Well, it’s all about the source.

1 ) The beef is free as beer. You just have to get out of the door, find a beef, collect it and take it home. Then you can kill it and cook it with ultimate flexibility.

2 ) a properly conserved beef will last years. No need to buy a new chicken to upgrade your fridge every week.

3 ) If you have been told the beef is for russian communists think again. It’s from-the-bottom capitalism. No mega-chicken corporation to deal with.

4 ) Chicken can’t fly, everybody knows that. Beef will soon be cloud ready. Really. Believe me.

5 ) Beef has a king share in butcher stores.

6 ) Beefs run faster than chickens.

7 ) You can make chicken run on a beef. Show me the opposite if you can.

8 ) My mom loves beef. She can cook one by herself. She just needed a little help from me to capture one.

Please stop this disinformation. 2010 will be the year of the beef on the table.

We’re in the flame season it seems.

After a massive flame on a recent news, Carla Schroder invites Mono proponents to get their facts straight.

Ubuntu Is Driving Me Away struck some nerves yesterday, with 43 talkbacks and still going. The issue presented in the article seems fairly simple: given the controversy surrounding Mono, some folks feel that Mono and Mono applications should not be included on the Ubuntu installation CD. There are other, better applications that could be included, and that the pressure to include Mono by default is not about its merits, but forcing Microsoft technologies and its unholy embrace into Ubuntu.

Mono fans have been creating a giant ruckus in the Ubuntu forums, and even here have made some fur fly, and have not bothered to say why removing Mono from the Ubuntu installation CD and simply including it in the standard repos is not acceptable. It will be available for anyone who wants it, just like the majority of Ubuntu packages. The inability of Mono fans to answer that simple question has me a bit bothered, as though there is a deeper agenda.

Rather, the discussion here has been primarily about why Mono is not a threat to Linux, after all it is GPL, and nobody should be upset by it. As discussions tend to be fractured, wandering, and emotional, I think that a calm presentation of why Mono is desirable, why it is not a threat, and why it should be included in Ubuntu by default would be beneficial. Write it up, plain text with simple HTML tags for paragraph and line breaks, and email it to me at cschroder@internet.com and I will publish it as soon as I receive it. Say anything you want, keeping in mind of course the LT TOS, which in a nutshell is no swear words and no personal attacks.

I extended this same invitation in the Talkbacks yesterday and so far have no takers. Comments do get overlooked in long threads, so here it is again out in plain view. Thank you, and I look forward to seeing what people have to say.

Go go go little crusaders, send your 10 commandments to cschroder@internet.com. They’ll be published as soon as they arrive.

Update: Jo Shields sent a long and detailed response to LinuxToday. I’m not linking every response sent there, but this one is well written and I feel it may be quite representative of the stance of Mono proposers.

MILAN – Breaking news ! WorksWithU‘s Guy Thouret has just seen a flame for the first time.

No, wait, it’s worse: apparently he has seen many, but only recently decided to reveal the issue to the world. Other than being a bold critique to the occidental society in its whole, the article points out a  disappointing lack of CoC acceptance by the mailing list users (not to talk with the lack of netiquette, but hey, who never forgot to bottom quote, after all?). Furthermore he discovered that “One thing is for sure: A lot of emails sent to the list that do not further a relevant discussion.”

Still, he writes, despite MOTU prompt intervention, “there’s no solution” !

It’s difficult to overlook the clear and compassionate purpose of the writer to link the issue to the human nature itself rather than individual bad intentions, and the pain he feels when he further writes:

Clearly this proves the point that list members are not capable of agreeing upon a workable solution and are not capable of self governance without the oversight of someone with authority for the list (a list owner or admin).

Notwithstanding, he takes the plunge and says what we were all thinking about:

A governance team with authority to warn and ultimately even ban persistent offenders is necessary. It’s time for the Ubuntu community and Canonical to come up with a solution to the list abuse.

Time has finally come for redemption. Late too late all the wretches run. These kings of beasts now counting their days ! ¹

Many websites archive the mailing list for future reference. The result: Past comments may haunt Ubuntu users for years to come.

Amen brother. Would we ever risk to burn in hell for the eternity ? Hell not !
(to comment this post CoC acceptance is not strictly required, but still strongly advised)

1. can you guess the citation?

I’ve come across this nice Stack Overflow entry, which lists the best code comments found by the users.

This is the highest rated:

    //Code sanitized to protect the foolish.
    using System;
    using System.Collections.Generic;
    using System.Text;
    using System.Reflection;
    using System.Web.UI;
    namespace Mobile.Web.Control
    {
        ///
        /// Class used to work around Richard being a fucking idiot
        ///
        ///
        /// The point of this is to work around his poor design so that paging will
        /// work on a mobile control. The main problem is the BindCompany() method,
        /// which he hoped would be able to do everything. I hope he dies.
        ///
        public abstract class RichardIsAFuckingIdiotControl : MobileBaseControl, ICompanyProfileControl
        {
            protected abstract Pager Pager { get; }
            public void BindCompany(int companyId) { }
            public RichardIsAFuckingIdiotControl()
            {
                MakeSureNobodyAccidentallyGetsBittenByRichardsStupidity();
            }
            private void MakeSureNobodyAccidentallyGetsBittenByRichardsStupidity()
            {
                // Make sure nobody is actually using that fucking bindcompany method
                MethodInfo m = this.GetType().GetMethod("BindCompany", BindingFlags.DeclaredOnly |
                    BindingFlags.Instance | BindingFlags.Public | BindingFlags.NonPublic);
                if (m != null)
                {
                    throw new RichardIsAFuckingIdiotException("No!! Don't use the fucking BindCompany method!!!");
                }
                // P.S. this method is a joke ... the rest of the class is fucking serious
            }
            ///
            /// This returns true if this control is supposed to be doing anything
            /// at all for this request. Richard thought it was a good idea to load
            /// the entire website during every request and have things turn themselves
            /// off. He also thought bandanas and aviator sunglasses were "fuckin'
            /// gnarly, dude."
            ///
            protected bool IsThisTheRightPageImNotSureBecauseRichardIsDumb()
            {
                return Request.QueryString["Section"] == this.MenuItemKey;
            }
            protected override void OnLoad(EventArgs e)
            {
                if (IsThisTheRightPageImNotSureBecauseRichardIsDumb())
                {
                    Page.LoadComplete += new EventHandler(Page_LoadComplete);
                    Pager.RowCount = GetRowCountBecauseRichardIsDumb();
                }
                base.OnLoad(e);
            }
            protected abstract int GetRowCountBecauseRichardIsDumb();
            protected abstract void BindDataBecauseRichardIsDumb();
            void Page_LoadComplete(object sender, EventArgs e)
            {
                BindDataBecauseRichardIsDumb();
            }
            // the rest of his reduh-ndant interface members
            public abstract string MenuItemName { get; set; }
            public abstract string MenuItemKey { get; set; }
            public abstract bool IsCapable(CapabilityCheck checker, int companyId);
            public abstract bool ShowInMenu { get; }
            public virtual Control CreateHeaderControl()
            {
                return null;
            }
        }
    }

This is the second:

stop(); // Hammertime!

(people may have not understood it, but it’s probably related to teeworlds.

Check the other entries !

Seems like I’m not alone on identi.ca.

The Ubuntu designers team is now aboard as well, as this dent says:

Starting today, we’re using Twitter and Identica to collect feedback from people using Ubuntu.

If you’d like to follow their adventures you can use:

• their identi.ca feed
• their twitter feed

Just a quick notice for everyone interested. I opened an account on identi.ca, and I’m actually looking forward to use it.

So, see you there !

Gnome Foundation elections are getting near, and the candidacies have already been submitted to the mailing list.

Here’s an overview of the candidates, along with the copy paste of their candidacy mail. I also tried to find the hackergotchi for everyone, and did minor edits to the formatting – for sanity.

Probably you don’t have the right to vote (vote is open to members only), but chances are you could find interesting the nominees anyway.

Or you could tell me more about the candidates, what you think about them and which would you vote for.

Behdad Esfahbod

Nick: behdad
Home: http://behdad.org/
Blog: http://mces.behdad.org/
More: http://live.gnome.org/BehdadEsfahbod
Affiliation: Red Hat

Summary:

I’ve been serving on board for 2.5 years now and have been holding the title of President of the Foundation and Chairman of the board for the current term. Fortunately the experience is not as painful as it used to be, thanks to Stormy. I think we are in a very good shape on the organization side, but there’s a storm coming (no pun), with all the GNOME 3 planning, messaging, marketing, etc. So I like to stay on board to help with it all.

Details:

I’ve been heavily involved in GNOME since about 2005. These days my hacking can be summarized as:

• Keeping an eye on everything Unicode
• Developing everything font and text related
• Trying to keep GNOME lean

In more programmer-friendly terms, that means I (co-)maintain and develop on: fribidi, harfbuzz, fontconfig, cairo, pango, vte, and hack here and there further up the stack every once in a while.

On the non-hacking side, previously I served on the Accounts Team. More recently, I’ve chaired GUADEC program committee for the past couple of years. While on board this year, I’ve done (and if elected, plan to continue doing):

• Hackfest / conference organization
• Worked on the a11y outreach program
• Making sure Stormy find the information / people she needs to get
  work done
• Make sure decisions are made / things move forward

Cheers,
behdad

Brian Cameron

Affilitation: Sun Microsystems
Blog: http://blogs.sun.com/yippi/

I would love to see more people running for the elections. Do it!

Summary (75 words)

I am running for re-election for the board because I love GNOME, the community, and free software. I also believe that I can help make the GNOME foundation and community successful. I have done work with GNOME accessibility and feel strongly that the community needs to further outreach to meet the free desktop needs for all people, regardless of income, location, gender, or level of ability.

I am affiliated with Sun Microsystems, Inc.

Who?

I have been a part of the GNOME community since January, 2001 and have experience as a UNIX programmer and technical documentation writer for over 17 years. I have been the maintainer of GDM and have had the honor of serving my first term on the board this past year. I have regularly attended GUADEC conferences since 2002. My nickname on IRC is yippi. I
live in Chicago in the United States.

Why?

I am highly motivated and have time to invest to make the Board successful. I have passion for working with the GNOME community, and would like to further expand the ways I am involved. I have a good working relationship with many people in the community.

Aside from the day-to-day work of being on the board, I have had a number of accomplishments in my past term:

• A significant amount of work to organize the first GNOME.Asia summit.
• I have been working closely with Stormy, the Foundation CEO, and have been acting as her manager.
• Have been responsible for getting the Foundation covered under D&O and General Liability insurance policies.
• Many tasks relating to the GNOME Marketing improvements over the past term. I frequently highlight the humanitarian and accessibility aspects in marketing discussions since I think it is important to not lose focus on these aspects.
• Worked with the accessibility community to establish the weekly IRC meetings to improve communication between the a11y community and the larger GNOME community.

That said, I think that it takes more than one term for a person to really become a productive member of the board. It takes a fair bit of time just to get one’s head around what needs to be done. Now that I have more experience, I would like to expand my involvement and serve as an officer in my next term, perhaps as secretary or treasurer. I believe that my experience serving the board in the past term will be helpful in the next term.

Also, GNOME rocks.

Thanks,

Brian Cameron

Diego Escalante Urrelo

Nick: diegoe (how creative!)
Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/diegoe/
- http://diegoe.blogspot.com/ (if you are learning Spanish)
Affiliation: SMB Training till end of May (not GNOME related), then,
none.
†Summary:

I’m Diego, 21, from Lima – Perú. Some of you know me as a pesky bug triager, others as an even peskier (is that even a word?) patch submitter and others as a pesky almost spam mail source.
I’ve been doing GNOME related stuff since 2006 although I really got more involved only in 2007, since then I’ve done code work for Epiphany and other modules, mostly fixes or small features (I did woohoo bar for Ephy! -firefox stole my idea, I swear). I’m deeply in love with GNOME as a project and community .
Since December 2008 I’ve been serving in the Board replacing Jeff.

Why Board?

I feel that my last months in the Board have let me understand how it works, I’m sure I have done a good job and that I can do it even better for the following period.

What did I do for this half period in the Board?

Of course, the following wasn’t made by me alone (those other six guys at the Board rock hard) but I feel this is were I was more involved:

• Helped gather the annual user group reports and hand pick from the flood of pictures all around the web to go with such reports
• Worked closely with Stormy to bootstrap the travel committee
• Worked with Bruno to get the membership committee refreshed
• Preparing a quickstart guide for new Board members (that you all new board members will receive)
• Received feedback from various members about their areas of interest in GNOME and problems they had (luckily most of those got solved quickly)

Why running again?

Because I feel that I can do a better job now that I understand how Board works and because I have big enthusiasm for the stuff that we will
see in the following months, I want to keep helping closely.
Some stuff I would like to try to focus on now would be marketing in the 3.0 context, fundraising, keep working with the committees and a second
edition of the GNOME LA Tour .

Thanks for reading,

Diego

Germán Póo-Caamaño

Nick: gpoo
Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/~gpoo/
http://www.calcifer.org/~gpoo/ (for Spanish speakers)
Affiliation: None

Summary

I am a contributor since 2000 and I am running for the Foundation Board because I want to help Gnome and its community
from a different perspective and bringing an independent voice.
I want to see the communication from Foundation Board’s to its community improved. I will work to empower contributors, work
groups and local communities.

My involvement in Gnome

• I have been involved in Gnome since the beginning of the current century, and I have been working with Unix since 1991 and Linux since 1995.
• I have attended GUADEC from 2002 to 2008, but also to other Gnome events, such as GUADEC-ES (Hispanic Guadec), Forum do Gnome (Brazil), Gnome Day (Chile), Involucrate (Peru).
• When I was young I was coordinator of Spanish translation team and I wrote gnome-nettool. Since then, I helped here and there.
• I usually give a hand whenever I am asked for.

Promotion of Gnome and Free Software

• I have spent a lot of my spare time promoting Gnome and FLOSS in conferences, I have given more than 60 talks on Gnome and related topics.
• I have been involved in local communities since its beginnings, such as Gnome Hispano and Gnome Chile. I founded and organized the biggest Linux[1] conference in Chile, but also I organized other events related with Free Software and Gnome.
• I have helped and encouraged several developers to get involved in Gnome.

Motivations:

I want to be on the Foundation’s board because I want to improve the communication from the board to its community. I think It
has improved trough the years, but I am confident it could be better.

I want to help to getting things done as quick as possible whenever its related to conferences, hackfest and events from local communities, in order to improve the use of foundation’s budget and communication.

[1] Yes, the kernel.

Regards,

Hubert Figuiere

Nick: hub
Blog: http://www.figuiere.net/hub/blog/
Affiliation: None

Summary:

I have been involved with Free Software for a decade or so, mostly working on the application side: AbiWord, gnote, etc. I have attended several Free Software conferences as resources permitted and given talk on several occasion. I have a true faith in GNOME and what it brings to users of Free Software, and I truly believe that’s where the future is.

Why?

With the past achievements of the Foundation, I believe that the board is a great asset to GNOME as a project, and as I have never been member of the board (nor even a candidate), that I could bring fresh hands and eyes. If elected to the board I would do my best to serve GNOME’s (and the Foundation’s) best interest and help pushing it GNOME on the non-coding aspects.

Misc.

I’m based in Canada.

Hub

Jorge O. Castro

Blog: http://castrojo.wordpress.com
Affiliation: Canonical LTD
Hi!

I would like to announce my candidacy for the GNOME Foundation Board.

My motivation

I would like to extend my contributions to GNOME. I work with community people on a daily basis and I know my organizational skills will benefit the project. To use an ice hockey term I prefer to just “put my head down and skate” to get things done. I know this will be hard work but I am committed to helping GNOME be successful.

Why you would vote for me

• I am dependable and I work hard.
• I respond quickly to queries, even if the answer is “I’ll have to get back to you.”
• I like to work as a member of a team; this is where I feel I am most effective. I am currently on the Ubuntu Community Team for Canonical Ltd. and I thrive on the dynamics of community work.
• I love GNOME.

Why you might not want to vote for me

• There are areas of GNOME that I am unfamiliar with, for example, a11y, i18n, and mobile. I look forward to growing in these areas.
• I love tacos.
• I am very familiar with the Desktop and Developer platform, however I do not have a development background.

In conclusion, I am motivated to do this and I believe I can make a difference.

Regards,

Jorge O. Castro

Lucas Rocha

Nick: lucasr
Blog: http://blogs.gnome.org/lucasr
More: http://live.gnome.org/LucasRocha
Affiliation: litl

Summary

I’ve been part of the Foundation Board for almost 2 years now. My impression is that the Foundation is gradually improving every year as an organization. GNOME is in a very important moment now with a lot of important changes to come. I think I can be very helpful on making sure Board supports the community in the best way possible towards the GNOME 3 goals.

Details

I’ve been an active GNOME contributor since 2005. Since then I got involved in a bunch of different (technical and non-technical) activities inside the project by maintaining (gnome-session, gjs, eog and zenity) and contributing to some of our software modules, doing release management, co-coordinating projects (Google Summer of Code in GNOME, Planet GNOME, GNOME Journal, GNOME Roadmap, GNOME Brasil, …), side-contributing to some teams (Web, Marketing, …), organizing events, and other misc stuff. In the specific GNOME Foundation scope, I’ve been a member of the Membership Committee for more than 1 year, from which a resigned some time after I became part of the Board since July 2007. Currently, I work for litl, a startup developing some cool stuff based on GNOME and other FLOSS technologies. I’m from Brazil!

While on Foundation Board, I worked on:

– A11y outreach program
- New Friends of GNOME
- Annual report
- General communication with the community
- Daily board decisions / communication

Cheers!

–lucasr

Og Maciel

Nick: OgMaciel
Affiliation: rPath Inc
Blog: http://ogmaciel.com (en_US) / http://blog.ogmaciel.com (pt_BR)

Summary

The GNOME Project has allowed me to take my first steps into the world of collaborative projects and long nights of translation sprints. Due to my open minded attitude, I have been able to get involved in many different projects and work with a great number of interesting people.

My passion is in the community aspect of these projects and how to better integrate new comers and volunteers with the rest of the community. I am also extremely interested in how we, the open source community as a whole, can leverage this immense pool of ideas and projects, and use it to the benefit of all.

If elected to the board, I will bring in my experience of building communities and guiding/enabling users to become more active in the GNOME Project. After all, the GNOME Project IS about people! I will also push to make accessibility a high priority for the project.

Biography

For the last 48 months I have been deeply involved with the planning and organization of several open source collaborative projects, mostly related to the localization and translation for the Brazilian Portuguese (pt_BR) language. During this process I eventually became a “full time” member of several organizations, most notably becoming the leader for the Ubuntu Brazilian Portuguese Translation Team, Foresight Linux, Xfce, LXDE and a member for the GNOME Foundation.

My ideals have always led me to maintain a very generic, non-distribution specific approach to my projects, which in my opinion allows for a “create once, use it anywhere” methodology. For instance, the Brazilian Portuguese translation process for GNOME was showing a 73% completion rate prior to the 2.18 release. I initiated and organized the collaborative effort between the Brazilian Ubuntu and GNOME teams that led to the successful completion and release of GNOME 2.18, completely translated in only a few months. This process was a delicate one, since the Ubuntu team had direct access to Launchpad’s Rosetta translation system and were not used to having their work reviewed by non-Ubuntu staff. I believe I have played an important role in keeping everyone’s egos out of the equation and making sure that everyone focused on what was most important: delivering a 100% translated product. When Ubuntu Feisty Fawn was delivered, it contained our translations from upstream, plus the minor tweaks needed to accommodate Ubuntu’s own code changes. Moreover, all the distributions that released GNOME 2.18 were also able to take advantage of our collaborative effort, another major factor that attracted our volunteers.

The process described above also served as the jumping point for some other multi-collaborative projects I have initiated, such as the unification of a standard and common knowledge repository for Brazilian localization teams, currently in development and supported by the GNOME, LXDE, XFCE, Ubuntu, Fedora, Linux Documentation Project Brazilian branches teams!

I have also spearheaded and organized the creation of several communities and projects, such as the creation of the Ubuntu Brazilian Documentation Team and Planet Blog aggregator, vital source of information for the ever so expanding Brazilian presence in the open source world! I am also present in pretty much all of the active Linux distributions communities in Brazil, such as Gentoo, Arch, Slackware, Fedora, and Debian, to name a few.

As you can see I’m a strong believer in working with people from different projects, empowering users to become contributors, and collaboration and sharing of resources. If elected I will strive to apply the principles mentioned above to every single area that makes up GNOME and make sure that people are acknowledged for their contributions and hard work.

Sincerely,
–
Og B. Maciel

Srinivasa Ragavan

Irc : srag (in GIMPNet/FreeNode)
Web : http://blogs.gnome.org/sragavan
Affiliation : Novell, Inc.

Short Summary:

I love GNOME, free software and the community. I care for it. I’m contributing to GNOME for the last 6 years, by means of code, bugs, patches and features. I want to contribute more in non-code terms being in the board. I’m confident I can do it. Every GNOME board I have seen is awesome, unique and ever-improving. I’m sure, I would add my best to it.

Me ?

I’m 28 years old, computer science engineering graduate from India. Out of college, I joined Novell, and 8 years on, still there. First 2 years, I was working on BIND and Apache projects. Since 2003, I’m with GNOME, contributing to various GNOME projects and OpenOffice.org. Notably, I’m the project maintainer for Evolution (and friends) for the last ~3 years. I’m the author of Anjal, the mailer for Netbooks.

What have I done till now in GNOME?

I have been writing code for ~6 years. Mostly patches, bugs enhancements. I’m maintain Evolution. I have contributed to create a self-sustaining Evolution community. I have brought new module maintainers in Evolution, who were active contributing. I have streamlined patch reviews in Evolution, and enabled more contributions to Evolution .Evolution adds to at least 50 new contributors every major release. I have been the top patch reviewer in GNOME for the last two years. I’m currently writing (Anjal) new mail client for low-power, low memory devices and mobile devices. I manage an Open Source Internship program in India (through Novell & GNOME Bangalore chapter), which enable students to contribute to Open source projects in GNOME, Open Office, LDTP and Mono. I still mentor few students in contributing to GNOME and other open source projects.

What will I do if I’m on the board?

• The release team has done an amazing road map and schedule for GNOME3. I would stand by and support release team when required and then GNOME to have a successful in GNOME 3.0 release.
• We have an amazing Desktop, great hackers, a wonderful community and users. We have good marketing as well. But I feel, there a lot of room for improvement. I would give more focus on GNOME marketing.
• I love GNOME, the community and the users. I’m would keep my ears wide open and listen to everyone and be a people representative on the board.
• I would do my best for arranging hack fests, meetings and conferences.
• I was successful with the open source internship program that I started in India. It helped in adding a few consistent contributors to GNOME. But India has a lot more potential contributors to GNOME and free software. Being part of the board, I would strive hard towards making more GNOME contributors from India.

When I first told my friends, some of them asked me, ‘Do I have time?’.
Time is something that everyone lacks. I swear, I’ll do better planning and dedicate necessary time for the board activities.

If I win, this will be my first term for the GNOME board. Vote for me.

Thanks,
Srini.

Vincent Untz

Nick: vuntz
Blog: http://www.vuntz.net/journal/
More: http://live.gnome.org/VincentUntz
Affiliation: Novell
75 words Summary

Hi, here I am, Vincent, 7 gnome-years old now. I’m running for the Foundation Board this year, after thinking hard about it. I believe the Foundation is doing great; it’s certainly not perfect, but my feeling is that things have improved in the past few years. Being on the Board is the way I choose to make sure this goes on. Of course, I could pretend I’m perfect and… wait, I’m not perfect?

More Details

I started contributing to GNOME in 2002, and I’ve been working in various areas of the project since then — bug triage, code, release management, local promotion, Foundation, etc. I have some irrational love for what we’re doing

I’ve been increasingly happy with what the Foundation has done in the past few years, and I believe this trend can go on if we keep working hard. And I’d like to help here. Of course, there’s no need to be on the
board to help (yes, everybody can contribute to the Foundation, don’t tell me you didn’t know that!).

I’m running for a few reasons:

• I will have time for this role. Yes, it’s worth mentioning
• I think I’ve done a relatively good job as a board member in the current term. Nothing huge (or at least, I don’t remember anything huge), but certainly enough to make me happy.
• I know the community well, and I’m comfortable with talking to anybody in our community (or not), about any topic. I also believe people can come to me and discuss anything without any problem. Of course, I might be mistaken But if I’m not, then it’s a good thing for helping coordinate stuff.
• I somehow like to do some of the boring parts that other people usually don’t enjoy. I said “some”

Also, I enjoy sending my candidacy mail just before the deadline. This probably means something about me…

Cheers,

Vincent

EOF

If you’re a regular here, you may want to skip this blog post completely.

Otherwise, here are 5 great posts you may have missed.

Enjoy !

Native Chromium on Linux

Google is finally taking care of us poor freetards. The browser is still incomplete, and used warn you at the start up to not even blog about it.

They have since lost their hopes and removed the warning. This post will help you add the Chromium PPA in Ubuntu as well as install the browser.

The PPA will keep you updated with the latest nightly builds of Chromium, without any manual effort !

Chromium already looks nice, it’s very fast and I’m starting receiving some visits on this website, from people that use it.

I believe a bunch of people already use it as their favourite browser. Try it it!
Chomium on Ubuntu [HOW TO]

The EU Parliament still sticks with Microsoft, here’s why

This is post is the english translation of a blog post from Marco Cappato, an EU deputy.  The post includes a PDF document which is basically the study that the EU used in 2005 to decide if they should should switch or not to Open Source products (and they decided to stay with Microsoft)

This leaked document was kept secret for years and we really have to thank Marco for letting it in the wild. It has been downloaded a massive 15000 times in the first 6-7 days from my site alone.

One common adjective about it around the web has been “embarrassing“.

Take a look to Marco’s writing and download the PDF here:
The EU Parliament still sticks with Microsoft, here’s why

Get Android fonts on Ubuntu

Linux default fonts are pretty ugly. Thanksfully the fonts used with Android phone has been released and packaged.

Those look very crisp, display nice even at small sizes and are less space hungry than the default Gnome fonts. Nice for both your desktop and your netbook !

The post also includes some preview screenshot.

I encourage you to try them out:
Get Android fonts on Ubuntu

What is Ubuntu One ?

When I first knew about Ubuntu One my first reaction has been pretty much spontaneous: Ubuntu One, wait… WTF ?!

As an exception respect the other posts, I’m encouraging you to read my follow-up post, which is basicly a FAQ about Ubuntu One that goes over common doubts and misconceptions.

Also seems like I’m pretty right on about everything in there, so, if you’re still doubtful about Ubuntu One, go on and give it a read:
What is Ubuntu One ?

The Mono Crusade

This post has been a surprise. I didn’t expect anyone to read it, really, but it has been an huge success instead.

It’s basically a funny talk about pro and anti Mono campaigns and along with a point on Mono concerns and nice bunch of serious information linked all along the post.

I received an awful lot of compliments (thanks) for the writing tone, even from people who actually like Mono, and surprisingly no flame took place.

Makes up for an entertaining read:
The Mono Crusade (don’t forget to check up the comments section !)

End of it all

Is this post a waste of time and bandwidth ? Insult me in the comments !

Many of you are already aware of the issue, and read opinions everywhere, but you may have missed Mark Shuttleworth own, tremendously long, response.

I could of course just link the hell out of it, but this makes up for such a lazy post so I just can’t resist. And you’re too lazy to click the links, you know it’s true.

So here’s, the Launchpad bug has been opened about the issue:

The usage of the word Ubuntu in the context of “Ubuntu One” is inconsistent with the Trademark Policy outlined at http://www.ubuntu.com/aboutus/trademarkpolicy

Specifically of note are the following:

“The objective of the Ubuntu trademark policy is to encourage widespread use of the Ubuntu trademarks by the Ubuntu community while controlling that use in order to avoid confusion on the part of Ubuntu users and the general public, to maintain the value of the image and reputation of the trademarks and to protect them from inappropriate or unauthorised use.”
The danger of confusion among users and the general public about whether this new service is part of or associated with Ubuntu is extremely high.

“there is no commercial intent behind the use”
The service has clear and stated commercial intent.

“what you are referring to is in fact Ubuntu. If someone is confused into thinking that what isn’t Ubuntu is in fact Ubuntu, you are probably doing something wrong”
The service is not Ubuntu and has no association with Ubuntu as a product or community. It merely runs on and works with Ubuntu, on equal footing with other applications like Apache, Firefox, or an Ubuntu user’s blog.

“there is no suggestion (through words or appearance) that your project is approved, sponsored, or affiliated with Ubuntu or its related projects unless it actually has been approved by and is accountable to the Ubuntu Community Council”
I am not aware of any such approval or even discussion by the Community Council at this time.

“If you are producing new software which is intended for use with or on Ubuntu, you may use the Trademark in a way which indicates the intent of your product. For example, if you are developing a system management tool for Ubuntu, acceptable project titles would be “System Management for Ubuntu” or “Ubuntu Based Systems Management”. We would strongly discourage, and likely would consider to be problematic, a name such as UbuntuMan, Ubuntu Management, ManBuntu, etc. Furthermore, you may not use the Trademarks in a way which implies an endorsement where that doesn’t exist, or which attempts to unfairly or confusingly capitalise on the goodwill or brand of the project.”
The service clearly falls under the latter list of examples similar to UbuntuMan, and as such is named unacceptably. Furthermore it appears to be attempting to capitalize on the brand, which is similarly explicitly prohibited.

Proposed fix:
Rename the service to not include the words “UBUNTU, KUBUNTU, EDUBUNTU, and XUBUNTU” nor “any mark ending with the letters UBUNTU or BUNTU”, or in an acceptably non-ambiguous manner such as “Cloud Storage Solution for Ubuntu”.

Here’s the answer from Shuttleworth about the issue:

A lot of what we have built, in Canonical and Ubuntu, is infrastructure
to handle complex conversations between people with widely different
viewpoints, and to create collaboration between people with competing
interests. We rely a lot on the best things in human nature – a shared
desire to see the world improve, but we also create space for
differences of priority, approach, or interest, and make an effort to
defend against the worst things in human nature.

Open source communities often have intense, happy, fruitful periods of
collaboration between a small group of like-minded people, followed by
explosive detonations and fights as the group grows and natural
differences become more evident. Ubuntu has managed to grow enormously
as a community because we actively invest in ways to address our
differences. For example, some people say a community should use mailing
lists, others believe in web forums, we managed to create effective
leadership and collaboration across both. The real test of collaboration
is not between people who see the world the same way and want exactly
the same thing, it’s whether you can create collaboration between
diverse and different groups that really matters.

One of the key potential areas of difference in the Ubuntu community is
about commerce, and the relationship between Canonical, Ubuntu and the
wider commercial and volunteer community that makes up this movement. We
very consciously created BOTH Canonical and Ubuntu, with separate
missions and mandates and organisational structures, to reflect the fact
that there are differences between the project and the company. That’s
no accident – it was done deliberately, to make it easier to organise
around for-profit and not-for-profit goals. We didn’t want to build
Ubuntu and THEN create a commercial organisation inside it, we wanted to
signal commercial intent and the intertwined nature of Ubuntu and
Canonical from the very beginning. So far, we have done well. The lines
aren’t pristine, Canonical and the project overlap tremendously, largely
to the benefit of both. I often meet members of the community who don’t
realise the depth of Canonical’s investment in their success, but then I
often meet people who are appreciative of the way Canonical engages with
other participants in Ubuntu.

Nevertheless, there are bound to be some flashpoints, and this is
naturally one of them. I’m proud of the fact that we can have a public
conversation that draws on the full breadth of opinions, and I hope we
can draw some good conclusions, shape our plans and accelerate the
creation of the future of Ubuntu. My vested interest is in building a
good community that can achieve everything we want for both Canonical
and Ubuntu.

When people start making wild accusations of aggressive behaviour or
disingenuity, and proposing extreme alternatives of “north pole or south
pole”, then a conversation becomes unproductive. In the comment quote
below, I see symptoms of both problems, and ask that we simply not
accept this approach, it’s not constructive.

Gorgonzola wrote:

> So canonical should, in the short term, rename the service, and in the
> long term, transfer effective control/ownership of the trademark to the
> community, by whatever legal means this requires (notice that this was
> what the trademark policy was originally for: use was subject to
> approval by the community council).
>
> Alternatively, Canonical should openly state that they have no intention
> of continuing to uphold the trademark policy, change its terms of
> licensing, assert their ownership of the project and stop making false
> promises. i.e, fuck the community.
So, the argument is “polar North, give over what I want, or polar South,
say you don’t care about the community”? Wow, that’s not very
innovative. The interesting options are always the more nuanced ones,
which find ways to bring together different interests. This A-or-B
approach runs the risk of polarising the debate down to options that are
ultimately not interesting or useful to anybody. I strongly suggest we
focus our energy on those more nuanced options that have got us this
far, and not follow fundamentalists down their rabbitholes.

> There’s no middle ground in this,
Really? No middle ground? I don’t believe that’s true. Arguments based
on fundamentalist left or fundamentalist right turn productive
communities into bitter, unproductive wastelands. I’m sure that’s not
the intent in this case, but left unchecked that’s where it takes us.
I’ve no interest in going there.

The Ubuntu trademark has always had commercial value – only Canonical
can offer official Ubuntu support, for example, and the fact that the
Official Ubuntu Book is official is because Canonical says so (to the
benefit of the authors). Canonical has tried to be a pioneer in making a
valuable trademark available to the Ubuntu community under
community-friendly terms, hence the trademark policy that was developed
for that purpose (and which is being widely copied by other trademark
holders, I’m proud to say). It’s important to be able to envision a
future which includes both successful commerce and free software, and
this is part of that mix.

Just as code can be dual-licensed by the copyright holder, making it
available to free software users while still preserving some commercial
flexibility, so a trademark can be licensed under multiple sets of
terms. The trademark policy that allows LoCo teams to build
Ubuntu-branded sites is one license, as it were, and Canonical’s right
to brand the online services infrastructure it provides as “Ubuntu One”
is another.

If you can’t imagine that they could co-exist, then please have the
generosity of spirit to allow those of us who CAN, the space in which to
explore it. Pushing for either a trademark which has no value because
anyone can use it for anything (in which point it loses its legal status
as a trademark) or a trademark which is exclusively used by a company,
is pushing to go back to about 1999.

> it is, as others have put much more
> eloquently than me, about who is who’s daddy.

I’m the daddy.

And I have no problem imagining a rich future for Ubuntu and Canonical,
which includes a full range of perspectives and contributors, and brings
together people with really very different goals, in a productive
collaboration. That is what both were born to achieve. As someone said,
both are not adults, there is no simplistic “parent-child” relationship
between them, they have shared goals and diverse goals, shared
infrastructure and diverse infrastructure, and they have many
interdependencies.

Those who say “the Ubuntu community should not allow Canonical a
privileged position” are perhaps unaware that the Ubuntu community is
privileged to have Canonical’s backing in the first place. And
occasionally, someone new to Canonical says “those community guys
shouldn’t think we work for them”, at which point they get reminded
that, in some senses, we do. It’s human nature to have blinkers on both
sides, but thus far we’ve generally managed to get both sides to rise
above it, and I’m sure we will do the same here.

I’ve just arrived in gorgeous Catalunya in preparation for UDS
Barcelona, where we will have ample opportunity to discuss this in
person. Many folks from Canonical, and many non-Canonical folks who care
just as much about Ubuntu, will be there (quite a few at Canonical’s
expense). I expect we’ll forge new understandings and a good roadmap
there. Canonical will NOT be giving up its title to the Ubuntu
trademark, as suggested, but nor will it flounce out of the room and say
“screw the community”. Of that you can be sure . The road ahead lies
in finding strengths and shared opportunities on both sides.

Maybe someone will say “this is it, I quit, I don’t want to work on
Ubuntu together with Canonical, I don’t want a world which is more
diverse than my specific values”. If they do, that’s their prerogative.
Remember, the Ubuntu project has always been defined by that
collaboration – company and community – it’s nothing new, and it gets
stronger when we remind ourselves of that and when people with wildly
different expectations leave. There’s no sense in calling people names
over this – it’s perfectly acceptable for people to want different
things. I’m just interested in working well with those who are actually
interested in exploring how open source, and commercial success, can go
hand in hand. And Ubuntu One is part and parcel of that exploration.

Mark

Ah, ‘another great post‘ I hear you scream ! ‘Original content FTW !‘.

Yet, some good points are raised in this answer (italics for copy pasted text, normal font for me rephrasing)

• “Canonical and the project (Ubuntu) overlap tremendously“
• “largely to the benefit of both”
• “I’m proud of the fact that we can have a public conversation that draws on the full breadth of opinions”
• yet a black or white approach on (any) issue is not likely to be good for anything.
• “Canonical has tried to be a pioneer in making a
  valuable trademark available to the Ubuntu community under
  community-friendly terms“
• Ubuntu is a mixed company – community effort.
• “Canonical will NOT be giving up its title to the Ubuntu
  trademark, as suggested, but nor will it flounce out of the room and say
  “screw the community”.“

I pretty much agree with what Mark says. Ubuntu is a community effort, but also enjoys Canonical support. This includes funds for the ship it programs, refunds for trip expenses to the various Ubuntu Developer Summit, a full team of paied individuals that work to support the main repositories, strong marketing efforts and … credibility.

Why do you think is Ubuntu spreading ? Kickstarting the project has surely required a lot of money. And you can’t even think any hardware OEM will ship ever a commercially unsupported distro. That would be riskying lack of support and subsequents class actions. (why did Acer choose Xandros instead of Debian itself ?)

The very fact that Canonical supports Ubuntu brings credibility towards Ubuntu. Ubuntu One will also likely be a *great* vehicle of publicity toward Ubuntu. Have you noticed Windows Live and Mobile Me already exist ? Which other alternative has Ubuntu to offer ? (don’t name DropBox, that’s a whole different thing with a different purpouse).

The boundaries between Canonical and Ubuntu are rather blurry, and from time to time some community effort to better define them takes place, but I don’t expect the issue to go away anytime soon. And it’s not only an issue, it’s a privilege in many ways.

Feel free to let me know what you think, if you happen to think anything about it,

Some other posts about Ubuntu One

• My immediate reactions to the launch of the service
• A little FAQ about Ubuntu One I put together