplicaciones que funcionan en este tipo de navegadores, no necesariamente funcionan en Firefox u otros navegadores.

Aunque este tipo de problemas suele señalar como responsable al desarrollador del sitio web, no siempre es su responsabilidad No se puede culpar al “Fulano” que desarrollo la pagina de que una empresa responsable de un navegador no implemente los estándares como es debido, se supone que es un Estándar y los estándares deben respetarse, por que son los lineamientos sobre los cuales otros se guían para crear o hacer otro tipo de cosas.

Revise la consola de errores y este es el error que arroja la página en Firefox:

Error: uncaught exception: [Exception... "Illegal operation on WrappedNative prototype object"  nsresult: "0x8057000c (NS_ERROR_XPC_BAD_OP_ON_WN_PROTO)"  location: "JS frame :: http://www.neuquen.gov.ar/rhproneu/js/vistas.js :: ProcMsg :: line 122"  data: no]

Por medio de la consola, revise la línea en la cual existia este error la cual describía lo soguiente:

Error: f.cells is not a function
Source File: http://www.neuquen.gov.ar/cgi-bin/wspd_cgi.sh/WService=prodrh/ayescu10.html?qs-NivelValor=&qs-NumeroValor=&qs-ModalidadValor=&qs-NivelCond=0&qs-NumeroCond=0&qs-ModalidadCond=0

Al parecer  la función cells no existe o no es estándar, pero no estoy segura de que así sea. Sin embargo le notifiqué a Debora que es posible ver los errores que arrojan los script de JavaScript por la consola de errores de firefox que encuentran en  la barra principal de firefox en la opción Herramientas – Consola de errores.

El equipo técnico de la pagina en cuestión había recibido hace ya varias semanas un reporte sobre los errores que, al utilizar el navegador Firefox, se producían en la operación del sistema. Este sistema tiene una importancia relevatne puesto que permite el ingreso de novedades, concretamente en el momento de seleccionar el establecimiento educativo sobre el que se va a trabajar en Neuquen.

Una vez reportado el problema y enviada la solución, quedó solucionado y la ventaja es que ahora este equipo técnico tiene en cuenta que se necesita realizar prácticamente doble trabajo: Probar en Firefox y en otros navegadores porque el “Estándar cambia”.

Me alegra mucho que mi ayuda les haya servido para solucionar el problema y para tener en cuenta la importancia de un Estándar.

I sat in my boarding room. The flight assistant told us an announce “Ladies and Gentlemen your flight has been delayed 2 hours due to technical problems. We hope you can understand”… people understood, I understood!. So, I decided to walk arround and do something, maybe to call to my mother but finally I called a friend. When I got back to my boarding room the flight assistant said “Ladies and Gentlemen, our tripulation had a traffic accident road to airport. The flight is canceled. please make a line in front of me and our air line will pay you a hotel and your flight is scheduled for tomorrow at 1:00 pm”. At 1:00 pm?? I told my self: “Is impossible, at 1:00 pm I have to be in Vancouver if we flight at 1:00 pm i will arrive to Vancouver at midnight! and how can I go to Whistler at midnight?” I notified my situation to the flight assistant and she told me “People in Vancouver will help you, don’t worry”. I went to the hotel with the rest of the group, I went to bed and I waked up early, I had my breakfast and the whole group went by bus to the airport.

I did my check-in, the airline managed my flight connection at 9:00 pm. I had to pass by emigration again, and I sat into the waiting room when I saw an old woman looking for me. She asked me “Are you going to Vancouver miss?” and I answered “Yes, why?”. The woman told me her flight connection was the next day and she have to spend an additional day in Toronto, she does not speak english  and she is traveling to Vancouver to visit her daughter and a person in Toronto who is waiting for her to help her with her flight connection, but due to flight cancellation this person can’t wait and she had no idea what to do.  I told her, “take it easy, I will help you with your connection, mine is today, yours is tomorrow but i can explain you how to take a connection or we can ask to the airline assistant if is possible to change your connection to today”. Finally the woman got calm and  we boarded our flight (at 1:00 pm). As a coincidence,  her seat was at side of mine!

7 hours… 7 hours took the flight to arrive to Vancouver, 7 hours talking with this woman. I had Fun! I had fun a lot! She was a funny and cool old woman, she lives in Medellin, she goes to the gym, she likes parties, she has a job.. we talked about her ex husband (hehehe)  my ex boyfriend (hehehe) and her daughter.

When I arrived to Toronto, I ran, because I had 30 minutes to claim my baggage, to pass by emigration again and to take my connection.  Juventina (the old woman) came with me. When we claimed our baggage, I had a big surprise: Juventina’s baggage was very very heavy. She had 3 big suitcases and very very very heavy. I promised her I will help her, so I had to run with my suitcase and one of her three suitcases and she with the other ones.  Finally we  were on the checking line. When I had my turn, I told to the flight assistant about Juventina’s situation, and I got it!, the flight assistant changed her connection and we will travel in the same flight!

When emigration agents reviewed  my bag, they detected coffee and a Victoria’s Secret Splash that I bought in the airport of Bogotá, so they called me, they opened my bag, they reviewed my pockets, my shoes, my jacket, my belt and they passed a special drugs detector over my clothes, hands and hair… Finally, they called me to a room, and I thought “Oh my God… x-rays… an interview with federal agents… no please no”. But I was wrong, The federal Agent told me: “Keep in mind you are not allowed to carry liquids over  100 ml in your hand baggage.” … “Ok,  I will keep in mind, thank you” (I don’t know why I said Thank you)  and I was free, I put my things into my bag again, Juventina was waiting for me and we ran!

This story begins the day when the embassy of Canada refused my Visa. There were 3 reasons that drove to the embassy to take these desition:  My contracts ended on June 30th, I have not a husband or children in Colombia and I had traveled to Cuba one year ago (and I will be back… I don’t know the date but I will). This three reasons were enough for the consul think that i would stay illegal in Canada. The notification about my visa refusing was delivered to my home. When I read the document with the reasons, I got angry (very angry) and  I told myself: To stay ilegaly in Canada? my God,  I have my friends, a contract renovation, my family and my cat in Colombia.. If I wanna leave this things I would have to earn a lot of money or at least to get a goooooood Job in Canada, but I wouldn’t leave leave my country to wash dishes as an illegal worker! I just wanna go for the Mozilla Summit!

I told to my friend Guillermo by chat who got angry too. “Is always the same, but let me see what you can do”, he said. And the next day he told me  “Send an email to …  and  to … from Mozilla” and I did it.  In summary, there were two layers from Canadian emigration working hard in my case and Canadian embassy sent me an email asking by my documents (again) and in one week I got my visa (it takes 20 days). I had to claim it directly to the Canadian embassy, early at the morning (7:00 am) I was a bit sick (a flu) so I covered my face and my head (like al qaeda guy but in pink). I was at the embassy at 7:03 am, it was raining and 6 degrees I had a flu and It was not possible to stay into the embassy because security reasons, so I has to wait out of the office, on the street and I told myself  “My God I am not a dog, I am just a girl asking by a visa why I can’t to stay in?” But It was not the worst!

My visa was going to be delivered at the mail box in the first floor of the embassy but it was not. I had to wait 4 hours out of the embassy, but raining, 6 degrees , to be dressed as an al qaeda guy (in pink) because a flu are not a good combination, so I walked arround looking for a coffee o some hot drink, dressed as an Al Qeda guy (but in pink).  Close to Canadian embassy there are 2 additional embassies: the Mexican and other one (I don’t remember wich one) so, security Guys thought I was a terrorist, they catched me and they asked me why are you walking arround and dressed in this way? I answered: Because I have a flu and I am waiting for my Canadian Visa but is not possible to stay in embassy and I am looking for a hot drink.  The security man told me “You have to uncover your face” and I told Him “Im sorry I have a flu. Call to the Canadian  embassy if you want to know who I am, but believe me I am very sick”  Finaly, he called to the Canadian Embassy and asked about me, and I got free.  For a second time at the morning, I told to my self: “My God I am not a dog!.. but I wanna be a dog,  at least the guardian dogs are into the building!”

Next I got to get in the embassy. I was interviewed, and I had to wait some minutes. Finally I got my Visa. So I went to my house, I took at least 5 different medicines for flu  and I got ready for Mozilla Summit 2010.

This is not the end of my Karma,  it is just the first part.

This days a friend was in my city because of his job and he visited me. I showed him the script, I explained him and I told him about our idea of randomize images. He was thinking a solution and he was involved in the script development. We found a shell web page with some examples, commands and their explain. We used it for our script.

Each time we change the script we test, but each time we saw the same mistake. We stored the images name into an array and we got a random number that is the array position and we showed this image by 120 seconds and next we deleted the displayed image, and we repeated this process until the array is empty. When the array is empty we load the image names again. This was our idea, but it not works!! sometimes, our script showed us a green image, that is displayed when the image is not found. Well we fixed the script and we accepted the character ‘ ‘ in the names… But it didn’t works. I tested severely, i followed the algorithm and I discovered the mistake: The page that we read said about a command that ” returns the size of an array” BUT this command returned the number of element into an array not their size!!!, so we delete the image name but the array was the same size BUT the number of elements into our array had one less, so the array position that we deleted was empty and the random command sometimes returned us this empty position, as a consequence, the image named ” was not found!!

This could be obvious, but my friend, my brother and me have no idea about bash. Each programming language is different and in the “Practical Examples” page “we found what we need” but it was not true!! At the end of the day we had a conclusion: RTFM, there is not a different explain for us.

OLPC presented the possibility to learn without teacher or with a teacher but in a collaborative way. helping each other. OLPC presented us the possibility of create and  interconnect comunities of children and teachers who changes information and increase their habilities. it sounds So beautiful.

But, when situations are so good my mother says: “Of this good thing, won’t give so much” and she was right. Poverty is a Business, OLPC knows. For this reason OLPC used their volunteers to become strong, famous and to build their base system, and next OLPC betrayed their volunteers.

OLPC presented the open source as a strong tool for this solution, a strong tool for poor children and underdevelop countries. For this reason a lot of people of developed countries were added to this project as volunteers (Thanks guys) because OLPC presented their project as a way to nivelate the digital underdevelopment between countries. Many people of countries in Latinamerica made comunities arround this project, because we believed this as a opportunity to poor children because our government won’t do anything. We made a group too, we worked a lot and too hard, showing the project in conferences, events, and some politicians and foundations, reading mails, some members writting code for activities, translating pages, documenting process, and IRC meetings. OLPC people was Happy with us and our job.

When The first pilot started in Colombia, we made the technical work (updating machines and testing) and some training programs for children and teachers. This work was paid. OLPC has not representation in my country, so there is not a way to give technical support for machines, network or school servers. Our objective was support the pilots in a technical way, but we becomes a danger to OLPC, because new pilots were appearing in Colombia and this pilots want our help.

OLPC has not a local team for technical support, but won’t leave us to give the technical support either. OLPC wants to manage this situations in a central way, focusing power in OLPC and forgetting the volunteers.

OLPC slogan was “is an educational project not a laptop project” JA!!! let me laugh a lot!! but now you have to buy at least 10.000 laptops to start a pilot. Is a Laptop project off course!! Where is the educational Plan Mr OLPC?? do you have a training program for teachers?? Do you have a technical support for pilots arround the world? What about licences?  yes, OLPC, you did it!! you sold a lot of machines without technical and educational support.

Now, OLPC laptops has windows and next OLPC generations will have windows. The licence cost is 3 dollars but how many poor children has a country? The probelm for me is not windows. The problem for me is the betray. OLPC betrayed their volunteers and their objectives.

Now, OLPC laptops has Windows and next OLPC generations will have Windows. The licence cost is 3 dollars but how many poor children has a country? The problem for me is not Windows. The problem for me is that OLPC betrayed their volunteers and their customers. OLPC betrayed their objectives.

Can you believe that there are people who robbed the meal of this children? Well when my boss was contextualizing me about this new project, I couldn’t avoid my laughter, I stopped when he said me .. ” is not a joke, but don’t worry, I couldn’t believe too”.

Well there is a group of people who receives money of ICBF, buy food and have to spread the meal to children. At the end of each day they have to write a report when describe the number of children who receive the meal and the number of children who don’t. Some of this people alter their report saying that more children received the meal than the real number. Another ones sale this meal to children and in the report says they gives the meal.

When the parents of this children complained about this situation, ICBF decided to implement a new plan. Each point of attention for children will have a terminal that will authenticate children reading their fingerprint. If the authentication is successful, the child will have their meal.

This is my project, the authentication process. When you work with a PC you have “Infinite” resources, but a terminal is different. In addition I have to come back to my past and have a look to C and C++ (references, pointers, structures, unions, hexadecimals, bit operators, etc). In addition we have to encrypt the data and to implement some security transmission methods.

I can’t believe. meanwhile in another countries like USA, Canada, Germany, France, England people implements this kind of solutions to improve the security in banks, jewelers or government, in my country we implement this solutions to avoid than stupid people rob the meal of poor children.

This man said us “learn concepts not skills” so I remembered when I was an student. I read about programming languages, databases and tools. I said to myself.. Every day i find a new tool or a new programming language or a new database.. how can I learn all of them and remember their “tips”, configuration and sintaxis?

Arround OLPC project I’ve known a man.. a crazy man with an interesting story. He showed me his Blog and some articles. He says the same thing: “Concepts are most importants than skills”.. and other interesting things about programming as a job.

My favorite professor at the University said me “Don’t learn the partition, learn how to make partitions and you will make songs. Each song is like a new tool or a new language but there are a lot of concepts behind they”. He is a musician on his free time.

And I did it, thanks for the advice professor. I can learn DataBase,programming languages and tools in a prudent short time.. But if I don’t practice then I forget this skills, but not the concepts behind they. I am not the best, I am not the fist one in the top 10, I don’t know all “Tips”, but I can see beyond than other people is a fact.

But for industry, the most important things are your skills. Skills in Java, in C in PHP… You can be promoted if you have a certification, skills knows or many experience. But what is a programming language certification? I DON’T KNOW… for me is a piece of paper that says you know where put a ; or a {. This kind of certifications must dissapear!!!(is my opinion). A certification must be most general an theorical test. If you forget the parameters of a library method or API method you open your browser and type for google or yahoo and search for the method. What is experience? is many many years doing the same thing!. If you have knowlege but not skills you won’t be promoted.

Skills or concepts? I love concepts but I need skills, more and more skills if a wanna be promoved and to earn more money. I change my job frecuently but not for money (hmmm… some times), I change it because i find it bored. All jobs are similars for me. I have to do the same thing each time. Today for a bank, to morrow the same program for a airline and next week for a food distributor. You need skills, your concepts are outside.

I prefer to play “Satisfaction” by Rolling Stones each time or I prefer to compose a song?

Well I don’t know. I think like this guys.. and I have a hope.. they are four and they are not stupid men. On the other way, if I am on a mistake they are on a mistake too!!  and we are four!! I am not the only one!!