You were warned: I wrote on Wednesday that it would be a good idea to get your badges at the Hampton Inn at game night…
Posts published by “Larry Cafiero”
Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
Sure there’s a lot going on right now: A report posted on the OSCON site this week has the show — which everyone assumed would be in Portland forever — moving to Austin and being rescheduled to May in 2016. Let’s call that AusCON from here on in.
Then there’s the release of Ubuntu 15.04, complete with the adjective and animal beginning with the same letter — Vivid Vervet this time around.
But what’s more important than those two items at the moment — we can deal with those later — is that LinuxFest Northwest is ramping up its 15th annual show in Bellingham, Washington, this week.
LinuxFest Northwest — just south of the border (the Canadian one, that is) — is like Old Man River: It just keeps rolling along. Shows come and go, they grow and move, but the oldest community-run expo has put down some solid roots at Bellingham Technical College. The show has grown over the years, and so has the college. With recent improvements over the last few years, LFNW has grown to be a top-notch destination for speakers, exhibitors and attendees, with around 80 presentations being part and parcel of LFNW’s weekend fare.
FOSS Week in Review
Death and taxes: I avoided the first and completed the second. Metric tons of thanks to Christine Hall for standing in for me while I was recovering from what seemed for awhile there to be a terminal case of the flu as well as an appointment to do paperwork for our friendly Internal Revenue Service.
The best news of the week, of course, is that we’re everywhere. Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols wrote a story in ZDNet yesterday reporting on the results of the ninth annual Future of Open Source Survey. There’s an upside and a downside, as Steven reports: Enterprise is adopting open source like crazy, but they’re not managing it worth a darn.
We’re going to take the scenic route in getting to the point today. If you don’t want to wait, you can go down to the bottom where it says, “The moral of the story…” But the point of today’s exercise is that we in the decentralized FOSS realm are a creative bunch, and in that creativity is our strength.
The Starbucks in San Jose near James Lick High School seems to always be abuzz — kids from the school come in for coffee and other Starbucks treats, all the while being served by a quick and helpful staff, one of whom couldn’t stop talking in loud tones about his new opportunity in a nearby, more prestigious Starbucks.
The after-school high school crowd seems to be supplanted, eventually, by moms picking up their elementary school-aged children and bringing them to Starbucks. While I’m sitting in a way-too-comfortable chair, two girls walk up to me.
They stare. I look up, smile, and go back to work. I can still feel them staring at me.
One points and says, “elefante,” which is Spanish for “elephant.”
FOSS Week in Review
Yes, we all know the drill. Last October, Microsoft CEO Satya Natella — in his portrayal of the anti-Ballmer in a 180-degree bootleg turn of a statement — said that Microsoft loves Linux.
So, in our best Shakespeare, how doth Microsoft love thee, Linux? Let me count the ways…
Most recently, we have a report from PC World saying that as of the latest offering from Microsoft, Windows 10, hardware makers now have the green light to enable UEFI Secure Boot without giving you a manual kill switch, as they are required to do with Windows 8 systems.
The temptation to write an April Fools’ Day column was overwhelming. I could have gone cheap and easy by writing about “Why I Use Ubuntu” or “The Campaign for Shuttleworth 2016,” or “Jono Bacon: The Red Hat Diaries,” but I resisted.
Achievement unlocked, and you’re welcome.
But instead, I’d rather talk about Linux in the home and how different distros can peacefully coexist. No, really — no April Fools’ Day prank here.
I live in a house in Felton, California — six miles northeast of Santa Cruz in what’s known as the San Lorenzo Valley (as in San Lorenzo River), but it’s really at the base of a ridge of rather tall hills that separates Silicon Valley from the sea. In this house, Linux essentially rules the roost.
The headline sounds like heresy, I know, but put down those pitchforks and torches and hear me out. By now, you’ve probably all heard the news that the zombie lawsuit brought about by SCO against IBM has reared its ugly head and has started bellowing “braaaaaaains” once again.
But the fact of the matter is this: At one time, SCO was cool.
SCO started out here in my neighborhood, essentially, in Santa Cruz, California. It was called The Santa Cruz Operation (hence, SCO). That manifestation of SCO was founded in 1979 by Larry and Doug Michels, a father and son, as a Unix porting and consulting company which, over time, developed its own brand of Unix. In his book “The Art of Unix Programming,” Eric Raymond calls SCO the “first Unix company.”
In lieu of a weekly wrap-up which normally appears here at the end of the work week, I’m going to report on something I think deserves its own special mention.
The Fedora Project — mythically known as the “bleeding-edge distro” which only experienced users can use, but which in reality can be used easily by anyone from kids to grandmothers — understands the unique connection between diversity and open source. They are looking for a Diversity Advisor, and they’re seeking your help.
Charlie Kravetz said he was a little nervous at SCALE 13x. Not only had his presentation slides gorped about a week ahead of the expo (he got them back together and working, of course), it was Charlie’s first time speaking in front of a group. And the message he wished to convey in his talk, “Accessibility in Software,” was an important one.
Charlie stepped up to the plate at SCALE 13x and knocked it out of the park.
Don’t take my word for it. Watch the video, which is available online.
Truth in advertising: I cheated. I wasn’t supposed to watch the live feed of Charile’s presentation during SCALE 13x because there’s a de facto rule about watching presentations in the hotel while they’re going on. But I was working in the media room and couldn’t get over to Century AB, the room where Charlie spoke.
FOSS Week in Review
To be honest, I’m really not finished going through all the materials I picked up at the Open Compute Project 2015 U.S. Summit this week in San Jose. There is a lot of interesting stuff here to wade through, and I’m still going through it.
Meanwhile, much of what makes the FOSS world interesting didn’t wait for me to finish. Like:
Linus Under Wraps? We all know Linus Torvalds. We “get it” — he’s a guy with a big vocabulary who doesn’t suffer fools gladly. Many of us are okay with “Linus being Linus,” though some lately have begun to question how positive his criticisms can be. Earlier this week, Business Insider reported the Linux Foundation appeared to try to rein him in, slapping him on the wrist when they issued a new “Code of Conflict” policy that declared “personal insults or abuse are not welcome.”
The “Code of Conflict” says that if “anyone feels personally abused, threatened, or otherwise uncomfortable” while working on Linux, they should report the situation to the Technical Advisory Board who will step in and mediate.”