A lot of open source projects are started for the same simple reason: a developer wants a specific program and what is out there doesn't fulfill the need. That's how subsurface was created - there was no decent diving log software that would run on Linux and support some of the key features that we were looking for.

From this starting point we got to a very decent diving log program that happened to run not just on Linux but also on Windows and Mac OS, that supported the vast majority of dive computers out there, had a decent UI (with some highlights like anti-aliased rendering and a novel approach to delivering multi-dimensional information in an easy to understand graphical format).

The majority of this talk won't be as much about the actual diving log (it's a user space application that has a fairly narrow audience - even though it seems that a lot of the people at LCA tend to be scuba divers). Instead the focus will be on two specific aspects: First, the process of going from a desire to have a specific piece of software available to an implementation of that using the vast array of libraries and tools available in open source - and getting to a top notch app in less than six months with mostly only two developers engaged part time. And second the aesthetically pleasing visualization of what is in effect a vast amount of complex, multidimensional data.