May 9, 2025
Keeping tech free
It inspires awe how quickly Friday comes along — one minute I’m talking stories for publication with my colleagues Ken Starks and Christine Hall, and the next thing I know, deadlines are poking me in the shoulder and saying, “Well…?”
So while I am reminded by my astute daughter that pirates, too, would also prefer to program in C because, well, that’s where they sail (thank you, Mimi), let’s take a look at the week in FOSS.
One of the several privileges of fatherhood — maybe it’s a duty, I’ll have to check — is that you have opportunities to torture your children with bad jokes. I am proud to say I have not failed in my parental role in that endeavor — ask my daughter — and whenever the letter R comes up, it is usually quick to be followed by a pirate reference. The R programming language, which runs on a variety of platforms and architectures, is no exception.
R (of course, you have to extend it out, like “Arrrrrrrrrrrr” or it won’t make sense).
I wasn’t in search of a hero when I found him.
Burt Rutan signed autographs on that blistering hot June day in the Mojave desert. His collection of engineers, scientists and “enterprise rouges” shouldered their way into front page news. SpaceShipOne had just become the first civilian aircraft/spacecraft to carry the first civilian pilot into space. His pilot for that epic flight into space, Mike Melvill, was the first recognized and licensed space pilot on the planet. How about that as “your most shining achievement” on a future resume? Burt Ratan and his company, Applied Composites, took home the ten million dollar prize offered by SpaceX. They fulfilled all of the requirements, to include everyone being alive upon landing.
I was a member of the crowd that gathered in the high country desert for the flight and the homecoming of SpaceShipOne. We planned our trip in order to be early. We were sure that a couple of hundred people would show up for this history-in-the-making event.
Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
It’s been a busy week for those in the FOSS realm — from sea-to-shining-sea, and even down South — with the Red Hat Summit going on in Boston, with Open Source Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and with preparations being finalized for the upcoming Texas Linux Fest in two months, among other things.
Let’s take these one at a time, shall we?
Red Hat, Samsung Team Up: While there has been a lot of oooh-ing and ahhh-ing over what’s been coming out of the Red Hat Summit in Boston this week, probably the most intriguing news to come out of the proceedings is that Red Hat and Samsung Electronics America “announced a strategic alliance to deliver the next generation of mobile solutions for the enterprise,” according to Red Hat’s PR department.
Sarah Sharp, an embedded software architect at Intel, and Kesha Shah, a student at Dhirubhai Ambani Institute of Information and Communication Technology, were named the winners of Red Hat’s first Women in Open Source Awards at the Red Hat Summit in Boston on Tuesday.
The Women in Open Source Awards recognize women in two categories – Community and Academic – who make important contributions to open source projects and communities, or who promote open source methodologies.
Free open source software. FOSS. The vision of one man…a vision tenacious enough to catch fire and spread around the globe. Free open source software is a staple of the enterprise for most of the world. We have one man to thank for that. Richard Stallman’s courage and foresight will be known and built upon long after we are gone. His contribution is truly his timeless, global legacy.
The only sad part of the story, at least so far, is that the United States has stubbornly dug in her heels. She has chosen to pay homage to the Microsofts and the Apples in our nation. We remain as one of the only nations in the world that openly shuns FOSS in the enterprise. We not only shun it, we work directly against it in the halls of our Senate. That’s due to one simple thing.
Money.
Ken Starks is the founder of the Helios Project and Reglue, which for 20 years provided refurbished older computers running Linux to disadvantaged school kids, as well as providing digital help for senior citizens, in the Austin, Texas area. He was a columnist for FOSS Force from 2013-2016, and remains part of our family. Follow him on Twitter: @Reglue
Mageia 5, released on Friday and over a year in the making, is familiar territory to those of us who cut our Linux teeth on Mandriva back in the days when it was called Mandrake. That’s not to say that the distro is old or outdated, far from it, but any Mandrake old-timer will instantly recognize the roots of this distro.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
Yep, it looks like the end of the week is upon us once again, and with it there has been a lot of news in the FOSS realm. What you might have missed, if you weren’t paying attention, is the following:
Happy 13th, Tux Paint: There was reason to break out the candles this week — 13 of ’em — and put them on a cake before saying “Happy Birthday” to Tux Paint. Tux Paint was first released to the wider world on June 16, 2002. Now that it’s a teenager, we can see what fantastic progress the New Breed Software folks have achieved in this time.
You’ve read the articles: “Linux sysadmins in demand,” yadda yadda yadda. You’ve been using Linux for some time and have been thinking, “Gee, I wish I could make a living with Linux.”
You can get the training; but it costs so much, you might say. Well, now you can get a scholarship, so there’s no excuse not to go for it.
The Linux Foundation, ever in the forefront of shaping the future of Linux, has announced the 2015 Linux Training Scholarship Program, which aims to provide educational funds “to up-and-coming developers and sysadmins who show incredible promise…but do not otherwise have the ability to attend Linux Foundation training courses,” according to a page on the Foundation’s website.
