COMMUNITY Free Software Projects
An up-to-date look at free software and its makers PROJECTS ON THE MOVE Free software simulates the population of Mars, which is due to start 30 years from now, gives users an over-
view of social networks, and keeps the peace at the debating society. BY CARSTEN SCHNOBER
lexandria Luciano lives on Mars. the individual information boxes will tell They are always proposing or imple- No, she’s not Linux Pro Maga- you how the character in question is menting new research projects. If you Azine‘s latest foreign correspon- feeling at that moment. The information accept a proposal, a team of up to four dent, but one of the first settlers on the includes comprehensive details on mate- scientists will go to work. A successful red planet. Of course, she hasn’t landed rial and health aspects, as well as the conclusion of the project typically opens yet, because this event will not take settler’s social life. The simulator thus up new options for settling on Mars. place until some time after the year gives you granular control, allowing you However, you can interrupt field trials if 2040. The Mars Sim [1] project gives you to take into consideration that Alexan- you the participants need to do some- a sneak preview. dria dislikes Tracey and won't have to thing else, and a research project can fail share the rover with her on the next ex- if, for example, the main researcher dies. Life on Mars ploration mission. Nearly everybody knows Sim City, the The simulator assigns personal attri- A Mars a Day classic simulation game that has reached butes randomly at the start of the game If the environment is not to your liking, the age of 20 without losing any of its that defines how well a person is suited or the options the simulator offers you original charm. In the game, players to a specific mission. Additionally, Mar- are too restrictive, Mars Sim allows you build a city on barren land. In your role tian settlers have skills in various fields, to configure most of the details yourself as an omniscient ruler, you need to cater such as cooking, botany, engineering, by editing multiple XML files, each of to your population’s every need, and and more, all of which can influence the which defines a category. For example, various factors, such as criminality, the success of a mission. If the character is you can edit people.xml to define your environment, the flow of traffic, and ed- tired or hungry, it influences settlers’ typical characteristics, includ- ucation make it more difficult to manage their effectiveness. ing their tolerance for the typical the community. The Mars mission also in- temperature; their oxygen, water, The Mars simulator beams a similar cludes scientific exploration and nutrition requirements; and scenario onto a distant world. The Java of the newly conquered many other attributes. These de- program simulates the settlement of planet. Many of the settlers tails act as mean values, although Mars in the future. Players supervise sev- are thus scientists from specific attributes are applied ran- eral missions and assign tasks, such as various disciplines, such domly. researching mineral deposits, trading as botany, medicine, biol- In a similar way, you can modify with other settlements, or extending set- ogy, mathematics, chem- the available buildings, plants, raw tlements (see Figure 1). istry, physics, and so on. materials, vehicles, and other struc- Your Mars settlers can erect buildings tural units. Depending on the cate- or handle other challenges, and you can gory you can modify existing entries monitor their progress, including that or add new ones. of individual settlers. Although you can’t influence settlers directly, Ben Heys, 123RF
94 ISSUE 113 AprIl 2010 Free Software Projects COMMUNITY
To round this off, the homepage has post to, the ser- exhaustive documentation for the Java vices. After creat- programming interface, allowing devel- ing your accounts, opers to modify the GPL-licensed source you can start to code to their hearts’ content. The devel- navigate the Web oper team, led by Scott Davis, is open to 2.0. On the left- help in the form of code, graphics, hand side of the sounds, ideas, or proposals. window is a list of The first version of Mars Sim was re- the services you leased in 1998, more than 10 years ago. set up; Gwibber Since then, the developers have worked will automatically on the project without major interrup- update the list. tions. The realistic depiction of the Depending on the planet and the intuitive controls the sim- service and con- Figure 1: The Mars settlement is growing and prospering thanks to ulator offers reflect the consistently high figuration, you players sending settlers on different missions. level of work that has gone into the proj- can browse the list ect. The game runs on various plat- and compose postings. to create the Speech and Debate Time- forms, including Linux, Windows, Mac Gwibber developers relied on Python keeper [5] (Figure 4). OS X, and other Unix systems. And, it as the programming language and used The Timekeeper program comprises a has Java Webstart support; in other Gtk for the graphical interface. The ap- small window with the current speaker’s words, the simulator will run directly in plication does not require a Gnome elapsed and remaining time and Stop your browser. desktop, but you must have the Gtk li- and Reset buttons. When time expires, braries in place. Distribution-specific an optical (and optionally audible) sig- Many Services packages of the latest release, version 2, nal is output, so that the moderator Mars settlers and the residents of today’s are available for most distributions, and doesn’t need to interrupt the speaker or Web 2.0 might ask themselves how to you can typically rely on the package take his eyes off his notes. best keep track of their accounts with manager to handle dependencies. The software Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and so on. Ad- Considering the type of project this is, supports a num- ditionally, spoilsports such as your it is no surprise that users are mainly ber of pre- friends, kids, employees, and customers kept up to date via the Twitter [3] and defined stan- all expect you to operate outside your set Identi.ca [4] micro-blogging services. dard debating of social networks. Gwibber [2] saves Additionally, the Gwibber developers competition for- time and gathers all your accounts under have their own Twitter and Identi.ca ac- mats, and times a single umbrella (Figure 2). counts. The project homepage also offers can be config- To get started with Gwibber, simply links to the mailing list, the IRC chat ured individu- Figure 4: Timekeeper create one or more accounts in the main channel, and the wiki. ally. The inter- helps debating com- Gwibber window. As of this writing, the face is simple, petitors keep track of program supports Jaiku, Identi.ca, Digg, The Debating Society with Chen fo- time. and RSS feeds besides the services I When speakers get carried away, it is cusing on porta- mentioned earlier. The configuration is sometimes hard to stop them, which is bility. As a result, Timekeeper not only wizard based (Figure 3), and you will be why many discussions, such as those in supports the usual desktop suspects, in- prompted to enter your login credentials. Congress, on TV talk shows, and in cluding Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X, Then you can decide whether Gwibber Rhetoric 101 classes, are under more or but also a number of handheld comput- can just read messages on, or actually less strict time limits that give all speak- ers, thus allowing the moderator to save ers the same options. space. As a platform-independent lan- As a moderator at debating competi- guage, Java laid the foundations for this tions, Jemmy Chen is all too familiar portability. n with this problem, which prompted him INFO [1] Mars Sim: http://mars‑sim. sourceforge. net [2] Gwibber: https://launchpad. net/ gwibber [3] Gwibber on Twitter: http://twitter. com/ gwibber [4] Gwibber on Identi.ca: Figure 3: Use the wizard to tell Gwibber your http://identi. ca/ gwibber Figure 2: Gwibber helps you keep track of login credentials and preferences for the [5] Speech and Debate Timekeeper: your social networks. account in question. http://debate‑ie‑timer. sourceforge. net
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