One of the things I thoroughly enjoy about the Free Software community is the creative names developers give to their projects. Tom Calthrop's AroundMe and Barnraiser projects definitely fit the mold. Barnraiser was born out of Tom's experience in Kosovo and is a small, scrappy little project that just might surprise you.

First, would you mind telling me a little about yourself, where you live and your interests? (maybe just 2-4 sentences about you- be as spcecific or general as you like)
My name is Tom Calthrop and I am the founding director or Barnraiser. I was a systems architect until 2003 when I discovered free software. I'd had an idea about some software and I'd read about "open source". I came across an interview with Richard Stallman, so I emailed him to ask him about open source (naivety at its best). He was nice enough to email me back and explain about GNU and free software. I was hooked. I am now maintainer of AROUNDMe; a GNU package.

When and why was AroundMe/Barnraiser started?
In 2003 I was invited to lecture in Kosovo. I'm sure you all remember the war in Kosovo in the late 1990's; the effects were still very clear to see. I discovered a region in which 70% of the populous are under the age of 30 (and effect of ethnic cleansing), schools burnt down and professors teaching from old books. Many of the refugees had returned and started businesses based on what they had learnt in the west - coffee shops, bars, petrol stations and Internet cafés. In Pristina (the capital) alone there were over 170 air conditioned Internet cafés. I was stunned by seeing old schools next to brand new Internet cafés, so I started to ask my students to take me to their home towns and set up impromptu Internet training workshops. These were a real success and after doing workshops for several weeks I realised that if I could connect these people they could start to train each other.

I started to write some simple social networking software (it was around this time that the infamous email to Stallman was sent). I realised that after such an experience I was not able to return to normal work, hence I decided to keep going. I did and today the home of the software and projects we do is Barnraiser; a Swedish not-for-profit organisation. The name came from an Amish tradition - when an Amish family needs a new barn their community gathers to build a barn in a single day, a tradition called barn raising. In building a barn together in a day they achieve something that no single family can do. I feel in many ways as though that summarizes the free software movement.

Where does the project stand at this point?
Alive and kicking. This Summer we adopted OpenID which led to a complete rebuild of the product and a splitting of the product into two parts; the community (a collaborative environment) and a personal identity server (a personal webpage with OpenID). I did this because I'm as passionate about Internet identity ownership as I am about free software. Both parts are now in testing and are close to launch; something I am obviously very excited about.

In mid November I visit Jerusalem to work with teachers and teenagers in assisting them with creating blogs, vlogs (video blogs) and using our collaborative software to form classrooms for dialogue and learning between Israeli-Jewish, Israeli-Arab, Palestinian and American youth. This for me is the cumulative project from over three years hard work.

How many active developers currently work on AroundMe/Barnraiser?
Both myself and Sebastian work full time on the development of the software today. Sebastian is funded by a Swedish youth project and I by lectures, donations and begging. We are surrounded by a small team of testers, something I would dearly love to expand upon.

What is your primary development toolset?
The project uses PHP making development very easy. My personal choice is KDevelop on GNU/Linux. We use Savannah for CVS and our own AROUNDMe collaboration server for community / development / ideas / discussions generation. It powers our web site which acts as our hub for activity.

Many projects depend on libraries, tools, etc. developed by others. What are some of the key external elements you rely on?
We are independent within our code, however we are nothing without GNU/Linux, MySQL, PHP and Apache. Because these tools are free we can be free, something I am constantly thankful to all the contributors to these tools for.

How does AroundMe/Barnraiser compare (in your view) to other projects?
We make use of decentralized Identity mechanisms (OpenID), we decentralize social networking (XML identity to identity networking) and we have a template engine that allows people to use CSS, PHP, Javascript and of course xHTML as they choose making us unique.

One thing I have been very hard on is bloatware. I wanted to avoid a large code base which is hard to maintain and hard apply language packs to. Our collaboration server including blogging, forum and wiki plugins is 250KB (tar.gz file size) which for us, means that developers open an optimized OO solution.

Can you give me any idea of how big and/or active the AroundMe/Barnraiser user community is?
We are very small. We only know of probably a few hundred people around us. In a sense I guess we have been more of an academic project that a software provider to date. After I return from Israel this is something I need to focus on growing. Having said that, there are many benefits to a small community; little maintenance, solid contributions and a collective spirit around the project.

What needs to be accomplished before the next release of AroundMe/Barnraiser?
The finalisation of testing and the thinking through of our forum plugin. I estimate release within the next month.

What are the biggest obstacles the AroundMe/Barnraiser team faces in development?
Ourselves. We all have a tendency to develop constantly and never leave the product to breathe and grow. We addressed this several months ago by stopping development and creating a real strategy. I guess I would categorize this as "growing pains". We have a very clear mission of which software plays a central part. The community development is fun, playful and engaging and as a maintainer I had to learn to say "no" and "hold" on ideas and focus on delivering an actual product. Hard lessons to learn if you just want to play.

Is there anything else about AroundMe/Barnraiser you think our audience should know?
Support free software, never give up and if you ever get an email from an idiot always take the time to reply. Who knows; in a few years time they may even grow into a maintainer!

Barnraiser - http://www.barnraiser.org/
Sebastian - http://sebastian.oblom.se/
Tom - http://tom.calthrop.info/
Savannah - http://savannah.gnu.org/
OpenID - http://www.openid.net

Thanks for reading.