May 9, 2025
Keeping tech free
Larry Cafiero is a journalist and a Free/Open Source Software advocate and is involved in several FOSS projects. Follow him on Twitter: @lcafiero
I don’t say enough good things about Ubuntu, so when they give me reason to, I’m on it. I also don’t talk enough about openSUSE either; good, bad or indifferent. Not that I’m turning over a new leaf or anything, but this week’s wrap up contains two items about these distros, and more. Don’t just sit there: Read on&hellip.
Unless you’re a motorhead to a varying degree — and an older one at that — you probably don’t know who John Cooper is. His contributions in racing circles — putting the engine behind the driver in his Cooper racing cars in the 1950s — would normally cement his place in automotive history, but he didn’t stop there.
The thing for which Cooper is more widely known is modifying the British Motor Corporation’s Mini in the 1960s, adding his name to make it the Mini Cooper while adding a higher degree of performance that won the little-car-that-could a warehouse full of rally trophies and Sports Car Club of America club racing victories.
What could be a better combination than one of the world’s foremost digital freedom advocates and Cards Against Humanity? Read on.
Cory Doctorow at SCALE 14X: While the Call for Presentations for SCALE 14X is ongoing and closes in two weeks — on Friday, Oct. 30, at midnight Pacific, so at 12:01 a.m. on Saturday morning the 31st, your unsubmitted proposal turns into a pumpkin — the SCALE team has announced it has chosen one of the keynoters for the four-day, first-of-the-year Linux/FOSS event.
In last week’s wrap-up, I posted an item about both Sarah Sharp and Matthew Garrett ceasing their contributions to the Linux kernel, and I was going to leave it at that and let those who read their blogs, as well as reports here and elsewhere, draw their own conclusions.
But giving it some thought over the weekend — not dwelling on it, of course, because the baseball playoffs are currently in progress — it occurred to me that many of the issues are not being addressed, and that’s going to continue to fester. The result of that remains to be seen and, sadly, this is par for the course in FOSS circles. That has been mentioned on many occasions elsewhere, so we won’t go into it here.
Inside the Linux Kernel Mailing List where this drama transpired, my guess is that it’s business as usual: Square One at frat-boy central is moving along as usual, with caustic feedback to those participating. That is, when they’re not giving each other digital wedgies and noogies.
Grab some popcorn — make two bowls — and get comfortable.
Distros, News, Operating Systems, Politics and Software
The day has changed, but the commentary remains the same: In a minor FOSS Force shuffle, I’ve moved from giving commentary on Wednesdays to giving it on Mondays. And while there is no one item that stands out in a grand way to start the week, there’s no reason we can’t begin the week with several smaller items, right?
LibreOffice has won, get over it: Last week, I innocently posted an article on Facebook about LibreOffice’s fifth birthday — yes, it has been five years, surprisingly — and for some reason it ran into some resistance from one friend who isn’t exactly too fond of the name “LibreOffice” — “Libre isn’t English” (huh?) — and he seems to think that the remnants of OpenOffice are better served if the LibreOffice folks just fold up their tent and rejoin OpenOffice. Yeah, I laughed too. That’s not going to happen because, for all intents and purposes, OpenOffice was fatally poisoned as soon as Oracle got a hold of it, making the LibreOffice fork necessary. If anything, OpenOffice developers should drop OpenOffice and join LibreOffice. Anyway, happy 5th, LibreOffice.
Photo: Joi Ito, CC-BY-2.0
Mediaoriente gave this report, and the Free Bassel Safadi Facebook page has also been active on Saturday, though details have been sketchy.
Mea culpa: I went to bed last night thinking it was Wednesday, woke up today thinking it was Thursday, went along with my usual Thursday work plan (which differs little from any other weekday) until Christine Hall emailed me and asked, “Where’s the wrap?”
Oops. With apologies and with a brand new calendar in hand, here’s the weekly wrap-up.
Photo by Jamie Pham)
Highlighting the week’s activities in the FOSS realm is, say it with me, money. You know, the thing that we all want but that most of us never have enough of. Some have it and some need it — making it a good thing we’re about to tell you who is who with this weekend’s wrap up.
Open FOSS Training Indiegogo Campaign: Back home again in Indiana — Martinsville, Indiana, to be exact — Matthew Williams has taken the baton and is running with it when it comes to training folks in the use of free/open source software, or what we lovingly refer to as FOSS.
Time to saddle up the rant stallion and take him out of the stable: This comes up from time to time on social media — as it did again several days ago — and it’s really about time it stops.
Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs died pretty close to each other, time-wise. That may sound like the start of a joke — “Dennis Ritchie and Steve Jobs meet at the pearly gates, and…” — but we’re not going there today. Many people are under the impression that while Steve Jobs got all the attention as the “messiah of computing” when he died, Dennis Ritchie was completely ignored.
