While a wiki provides a semi-permanent place for content, blogs provide the opposite: a flow of transient, in-the-moment news and commentary.
Because many open source participants write blogs, it has become difficult to keep up with them on a one-by-one basis. The volume of blog postings created within a community can be overwhelming. To help deal with this, RSS or Atom feeds enable the receipt of content in a machine-readable format so that it can be used in a variety of different ways (for example, in Firefox Live Bookmarks, through a service such as Google Reader, or in a program such as Liferea or FeedReader). Many open-source community maintain a Planet site which aggregates the feeds from community members into a single page (and the Planet, in turn, provides an aggregated feed). Here are some examples:
In most cases, individual blog postings can be tagged or categorized, and separate feeds can be generated for each tag or category. This permits posts to be sent to one or more different planets at the author's discretion.
As you get into FOSS, you will want to share your news and opinions with others via a blog. You need to represent your thoughts professionally; here are some guidelines:
Write professionally. Blog postings are less formal than other types of writing, but they are still a reflection of your communications skills.
Remember that the internet has a long memory. The Planet page is generated periodically, and even if you delete or change your posting, it may be indexed, cached, or reposted until the planet is re-generated. Avoid saying something that might come back to haunt you later -- and remember that future employers may read your old postings (as well as future in-laws, office mates, and so forth).
Do not use profane, obscene, or rude content, or content that belittles other people.
Do not link to profane, obscene, rude, or illegal material or to sites that knowingly violate intellectual property rights (warez).
Ensure that each posting makes sense when taken out of the context of your blog and viewed on its own. If you are referring to one of your previous posts, link to it rather than refer to it as being "below" or "above".
Link extensively. If you're referring to a blog post, article, video, event, command, software package, person, project -- link to all of them so that your readers can find out more information.
Ensure that each posting conforms to your community or institution's policies.
Keep the postings relevant to your open source work. Use tagging/categories to keep deeply off-topic posts off your planet feeds.
