about me
I write criticism and quasi-journalistic accounts of what I find interesting in public and technological culture. Once, and for a very long time, I was the community lead of OpenOffice.org, the open-source project. I worked out of CollabNet, Sun, Oracle, all the while maintaining my role as “Community Manager.” This was from 2000 to 2011 or so. An odd position, angled against a variety of interests; and all the while I sought to promote an inclusive, global system that could survive the inevitable. Prior to that, I was working on my doctorate in English (US culture), which I received from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999. The connection between open source production and my academic work is actually significant: My focus was on community, particularly on a kind of accidental, even marginal community. The term “community” is overused, close to meaningless; a word that reeks of marketing blather (like “passion”) and which demands precise alternatives–or ought to. Nevertheless, the term retains a cultural force that, however Orwellian, however wishful, however policed has to be dealt with. It’s inescapable, at least in the US.
I live now in Toronto, which is not quite Wonderland but sometimes close. We moved here in July of 2005, when my wife accepted a position teaching English at York University.
newspeak 
Dear Mr Suarez-Potts
Salam
Through OO website, I have come to know that you have founded a group to add Urdu support to OpenOffice. I use Mac and there is not DTP tool available that supports Urdu. There are many word processors that fully support Urdu, such as TextEdit, iTextExpress and Bean, which are free, and Mellel, Nisus Express Pro and Scrivener, which are shareware. They are all excellent, but none of them is suitable for DTP.
I wonder if you plan to provide any major support for Urdu in OO? And may I know your roadmap? Further, I would love to be in touch and would like to know if I can be of any help in this effort.
Scrivener is the best too for Urdu on the Mac, simply incomparable! It would be wonderful it you could export your text to OO once it condescends to supporting Urdu!
Best regards
Jauhar
Jauhar,
Hello!
I am writing to You Louis to warn You, that someone created a website promoting gambling using Your picture. It would be a long story to tell how I’ve found out that they have Your portrait and why I have not ignored spam this time…and writing too much would be risky (since Akismet is very sensitive). But since You are the only one that could fill a Google form to wipe the site from search results due to copyright infingement, I ask You to check myslybook (yes, similar to FB) dot com.
Greetings from polish blogger and webdeveloper.
Louis, thanks for visiting at my blog and leading me back to yours, which I hadn’t been aware of before. Hope you’re well.