WSO2 Stratos ~ Something Different ..

WSO2 Stratos 

WSO2 Stratos Architecture is quite interesting in terms of its multitenancy. When the WSO2 Carbon Platform meets the cloud computing through the multitenancy, there comes WSO2 Stratos. The above document just gives a very basic view. If you are familiar with WSO2 Carbon, you can get the exact user experience using WSO2 Stratos without even having it installed or configured in your machine. Feel it yourself now, by signing up an account free.

Work at WSO2..

I often have felt sorry for the people who do routine tasks as jobs, which doesn't involve creative thinking or some change from a predefined agenda. Though this relates to the clerical jobs, call centers, or the jobs where bulk of employees are considered a cheap labour carrying forward the order of a big-guy. In late years with the rise of IT, many concerns were risen considering the fact that programmers are considered the same.

Job Satisfaction

Job satisfaction often comes well packaged if a smart employer and smart employees are paired. WSO2 is an ideal example where job satisfaction reaches to the maximum level. We have never felt "Thank God, It's Friday" or "FML, it's Monday" ;). In fact, WSO2ers treat WSO2 more of their home. I have seen many WSO2ers staying very late night. It doesn't necessarily mean, we work more time. Rather we try many new stuff there. Learning is encouraged through self-learning or trainings. We mostly follow the 'Apologize than Ask' model. No one here waits to get an approval of a senior person to try something new or crazy. If it failed, we just apologize, and start planning for the next adventure. :) 

Quality Assurance Team - Development Teams relationship

Successes are properly recognized and rewarded at individual level. I recall last year WSO2 Stratos Team was awarded for the effort on bringing up WSO2 Stratos-1.0.0, and QA Team was awarded as the outstanding team of the year 2010, in the award ceremony. In WSO2, QA team is often considered the team which is loved by everyone, which itself is a great success for the team and the organization culture. QA team was never a hindrance to the fast pace development of the teams. Rather they are a strong motivation and acceleration for the development, ensuring the quality making sure everything is done correct end-to-end.

Development
We use Atlassian JIRA to track the project and issues. Though QA team reports most of the bugs, sometimes the developers report the bugs or feature enhancements as they found it. Everyone at WSO2 is devoted to the software and code quality. Most of the bug reports are comprehensive and we discuss the issue through the bug reports or the mailing lists, which are open to public. We discuss most of the development and even the architectural decisions are made through the public architecture list. Here idea matters, and not the person's rank. So we always feel free to express our ideas, even if it is against the project-lead's view on the topic. Hence we practice a pure open source development. Take a look at STRATOS-852 to get a feel of a typical bug report, and how we communicate through the bug reports.

Code Reviews

At WSO2 we often care about the code quality than the quantity. We have 5 assigned code-review teams. As from Code-review team A, we have the code reviews on Mondays, 10 a.m - 11.30 a.m. Other teams have their reviews on the other four days respectively. In code reviews, we discuss about the productivity, best practices, and more. We use Atlassian Crucible for code reviews, and this turns out to be more productive. So far, I have done two code reviews on tenant-mgt [1] [2]. They were pretty productive, and the outcome was more of a  better code, and we learned a lot from eachother. We write code that is good and that just works, and code reviews ensure the quality and make the code better.

Thursday Tech-talks

Each Thursday we all gather for the tech-talks at 2.30 p.m. Mostly it is done by WSO2ers themselves. It gives a chance to share our knowledge, giving a change from the routine coding. WSO2 uses regular webinars to educate the outer world about the development work we do at WSO2. Screencasts are used for the same purpose. The webinars are free for anyone to join, and all these contents, along with the source code, binaries and documentation are free to download.

Interaction

WSO2ers form a strong clique, with annual trips, offsite meetings, basketball matches, and sometimes people code from home (and play from office too.. ;)) Private mailing lists are used to share everything from geeky know-how to private or fun stuff. Private and Public ircs exist, but are often used to coordinate the development and releases. 

More?

Join WSO2 facebook group and page to learn more about life at WSO2. Pay a visit to our knowledge base 'OxygenTank' to understand the insights of our projects. I am pretty sure, you would love to sign-up an account at WSO2 Stratos - WSO2 Carbon Platform as a Service and get a first hand experience of our complete enterprise-ready SOA middleware platform without worrying about installing or configuring anything. [well.. I am happier now -- Because I am from the great Stratos Team myself!].

We code with pleasure at WSO2. In brief, we love WSO2 and are passionate about working at WSO2. ♥

On a side note - there are many more exciting stuff to write on working at WSO2. Guess this is just a teaser.. Hope to write more on a later post.

Faking a smile.. :-]]

When I was asked why I was seen confused, bored, or sad, I started realizing the value of a fake smile. A simple fake smile just prevents more white lies; moreover no one likes to see a frowning face.

Smiling faces in a lecture hall.. ;)

Though I am not a promoter of pretending, guess it is natural. As an optimist, I always feel everything will be successful by at least EOY (End-of-year), if not end-of-day. Guess I have mentioned somewhere before, "We should always compete with ourselves-of-the-last-year", which means 2011 should take us much higher than 2010.

The phrase "No question is a silly question" is often used fake to help someone to start interacting. Don't be surprised to see your questions left unanswered, if that is obvious. Careless questions often lead to the reply of "RTFW", a link to http://www.justfuckinggoogleit.com/ or http://lmgtfy.com/, or in the worst case being ignored, when asked in a technical forum or open source mailing lists, which have volunteers who have smarter stuff to try than helping a child. Just Google before you ask instead of being too lazy.

It is not good to consider intermediate halts or breaks as failures. Smile☺ if you succeed. Fake a smile☻ if something goes wrong and keep trying honestly, and everything will be successful. I refer to the fake smiles which used as a shield by the innocent, and not a weapon of the dishonest!

GSoC 2011 and FOSS

It was really nice to meet many interested students in today's session at Science Education Theater (SET) of University of Peradeniya, hosted by the Computer Society of Science Faculty, UoP. Special thanks to 07CSE who made everything possible within a very short time frame.

We created the gsoc-srilanka group with the goal of "Promoting FOSS through GSoC among Sri Lankan Universities, hence doubling/increasing the Sri Lankans' presence in GSoC and FOSS altogether," a year ago. Now we have started spreading the word in real; not promoting merely online. Hence I feel that today is an important day towards achieving the goal. We are in the correct path, I am pretty confident. Keep the word spreading.

The presentation slides Can be found here.

This is basically the same presentation that I prepared for the IESL GSoC Session, along with some further improvements/additions.

Update: Pls find the latest revised version of this presentation at 

Google Summer of Code 2012.

GSoC-2011

Google Summer of Code

Yesterday we had a Google Summer of Code awareness session at IESL auditorium. I gave an introduction to Google Summer of Code in the event. My presentation is given above.

Feel free to drop a comment here if you need any clarification or further assistance; join the gsocers' group of your country and start interacting with the GSoCers. :) 

Update: Pls find the latest revised version of this presentation at 

Google Summer of Code 2012.