Bruno Lowagie's Online Gazette

Due to Google+, my Klout score on LinkedIn is slowly decreasing. I used to be a specialist with score 48, now I'm once again a networker:

Note that I'm in good company: the avatar of the guy next to me belongs to Nikesh Arora.

Last year in December, I made an about.me page:

Today, I received a mail about an about.me contest:

August seems to be slightly better than July:

But that's also true for other companies:

Note that the number of visits went up just after the release ;-)

There's a clear set of rules if you want to post a question to the free mailing list. Last week, we've given you one reason. This is another one:

iText Software is looking for developers for its Belgian offices:

Your background
You're a Java/Java EE developer, and you're used to working with tools such as Eclipse, Maven, Jenkins. You don't know all frameworks in detail, but you know what Spring, Java Server Faces, Hibernate, and so on, are about. You'll know how to use them when needed.
Some knowledge about C# is a plus, but not a must.

Subject: Maintenance release of iText; change in architecture for XML Worker

iText 5.1.2

What started more or less as a joke, is changing into a running gag targeted at Google. Unfortunately, it's not funny:

For more info, read August 4, July 21, or the first post I wrote on April 23.

Recently somebody wrote that this page is misleading because it says:

If you have a technical question, and you want to get an answer for free, please subscribe and post your question to the mailing list.

His interpretation of this message was that everybody who posted a question on the list was entitled to a gratis answer. He gave an example of a question that received a well-documented explanation, whereas his own question received an answer that was perceived as inadequate and insufficient. (There are also examples of questions that don't receive an answer at all.)

Many people post questions to the iText mailing list. They follow the rules and subscribe. However, some people are confused by the fact that third party services also offer the possibility to post question. Nabble is one of these services.

Unfortunately, your mail doesn't reach the real mailing-list if you post a question on Nabble. This is clearly indicated in yellow:

I'm an open source developer, that's no secret. I'm very passionate about what I do. If you ask me a challenging question, I often take it with me to bed, and I don't sleep until I've found the answer. There's also a downside to my passion: if you ask me a stupid question, you can expect me to explain in great detail why the question is stupid, and that's probably not something you want or like.