Overheard.

With regard to my friend Greg, who is now in the same town as me for a few days, and whom I might see later this week:

Me: “Greg’s great.”

My dining companion: “But a little full of himself.”

Me: “Well, maybe, but if you were him, wouldn’t you be too?”

MDC: “I’d be worse.”

More than a footnote.

My wife alerted me last night to a terrible loss to the literary world — writer David Foster Wallace was found dead Friday night of an apparent suicide. DFW was already at 46 a giant of American literature and, even though he tended to the self-absorbed, his writing was passionate and magnetic. I always found his love of the footnote charming and amusing, even when it was distracting. I’m sad to think of all the wonderful books we’ll never see now.

Commonalities.

I think Joe Brockmeier and I tend to have a lot in common on the subject of comporting oneself, as his recent ZDNet blog entry shows. In that entry, Joe looks at this subject from the practical point of view: How will an employer view your flamefests? But the larger question is not just about the employer’s ability to see the talent behind the sharp tongue — it’s about how that job interview reflects the general acceptance level for specific behaviors. I recently wrote this as part of a note to a small group, asking for some moderation in their tone, to curb harsh and unproductive flaming. Notice the similarities:

I firmly believe that when people disagree, we can do it with civility and courtesy. Interaction by computer isn’t an excuse to act in ways that, if we did them face to face, would shame us or those who know us. The Internet has a vast and unforgiving memory — when we act out badly, the results take on an extended shelf life.

Giving it away for free.

Thursday evening I had the pleasure of chatting with students at Seneca College in Toronto about Fedora and getting involved with open source. The students are in a program called LUX, a graduate certificate curriculum that is more about system administration and integration than programming per se. These students’ interest in distribution efforts is driven by the many moving parts that make up the platform — code integration, quality assurance, release engineering, and so forth. It was a lot of fun to (maybe) mold fresh minds, but even more fun to hear what was on them. Thanks to Chris Tyler for setting that up!

Because we’re having a Software Freedom Day celebration in my town next Saturday, I thought it would be good to drum up some press for it. A friend of mine got me in touch with a writer for our regional newspaper, and as a result there was a nice article in the paper and on their web site. The headline is a little sensationalistic since I never mentioned the M-word in my interview, and it greatly overestimates me and my importance, but in terms of publicity I do think it will boost attendance at our little event.

I spent a good amount of time this past week trying (with some success) to get calls and emails returned from various educational and hospitality institutions for FUDCon. I know there are folks out there who need substantial advance notice to make travel plans, so don’t think that it’s not on my mind too! Next week I’ll be in Raleigh to renew my RHCE, but despite wanting to do well in the class, I’ll still be working on getting these details nailed down.

Keen eyes will have already seen that I’ve removed the exact dates from the wiki page for FUDCon F11 Boston, since it’s looking more like we’ll be moving to (at the earliest) the December 12-14 weekend. After that, given the holiday season, the next logical time to hold it would be January 9-11 — almost a whole month later! As I’ve said before, I think having FUDCon earlier in the development cycle is a good idea; and, having heard no tremendous outcry to the contrary, that’s the way I’m proceeding.

With our North American Ambassadors on an accelerating trajectory upward, the community architecture team and I will be trying to make it possible for them to plan future FUDCons here. These informal conferences haven’t historically been nearly as demanding as some of the community events I’m seeing these days. But who knows, getting our community more involved in the planning could bring them to a whole new level! Of course, it’s our intention that Red Hat continue to fund these events. The community architecture team and I consider them one of the gifts Red Hat can and should give back to the community. I expect 2009 will see a couple very good North American FUDCon events.

Since I’m not going to see them for a week, I’ve spent most of my time this weekend thus far with my family, so I may not get a lot of work done before I leave for Raleigh. In the meantime, I hope everyone is having a spectacular weekend, and I’ll try to blog more next week about some of the other things I’m working on.

The devil’s in the details.

Russ Herrold has posted a really good article on key security, which I heartily recommend to the more security-conscious.

Updates on the way.

In case you hadn’t read the news, Fedora 8 and Fedora 9 updates are now available again through the mirrors.

Read release engineer Jesse Keating’s announcement for more information on the new signing key, and a summary of what you need to do (answer: very little, thanks to a lot of hard work by a lot of Fedora community members). You’ll also find complete instructions and details on the wiki, information on why we’re switching to a new package signing key, and tips for use in the unlikely event something goes wrong.

Thank you to all the hard working Fedora developers, system administrators, and release engineers for getting things back into shape. You guys rock hard. And thank you also to our community for your patience and steadfastness.

After going through this process, you’ll receive all the various bug fixes, enhancements, and security patches that Fedora community members have been stacking up for your dining pleasure. (I see among them are things like OpenOffice.org updates, so the download is fairly sizable.) As always, 100% free and open source — eat all you care to, we’ll make more. And remember that if you’re interested in making a transition from the epicurean to the culinary — that is, becoming a chef — we’re open all hours.

Li’l hug.

This has been an extraordinarily long and busy day, and other than a couple hours of breaks for lunch, dinner, bio, and munchkin bedtime rustlin’, I’ve been on the computer from 7am until 11pm. But before I left for the day I wanted to thank a trio of folks, Jens Petersen, Brad M. Walker, and Chip Coldwell. What do they have in common? Providing Emacs CVS packages for the community via yum repos, basically in succession, making life a little easier for a freeloader like me.

Thanks guys, I used (and use) your work every day and I’m grateful for it.

FUDCon F11 Boston dates.

Don’t get too excited yet — we don’t have dates to announce yet, but we should have them fairly soon. One of the most important considerations in planning a FUDCon is making sure the facility will acommodate 100-200 Fedora hackers. You need a fairly robust network, ample seating for hackfests, breakout rooms for sessions, and so forth. We keep logistics information on the Fedora wiki so anyone can look at our event setup and requirements and, potentially, run a FUDCon.

The wonderful people at Boston University have graciously hosted us many times in the past, and hopefully will do so again in the future. But for a variety of reasons they can’t do it this December, so we are looking for alternate facilities. I have a number of people to call on Monday and discuss our needs and plans.

My hope is that we will land FUDCon at another area educational institution, because .edu’s tend to have good classroom and hall setups for FUDCon, as well as excellent network support. They also tend to be hotbeds of grassroots activism and open source use and contribution, and we do hope the students and professors at any hosting institution will attend FUDCon too.

We are considering a couple different weekends in December, without trying to get too close to Christmas, or having to wait until mid-January (too late in the development cycle), or interfering with final exams at schools. December 5-7 or December 12-14 are the likely targets thus far.

What we generally try to find at an educational institution hosting a FUDCon is simply one or more faculty sponsors who can connect us with the people who handle logistics for these events. That usually means IT departments for wifi network support, A/V for the lecture and session rooms, and anyone else with whom we need to coordinate the physical setup and proceedings of a FUDCon.

If you have deep contact to faculty members who might be able to do this at a .edu in the Boston area, you’re welcome to get in touch with me!

If we can’t secure facilities at a school, we can still hold FUDCon at an appropriate hotel venue; we’re considering a couple places around Boston as well as Providence, Rhode Island, depending on the economics. We want to make sure that hotel rooms are as affordable as possible for our community members who are attending. We also have a set budget for the event, into which all our costs must fit. I’ll post more about that on the FUDCon F11 wiki page soon.

Blog stats whoring.

This came up in conversation earlier this week and I didn’t want to forget outright to post it. If you’re sending links around for Fedora Project wiki pages, make sure you’re using the https: method (note the “s”). That helps people who are logged in — they’ll get the proper authenticated page instead of repeatedly having to log in for no reason.

This tip comes to you courtesy of your friendly neighborhood Cookie Monster.

“Hi, I’m a colossal waste of money.”

Apparently YouTube has one of Microsoft’s new commercials featuring Bill Gates and Jerry Seinfeld. Was this really a $300 million advertising investment? I’ve watched it and frankly I don’t see how this is going to increase their relevance, reputation, brand awareness, or perceived value to anyone. Unless you really think they’re going to turn computers into cake, in which case I suggest you also look forward to upgrading to new plates and serving utensils, serving only Microsoft Milk with your cake, and upgrading your teeth to Microsoft Orthodontia 2009.

And don’t even think about sharing your cake with anyone else. That’s a no-no!

Something tells me no one at TWBA\Chiat\Day is going to lose any sleep this weekend.