FUDCon hotel info.

We’ve set up for 75 rooms at the Marriott Boston Cambridge for FUDCon F11.

I am waiting on the hotel group code, which should be coming very shortly from the hotel group sales coordinator. Once that happens, all the information will be on the wiki as soon as possible thereafter.

We have set this up in the expectation that we’ll have FUDCon space at MIT. Their decision makers send out their reservation responses in mid-November according to the web site, so it shouldn’t be more than a couple weeks for that to land. In the event of an emergency we will figure out a transportation plan that will get everyone where we need to go for FUDCon, and stay in town, where it’s convenient to get food and find things to do after hours.

I’m working on FUDPub with a couple people, but if you have ideas you’re more than welcome to leave them here or contact me by email.

UPDATE: Forgot to mention — we got a deal with the hotel, which was already giving us an incredibly low group rate, to provide one free wifi account per paid room. Add that to Fedora 10′s NetworkManager connection sharing, and hopefully you get happier Fedora campers.

FUDCon signup update.

We should have hotel information available very soon, which will be posted to the wiki and notifications made everywhere there’s free space.

I wanted to ask people, even if they have already signed up for FUDCon, to revisit the page and make sure all the columns are filled out. I added spaces so we can make sure to get enough vegetarian meals for people who want/need them, and find out shirt sizes.

The signup sheet is located here.

FUDCon dates set.

January 9-11, 2009.

These are the dates when the North American Fedora community will gather in Boston, Massachusetts to host another in a long line of very successful, mostly self-organizing conferences where we gather to talk about hot new developments, assess and kick off work on the next release, and generally enjoy a weekend full of nuttin’ but Fedora.

I know folks have had a bit of a wait to get the final dates. We’re still getting the last kinks worked out of the exact location in the Boston area, but the dates are set in stone. Promise. One way or another, we will have FUDCon on these dates. Thanks for your patience while we remodel, and all that.

Please feel free to sign up on the wiki page in the meantime and make travel plans. We’ll have hotel and other location information finalized very soon. I am waiting on final word from MIT on space at their facilities, thanks to a little help from Mako and Walter Bender at Sugar Labs. Word on those facilities may not come for a couple weeks, but we have a backup plan if that falls through. Again, the dates are good to go.

You can also sign up on the wiki to lead or request a session or hackfest. I hope community members will take advantage of the meeting of so many open minds to teach, learn, and participate. Have a topic that’s near and dear to your heart? Code to show off? Ideas to bring to a brainstorming session? Come to Beantown and tell us all about it.

And of course FUDCon is, as always, free and open to everyone to attend. Hope to see you there in January!

By the way, I just noticed this is my (2^10 + 1)th post on my blog since I started it in 2002. Pretty cool.

And yes, there was also pie.

Here I am at the end of a few whirlwind days visiting our Neighbor to the North, O Canada! I’ve been visiting Toronto for both the 2008 Free Software and Open Source Symposium and the Ontario Linux Fest. My only travel difficulty thus far was the fact that I absent-mindedly left a paper soda cup in the center console of my car, half full of ice. That means I’ll likely be returning to a fair-sized mess tonight when I get back to the Dulles garage. Ah well.

Arriving Wednesday evening was fairly easy, although the cattle lines at Canadian customs were extremely long, and the cab ride extravagantly expensive. Thursday morning I hooked up with Greg DeKoenigsberg and after a quick breakfast we got in a cab (much less expensive, thankfully) to head to the SEQ building.

I spent the entire first day in the Teaching Open Source @FSOSS panels. It was ingeniously set up to provide separate panels for each perspective on the process and difficulties. First up was the student perspective, with a group of fine young people who unanimously agreed that working with open source communities was an enlightening and mind-freeing experience. Following that was the professors’ experience, including folks like David Humphreys, one of the folks at Seneca who put this conference together with Chris Tyler. It was interesting hearing how open source teaching also changes radically the way that the instructors work with their students and their knowledge base.

The institutional perspective came next, with Greg participating with several other representatives of companies and non-instructional EDU departments. One of the most interesting phrases I picked up there was a better positioning of what I’ve always called collateral content — “precarious values,” those contributions that are usually at much higher risk in FOSS communities. I liked it so much I borrowed it when I took part in the fourth panel, which consisted of people in leadership positions in well-known FOSS communities.

The video content of the talks and panels are to be published on Seneca’s site soon, but I took some notes anyway and posted them on the Fedora wiki.

But once the panels were over, we continued on with a further 90-minute open floor discussion, a brainstorming session led by David Eavey about how to break down the ideas that had been explored on the panel into actionable work. Jack Aboutboul has posted a bit about that discussion already so I won’t rehash it here. You can find our brainstorming notes here on the Seneca wiki.

Thursday night we had a lovely dinner at the executive center. My dining partners included a cross-section of organizers and attendees such as the Mozilla Foundation’s Mark Surman, Fedora Board member and Seneca professor Chris Tyler, and Greg, among others. The conversation ranged further along the lines of the day’s panels and discussions, and eventually, after some adventures with Canadian wildlife and a lot of SMS messages, Jack caught up to us after dessert (and a couple bottles of a not-bad cabernet mix).

During Friday I spent a bit more time catching up to my email and other aging tasks, although not particularly well. There were a lot of good conversations to be had by people who caught up to me in the “ready room,” and I got the chance to dispel some of the common misperceptions about Fedora and some of our technical capabilities for several people.

I also got a chance to talk to a very personable older duo, a teacher and a non-profit owner, who respectively teach open source and use it to provide rejuvenated and recycled computers for seniors. I am seeing more and more of that latter use case for open source across the board; at Ontario Linux Fest on Saturday Greg and I discussed with Yaakov ways to better engage with and empower these types of purveyors of social good. As most people probably know, I’m pretty vocal (and somewhat moralizing) about the good that free software can do for the world, and why we should all spend serious time thinking of how our volunteerism is going to impact communities around us outside of our comfortable world of geekery.

Friday night Greg and I took Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams to dinner — well, OK, it wasn’t fancy, but still — at Perkins, since it was one of the only places we could walk, safely, from our hotel. Ignacio’s been a contributor since way back and I wish I’d had a better thank you for him. I’ll figure something out, Ignacio, keep an eye on your holiday $SHRUBBERY! And thanks to Greg for reminding us that dessert is a dish best served, uh, first.

Saturday was another early morning awakening, to check out of the hotel and head over to the Ontario Linux Fest, which turned out to be only about 10 minutes from our hotel. Our table was ready when we walked in the door, and just as Greg and I were saying, “Gosh, I wonder if there’s a kit coming?”, in came Andrew Overholt, Behdad Esfahbod, and Deepak Bhole with the famous black Pelican case with Fedora stickers! In no time flat they had posters up and the banner in full glory across the table front, to go with the piles of CDs and DVDs, and we were off and running!

I got the chance as usual to interact with a lot of different community members, including a couple of the guys from Joomla! who seemed really excited about PackageKit and the progress of KDE in Fedora 9 and soon 10; the customary hordes of people who wanted to play with the OLPC XOs on display; Rob Day, a technical reviewer for O’Reilly, with whom I talked docs a bit (of course!); and lots of curious questions like “Is there a package that…?”, to which the answer was almost invariably, “YES! We have over 10,000 packages in Fedora, and you probably want one of these: ….”

Andrew showed me some really cool features of Eclipse for interfacing with Bugzilla and then collaborating with others — Eclipse will actually store your various open contexts and then share them with your partners. So you can get tired at night, give up, and go to bed, but transfer data to your team members on the other side of the globe with a note saying “I can’t figure this out, maybe you can.” Then your buddies can open up the bug with the same open files and information you were working with, to get an idea of where you left off and proceed from there. Sweet!

After Scott Sullivan’s father told me Scott would be speaking about new human interfaces in Linux, I wanted badly to see it. Unfortunately I only made it to the last 20 minutes, but he was a good presenter who knew his stuff. He was showing off ways to use interfaces like Wiimotes for interaction. He even gave a nice shout out to Fedora when he saw us, thanking Fedora for carrying so much easy-to-install software that allowed him to pursue his passion using our distro. (And yes, he was running F9 on his presentation system too!) I made a point of coming up to introduce myself and give him the little bit of schwag I had on hand by way of thanks and encouragement.

Greg, Yaakov and I talked at some length (and sometimes as a tag-team) to Bob Gobeille from HP, about educational initiatives. Unfortunately Bob had missed out on FSOSS, which was a shame, but there’s no lack of work left to do.

And of course I went to Greg’s talk on OLPC, which was spectacular and engaging. He was thinking I’d heckle him, but the only time that went on was when Greg heckled folks about paying too much attention to rumor and hearsay and not enough time focusing on OLPC’s clear path and getting involved in furthering their progress down it. Of course, he was funny and engaging about it, but there was a clear call to action as well — stop using Redmond as an excuse to give up.

OLPC will have over a million units in the field by the end of next year — a million laptops that according to some people would never work, could never get off the design board, could never work properly with free software, wouldn’t be accepted by teachers or students or governments. And here we are today, because the right people persevered where it was needed. That’s not to say there are no missteps, but overall OLPC is still a great milestone in the story of free software, and the power we have to change the world.

And as I always say, if you want to make that difference, you can’t just use free software and think that makes any difference to the world around you. You have to get involved to make a difference — whether that be by filing bugs, translating some text, writing a wiki page, speaking at a classroom or boardroom, or just helping others get started. It’s a challenge we all face every day, to stand on the sidelines and watch the world roll on its merry way, or to jump in and help turn the wheel. I know what I prefer to do — how about you?

So as a coda, energized by Greg’s session, and the knowledge that Fedora is changing life for the better for hundreds of thousands (soon millions) of children worldwide, I got myself packed up and said my goodbyes to everyone. Next year I’d like to have a little more time to hang out with the Red Hatters here in Toronto that I don’t see often, but this time it was not to be.

Behdad graciously offered me a comfortable ride to the airport, and I found out that he is a huge Bob Dylan fan. We talked music a little, as well as about his work in GNOME on pango and cairo that enables better internationalization and with the GNOME Foundation. And suddenly my first ever trip to Toronto was over! I hope to be back next year for both these fabulous conferences.

Big thank you’s go out to Chris Tyler, David Humphreys and the staff and crew of Seneca and FSOSS for making that conference a huge success. And thank you also to the folks at the Ontario Linux Fest for also putting on a great show.

Yes Jiang Li, there is a Santa Claus.

“Can China have its own software?” one angry poster writes in response to Microsoft replacing their desktop view with a black screen and (presumably) an offer to buy completely unaffordable genuine Windows software.

The answer is yes, yes you can. It’s called Fedora, and it’s free for everyone to use and redistribute, now and always. And furthermore, you can look inside this particular box to assure yourself that no one will ever (or could ever) take away those rights in the future.

Hollywood continues to suck as expected.

I’ve noted before in the pages of this blog that I’d be surprised if Warner Brothers didn’t succeed at screwing up Watchmen, the comic book miniseries widely regarded as the best ever created. For good reason, too — it’s heady stuff, layered and mindful of human frailty and foibles, even when the frame is covered by cowl and cape.

Well, today saw the first hint of proof from Cinematical that hack writers and movie execs have been hard at it castrating yet another work of literary renown. WARNING! Spoilers abound. If you haven’t read the book, do not click this link. In fact, don’t read this Wikipedia article either, since it has lots of spoilers too. Just go buy the book and enjoy it — you’ll need to read it a couple times to pick up on some of the subtler ingenuities, and that extra time will help you miss the agonizing screams of disappointed comic-book geeks and producers watching box-office grosses that look like last month’s stock market.

I’d like to think that the people who will bite it for ushering this latest fizzle into fruition are the same ones who require directors to title their opening scene with, say, “London 1608,” followed immediately by the supposedly more ominous pronouncement fading in, “400 years ago.” As if (1) the viewers can’t subtract that well in their heads, and (2) it really matters that we’re talking about 400 years ago, as opposed to 380, or 407 and an odd Wednesday or two. The same people who put annoying voice overs in otherwise great films to feed us information that we’d figure out for ourselves by simply paying attention, if only we could stop that yammering voice over from yanking us out of the movie experience.

Perhaps the reason movie execs do this is because secretly they believe everyone is as stupid as they are, or rather, they can’t believe anyone’s smarter than they are — much the same thing really, now that I think about it. On the other hand, Warner did bring us The Dark Knight this summer, and it boggles the mind to think how that spectacularly satisfying film slipped through the grinding gears of commerce relatively unscathed, or at least no worse for wear. One imagines a secret cadre of ninja execs moving stealthily by night, silently shuffling producers’ notes around so the clueless turn the low-beams of their stunted intellects instead onto fare such as Bevery Hills Chihuahua.

This tendency to destroy the edges, to simplify to the least common denominator, is why I much prefer movies with original screenplays — after all, with all those grasping hands in the way, looking to make their mark on a film, it’s very rare for cinematic departures to deliver on the spirit of books. Adaptations suffer the curse of having to distill a high volume of information not designed for the art form of cinema; original work has the freedom to play instead to film’s strengths. There are, of course, some notable exceptions.

Now, having said that, Eleya and I just watched Sydney Pollack’s masterful 1969 film They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?, based on Horace McCoy’s Depression-era short novel (which I have read but, for some reason in the past couple of years, have been inexplicably attributing to Cormac McCarthy). If anything, the film version is more intensely disturbing than the novel, while fully delivering on its despondent tone. There’s a clear connection drawn between the story’s sense of hopelessness and inevitability and the widespread view at the time of the USA hurtling into apocalypse. That despair and the spectacle of the dance marathon contestants being prodded and run like cattle to the point of exhaustion and madness haven’t lost their punch in the intervening 40 years. Jane Fonda is a bit shrill as the brittle Gloria; in my estimation, Bonnie Bedelia stole the show as an pregnant, ignorant, and ultimately hopeful Everywife. Highly recommended.

We also saw the altogether underwhelming M. Night Shyamalan thriller The Happening. Shyamalan draws the viewer in with his customarily deliberate pacing, and even delivers on a few “oh ****!” moments hinted at in the trailers. But there aren’t many surprises to be had in this wannabe eco-thriller, and ultimately the film crumbles under the weight of too much bad writing (Outrun the wind? Seriously?) and a lead couple — Mark Wahlberg and indie fave Zooey Deschanel — with absolutely zero chemistry. If Lady in the Water was too close to the otherwise talented writer/director’s heart to succeed by building, one up-close stroke at a time, a painting that makes perfect sense when viewed from afar, then Happening fails by throwing away the brush and palette altogether, and simply going for outright shock value measured in on-screen deaths. The DVD documentary showing the crew smugly congratulating each other on their “hard R” status is particularly disaffecting given that the most effective moments in the film are often very much diminished by the literal rigor of gore. Not recommended.

Notes from a happy camper.

Wikimedia helpfully posted a FAQ to set the record straight about their recent server standardization. This is helpful, since a lot of people (including overzealous joinalists) were somehow under the impression that this was a sudden move that involved ripping out hundreds of installed Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS boxes.

However, the FAQ also introduces some unnecessary confusion about the performance of yum, and I figured that needed to be set straight. Readers might take away from this article that current yum was somehow “performance-challenged,” when nothing could be further from the truth.

True, in the days of Fedora Core 3 and 4, i.e. about three years ago or so, it’s true that yum didn’t perform as well as it does today. A metadata parser rewrite, along with a metric boatload of other optimizations and intelligent code straightening done by the yum team, has resulted in a snappy, flexible, and incredibly useful dependency solver. In short, modern yum makes software management on Fedora systems fast and easy. The performance nowadays is probably close to two orders of magnitude improved over the FC 3/4 timeframe.

To make the situation clear to readers about how yum works on systems like Fedora 9, while acknowledging that it’s completely up to the Wikimedia folks what they do with their servers, I wrote this clarification. I included links to some helpful information posted by James Antill regarding yum benchmarks, and information on what makes yum unique.

FSOSS registration.

Today is the last day to pre-register for the upcoming Free Software and Open Source Symposium in Toronto next week. The conference will be taking “at the door” registrations, but you can save some money by doing it a bit early.

Greg DeKoenigsberg, Jack Aboutboul, and I will all be there, not to mention Fedora Board member Chris Tyler, who’s not only a Fedora Board member but a Seneca instructor, not to mention a conference organizer. This is really a can’t miss event if you have anything to do with the intersection of free software and education!

You’re going to need a bigger shovel.

Thanks to my friend Jesse for bringing this up last night at dinner.

In the middle of all the market mayhem here in the US, did you know that we now have a Pirate Czar? (Yarrr!) All thanks to the Pro-IP bill signed into law on Monday. Another “triumph” for the Bush administration.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tuesday ews-nay, issue #43.

Yesterday I was scarce because after a weekend at Ohio Linux Fest it was time for a brief respite with my family. We went out to Belvedere Plantation for a day of fun in the sun during their Fall Harvest festival. (Quite a bit of sun, as a matter of fact, to which my face, neck, and arms can attest.)

The pedal tractors and the Maize Maze were the big winners overall, but young and old alike were really waiting for the afternoon hayride to the pumpkin patch, where we picked some doozies for jack o’ lantern carving and decorating this year.

Today I found that David Yates had put up a new episode 92 of his Lotta Linux Links podcast, including a fun hallway interview we did during the Ohio Linux Fest on Saturday. It was great meeting him face to face after hearing his entertaining, freewheeling podcast for some time. He gave me plenty of time to talk about cool, upcoming Fedora 10 features, how I got into Fedora to begin with, and the possibilities of getting the “Redneck” translation back into Fedora.

After a Board meeting this afternoon, I’m heading to a parent-teacher conference at school — finally meeting Evie’s second-grade teacher — to formulate a strategy on how to make school less boring for Evie. Then it will be back to work. This week I’m hoping to put finishing touches on the TM guidelines, get some draft communications written for a few people to whom I owe them, formulate some more details on the FUDCon in Boston on January 9-11, and (hopefully) work on unraveling some knotty Docs stuff. Happy Tuesday all!