Last Saturday I went to one of the meetings of Java Hellenic User Group (JHUG).
It was very interesting and I enjoy it very much.

I attended 3 presentations.

The first one was an idea for the packaging of java enterprise applications.
The title was Package by feature and not by layer. I liked that, because it was something that may help developers in the future, with some extensions.

The second was a real study of the IT department of a bank (I cannot write the name of the bank) and how they use open source projects. How much they have help them to build an adaptable architecture and how much they have learnt from this. Nice work guys, keep going !!!

The third one was by Dimitris Andreadis and the topic was What it takes to become an opensource developer.
I liked this very much for one main reason. The reason is that Dimitris has summarized 7 main principles that a developer must follow in order to become a real open source developer. The beautiful aspect is that none of these principles is directly related to software. To give you a better understanding, the principles are: Passion, Persistence, Focus, Innovation, Luck, Connections and one more. These principles are very general and anyone use them can easily become whatever she/he likes. Bravo to Dimitris.

The only argue we had with Dimitris was about, if someone needs “talent” or not to become an open source developer. As most people believe, talent can give you a major boost on your career or in your general life. I do not follow this belief. If we are to take personal success as a quantitative “product”, then talent accounts for less than 10% of the total sum of the total product.

I do not believe that Larry Wall, Richard M. Stallman or any other of the best programmers are the best because of their talent. We are all sure that they are very intelligent and they practice very hard, but talent is something else.
Can you define talent???

Regards,
Adrianos.
—
Democracy requires Free Software.