[dot] Interview with Flavio Castelli, A Strigi Developer

[Dot Stories]

URL: http://dot.kde.org/1178648432/

From: Giovanni Venturi <giovanni at kde-it.org>
Dept: index-and-search-our-thoughts
Date: Tuesday 08/May/2007, @11:20

Interview with Flavio Castelli, A Strigi Developer
==================================================

   We are here today to talk about the Strigi
[http://strigi.sourceforge.net/] project - the indexing and search
technology of KDE 4 -  and to interview Flavio Castelli, a key developer
of Strigi. Read on for the interview.
  This interview was initially released to KDE Italia
[http://www.kde-it.org/] and is available for Italian readers here
[http://www.kde-it.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=116&Itemid=1].

     Flavio can you introduce yourself to the KDE Italia readers? What
did you study? Have you got a job? I was born 25 years ago in Bergamo, a
city near Milan in Italy. I have just taken a second level degree in
computer engineering. Now I'm working as a consultant for an IT company
in Milan.

     When did you hear of KDE for the first time? When did you start
using Linux and why? I discovered KDE and Linux at the same time. In
fact the first Linux distribution I installed was shipped with KDE 2 as
window manager. I was only eighteen and I had just heard about Linux
from one of my schoolmates and some magazines. I found a Red Hat 6.2
installation disk in a magazine and I installed it just for fun. I tried
to use Linux for some months but I ended-up removing it because I wasn't
able to solve lots of problems. In those days I didn't have internet at
home nor did I know other Linux users. Then, during the first year of
university, I met Linux again. Since I discovered that some stages of
the previous summer required Linux knowledge, I installed it again. When
the summer arrived there where no interesting stages, but in the
meantime I had discovered a new world...

     How and when did you get involved in KDE? I joined the KDE
development with the born of Strigi. That happened during February /
March 2006. I had never taken part to such a big and important project
before.

     How was born Strigi, can you tell us a story about meta information
engine search designed for KDE? The first desktop search program for KDE
was Kat. It was a promising project sponsored by Mandriva and maintained
by an Italian guy called Roberto Cappuccio. Unfortunately Kat never
reached a stable official version. Its latest versions had some serious
bugs, which showed the need to reorganize the source. Roberto had just
began to rewrite some parts of Kat when, for personal reasons, he had to
leave the development. So the project was left without its leader, with
serious problems to fix and a simpler layout to be found. Since the Kat
development team was really small, nobody tried to continue Roberto's
work. In the same period, Jos van Oever (Strigi's maintainer) created
the Strigi project. At the beginning Jos had just written some plug-ins
for Kat. He needed a stable version of it to test his code. Since
Roberto was really busy and his work was going on slowly, Jos decided to
create a small program for his tests. So when the Kat project was
closed, Jos expanded this small program and the Strigi project was born.

     Lately Strigi entered in KDE 4 with the kdesupport SVN module. This
KDE 4 core developer decision let you be proud of your contribution?
Well, I'm really happy and proud of it. I think I'll be happier when,
with KDE 4 official release, more people will discover, use and (I hope)
appreciate Strigi.

     What makes you contribute for KDE instead of the competitors? When
I started using Linux I tried lots of window managers and desktop
environments. I liked some of them, but in the end I realized that KDE
was my favourite one. Every day I have lots of advantages using tons of
open-source  programs. So I decided to offer my time and capabilities to
the KDE project. My aim is to contribute to its evolution and permit to
other people to use a good and always up-to-date product. In short I
would like to do something useful for other people... :)

     Can you say that programming for KDE was an investment? You got
C++/Qt programming experience that helped you enriching your personal
curriculum. Can this be of help getting a job? Can it be a good call
ticket to go to a job interview with a software company? By working on
KDE I'm constantly improving my skills, and that's really good. In the
meantime it is a good point on my curriculum. I think that programming
for KDE can help during a job interview, but unfortunately this isn't
assured (especially here in Italy).

     Are you part of a Linux Users Group? Have you ever presented some
works for the LUG or in Free Software events? I'm one of the members of
BGLug, which stands for Bergamo Linux User Group. As part of it I had
the chance to organize lots of events related to the divulgation of
Linux and the open-source.

     Have you ever stayed at an aKademy or at a Free Software Event? If
so can you tell us briefly how it was? What did you do? Do you think a
KDE user/developer has to participate at least once to the KDE
developers conference (aKademy) in his/her life? Or at a Free Software
event? Unfortunately I have never joined an aKademy. I was going to join
two of them but in both cases  I didn't find a good (alias cheap)
flight. Indeed, last February I participated to the Bruxelles' FOSDEM.
This is an annual meeting of all the European open-source developers.
Here at FOSDEM I gave a talk regarding Strigi desktop integration. It
has been a really positive experience that I'll try to repeat next year!
I think that an open-source developer should take part to a similar
manifestation because it can be really useful. By joining these events
you can meet lots of interesting people and share with them your
opinions. You can't even imagine how many ideas can be born from these
debates.

     What is the more beautiful experience with KDE? To know the other
developers? Or something else? Actually the more beautiful moment took
place after my speech at FOSDEM. When people started making questions on
Strigi I felt in the flesh the interest for my work. It has been
gratifying.

     Do your parents and friends use Linux and KDE? I have lots of
friends using Linux. While my parents are still using Windows, my sister
used Linux for some times and finally switched to Mac OS X. Also my
girlfriend used Linux and KDE for some times. She liked it, but now she
uses Windows all the time (that's a choice of her company). Obviously
she knows that, living with me, she will meet Linux and KDE again :) .

     What could be your slogan to attract people to KDE? Can you give
also some "reasons to stay with *nix/KDE"? Choose the best, switch to
Linux & KDE! Ok, I'm not a great advertising man :) . I suggest to use
KDE on Linux (or anything else from the *nix family) because in this way
you will obtain a complete and stable system with a good user
experience. But, most important of all, you'll have a totally free
system.

     If one day you won't be working on KDE anymore what could be the
reason? Too much time to dedicate to a new job, to your family or what
else? Or simply you decided to leave behind your passion for KDE and so
leave KDE team? What will you miss of the KDE experience? Obviously we
hope you can work in the KDE team for a lot of time yet. I hope to work
on KDE for a long time. I think that a bad interaction between work and
family could make me leave KDE.

     How much time do you usually spend on KDE? Every day I spend two
hours on KDE, that's the time the train takes to reach my office and
bring me back home. Then there're two or more evenings per week, but
these ones depend on my "real life" matters. Unfortunately the good
times of university are over... :( .

     Flavio what are your plans for KDE 4? Make Strigi better and
better. I would like to see it became the KDE's Spotlight. Personally I
want to make the file system monitoring feature stable and
multiplatform. Actually Strigi offers this functionality only on Linux
system. I would like to extend it also to Solaris and BSD ones. I'll
also try to improve and extend the unit testing suite that I have just
rewritten, the main goal is to obtain a good quality and assurance tool.

     What was your first Linux distribution and why? You tried many ones
before you get the right one? My first Linux distribution has been a Red
Hat. Then on my laptop I've used for a couple of years Slackware. In the
meantime on my home pc I tried Mandrake, Red Hat again and in the end
Gentoo. I immediately fell in love with Gentoo, so I left Slackware and
I installed this beautiful distribution on all my computers. I continued
to use it also when I changed the architecture of my laptop, switching
to an iBook G4. Anyway after some years I didn't like any longer to wait
for the building of all programs, so I switched to Debian. I chose this
distribution because it gives a good support to the PowerPc
architecture.

     Which distribution do you use now? Why? I'm still using Debian. I
like it because it is available on different architectures, offers lots
of binary programs and, most of all, has a good package manager. I don't
care too much about the new Linux distributions or the evolutions of the
other ones. I'm really happy with Debian and I don't feel the need to
change it.

     Mac OS X or Linux? Linux forever. Since I have two Macintosh I used
Mac OS X for some time. I liked some aspects of this OS, but there're
lots of things I don't like. I found that Linux is the operative system
that fits my needs.

     What is your favourite place in the world? A green place with
broadband :) .

     Flavio, thanks for your time, Giovanni