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FOSS Force

FOSS & Accessibility: The New Frontier

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.

The Ubuntu, Microsoft & SUSE (Bermuda) Triangle

There’s little doubt that a few eyebrows were raised by the news on Friday, when Larry Cafiero reported on FOSS Force about Canonical’s partnership with Microsoft involving Microsoft’s OCS hardware and Ubuntu’s open source Metal-as-a-Service (MAAS) deployment product. Those with a little memory might wonder if this is a case of history repeating itself, as we’ve seen Microsoft court aspiring princess distros before, with SUSE, not long after the distro was purchased by Novell, a company with an uneven history.

Ubuntu plus Microsoft
A graphic from the Ubuntu web site, touting the distro’s partnership with Microsoft.
Shortly after the turn of the century, Utah based Novell, desperate to stem shrinking revenues, announced it’s intentions of becoming a major Linux and open source player. During the 1980s and 90s the company had flourished in the networking market with its NetWare operating system, a business that was by 2001 in rapid decline, mostly because Windows was now able to network out-of-the-box, and partly due to a customer relations fumble by CEO Eric Schmidt which resulted in the loss of much of the company’s installed base.

In 2003, to establish its open source cred, Novell went on a buying spree, which began in August when it spent an undisclosed amount to acquire Ximian, the open source company behind Evolution, Mono and Red Carpet, the later being an early attempt at an universal package manager for Linux, a precursor to Linspire’s Click & Run. In November, just three months later, Novell spent $210 million, partly financed by an investment from IBM, to purchase SUSE (then SuSE), which was at the time one of the top three Linux distros by most estimations.

‘All Thing Open’ Announces Call for Speakers

On Wednesday afternoon, the All Things Open (ATO) conference announced its Call for Speakers for 2015. The call will remain open for 45 days, which means it will close sometime near the end of April. Those interested in being a speaker at this year’s event can apply on the ATO website. 2015 marks the third year for the Raleigh, North Carolina event, which is well on the way to becoming the premiere open source enterprise conference in the Eastern United States.

All Things Open 2015After being a two day event for its first two years, this year the event, which is staged by the Columbia, South Carolina based nonprofit IT-oLogy, will expand to take place over a three day period. In addition, the event is moving from midweek to the beginning of the week, and is scheduled to begin on Sunday, October 18th and run through Tuesday, October 20th.

As in years past, the event will take place at the Raleigh Convention Center in the city’s downtown.

Linus Under Wraps, Fedora Tests Wayland & More…

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.”

Linux TorvaldsThe “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.”

OCP Summit: Passing the Open Hardware Tipping Point

In the FOSS realm, we’re all about Free/Open Source Software. But what about the hardware on which it runs?

For the last four years, the Open Compute Project has had that covered. Just as Linux and BSD have blazed a trail in the open source side of things for software, OCP seeks to open hardware the same way, providing standards for open hardware and allowing for hardware makers to use them in creating networking and server works in a way that benefits all.

This week, the OCP held their summit in downtown San Jose — a two-day event which captured the latest in developments in the open hardware field — and the McEnery Convention Center was abuzz with activity.

POSSCON Returns to South Carolina

POSSCON is back.

After taking a year off so that IT-oLogy, the nonprofit behind the event, could concentrate on launching the Great Wide Open conference in Atlanta, the POSSCON developers’ conference will return to Columbia, South Carolina on Tuesday and Wednesday, April 14th and 15th. Last year, regular attendees of POSSCON were urged to attend the Atlanta event instead. This year’s event will take place at various venues in the Vista, Columbia’s arts and entertainment district.

What Linux Distro Do You Use?

Inquiring minds want to know: What Linux distro is on your computer?

Market share matters, even in the nonprofit world in which most distros live. Most likely, a large user base means more dollars coming in from donations or corporate grants. Also, a popular and much used distro might also prompt more folks with technical skills to volunteer, which might result in an improved user experience — or not. You know what they say about too many cooks in the pot.

Using FOSS Out-of-the-Box

It’s a rare thing when I double down on a previous week’s article. Most of the time that second effort is perceived as defensive or argumentative. This is neither. It’s just a rare thing.

We spoke together last week about some glaring holes in AAC software in the Linuxsphere. AAC is short for Augmentative and Alternative Communication. I considered the topic to be important enough to be discussed here on FOSS Force. Given the thoughtful and helpful comments that preceded publication, it’s apparent that others felt the same way.

Libre Planet 2015 logoOne of the commenters was thoughtful enough to even include a bash script that made working with the text to speech application Festival much easier. I’m putting the script here for anyone that wants to use it. It works great and I was able to make it work easily.

A Developer’s Eye View of Bodhi 3.0.0

After two years of development, the stable version of the latest and greatest version of Bodhi Linux, 3.0.0, was released last month. There’s little doubt that loyal users breathed a sigh of relief with the release, as there had been some question about whether the distro would continue after project founder Jeff Hoogland briefly resigned in September, saying he no longer had the time required by his duties to the project. The good news was that he continued to work with the development team, and in January returned in his old role as lead developer. The long awaited new Bodhi was released less than a month later.

Bodhi 3.0.0 desktop
Click to enlarge
Like many distros these days, Bodhi is built on top of a Ubuntu base, in this case using version 14.04 LTS as its core. However, Bodhi is anything but just another cookie cutter distro. From it’s inception back in 2010, the main purpose of the project has been to offer a Linux distribution that fully takes advantage of the lightweight but full featured and elegantly beautiful Enlightenment desktop environment. Beyond that, the Bodhi development team embraces a philosophy of minimalism — but not a forced minimalism which forces users into a confining or even crippling environment. A default installation of the distro is very bare bones, a base on which the user can build a system suited for his or her individual needs.

According to Hoogland, the new version of Bodhi is being well received, both by old users updating their systems and by new users giving the operating system a try for the first time.

Free Bassel Day, Bodhi Linux Chromebook Giveaway & More…

FOSS Week in Review

As the week finally becomes Friday, here are a few things that deserve mentioning in the FOSS realm:

Bodhi Chromebook Giveaway: What’s better than having a Chromebook? Having a Chromebook with Bodhi installed on it, of course. We’ll let Jeff Hoogland explain:

“Whenever I am done working with development hardware I picked up for Bodhi Linux, instead of letting it rot in the corner of my basement I would prefer to give it back to our users,” Hoogland writes in a post on the Bodhi website describing the giveaway. “Last year we gave away an ARM powered Samsung Chromebook and this year I find myself with a spare Acer C720 Chromebook after recently upgrading to the i3 based version.”

Bodhi Linux logoSo on May 15, some lucky Bodhi contributor — key word here is “Bodhi contributor” — will receive “a gently used Acer C720 Chromebook powered by Bodhi Linux.”

Says Jeff: “If you have already donated or contributed to the Bodhi project in 2015 no extra effort is needed on your part. If you have been thinking about getting involved or sending a donation our way now is a fantastic time to do as you might end up getting something back!”

Details on the giveaway are on the Bodhi site.

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