The FOSS Force Interview
Back in June I had the opportunity to meet Deb Nicholson, a person who is well known to people who frequent open source and Linux conferences.
I was dog tired, having had only about four hours sleep. I’d gotten up at about five in the morning, much earlier than I think is civilized, in order to make it to Charlotte in time for the opening ceremonies at the SouthEast LinuxFest (SELF). I’d allowed for traffic jams in the morning rush hour traffic that didn’t happen and so arrived early enough to have time to try to catch a nap on an inviting and empty couch I found in the vendor hallway that turned out to be part of the booth space for Internet Systems Consortium.

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





And while using Linux may well change your life, I may have ever-so-slightly exaggerated the amount and impact of that change. Maybe just a little bit. Maybe.



Claude and Jane are good folks. Both in their mid 70s. They live on their combined retirement funds and spend their time keeping busy with kids, grandkids, and from what I hear, a great-grandchild in a matter of months. They come over for coffee or tea at times, and we always see them at community center events. They are not well off by any standard, but they do okay…until last Saturday.



“We developed Purism so that users can have access to the highest quality computers without compromising these beliefs,” the Purism website states. “The founder of Purism developed the Philosophical Contract, that we all abide by, which was adopted from the Free Software Foundation, and expanded to include hardware manufacturing as it relates to software.”
The project is called