D’Souza: Maru is open source! [LWN.net]

On the Maru blog, developer Preetam D’Souza has announced that the Maru project is now open source. Maru is a desktop system running on a smartphone, so that adding a display, keyboard, and mouse to a phone allows the user to run their desktop on the phone—and still be able to use the device as a phone. "I’ve gotta say, the open source community never ceases to amaze me. I’ve had emails from people asking if they can help test Maru on other devices on a Sunday. How many normal people do you know that willingly want to give up their Sundays to help test software? I’ve experienced this helpfulness time and time again, whether it was the speakers at open source conferences so willing to share their knowledge, or the folks on forums who were so keen to help out beginners like me. Maru would never have been possible without that spirit of openness."

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D’Souza: Maru is open source!

Posted Feb 13, 2016 0:20 UTC (Sat) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] (2 responses)

His amazement at open-source development on the weekends is quite amusing. Indeed, I remember a time (long ago now) when LWN itself was far more active on weekends than during the week. I'm not sure when the shift to majority-weekday activity was, but it marked a turning point, and not for the better in some cases.

D’Souza: Maru is open source!

Posted Feb 13, 2016 1:24 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

Neat observation. Time for a bit o procrastinating...

This appears to be the first article on the site: http://static.lwn.net/1998/1203/
This appears to be the first article that allows comments: https://lwn.net/Articles/108/
And this appears to be the first comment: https://lwn.net/Articles/1094/

Surprised commenting didn't get turned off immediately...

But 1 June 2002 is a Saturday! 100% of the early comments that I've seen match allesfresser's observation.

Would love to hear the results if anyone pursues this for real.

D’Souza: Maru is open source!

Posted Feb 13, 2016 1:40 UTC (Sat) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link]

Oops, that was the earliest article to be commented on (so far...).

Pretty sure this is the first comment: https://lwn.net/Articles/1030/

May 31st was a Friday; the observation still holds. And it's neat to see that TheOneKEA and ikm are still subscribers.