Today’s been a banner day full of free and open source software advocacy. This morning I had the great pleasure to present via teleconference to FOSSMeet in India about the Fedora Project. Things went swimmingly, and I had a number of great questions from the audience that were all about one of my favorite subjects — what sets Fedora apart from other Linux distributions and projects. (The answer: our concentration on innovation, and creating a culture of contribution, not just consumption.)
Then this afternoon, our daughter Evie was one of several students chosen to man her elementary school’s tables at the county Information Technology Exchange. Each school in the system presents an interesting way in which their students are using IT as part of their curriculum, or solve specific problems.
Of course, I couldn’t let a chance for advocacy go by, so I slapped a sticker on my shirt saying “Ask Me About LINUX!” and wandered the floor with Evie’s OLPC XO, and my Dell XPS M1330 running Fedora. I talked to a variety of people including teachers, administrators, students, and parents about the bounty and pleasure of open source and how it could help in classrooms, living rooms, and boardrooms everywhere.
As usual, the XO was the biggest hit, attracting scads of attention from lots of young students (and plenty of parents and teachers). Evie took a break from her demonstrations — she was one of several students there at a time — to show off what she loves doing with her XO. I was gratified to hear a couple parents say, “Oh, and I hear it’s all open source software inside.”
I also talked a bit to some of the school system’s administrators there, who are in the middle of deploying SuSE servers this year for file, print, and proxy services across the county. They’re also making use of Xen virtualization to maximize their hardware investments. Looks like they’ll soon be coming out to our local LUG to get free advice and help from the many Linux professionals we have in town.
So now to enjoy a nice Saturday, maybe get a little work done on the side. Have a great weekend!
Hey Paul,
I totally agree with “and creating a culture of contribution, not just consumption.)” but thought I’d also say you should definitely read “To have or to be” by Erich Fromm, that is if you haven’t already. It’s along the lines of what you’ve said here, and I feel holds very similar ideals to that of Fedora. Add to that, almost everything by Erich Fromm I’ve ever read is worth reading!