FOSS Week in Review
With another week coming to an end, let’s wrap it up on a somewhat balanced note.
Get out the Vote: Our friends at Red Hat are now taking votes for the Women in Open Source Awards. The first award of its kind, the prize shines a spotlight on women making important contributions to an open source project, to the open source community, or through the use of open source methodology.
Nominations are open through Nov. 21. Qualified judges from Red Hat will narrow down the nominees to a subset of finalists for both the Academic and Community awards. The public will vote to determine the winner from the finalists selected. Winners will be announced in June during an awards ceremony at next year’s Red Hat Summit in Boston.
Buy Linux stuff: In an IT World article this week, Jim Lynch presents the obvious proposition: “Why you should buy computers with Linux preinstalled.” Of course, the reason is obvious. Linux hardware is built specifically for Linux and FOSS, and every time you spend that little extra to get a Linux box or laptop, that’s one less piece of hardware being counted as a Windows sale — which is what happens when you buy a Windows machine and reinstall.
Sadly, what could have been a good item turns out to offer a halfhearted and myopic selection of available hardware, brought to you by a search on Amazon — probably with the Unity lens, I bet. The search turns up only Asus, Dell and System76.
Glaringly left out, of course, is one of the better Linux hardware makers, ZaReason, a long-time FOSS manufacturer of a wide range of hardware, from tablets to servers. Truth in advertising: I have a long history of using ZaReason hardware, and every laptop and desktop that I’ve had — whether for review or purchase — has been outstanding. The laptop I once used on a daily basis was absconded by my teenage daughter, who now puts the hardware through some pretty rigorous paces for an out-of-production model (an Alto 3880).
In fact, while an Amazon search only brought up three hardware makers, LXer.com has an entire database of Linux hardware which, shockingly, lists more than three. Instead of Amazon, next time use that other search engine; you know, it begins with a G.
Sportsball – Get Used to It: This is not specifically a FOSS issue, but last night during the San Francisco Giants-St. Louis Cardinals game, my good friend Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph tweeted, “Don’t worry non-sports-y people, I only live-tweet #SFGiants and only in the post season (or if I’m *at* the game), other sports meh.” I told her in a return tweet that she didn’t really need to apologize.
Here’s an important point that geeks who look down their noses at “sportsball” need to take into account: There are a wide range of interests in the wide world of FOSS. You may not like sports, and that’s completely fine, but that’s no reason to look down on those who do. So get the hell over it. And go San Francisco!
[Bassel Watch: Bassel (Safadi) Khartabil has now been detained in Syria for 945 days. We wrote about it here, and go here to help out.]
Larry Cafiero, a.k.a. Larry the Free Software Guy, is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate. He is involved in several FOSS projects and serves as the publicity chair for the Southern California Linux Expo. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
You apparently stopped reading the IT World article too soon because Mr. Lynch includes links to the LXer list that you mentioned as well as lists at GNU.org and Debian.org of hardware manufacturers that sell computers with Linux preloaded.