Kim Polese on SpikeSource

Over at IT Conversations is a recording of Kim Polese’s OSCON 2005 keynote. Better known to many people as the public face of Marimba, the push technology that was shoved away, her new employers seem a lot more interesting. The basic idea is to test and certify stacks of software, seemingly from the kernel up, and then presumably get paid to add desired items to the testing.

It might just be me but this sounds fascinating. Pulling together and integrating all the layers in each stack, and making the whole thing measurable, reproducible and automated is one of those technical challenges that just seems too much fun to get paid to do. It also requires a blend of sysadmin and developer skills that’d keep things interesting.

The recording’s a short one and Polese is a great speaker so if you’ve got twenty minutes it’s worth listening to what she’s got to say. The business model might not make them millionaires but the work is interesting and could be very beneficial to OpenSource in general. If only they had more useful information on their site…