One of the things we took away from this talk is that open source can be fun — and that’s a good thing. The Video…
Posts published in “Community”
A member of the Libreboot development team has painted a picture of a lead developer who is out-of-control.
It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone who’s been following the news about Libreboot’s sudden withdrawal from the GNU Project that not everyone connected with the Libreboot project is in agreement with project lead Leah Rowe’s recent actions.
If you need catching up, the story began on Friday when Rowe posted a notice to the GNU mailing list removing Libreboot — a project that produces free, open source and blob-free software to replace proprietary BIOS firmware — as a GNU project, which it had been since May. The reason, she said, was that an unnamed friend employed by the Free Software Foundation had been dismissed on the basis of her trangendered status.
Also included: Libreboot leaves GNU, municipal broadband law proposed, Linux’s second 25th birthday, a new distro release, Vim and Emacs both get upgrades, Google’s hack challenge and Oracle can’t catch a break.
FOSS Week in Review
Yesterday I got a look at some decidedly old tech: Rope beds, pewter being made by hand, ceramic wood burning stoves, a bit of blacksmithing — all at Bethabara, which is a preserved 18th century village that had been established by German Moravians, who were the first settlers around these parts. Fascinating. The event was the annual Apple Fest, with plenty of local orchards offering every variety of apple imaginable, as well as about any kind of food prepared with apples.
Both Richard Stallman and John Sullivan have issued statements concerning the allegations made against the FSF by Libreboot’s lead developer.
On Friday we reported that Libreboot’s lead developer, Leah Rowe, had posted a notice to a GNU mailing list, removing her project from GNU. The reason she gave was that a friend employed by the Free Software Foundation, had been dismissed for discriminatory reasons. “The Free Software Foundation recently fired a transgendered employee of the FSF, just for being trans…,” she wrote. “I’m declaring here and now to the whole world that Libreboot is no longer part of the GNU project.”
Friday afternoon after we published our report, Richard Stallman, founder and president of FSF, posted a brief, unofficial statement in an email to the thread around Rowe’s email. “The dismissal of the staff person was not because of her gender,” he said. “Her gender now is the same as it was when we hired her. It was not an issue then, and it is not an issue now.”
Sometimes we wonder how Ms. Joseph finds the time to balance her career at HP with writing, evangelizing Ubuntu and public speaking, along with an…
So far, this entire story is summed up by the above headline. Until we know more, that’s all we know.
A disturbing story broke this morning concerning the sudden action by the Libreboot project to leave the GNU project. I started to write “potentially disturbing,” until it occurred to me that no matter how this plays out, the news is disturbing.
Libreboot is a project that produces free, open source and blob-free software to replace proprietary BIOS firmware that performs only the tasks necessary to load and run an operating system. The project is endorsed by the Free Software Foundation and was an official part of the GNU Project from May 14 until today. This morning Libreboot’s main developer, Leah Rowe, announced in an email to the GNU mailing list that she is pulling Libreboot from the GNU Project.
Is it “organic,” or just merely “natural?” Is it really “open source hardware,” or merely hardware with a degree of openess? David Jones explains the problem in identifying which is which and who is whom.
The Video Screening Room
David L. Jones, an electronics design engineer based in Sydney Australia, explains his pragmatic solution to the use of the open source hardware logo — inspired by the varying gradations of the Creative Commons licenses.
Also included: Gilles Chanteperdrix passes, corporate Linux, Cisco patches against the NSA, MariaDB’s proprietary moves, Netrunner becomes Maui, Ubuntu to replace Upstart, Fedora and Wayland, and Linux client for Yandex Disk.
FOSS Week in Review
The last LinuxCon: This year’s LinuxCon, held in the city of Toronto which is one of my favorite old haunts, was the last love fest for Linux under the name LinuxCon, which had come to be synonymous for a certain type of Linux festival. In a way, it’s fitting this should be the last as the show ended on the day before Linux’s 25th birthday and was, in many ways, a celebration of the first quarter century of Linux. In another way it’s a crying shame. LinuxCon has come to stand for the community spirited nature of Linux, even though backed by the Linux Foundation, which becomes less of a community organization with the passing of each year.
Wow! This live Hangout show looks a lot like a DIY version of one of the morning shows on over-the-air TV — and if there’s any doubt that the maker movement thrives on open source, the first guest’s project is all about Python and Arduino. Be sure to check out the cool Star Trek combadge. Beam us up, Mr. Shapiro!
The Video Screening Room
Lady Ada and Philip Torrone are both legendary makers and exemplary sharers of hacks and tips. Their weekly “Show-And-Tell” Google Hangout is always fascinating. These Hangouts are archived to YouTube.
While the Linux Foundation’s executive director Jim Zemlin’s opening keynote address at LinuxCon 2016 was filled with visions of the past, present and future of Linux and open source, the focus was on the enterprise and making money.
Op-ed
“Linux. We made it. Twenty-five years.”
With these words Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, opened up LinuxCon North America, this year being held on the northwest shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto. As expected, the opening keynote address was a 25 minute pep rally that was long on the enterprise and short on the desktop or any other area where Linux is important but not lining anyone’s pockets with cash.
