Planet Software Freedom Day

July 04, 2009

einfeldt: Funniest take yet, and from a New Zealander! RT @br3nda Sarah Palin could adopt Michael Jackson's kids. Bring them up proper.

einfeldt: Funniest take yet, and from a New Zealander! RT @br3nda Sarah Palin could adopt Michael Jackson's kids. Bring them up proper.

einfeldt: Sarah Palin's resignation speech vid http://is.gd/1mPl5 Appears to be given in hasty prep to a handful of ppl. Unusual.

einfeldt: Sarah Palin's resignation speech vid http://is.gd/1mPl5 Appears to be given in hasty prep to a handful of ppl. Unusual.

July 03, 2009

èl valor de enseñar en en un mundo diverso y desigual

por mary osuna.  

risa La escuela: cambiando los objetivos y los métodos de enseñanza ayudarian a los estudiantes a : ampliar sus conocimientos, razonar, comunicarse y relacionarse con quienes lo rodean.

Tomando en cuenta la experiencia del docente el éxito y fracaso son de gran importancia en este mundo diverso y desigual en que vivimos.lengua fuera

Canción de iniciación bíblica.

por Carolina Escalante .  

www.4shared.com/file/115815342/33c5daf4/carlos_seoane_ahserejeh_bblico.html

July 02, 2009

Zenoss Newsletter - June 2009

This has been a big month at Zenoss, early in May we released Zenoss Core 2.4 with the help of our community beta-testers and contributors. In the beginning of June is also the release of Zenoss Enterprise 2.4 featuring our brand new Big 4 Break-Free Guarantee. What’s next? Our Community Manager Matt Ray is also busy working on our own Summer of Community project working with our community to create lots of new Zenpacks over the next three months, so get involved today!

Zenoss Enterprise 2.4

Zenoss Enterprise 2.4 comes with an industry-first guarantee of 50% or more cost savings on licensing, maintenance, and deployment compared to traditional products from HP, IBM, CA, and BMC.

Zenoss Enterprise 2.4 not only offers a guarantee but the following new features:

  • Normalization of Metrics Across Heterogeneous Technologies
  • Scalable Secure, Monitoring of Linux/Unix Servers
  • Monitoring of Internal or External Web Services
  • Expanded Device and Applications Support
  • Simplified Setup and Configuration

Read more >>

Sign Up for a Zenoss Enterprise Guided Tour

We are very excited about the new features in Zenoss Enterprise and we want you to have the chance to witness them yourself. So every week we will be conducting a demo of Zenoss Enterprise where you can see Zenoss monitoring in action. Sign-up today and see what all the hype is about!

Read more >>

Summer of Community ZenPacks Contest

To help kick off the new Zenoss 2.4 release, we’ve decided to jumpstart the creation of new ZenPacks with another Community ZenPack Contest. 2009 has already been off to a great start, there are new ZenPacks for HP ProLiants, Printer Toner, an Event Views Portlet, and even several new reports. In the Zenoss forums there are a wide variety of ZenPacks being discussed and tested, but we wanted to really kickstart the process. So we’re announcing a Summer of Community ZenPacks Contest with not 1, but 5 great prizes!

Read more >>

Getting Started Webinar

Does Zenoss look cool but you need a helping hand to get started? We offer regular instructor-led webinars where you can follow along as we install and configure Zenoss Core. Then you can ask your questions where Zenoss Engineers can answer your most press questions. Here is an example of what the last attendees asked and the answers to their questions.

Read more >>

Tip of the Month: Event Suppression

This month you get two tips for the prices of one from Zenoss engineers Chet Luther and Chip Holden. First, from Chet we have an event transform for suppressing all further events from a device when they are unreachable by ping.The second tip comes from Chip “mrchippy” Holden on how to stop all events from a location when a router to that location goes down.

Read more >>

Thank you for your Feedback

We had some great testimonials from those who participated in our April Survey. Thanks to John Burkhart and Mike Loven and everyone else for their kind words. Also each month we draw from submissions during our download survey for a cool open source Chumby. The winner for April is Thomas Olsen. Congratulations Thomas! Take survey today and you could be a winner too!

Thank you for your interest and support for Zenoss.

Mark Hinkle, VP of Community

Mark R. Hinkle

Vice President, Community

Zenoss Inc.
Follow me on Twitter: twitter.com/mrhinkle

Q&A Session for Getting Started with Zenoss

Here are the questions and answers from this week’s Getting Started With Zenoss session. These are a good source of information for those people starting to use Zenoss. If you would like to attend a future online training session you can reserve your spot today.

Q: How can we monitor from our site the connection between a NAS device at customer site and the offsite backup data center?

A: you could add the router at the offsite back up location to the ping class. if the router is not pingable, you will get an alert and you will know connection is down.

Q: How can we monitor a process on a customer’s Windows server which is connected to a monitored NAS ?

A: Windows process monitoring can be accomplished by SNMP. You must enable SNMP in windows. See the admin guide for “How to configure windows devices”.

Q: Does the Zenoss VMAppliance have the zenpack already installed?

A: the Zenoss VMware Appliance is the Zenoss CORE application only. The Zenoss Core-Zenpacks package must be installed separately. The appliance is a good choice if you have only  a windows machine available to test out Zenoss. If you have a CentOS, RHEL, or other supported Zenoss Core platform, I recommend you install on that.

Q: in the commercial version, are there any Linux distributions not supported?

A: almost any linux distro can be monitored - if net-snmmp is supported - we can likely monitor it, but each system needs to be tested. Some distributions can present issues due to the lack of a net-snmp binary and/or host resource MIB. If considering Zenoss Enterprise, please ask your sales contact about any specific distributions that you will need to monitor.

Q: Can a particular filesystem for a particular device be ignored for alerst (for example, drives which are naturally full)?

A: yes - there is zProperty called zFileSystemMapIgnoreNames in which you can specify a regex to ignore file systems. see admin guide for more info on zProperties. You can also use alerting rules and event transforms to further customize your alert strategy.

Q: How do you create a default location?

A: click on Locations (in left nav), click on “Down Arrow” beside the “Sub-Locations”, choose “Add New Organizer”

Q: Can I monitor voip on a cisco device?

A: In core, you can monitor syslog and trap events - which will give you some view of your VOIP. Monitoring VOIP may mean different things to different groups.  We monitor Cisco IP-SLA in Enterprise, which is a common way to measure VOIP related performance.

Q: Is there any differnce between sorting by “group” and sorting by “system” in regards to Zenoss features?

A: no difference from a feature perspective. These are simply “buckets” in which you can classify your devices. You can then use these “buckets” to help filter your alerting / event rules.

Q: is there a way to add a device manually? Without using the auto-detect feature?

A: Yes. You can choose the “Add Device” link from the left navigation menu. You can also choose add device from the page menu directly within the device class you want to put the device. And lastly, you can add without any modeling by simply setting the “protocol” to “none”.

Q: what is the difference between /Server/Linux and /Server/SSH/Linux?

A: /Server/Linux will perform SNMP based modeling and monitoring, /Server/SSH/Linux will use SSH connectivity to model and monitor your device. SNMP is by far the preferred method but SSH can be used when SNMP is not possible.

Q:  Is it possible to add any of the graphs for a device to the portlets?

There is a community zenpack that seems to accomplish this task. Please see http://community.zenoss.org/trac-zenpacks/ and look for “Show Graph Portlet” zenpack.

Q: Under the networks tab in my Zenoss install it auto-discovers many networks that are not actually in my environment that I do not want to monitor.  When I remove them they come back the next day.  Is there any way to stop that from happening?

A: Add a regex that matches them to zLocalIpAddresses. Any IP that is matched by this regex won’t create an entry in /Networks.

Tags: , ,

rm


Estaba yo asi sin nada que hacer cuando:

En una instalacion virtual ejecute el comando rm -fr / para ver si en realidad se borraba todo como cuenta la leyenda, pero no simplemente no te deja el sistema por lo menos en Crunchbang 8.10, sin embargo si uno ejecuta rm -rf * estando en la raiz si se borran muchos archivos que dan como resultado la siguiente pantalla a la hora de reiniciar:


NOTA: NO LO HAGAN EN UNA MAQUINA DE “VERDAD” O QUE SI USEN

My top 10 songs of all time

So I didn’t actually get to vote in the Triple J top 100 of all time. I feel really stupid to have missed it! I was just asked (live on radio) whether I had voted and I stupidly said yes intending to get straight off the phone and onto the voting, but it was closed! So below are my top 10 songs of all time, some for technical reasons, all for emotional. Thought it might be of interest to some :)

Meme time!

In no particular order:

  • Gorecki – Lamb. Our wedding  song :) About finding that person that just completes you, that complements and helps you want to be a better person. A beautiful song and a beautiful voice.
  • Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana. Changed everything, and yet so simple. Influenced a generation.
  • Shame – Stabbing Westward. My favourite angsty teenage song. Once went to a Live (the band) concert just to see Stabbing Westward play support, and then left ;) The man has an incredible voice.
  • H – Tool. I love a lot of the older Tool music, this particular one reminds me of  a close friend who died very young in very unfortunate circumstances.
  • We’re in this together – Nine Inch Nails. I love pretty much every NIN song, but this one really talks to me about regardless of everything going on, none of us are truly alone.
  • Fade to Black – Metallica. One of their best songs, and one that influenced me to learn guitar in the first place.
  • Burn – The Cure. an amazing (and dark) song from The Crow soundtrack. One of their best in my opinion. Admittedly takes me back to school :)
  • Cornflake Girl – Tori Amos. Beautiful, powerful and disturbing. Worth looking into the deeper meaning.
  • Classical Gas – Mason Williams. An incredible guitar piece that puts me in an almost meditative state when I play it. Technically challenging but also a joy to play and listen to.
  • Pathetique – Beethoven. Such an exquisite piano piece, and when played well covers about the entire scope of human emotion. Fun to play too, but I’ve yet to master it :)

There are so many more songs I love, and I’m sure given more time I’d rejig this another dozen times. So I’ll leave it there :) Apart from one last honorary mention:

  • Space Cadet – Kyuss. Couldn’t leave this off. This 3 person rock band had such a big sound, such a complex and incredible mix. Great fun to play on the bass. Demon Cleaner also very worth listening to.

July 01, 2009

Fellowship Interview with Smári McCarthy

Smári McCarthy is a thoughtful anarchist and practical chaos technician - with a deep interest in Free Software and democracy. Currently serving as project manager for the Icelandic Innovation Center, Smári works on digital fabrication and peer-to-peer education, while spending his spare time breaking the fundamental assumptions of how we organise society. I sat down for an interesting interview with Smári, in which he explained his projects and how they can contribute towards a more sustainable world.

Open Source Open World China, 2009

Spent the first 2 days of the week at Open Source Open World, 2009 which is one of THE Open Source conferences in China to attend and had the chance to listen to Jim Zemlin, Mark Shuttleworth and Louis Suarez-Potts. In fact it was also the opportunity to meet other Open Source people from organizations like Red Hat, Nokia or deviceVM as well as the usual Chinese companies attending those events. I think the major happening from my perspective was the round table discussion on the second day which put together all those industry players as well as the banking industry. Apparently COPU is going to push for better online banking support under Linux as well as a Linux port of the Chinese compulsory official accounting software in Haidian district to start with. Great to see open discussions leading to decisions and actions!

OpenSQL Camp 2009: List of current session proposals; keep them coming!

I've now posted all the current talk submissions to the OpenSQL Camp Wiki. A big Thank You to everyone who contributed so far and helped us to bang the drum for this event! If you haven't heard about OpenSQL Camp yet, it's a subconference of the Free and Open Source Conference (FrOSCon) in St. Augustin, Germany, which takes place on August 22+23. The topic of OpenSQL Camp is "Open Source databases and related technologies" and we're looking for interesting presentations in this field.

As we have 12 session slots to fill, we still have room for at least 6 more submissions! It's also a tad bit MySQL-centric at the moment, that should definitely change! We would love to get some more diversity to cover a broader range of Open Source Database technology.

So please submit your talk proposals and help spreading the word — the Call for Papers is still open until July, 19th! Post a message to relevant discussion forums and mailing lists. Know an expert in this field? Approach him directly! OpenSQL Camp Speakers will receive free entry to FrOSCon, which is worth visiting in any case!

GNUstav, Fellows and myself at GLT 2009

After FSFE’s General Assembly in Spain I attended the Linuxtag in Berlin. Together with Lena, and a lot of other outstanding volunteers we set up our booth and informed visitors about FSFE’s work.

What was new this year? Well first, thanks to Henner’s and Stian’s work we had pdfreaders.org leaflets. Thanks to Pablo we had a nice comic strip, explaining why you should join the Fellowship.

Gnustav the GNU

Gnustav the GNU


And finally we tested the 0.0.1 version of our booth game “GNUstav the GNU”. Markus Meier, who already made the Fellowship posters for the booth, and also does a lot of artwork for Linuxhotel Villa Vogelsang penciled our new Fellow GNUstav. “Gnustav the GNU” is a fairytale about the small GNU Gnustav, who is breaking out from the zoo and exploring the world. On his way there are several occasions where the reader has to interact with booth volunteers from several booths to learn more about Free Software. The game is still in the early development phase and we will continue to develop it. Thanks to all who wrote bug fixes and feature requests and to the booth teams from KDE, the BSD, and Fedora who were involved in the game.

In the end of the day we had a raffle amoung the participants. Here you see the winner from Friday, like all the others she had to build a sword to protect her freedom (Gnustav has seen this cartoon”, too).

Winner of the booth game with a sword

Winner of the booth game with a sword

For me personally there was also a change, as this year I was no longer a booth volunteer, but now a paid FSFE employee. In that capacity I gave an interview for a Linuxtag press release (together with Karsten), talked with a lof of interesting Free Software initiatives, had several meetings including the German Free Software buisiness association LIVE, gave a video interview for Linuxmagazin (working with gnash in iceweasel and epiphany gecko, unfortunately not yet with konqueror, epiphany webkit or arora), and of course had a lot of fun talking with a lot of Fellows.

Some more pictures are on Edgar’s blog, who like all the other booth volunteers did an amazing job! I am looking forward to Torsten’s blog entry, who will show you what the Berlin Fellows did with our booth equipment afterwards. Thanks to all volunteers!!

US Air Force Web Posting Response Assessment

This is pretty interesting. The US Air Force have a methodology to deal with online responses like comments. I like it how trolls and “ragers” require HQ be notified :)

I think it helps people not used to communicating online think about different sorts of negative feedback, and how it is important to engage with some, and possibly not with others. Also the “response considerations” were quite good too to encourage transparency and accountability in online communications.

Click on the image for the larger more readable version.

US-Air-Force-Web-Response-Assessment

June 30, 2009

ineptitude! – Or why Firefox 3.5 does not have a Swahili translation when there is one done…


Firefox 3.5 has just arrived!

This should be celebration time for the Umoja Project, but it is not. And you know why? Ineptitude!

The story in short. There are 2 teams translating Firefox to Swahili (sw-TZ):

  • The first one is an academic group (mob) had funding and has used 4 years with no visible results.
  • The second one is 100% community based which did 80% of the job in a Christhmas sprint. And got finished by the middle of April.

So why is not Mozilla Firefox 3.5 shipping with a Swahili translation? Politics. The Mozilla people want to play nice with everyone instead of giving priority to the team that has actually showed results, real result!

The Swahili transaltion is not even shipping as a beta version. Simply it doesn’t exist in the public eye only as a bug which should be closed.

You know what irritates me? That the people in the community, that actually worked hard, won’t see any visible result. Do you think that is the way to motivate people?

I don’t.

Next time, please, do the right thing. Go with those that do the work, not those that “own” the translation branch and haven’t done anything for years.

At least I hope the translation hits Karmic…

My €0.02

FlightGear 1.9.1 now added to the openSUSE Build Service

I admit it — I'm a fan of simulation software, particularly flight simulators. Probably the best Open Source Flight Simulator out there is FlightGear — it provides an impressive level of reality and you can download and install many additional plane models and terrains. There are packages of FlightGear 1.0.0 in the games repository of the openSUSE Build Service, which works quite well and I have been enjoying it a lot. However, the FlightGear project released version 1.9.x quite a while ago (1.9.1 was published in January 2009) and I was itching on giving the new version a try (just take a look at the screenshots and you know what I mean). However, building FlighGear on Linux is quite a complex task with many dependencies, and so held off from doing it myself, waiting for someone else to perform the update...

Well, this weekend I finally bit the bullet and did it myself - FlightGear 1.9.1 has now been added to my home:LenzGr build repository. I based my packages on the ones included in the games repository, but I plan on cleaning them up a bit and splitting them into separate packages (currently the FlightGear source RPM contains SimGear and fgrun as well). I also "borrowed" the OpenSceneGraph sources and spec file from the PackMan repository, in order to have a functional build. Unfortunately FlightGear currently only builds on a very limited list of distributions so far (namely OpenSUSE 11.0, just what I needed) — I haven't had time to adapt the spec files for FlightGear and OpenSceneGraph to match the appropriate build dependencies for the other distributions yet and "02-check-gcc-output" gives me some grief on platforms where it actually builds but generates compiler warnings (but patches are welcome!)...

The fracas

Dear Nasrul,

I’ve watched the vitriol on osdcmy-list, I’ve seen the attacks on Facebook, and on Twitter and I’ve read all the comments on the Open Malaysia blog, and I think its time I chime in.

Firstly, I need to ask: do you know much about open source? I would highly recommend you read The Open Source Definition.

Next, you’re talking about Facebook, which is a closed platform, which was launched at an open source conference. Why?

But more interestingly, you won RM2,000 for “porting” MediaWiki to run on the Windows, IIS, MSSQL Server, and PHP. For what it is worth, MediaWiki already runs on Windows, and works fine with IIS. So it seems that your largest task, was to port the SQL, to run not on two very capable open source databases, but to run on Microsoft SQL Server (a closed source database).

I read Final Day: MediaWiki – What I learn so far from LAMP2WIN and My Journey with glee.

So I decided to poke a little. You haven’t submitted any code upstream to MediaWiki. But what’s worse is, have you seen Bug#9767? The title of the bug is “Microsoft SQL Server/MSSQL support (tracking)”. It doesn’t take a genius to tell you what the patches in that bug do.

Yes, DJ Bauch added support to MSSQL, via ADODB (work started in 2007, and its been ready since April 30 2009). Something you won money for. But worse? “.. winners walked away with RM2,000 in cash, a MSC Malaysia Participation Certificate. They will also enjoy facilitated access to MSC Intensive Technoprenuer Programme and the eventual RM150,000 pre-seed fund.” (via the Malay Mail).

Now you’re able to access a lot more money, for work that you, yourself, did not do.

I think you should get off your high horse, understand a little more Netiquette, and behave. After all, Google will forever remember what you’ve said, and all the personal attacks against active participants in the open source community, which I’m certain can do you no favours.

Kind Regards,
Colin


June 28, 2009

Liv Tyler pa rin. Yay. :-)
Test ping.fm post.

June 26, 2009

Why free software shouldn't depend on Mono or C#

by Richard M. Stallman

June 25, 2009

Ubuntu Norway – New loco-contact and meeting on Sunday @ 21.00 (Norwegian local time) #ubuntu-no @ FreeNode


News from our team:

  • Karianne Fog Heen is stepping down as contact member for our team and I am taking over her job. Previously I was the contact member for Ubuntu Ecuador and now I am looking forward to grow an even greater Norwegian team!
  • I want to thank Karianne for her hard work and wish her good luck with your future projects! Thanks to the team for giving the opportunity to be the contact member!

I have called for a meeting on Sunday the 25th of June @ 21.00 (Oslo UTC+2). The agenda (in Norwegian)

  • Ubuntu Norge, en gjennomgang:
    * Hvem er vi og hva vil vi?
    * Infrastruktur (webside, forum, chat, launchpad, mailister)
    * Aktiviteter (oversettelse, friprog bevisstgjøring, eventer)
  • La oss se fremover:
    * Hva kan du bidra med?
    * Forbedringspotensial?
    * Arbeidsgrupper (team infrastruktur, aktivitetsgruppa, oversettelsesgruppa++)
    * Oversettelse: i18n-no, launchpad+upstream samarbeid
    * Team infrastruktur ansvarlige
    * Eventer: Større fester og holde dem flere steder, samt andre fysiske møter for Ubuntu entusiaster
    * Samarbeidet med andre friprog/fri kultur interesse organisasjoner
  • Synliggjøre bruk av Ubuntu i Norge: lokalt, nasjonalt, regionalt, globalt

If you are interested in contributing to the Norwegian team or have thoughts about better cooperation among teams at regional levels (Nordic, European) this is your chance!

  • Where: The meeting itself is on the Ubuntu Norge channel: #ubuntu-no in the FreeNode IRC network: irc.ubuntu.com
  • When: 21.00 (UTC+2 – Oslo/Norway)

Hav e a nice weekend everyone!

June 24, 2009

null

#./voto > /dev/null

o alguien ya lo habia dicho?

So, what are you going to do next?

This is certainly the question I received most often when people learned I was not going to be available again for election as president of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE).

Being founder and president of FSFE has been a challenge in more than one way, and I have enjoyed it greatly. It would certainly have been possible to stay in this position for longer. But the time was right for a change, and as explained in my other posting, I believe this change was the best possible choice for the organisation. So it became clear that it was time to start looking for the next big challenge.

Naturally I began thinking about this for the past year that I knew the change was going to happen at this year’s General Assembly. Some time was spent talking to friends, some time on identifying opportunities, and even more time was spent on weeding out less interesting options. This process has narrowed down my choices to a group of four or five, between which the choice is likely to be made.

These discussions are still ongoing, so nothing I can talk about right now.

Meanwhile I will take some well-deserved vacation with my wife and do some consulting work. If you would like to work together, you can find my profile on FSFE’s page, which also contains a more verbose CV in PDF format.

Once the decision for my next big challenge has been made, I’ll let you know.

My sincere thanks to everyone I had the pleasure to encounter and get to know over the years.

A special notice goes to Bernhard, Matthias, and all the others who surprised me during the assembly with the good wishes from so many people I had the pleasure to work with more closely during my time as president of the Free Software Foundation Europe. I also guess that having the General Assembly and its guests sing “Oh, Freedom” was better than the alternative.

Thank you, all.

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Changes in FSFE: Time to pass on the torch

Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) was conceived in early 2000, pregnancy took about a year, and in early 2001 my decision to make the creation and success of Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) my first and foremost priority in life was clear. This was eight years, six months, and a couple of days ago, and the organisation has meanwhile survived birth, infancy, childhood and adolescence – in particular thanks to the great people that have been part of FSFE over the years.

The founding group consisted of people from Germany, France and Sweden, with Italy joining during the first General Assembly in 2001. There has been a healthy fluctuation of people and positions over the years. Of the seven initial founders four are still members in the association, and two have had four entire two-year terms in their positions. The other positions were typically held for 3-5 years, which is long enough to build up and pass on experience, but not so long that the organisation needs to be concerned about dictators for life.

This was a design principle for FSFE from the start. Our goal was to build an organisation that will survive every individual member. We wanted an organisation that was strong on principle and would be able to protect this set of principles for the future but at the same time incorporated the best of the European experience and culture, including the capability to translate these principles to a changing world.

That is why FSFE has always worked hard to redefine and improve itself. The culture in FSFE has evolved into one that embraces development and change, to give it our best shot, and then see what we could have done better. It has always been a privilege to work with so many people who are capable of carrying such an environment forward.

But in order for FSFE to truly embrace change on all levels, to experience it as something normal regardless of the person concerned, it was necessary to give the organisation practical experience with change on all positions, the President included.

That is why during the 2008 General Assembly in Zürich I informed my colleagues in the Assembly that for the upcoming election during the 2009 General Assembly I would no longer be available as President.

The choice of timing seemed logical, because FSFE will never be more prepared for this step. It is a grown up international organisation incorporating some of the best people I have ever had the pleasure to work with. The financial situation is sufficiently stable, internal process is working smoothly, the organisation has an excellent track record and built significant political capital and contacts over the years, and the waters in which FSFE is currently sailing are as smooth as they will ever be.

The last year was spent preparing this change, preparing the organisation, its volunteers, and finding the right people to take FSFE to the next level. Looking at the new team I do not believe that we could have found a better group of people.

Karsten Gerloff, FSFE’s new President, spent the past years at the UNU-MERIT, working with people such as Rishab Ghosh to provide the scientific basis for the political change around Free Software. Before that he was an intern at FSFE, working with me at the United Nations, specifically the World Intellectual property Organisation (WIPO), he is familiar with FSFE’s policy work and I have no doubt that he will be able to represent Free Software effectively on all levels.

Fernanda Weiden, FSFE’s new Vice-President, has been an active part of the Latin American and European Free Software community for many years. As a co-organiser of the Free Software Forum in Porto Alegre, organiser of the world’s first conference on women in Free Software and an active part of the Free Software Foundation Network for many years, she combines exceptional technical skills with a passion for Free Software and many years of coordinative experience.

Christian Holz, FSFE’s new Executive Director, is a Fellow turned Executive Director. His classic business background, among others with PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), give him the skills and experience needed to manage FSFE’s daily operations. He had decided to become involved with Free Software and work with FSFE through the Fellowship when the Executive Director position was announced. We found him pragmatic, focussed and a good social fit for FSFE.

Adriaan de Groot, FSFE’s designated FTF Coordinator, is known to many people in the Free Software community from his work as a KDE e.V. and NLUUG board member, and has been involved in FSFE’s Freedom Task Force for some time now. His experience and skills make him uniquely skilled to be our next FTF Coordinator.

Matthias Kirschner, FSFE’s new Germany and Fellowship coordinator, has been with FSFE for several years now, starting his career as FSFE’s first-ever intern, contributing to the set-up of the Fellowship. Over time he has become a valued member of the General Assembly, and after his studies in politics and management are now finished, he is also taking over as FSFE’s German representative.

These five people were the group with which I worked intensively to prepare the 2009 General Assembly, define the strategic planning and milestones. Working together was a great pleasure and almost made me regret that I won’t get to be part of this new and powerful team for FSFE. But you should know that their plans are also my plans, and they have my fullest support.

So these are the changes in FSFE’s structure, but of course there is also plenty of continuity. Reinhard Müller has kindly agreed to stay on as FSFE’s Financial Officer, overseeing the work of the new Executive Team as a kind of “internal auditor.” Cristian Rigamonti will continue to work on FSFE’s systems, and Giacomo Poderi will continue to work on FSFE’s newsletter.

FSFE will continue to have my full commitment as a volunteer and member of the General Assembly to participate in the strategic planning of the organisation. So this change does not reduce the experience available within the organisation. It increases it by adding the impressive background of the new Executive Team.

As my parting request, I would like to ask all of you to give this new team your support.

If you are not yet a Fellow, please join now.

If you have thought about getting involved, please do..

And if you see any of them around, please seize the opportunity to get to know them – it’s worth it.

P.S. And should you be wondering what my plans are, please do read on.

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June 23, 2009

Introducing FSFE's new president, vice president and executive team

During its General Assembly in Miraflores de la Sierra, Spain, the members of FSFE elected new coordinators for several of the organisation's activities, including strategy, legal and executive coordination.

June 20, 2009

Postcards, an iPhone app idea, and HazelMail

First birthday wishes A few months ago, I had this idea, that I shared with a few people, for a cool iPhone app. The idea was roughly:

Take a photo. Use said app. Add a message. Pick an address (preferably out of your Address Book). And have it mailed out, without you having to look for a post office, a postcard or a stamp. And never have to worry about charges — it’ll just be billed via your account on file, either via PayPal or direct credit card debit.

The problem with this business model is that:

  1. I need to work out printers – there must be local printers in various locations, typically of the destination.
  2. I need to work out how postal services work, in general, and what’s the most profit-friendly option

The margins, I figured, will be low. The application will either work via (roaming – one would assume) 3G/EDGE, or a common WiFi network, which you tend to get pretty much everywhere these days. WiFi should be preferred, since you don’t want to be slapped with a large roaming data bill. The Two Apostles

Anyway, I purchased the iPhone 3.0 SDK about a month back, and started hacking. Finding a name was going to be interesting, since apps like iPostCard, already existed. Ha! Names are so important, I think.

Today, I read about how to Turn your iPhone photos into postcards with HazelMail. HazelMail does exactly what I was planning to do. They’ve worked out all the business aspects, too, and charge your account with HazelBucks (so 1 postcard = USD$1 basically).

The only problem I can see with this whole idea (HazelMail’s and mine)? Stamp collectors. Some people love stamps from foreign lands, and that is part of the appeal, of receiving a postcard. However, I don’t know that many stamp collectors these days, and I do want to send postcards, so this was really, just trying to scratch an itch, and I’m glad that HazelMail has done so. Time to give it a try, and work on my next app idea ;)


June 18, 2009

Philippines Web Hosting Support MinOss

The Philippines Web Hosting Company the offers web hosting and domain registration in the Philippines that has office in New York and Taiwan supported the movement Mindanao Open Source Society that will promote open source software in Mindanao. A project of Computer Professionals' Union that will conduct some initiative of CPU in Mindanao.

The 1st Project of Mindanao Open Source Society is Celebrating the Software Freedom Day 2009 and official launch the project site at http://sfd.minoss.org .

You can visit the official site of Mindanao Open Source Society at http://www.minoss.org which will be launch within this month.

June 17, 2009

Ubuntu-ie now an Approved LoCo


Ubuntu-ie

I am very happy and proud to announce that the Irish Team has been approved last night by the Ubuntu LoCo Council.
The meeting minutes are available here.

Here’s how we reacted:

20:19 czajkowski Go raibh maith agat (thank you as gaeilge)
20:19 Shane_Fagan: yay o/
20:19 ebel: yay
20:19 keffie_jayx: contratulations Ubuntu-ie
20:19 tdr1121: good stuff
20:19 czajkowski: w00t
20:20 Mean-Machine: hurray!
20:20 keffie_jayx: you are approved
20:20 ebel: huzzah
20:20 Kami: congrats
20:20 daxroc: :D
20:20 ebel: :D
20:20 Mean-Machine: well done Ireland!
20:20 harcesz: :D
20:20 popey: congrats guys (and more importantly gals)
20:20 czajkowski: grin :)
20:20 Shane_Fagan: Go raibh maith agat
20:20 kklimonda: congrats..
20:20 harcesz: gratulacje :)
20:20 Mean-Machine: brilliant job Irish team

If you’re planning to apply for your LoCo to be approved, make sure you follow these steps. I can’t stress enough how important the approval application is. You can view our application here.

Also see Laura’s blogpost.

June 16, 2009

NYR revised - Fellowship comic strip leaflet

Together with Lena I am preparing this years attendance for Linuxtag in Berlin. You will find FSFE’s booth in hall 72B, booth 124. As I was on vacation last week and will go to FSFE’s general assembly on Thursday the planning is a bit though this year. But I hope we will be able to implement some new ideas.

fellow4g

One things some Fellows asked for was a PDF version of the Fellowship comic strip from this New Years campaign without the 2009 reference for general use. I just played around with inkscape and created the leaflets. Here they are (You can help help FSFE by spreading this leaflets at events you attend.):

So if you live around Madrid, I hope to see you at the social event in Miraflora on June 20. And if you are able to make it to Linuxtag in Berlin, I am looking forward to see you at our booth so we can have a chat, or join us on Friday 26 June at the BBQ with the Berlin Fellowship group.

June 12, 2009

Mplayer, a Webcam and ASCII Art

While discussing education and Open Source in Cambodia with a friend from the Phnom Penh LUG he gave me a little trick to play with mplayer if you have a webcam. Definitely something you can do with your Gdium and its built-in webcam, or any similar hardware. Open a terminal window and type:

mplayer tv:// -vo aa -monitorpixelaspect 0.5

Have fun!

June 05, 2009

Social Media Bookmarks June 5th, 2009

Some really good posts and information for Social Media and Wordpress integration

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June 02, 2009

FSF welcomes AdBard network for free software advertising

The Free Software Community now has an ethical alternative to ad networks that promote proprietary software

May 29, 2009

Call for Irish Ubuntu translators


This post is to inform that Ubuntu-ie LoCo is trying to get serious about translating Ubuntu into Irish.
Yes, the Irish language is still alive and is being spoken in many parts of the Republic of Ireland.

Shane Fagan, one of our core LoCo members has taken over the Irish Translation Team leadership on May 5th 2oo9.

His message to the ubuntu-ie mailing list reads:

…I have some big ideas and would hope to get some die hard Irish lovers
on board. I already contacted a few organisations about it. So please
join the team and get translating. …

Full message is available here.

If you have any questions, you can contact Shane on IRC: Shane_Fagan in #ubuntu-ie on irc.freenode.net or drop us an email to ubuntu-ie mailing list.

Join the team and start translating!

Go raibh maith agat!

May 27, 2009

Ort & Art des SFD 2009 in Kiel gesucht?


Wo wollen wir es machen? Wo können wir es machen? Und wie? Es wird Zeit erste Planungen anzustellen.

Ich hatte überlegt einen Preis auszuloben für sowas wie Bestes Open Source Projekt oder so. Inklusive Engagement für Übersetzungen u.a.. Kann man sowas wuppen?

May 26, 2009

Software Freedom Day 09 – zaproszenie do wystąpienia


W tym roku, po raz trzeci z rzędu, na przełomie września i października organizacja studencka AASOC ma przyjemność zorganizować obchody Dnia Wolności Oprogramowania we Wrocławiu.

Tym razem jednak chcielibyśmy odejść nieco od sztywnych ram składających się na konferencję i zorganizować coś, co bardziej przypominałoby spotkanie. Naszym dążeniem jest zebranie przedstawicieli firm związanych z FLOSS, developerów oprogramowania oraz ludzi reprezentujących pokrewne projekty i inicjatywy. Jeżeli należysz do którejś z tych grup lub po prostu uważasz, że jesteś w stanie przedstawić coś ciekawego, w duchu wolnego oprogramowania i masz wolne kilka godzin i możliwość zjawienia się we Wrocławiu tego dnia, zapraszamy serdecznie do nas. Politechnika Wrocławska wspiera nas, umożliwiając nam swobodne korzystanie z różnorakich sal, więc każdy rodzaj aktywności ma rację bytu. Budynek w którym się spotkamy (C-13) jest całkowicie przystosowany dla osób niepełnosprawnych.

Mamy więc dla Ciebie następujące propozycje zaprezentowania się:

  • wykład – dysponujemy odpowiednio dużymi salami wykładowymi, wyposażonymi w sprzęt audiowizualny. Jeśli sądzisz, że to rozwiązanie jest dla Ciebie najlepsze, nie ma sprawy.
  • seminarium – oprócz dużych sal, mamy do dyspozycji małe sale seminaryjne. Możliwość podpięcia rzutnika oraz białe tablice z markerami mogą się okazać idealne dla mniejszych grup aby przedstawić szkic jakiegoś projektu, zorganizować burzę mózgów, lub po prostu podyskutować.
  • warsztaty – jeśli masz pomysł jak wykorzystać trochę hardware w praktyczny sposób a dodatkowo chcesz pokazać innym ludziom coś ciekawego, z chęcią udostępnimy Ci pracownię komputerową.
  • ostatnią możliwością zaprezentowania swojej inicjatywy wśród zgromadzonych uczestników jest po prostu obecność. Być może nie masz czasu na przygotowanie konkretnych materiałów i zagadnień na wykład/seminarium/warsztat, a masz wolną sobotę. Wpadnij do nas, a my już postaramy się aby każdy zainteresowany wiedział jak Cię “dorwać” i mógł do Ciebie zagadać.

Jeśli masz jakiś pomysł którego nie uwzględniliśmy lub po prostu chcesz pomóc w organizacji, również zachęcamy do odezwania się :)

P.S. Jako, że przez najbliższe kilka dni nasza oficjalna strona poświęcona SFD09 będzie w budowie, polecam zadawanie pytań w komentarzach lub kontakt przez np. e-mail.

May 23, 2009

On the funding of open source

What Does Not Kill Me Makes Me Stronger

Over the past week the question of who pays for open source and whether it faces a tragedy of the commons in the future has kept coming up. There seems an instinctive acceptance that open source is a charitable venture that should seek collective donations like any other non-profit. I don't think the tragedy of the commons applies to a true open source community, and I think the assumption it's all done "for free" is a mistake.

Three Threads

Three threads came together for me this evening from diverse sources:

  1. Chris Anderson, the author of The Long Tail, is now blogging his way to his new book about the impact of "free". I've found the posting stimulating and insightful and I'm finding the blog as valuable as his earlier "long tail" series. His posting last week about the three basic economic models involving getting something without paying was very clear, laying out all the approaches I could think of for leveraging "gratis". But at the end he made me wonder if he's completely clear about the "Free" in open source meaning "liberty" and not "price". The trigger was when he suggested the third model - "freemium" - was the model behind
    open source's "support included" commercial versions of Linux.
    While the models he describes can certainly apply to products delivered to consumers, I am not so sure they apply to the commons at the heart of peer production of which Yochai Benkler wrote.
  2. As it happens, I am currently reading Clay Shirky's (excellent) book Here Comes Everybody, which explores commons-based peer production in terms far more acessible than Benkler. I have reached the chapter called "Personal Motivation Meets Collaborative Production", which largely uses Wikipedia as an example1. Clay's book so far has been an ode to the power-law curve, and this chapter pointed out how the attribute of collaborative communities that, characteristically for power-law contexts, 80% of the work is done by 20% of the people (with one or two doing 80% of the work done by that 20%)2. Looking at Anderson's third diagram it's clear he's talking about the same sort of phenomenon.
  3. The third thread came from several conversations in different contexts about cash donations to open source communities. I have been being a a nuisance on some open source boards I participate in over accepting large donations from non-participants in return for giving them recognition. I've been asserting that it's not right to allow outsiders to gain the benefit of being seen as part of a community just because they made a large financial contribution. I still stand by that assertion, despite getting considerable push-back from several people whose opinions I respect.

Paying Your Own Way

Monarchs on Eucalyptus

These three threads all come together in the observation that open source is what happens when several different people choose to work together on the same code base rather than working separately. Each of them is there for their own reasons; each covers their own costs and contributes the code they choose to. There is no pooling of funds to pay for work to be done because everyone is solely responsible for their own costs.

As a consequence, there is no fiscal power that any contributor holds over others, so no-one has the right to tell the others what to do. An open source community is an example of a group of people choosing to synchronise their mutual interests, each at their own expense, for the benefit of all involved including themselves3. While there may be a non-profit organisation for administrative reasons, an open source community is not a non-profit or a for-profit.

Now, if the motivation of one or two of the participants is to then offer the software as part of a "freemium" plan, that doesn't mean the whole project is there to serve their activity. That's just the motivation of one or two participants at work. They are not giving away their work without payment; they are giving away the contents of the commons at the same price at which they acquired it.

As long as their activity doesn't "take over" and disrupt the interests of others, no-one minds too much. Your motivations for participating are rarely my business. There's a "long tail" out there too, made of a large number of others who have their own motivations to be there and who are covering their own costs as a part of executing on those motivations. And the commons isn't spoiled in any way by being more widely used.

If that's the case, allowing a donor to give only money to be able to use the community's "brand" flies in the face of the basic dynamic of the community. Whuffie is not for sale. I understand that some communities have created an adjunct non-profit, and that body can use the money for socially useful things like hosting or employing a facilitator. But the money that's needed ought to be coming from the community members themselves, not from an outsider trying to wrap themselves in the community's "flag". The community is only about contributing as far as that is about collaborating.

Mesh of Motives

Any open source project that actually has a co-developer community is thus not an example of Anderson's third model because profit doesn't come into it. Some of the contributors might be, but the community as a whole is actually a mesh of different participants, all with their own motivational models and all paying their own way to achieve them outside the context of the community. If those motivational models involve business, I am sure they will be about payment at the point of value. But the community itself is about the liberty to align interests, not about the presence or absence of profit. Once again "free" deceives english speakers...


  1. All the way through the chapter I've been wondering the effect of the strong Wikipedia culture. Shirky somewhat idealises contribution and the fact that there's an inner circle of "Wikipedians" taking actions like deleting non-notable entries rather than developing them isn't reflected.
  2. When I read about this at the end of last year it was a small revelation: whenever you see an 80/20 rule at work, there's an underlying power-law curve involved. I wonder how I had managed to miss this for so long.
  3. Before I get accused again of saying open source doesn't involve altruism, let me be clear that I don't think that. I do, however, reject the definition of altruism as being "an act that benefits other but not me."

May 21, 2009

SFD '09 Registration is now Open

Hi SFD'ers,

The season is open on registering for Software Freedom Day, which is happening this year on 19 September 2009. Check on our map [1] to see if a team is registered near you - otherwise get yours together and register [2]! (Don't forget that you need to make your team wiki page on http://softwarefreedomday.org/teams before registering)

The first 200 teams registered before Friday 10 July will receive an SFD team pack including three SFD 2009 T-shirts, Ubuntu CDs, and a few other bits and pieces to support your day - we'll keep you posted on what's going into the pack. As usual, these packs are sent to teams all over the world with support from our sponsors: Canonical (the folks who bring you Ubuntu), Google and DKUUG (with additional help from Linode, Zac-ware, Linux Magazine and FSF).
If you haven't taken part before, learn how to run a new event from our easy to read StartGuide [3] - and if you have any questions, just email info@sf-day.org.

Good luck with your SFD 2009 preparations, and don't forget to pass the message around and get more teams involved. We had over 550 teams last year and are anticipating over 700 this year!

Thank you for connecting, creating and sharing!

Robert
President, Software Freedom International

May 20, 2009

Free Software in Schools

At the moment Free Software in education is one of my main interests in the Free Software ecosystem. FSFE’s Fellowship wiki already provides some useful information on this topic. It’s quite interesting to see the development in this area. Further I think schools play an important role for the adoption of Free Software in many areas. What pupils learn and get used to during school is what they want to use and what they demand if they enter the business world. I also think that it is important to get as early as possible at least a basic idea about the role of software in the information society.

Today I read an interesting article about a school in Austria which uses GNU/Linux systems on USB sticks (German only). With LinuxAdvanced the school created their own distribution based on Debian GNU/Linux 5.0 (aka Lenny) and the lightweight desktop environment Xfce.

The Kremser Bundesgymnasium uses this system since two years on all computers in the computer science classrooms. Now they decided to switch from local installations to live systems on USB sticks. The advantage: The pupils can carry their system around with themselves. They can use it at school, at home or at any computer they want. About 50% of all pupils uses the system regularly at home. It seems like especially the young pupils using the system quite naturally and have no reservations. Further Rene Schwarzinger explains: “We don’t want to encourage our pupils to create illegal copies just to be able to work at home with the same programs as at school”. The obvious solution to avoid this is to use only Free Software at school and pass it down to the pupils.

In autumn they want to introduce netbooks together with the GNU/Linux USB stick to the pupils.

I really like the idea using USB sticks instead of normal installations on hard disks. Live systems are nothing new but I think it makes much sense in this scenario. With the USB sticks the pupils can work with their systems and their data wherever they want without having to convince their parents to install a new operating system at home which could be quite challenging, both technically and philosophically.

I’m interested in more success stories about Free Software and GNU/Linux in schools. Please let me know if you know schools (especially in Germany or Europe) which already uses GNU/Linux or prepare the switch to Free Software.

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LUG Kiel first german team to register for SFD09


You can see us on the map. SFD registering season has started. Thanks to Robert Schumann for all his work! We will NOT do out SFD in a public school this year, because last year we struggled with opening. Any other ideas? Please contact me if you like to join.

May 17, 2009

Looking at the Art of Community Management

Code, collaboration and community are the pillars of open source. Every successful open source software project has an active community around it that reflects the project’s priorities and character.  Since the core concern of most open source projects is code, their communities are typically focused on developers and on producing good code. But other areas also [...]

May 12, 2009

Fedora and gpg-agent

While it was quite easy to set up my Fellowship smartcard for SSH logins on Debian GNU/Linux following this instructions I never managed to get it working on Fedora GNU/Linux. At some point of time I just gave up. Today finally I found a solution in an on-line forum.

The problem was that gpg-agent always stopped with the error message:

$ gpg-agent
gpg-agent[2857]: can't connect to `/home/schiesbn/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent': No such file or directory
gpg-agent: no gpg-agent running in this session

By default the gpg-agent on Fedora creates the socket in /tmp instead of in /home/schiesbn/.gnupg. So you have to move it manually over to your home directory once gpg-agent has started.

To do this I use this script:

#!/bin/bash
 
# Decide whether to start gpg-agent daemon.
# Create necessary symbolic link in $HOME/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent
 
SOCKET=S.gpg-agent
PIDOF=`pidof gpg-agent`
RETVAL=$?
 
if [ "$RETVAL" -eq 1 ]; then
	echo "Starting gpg-agent daemon."
	eval `gpg-agent --daemon `
else
	echo "Daemon gpg-agent already running."
fi
 
# Nasty way to find gpg-agent's socket file...
GPG_SOCKET_FILE=`find /tmp/gpg-* -name $SOCKET`
echo "Updating socket file link."
cp -fs $GPG_SOCKET_FILE $HOME/.gnupg/S.gpg-agent

To execute this script during log-in I have added this to my ~/.bashrc:

# GPG-AGENT stuff
GET_TTY=`tty`
export $GET_TTY
$HOME/bin/gpg-agent-start.sh

I still wonder why it works that easy on Debian and on Fedora i need all this scripting. But for the moment I’m just happy that I have found a solution to use my smartcard for SSH login on my Fedora systems.

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May 11, 2009

Scilab workshop for teachers at Bhaskaracharya Institute of Mathematics

The Bhaskaracharya Institute of Mathematics in Pune is organizing full-day workshops on Scilab specifically targeted for teachers. This program is organized jointly by BP and IIT Bombay. Prof. Katre and Manjusha Joshi of BP have been prime movers in organizing these workshops and activists in spreading the use of open source software for mathematics analysis and [...]

May 02, 2009

Linux Desktop Breaks 1.02% for Personal Computers

As a long time fan of the Linux desktop I was interested to see the the Linux desktop usage number for personal computers increase to over 1.02%. I suspect it’s partially fueled by the popularity of Linux netbooks from the Dell (who offers an Ubuntu option) and Asus (that’s uses a special version of Xandros Linux).

While there’s no one company behind Linux for personal computers, it’s significant that Linux just broke through to 1.02 percent market share for personal computers, the first time it has ever risen that high, according to data compiled by Net Applications. (Meanwhile, even in beta, Windows 7 continues its march, now hitting .25 percent market share.)

I spent a long time trying to convince myself and others that the future for the desktop was an option of Windows, Mac or Linux. I am less bullish then I once was and now I use both a Mac and a Linux laptop. I really like the Linux desktop for it’s stability and I like the virtual desktop environment afforded by windows managers for Linux and the flexibility to adapt the interface in general to your personal needs.

However, I think we will always struggle with Linux as a desktop operating system as long as application compatibility falters (I can’t open sophisticated Excel spreadsheets from colleagues) and hardware vendors don’t feel obligated to support Linux (My Verizon EVDO card takes extra configuration for it to work under Linux while it’s a snap to set-up on Mac OS X).

So why bother with a Linux desktop at all? Well I found when using my Asus N10 netbook that my battery life is much better under Linux and I feel like the operating system is much more responsive than when I run Windows XP (I downgraded from Vista to reduce the resource requirements improving speed and battery life).  My theory is that over time we will see the focus less on the desktop operating system and more on the avialability of hosted apps that run on them like Google Docs and Zoho. I think at that point the emphasis on the desktop operating system will be greatly diminished.

[Desktop Usage Numbers via Matt Asay]

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April 29, 2009

Ubuntu Newcomers? Join “With a Little help” - Ubuntu Open Week Tomorrow

As Jaunty rolls in, a new wave of users land on this side of the fence. This talk is intended for new Ubuntu users who want to have a crash course on who to find help within the community support platform. From the very famous Ubuntu Forums, the Ubuntu WIKI, Help, Mailing lists and IRC channels, and more. This session will provide with tips on how to use these resources more effectively and also a small reference to guidelines on netiquette when using  community support.

New to Ubuntu. BE THERE!

“With a little help”

Ubuntu Open Week: IRC FREENODE  #ubuntu-classroom

Tomorrow Thu 30 Apr

15:00 UTC

April 17, 2009

Five Ideas To Get FOSS Into Governments

Why is it so hard to get governments (especially local government) to use open source software? Here are some ideas discussed during my keynote today in Oslo at GoOpen 2009 for practical steps various people, from citizens to policy wonks to representatives, can do to help get open source in actual use and delivering on its promise (and I know it's not easy):

  1. Fix the procurement policy. While a policy that says open source is great is a good thing, if you don't change the procurement policy it will have no effect. The best open source solutions result from a two-phase procurement process where the first phase buys prototyping and iterating using software on a white-list of approved elements that can be supported in phase two, and the second phase buys production deployment and scaling. If you have a procurement process that basically defines software as "something you buy a license for" you'll never get the adoption-led benefits of open source.
  2. Publish tenders by default. In most places, it's illegal to specify a vendor explicitly in a generic request for tender. To deal with this, many countries have open procurement policies, but very, very few publish tender documents, so we have a problem. Initiating a scheme like the one Brenno de Winter has in the Netherlands brings the cleansing power of sunlight into the process. Brenno uses Freedom of Information requests to secure tenders and then posts them to a wiki for community review. You could do that too where you live.
  3. Demand the freedom to leave. Often, the cost of migration is used as a barrier to use of open source. But the cost of migration is often caused by being locked in by an existing vendor. If migration costs are cited, so must be exit costs (one of the key changes in the UK open source policy). If you're not willing to demand exit costs are stated, exclude migration costs too. The longer you leave this unchecked, the deeper the lock-in will become and the greater the migration costs for new solutions.
  4. Don't focus on cost savings alone. Any vendor with a decent sales function can cut one-time costs to get you locked in. If you have freedom to use/study/modify/distribute the software you use, you can drive down the costs - freedom can lead to cost savings but cost savings rarely lead to freedom. Making this the rule is a policy decision that your legislature needs to make.
  5. Consider posterity. Solutions that require proprietary formats, DRM as an enabler to tracking, closed and NDA-only interfaces (and many more tactics) - all these things result in systems that lose the reasons why decisions get made and rob future generations of their history. Demand transparency with privacy. That's freedom; secrecy with controlled disclosure is not. Discriminate against offerings that use DRM, unpublished interfaces and anything else that your vendor won't let you publish without permission.
And your bonus idea for added value:
  • Use open standards. What is an open standard? Well, that can take a great deal of argument to determine, but a great rule of thumb is if it could be implemented under all available open source licenses and is actually implemented under one, it's probably open. And if you use the open source implementation, chances are the extra freedoms will help too.
Got more ideas? Case studies? Comment below.

Meta-cycles: 2-3 year major cycles for free software?

Six-month cycles are great. Now let’s talk about meta-cycles: broader release cycles for major work. I’m very interested in a cross-community conversation about this, so will sketch out some ideas and then encourage people from as many different free software communities as possible to comment here. I’ll summarise those comments in a follow-up post, which will no doubt be a lot wiser and more insightful than this one :-)

Background: building on the best practice of cadence

The practice of regular releases, and now time-based releases, is becoming widespread within the free software community. From the kernel, to GNOME and KDE, to X, and distributions like Ubuntu, Fedora, the idea of a regular, predictable cycle is now better understood and widely embraced. Many smarter folks than me have articulated the benefits of such a cadence: energising the whole community, REALLY releasing early and often, shaking out good and bad code, rapid course correction.

There has been some experimentation with different cycles. I’m involved in projects that have 1 month, 3 month and 6 month cycles, for different reasons. They all work well.

..but addressing the needs of the longer term

But there are also weaknesses to the six-month cycle:

  • It’s hard to communicate to your users that you have made some definitive, significant change,
  • It’s hard to know what to support for how long, you obviously can’t support every release indefinitely.

I think there is growing insight into this, on both sides of the original “cadence” debate.

A tale of two philosophies, perhaps with a unifying theory

A few years back, at AKademy in Glasgow, I was in the middle of a great discussion about six month cycles. I was a passionate advocate of the six month cycle, and interested in the arguments against it. The strongest one was the challenge of making “big bold moves”.

“You just can’t do some things in six months” was the common refrain. “You need to be able to take a longer view, and you need a plan for the big change.” There was a lot of criticism of GNOME for having “stagnated” due to the inability to make tough choices inside a six month cycle (and with perpetual backward compatibility guarantees). Such discussions often become ideological, with folks on one side saying “you can evolve anything incrementally” and others saying “you need to make a clean break”.

At the time of course, KDE was gearing up for KDE 4.0, a significant and bold move indeed. And GNOME was quite happily making its regular releases. When the KDE release arrived, it was beautiful, but it had real issues. Somewhat predictably, the regular-release crowd said “see, we told you, BIG releases don’t work”. But since then KDE has knuckled down with regular, well managed, incremental improvements, and KDE is looking fantastic. Suddenly, the big bold move comes into focus, and the benefits become clear. Well done KDE :-)

On the other side of the fence, GNOME is now more aware of the limitations of indefinite regular releases. I’m very excited by the zest and spirit with which the “user experience MATTERS” campaign is being taken up in Gnome, there’s a real desire to deliver breakthrough changes. This kicked off at the excellent Gnome usability summit last year, which I enjoyed and which quite a few of the Canonical usability and design folks participated in, and the fruits of that are shaping up in things like the new Activities shell.

But it’s become clear that a change like this represents a definitive break with the past, and might take more than a single six month release to achieve. And most important of all, that this is an opportunity to make other, significant, distinctive changes. A break with the past. A big bold move. And so there’s been a series of conversations about how to “do a 3.0″, in effect, how to break with the tradition of incremental change, in order to make this vision possible.

It strikes me that both projects are converging on a common set of ideas:

  • Rapid, predictable releases are super for keeping energy high and code evolving cleanly and efficiently, they keep people out of a deathmarch scenario, they tighten things up and they allow for a shakeout of good and bad ideas in a coordinated, managed fashion.
  • Big releases are energising too. They are motivational, they make people feel like it’s possible to change anything, they release a lot of creative energy and generate a lot of healthy discussion. But they can be a bit messy, things can break on the way, and that’s a healthy thing.

Anecdotally, there are other interesting stories that feed into this.

Recently, the Python community decided that Python 3.0 will be a shorter cycle than the usual Python release. The 3.0 release is serving to shake out the ideas and code for 3.x, but it won’t be heavily adopted itself so it doesn’t really make sense to put a lot of effort into maintaining it - get it out there, have a short cycle, and then invest in quality for the next cycle because 3.x will be much more heavily used than 3.0. This reminds me a lot of KDE 4.0.

So, I’m interesting in gathering opinions, challenges, ideas, commitments, hypotheses etc about the idea of meta-cycles and how we could organise ourselves to make the most of this. I suspect that we can define a best practice, which includes regular releases for continuous improvement on a predictable schedule, and ALSO defines a good practice for how MAJOR releases fit into that cadence, in a well structured and manageable fashion. I think we can draw on the experiences in both GNOME and KDE, and other projects, to shape that thinking.

This is important for distributions, too

The major distributions tend to have big releases, as well as more frequent releases. RHEL has Fedora, Ubuntu makes LTS releases, Debian takes cadence to its logical continuous integration extreme with Sid and Testing :-).

When we did Ubuntu 6.06 LTS we said we’d do another LTS in “2 to 3 years”. When we did 8.04 LTS we said that the benefits of predictability for LTS’s are such that it would be good to say in advance when the next LTS would be. I said I would like that to be 10.04 LTS, a major cycle of 2 years, unless the opportunity came up to coordinate major releases with one or two other major distributions - Debian, Suse or Red Hat.

I’ve spoken with folks at Novell, and it doesn’t look like there’s an opportunity to coordinate for the moment. In conversations with Steve McIntyre, the current Debian Project Leader, we’ve identified an interesting opportunity to collaborate. Debian is aiming for an 18 month cycle, which would put their next release around October 2010, which would be the same time as the Ubuntu 10.10 release. Potentially, then, we could defer the Ubuntu LTS till 10.10, coordinating and collaborating with the Debian project for a release with very similar choices of core infrastructure. That would make sharing patches a lot easier, a benefit both ways. Since there will be a lot of folks from Ubuntu at Debconf, and hopefully a number of Debian developers at UDS in Barcelona in May, we will have good opportunities to examine this opportunity in detail. If there is goodwill, excitement and broad commitment to such an idea from Debian, I would be willing to promote the idea of deferring the LTS from 10.04 to 10.10 LTS.

Questions and options

So, what would the “best practices” of a meta-cycle be? What sorts of things should be considered in planning for these meta-cycles? What problems do they cause, and how are those best addressed? How do short term (3 month, 6 month) cycles fit into a broader meta-cycle? Asking these questions across multiple communities will help test the ideas and generate better ones.

What’s a good name for such a meta-cycle? Meta-cycle seems…. very meta.

Is it true that the “first release of the major cycle” (KDE 4.0, Python 3.0) is best done as a short cycle that does not get long term attention? Are there counter-examples, or better examples, of this?

Which release in the major cycle is best for long term support? Is it the last of the releases before major new changes begin (Python 2.6? GNOME 2.28?) or is it the result of a couple of quick iterations on the X.0 release (KDE 4.2? GNOME 3.2?) Does it matter? I do believe that it’s worthwhile for upstreams to support an occasional release for a longer time than usual, because that’s what large organisations want.

Is a whole-year cycle beneficial? For example, is 2.5 years a good idea? Personally, I think not. I think conferences and holidays tend to happen at the same time of the year every year and it’s much, much easier to think in terms of whole number of year cycles. But in informal conversations about this, some people have said 18 months, others have said 30 months (2.5 years) might suit them. I think they’re craaaazy, what do you think?

If it’s 2 years or 3 years, which is better for you? Hardware guys tend to say “2 years!” to get the benefit of new hardware, sooner. Software guys say “3 years!” so that they have less change to deal with. Personally, I am in the 2 years camp, but I think it’s more important to be aligned with the pulse of the community, and if GNOME / KDE / Kernel wanted 3 years, I’d be happy to go with it.

How do the meta-cycles of different projects come together? Does it make sense to have low-level, hardware-related things on a different cycle to high-level, user visible things? Or does it make more sense to have a rhythm of life that’s shared from the top to the bottom of the stack?

Would it make more sense to stagger long term releases based on how they depend on one another, like GCC then X then OpenOffice? Or would it make more sense to have them all follow the same meta-cycle, so that we get big breakage across the stack at times, and big stability across the stack at others?

Are any projects out there already doing this?

Is there any established theory or practice for this?

A cross-community conversation

If you’ve read this far, thank you! Please do comment, and if you are interested then please do take up these questions in the communities that you care about, and bring the results of those discussions back here as comments. I’m pretty sure that we can take the art of software to a whole new level if we take advantage of the fact that we are NOT proprietary, and this is one of the key ways we can do it.

February 28, 2009

#wci Day2

Hi all, Sorry for not writing earlier. Just been caught up for time. This blog post is about wordpress camp in India. WordPress alongwith Adobe and whole host of partners both online as well as offline did an event called Wordcamp. This was a paid event costing Rs. [...]

February 27, 2009

Freed-Day 2

Hi all, Stuff about day 2 in Freed.in Freed.in Day 2 started on time (much to my surprise) and the first order of the day was GNUKhata by Anusha . The talk/demo was supposed to be on the first day but was then put up for the second day as Anusha had a sore throat. Still [...]

February 21, 2009

New notification work lands in Jaunty

Thanks to the concerted efforts of Martin Pitt, Sebastien Bacher and several others, notify-osd and several related components landed in Jaunty last week. Thanks very much to all involved! And thanks to David Barth, Mirco Muller and Ted Gould who lead the development of notify-osd and the related messaging indicator.

Notify-OSD handles both application notifications and keyboard special keys like brightness and volume

Notify-OSD handles both application notifications and keyboard special keys like brightness and volume

MPT has posted an overview of the conceptual framework for “attention management” at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotificationDesignGuidelines, which puts ephemeral notification into context as just one of several distinct tools that applications can use when they don’t have the focus but need to make users aware of something. That’s a draft, and when it’s at 1.0 we’ll move it to a new site which will host design patterns on Canonical.com.

There is also a detailed specification for our implementation of the notification display agent, notify-osd, which can be found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NotifyOSD and which defines not only the expected behaviour of notify-osd but also all of the consequential updates we need to make across the packages in main an universe to ensure that those applications use notification and other techniques consistently.

There are at least 35 apps that need tweaking, and there may well be others! If you find an app that isn’t using notifications elegantly, please add it to the notification design guidelines page, and if you file a bug on the package, please tag it “notifications” so we can track these issues in a single consistent way.

Together with notify-osd, we’ve uploaded a new panel indicator which is used to provide a way to respond to messaging events, such as email and IRC pings. If someone IM’s you, then you should see an ephemeral notification, and the messaging indicator will give you a way to respond immediately. Same for email. Pidgin and Evolution are the primary focuses of the work, over time we’ll broaden that to the full complement of IM and email apps in the archive - patches welcome :-)

There will be rough patches. Apps which don’t comply with the FreeDesktop.org spec and send actions on notifications even when the display agent says it does not support them, will have their notifications translated into alerts. That’s the primary focus of the effort now, the find and fix those apps. Also, we know there are several cases where a persistent response framework is required. The messaging indicator gets most of them, we will have additional persistent tools in place for Karmic in October.

February 15, 2009

Mr. Rohan Ranade at SRKNEC Silver Jublee Celebrations

This year SRKNEC is celebrating its 25th anniversary and as a part of the Silver Jubilee Orations various activities are going around in the college. We were lucky enough to have Mr. Rohan Ranade, Sun Microsystems, US who spared time out from his busy schedule and gave a fantastic talk to the students and the faculty.

Topic I: “From Journeyman to Master”.

He did not concentrate on a particular technology or so (usually tech seminars are supposed to) but it helped us to know what it takes to ‘Being Different’. “Pace, Passion, Eye for finer details, Supreme Knowledge – all this blended with an uncanny urge to make a difference helps you to become a Rock Star Developer” was what he said.

Rohan Sir himself being a student of Computer Science and Engg, shared his experiences with us. He also suggested some good to read books like ‘The Pragmatic Programmer’, ‘The Mythical Man-Month’, ‘Free as in freedom’ and ‘The design of everyday things’. He also suggested us to follow some good blogs by ‘Paul Graham’, ‘Joel Spolsky’, ‘Bruce Eckel’ , ‘Dave Thomas’ and podcasts like ‘The Java Posse’, ‘NetBeans Developer Podcast’, ‘Drunk and Retired’, ‘CNET – this week in tech’, ‘Google Developer Podcast’.

The response was great and not only the students, but the faculty members also enjoyed the talk.

 

Topic II: “Getting started with Version Control Systems”

He had stressed on the importance of opensource throughout his talk and he went on to explain how opensource projects are made, coordinated when developers from all around the world are contributing code, documentation etc.

He mentioned all the code hosting website, with special stress on the new Project Kenai! Then he went on to explain the basic concepts like versions, check-in, check-out etc.

The overall talk was really enlightening and we are really thankful to Rohan Sir for always being there to help promote the opensource agenda in SRKNEC!



Rohan Sir with the Students! 

From rohan sir

From rohan sir
                                                  Faculty

January 19, 2009

Skim Once and Move Along

In tangential response to Is Google making us stupid?:

I used to be able to romanticize the past like nobody's business. These days I can't even get a good reminiscence going. *sigh*