Tuesdays Surgery Went Well

Tuesday I had elbow surgery to remove a bursa that was causing issues and had not healed in two years since a gout attack. Here is a picture of me. Sorry for missing time on IRC with my Ubuntu friends and teams.

The nurses called the yellow thing protecting my arm a “spongebob”.

UDS: The Next Step In Community

In history there are several examples of communities growing and becoming stronger after going through a period of upheaval after assimilating a new culture. Ubuntu has made huge efforts to avoid exclusion by stressing that there is not a difference between ‘Canonical’ or ‘Community’ at UDS. At my first UDS I was gently corrected for saying “I am just community”. The exchange left me impressed with the openness of the environment I had become involved in. I was not being segregated in to a group of ‘lesser’ and others were not being ‘elevated’ to a group of ‘better’.

When Ubuntu started the ‘community’ was composed of technically savvy users and developers. These groups had the capacity to become involved in the open source community of Ubuntu and contribute to the project in a standard manner. With Ubuntu now reaching the stage of its life in which the community now included non-technical users there is a new issue arising. It became apparent in today’s community round table; “how do we get them (new users) involved?” There is an expectation that the community should be involved. There are complaints on the recent Ubuntu Member survey about people who complain but do not contribute. Does this imply that Ubuntu Users that do not contribute are ‘lesser’? Are we, as a community, in danger of segregation? This is not a path any of us want to go down, so I suspect most have not thought about things from this perspective.

The Ubuntu Community is changing. We do not have to change our core culture; there is no reason to become another faceless corporation. Some of the new members of our community come from a different culture; they are used to faceless corporations ignoring them unless they act rude and obnoxious. Let us practice Ubuntu and welcome them, feed them, entertain them and give them a place to sleep. Let us not push them off to the fringe, and ignore them.

Let us embrace them for who they are and help them understand our community. Let us not place expectations on them that are unrealistic.

Ubuntu Community and Being Appreciative

This morning via IRC I caught a conversation about the Ubuntu Community and being appreciative.  It was a very insightful conversation in which people were concerned that the longer a person has been actively involved in the community the less appreciated they feel sometimes. The discussion made me realize that there are likely several people performing important functions that are taken for granted.

ie., Image Testing is a crucial component of each release, but it is one I think most people do not even think about.  — see http://iso.qa.ubuntu.com/ for more details

I certainly appreciate the work that people do to ensure that the CD images are all tested and working. When I got more involved with the process during the release of 11.04 I was also amazed at how easy it was to participate. I would imagine there are many other functions that people take on that are similar so I think having some way of making the community aware of the functions and the people involved with them is a valuable thing.

As the discussion of this went a bit deeper it also became apparent that it was undesirable to have this appreciation become quantifiable in a way that could lead to people feeling competitive about it or feeling depressed. If you feel that this is a worthy idea you can do two things to help.

• Be appreciative of the community for producing and promoting Ubuntu
• Take a look at the UCADay wiki and assist in the making of an event to assist the community with this

Needle to the knee

Last night I went to a local urgent care facility and got a referral to go to an orthopedic specialist for my knee. The diagnosis was gout. This has been a suspected issue on my foot for 13 years, but they will not take fluid from the foot; they will take fluid from the knee. My foot has not responded well to the typical treatments for gout so it was never confirmed. So today I went to the ortho and was very pleased that they wanted to take fluid from the knee for testing. It hurt to get the needle in the knee through the muscle and at time when they were extracting fluid. They got 50cc of fluid and injected Cortisone after the fluid was removed. I now await the results – gout or something else. Finally I will know if it is gout or not.

UDS-N: Unity Sensationalism Exposed

Today in the community round table the topic of Unity was discussed and a link to a blog post was shared. The blog post is just riddled with untruth.

“Ubuntu developer Jono Bacon was quick to point out that Unity will still depend heavily on GNOME’s software stack, even if the interface itself break away from GNOME.”

What? Jono Bacon is not a developer; he is the community manager.

“Canonical has been pulling away from the GNOME project for about two years,” he declared.  “So, this was inevitable.  I suspect that the timing probably has a lot to do with Mark’s jealousy of the recent OS X Tiger announcement.”

Mark is Jealous? I have failed to detect that. Unity is actually a shell that is suitable for a Netbook and a Desktop.

Oracle sues Google: What most are not considering

I have seen the doom and gloom pack write about Oracle’s lawsuit against Google; they all seem to think Oracle is trying to prevent Google from using Java.

Oracle filed a federal lawsuit Thursday in San Jose, California, charging that Android breaches Java’s open source license. The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, and demands a federal judge immediately block distribution of Android, the No. 3 mobile operating platform.

Read that one carefully… Android breaches Java’s open source license. Think about that. Don’t rush.

Many questions about the prospects of the suit remain unanswered, and the long-term impact of the suit is very much up in the air. Nevertheless, the suit drew a fearful response from the open source community on Friday.

Why is this the assumption? I am not saying that I know what Boies, Schiller, and Flexner LLP are thinking, but is it possible that Oracle is actually upholding FOSS principals and will argue that the proprietary code Google put in the phone must be open source? I have no reason to believe Oracle is, but I have not seen Oracle act the way Apple and Microsoft have in protecting patents. Oracle is certainly no Sun, but lets give this a little more than a day before walking the streets in folded wooden signs proclaiming that the world is ending.

FOSSCON 2010: New York State Ubuntu Local Community Team

The New York State Ubuntu Local Community participated in the first FOSSCON at RIT in Rochester, NY. Rochester, while not as large as New York City or Buffalo, was an ideal location for the convention. I have to give special thanks to Landon and Don who managed to mobilize on short notice to cover the conference booth for the team. Don and Landon are from Syracuse and traveled out to Rochester for the event. I am always amazed with their energy, friendly demeanor and willingness to drive long distances to advocate for Ubuntu and the Ubuntu Community.

The Journal: State Leaders Weigh In on Open Source Assessment

I opened my email today to find a headline of State Leaders Weigh In on Open Source Assessment; perhaps the time is truly now for getting schools and other governmental entities to consider open source. The article start off with a fairly positive opening.

Open source assessments have great potential for cost savings, collaboration, and standards adoption, but there are also some perception barriers that stand in the way of wider adoption in the immediate future, according to a new report exploring the attitudes of state assessment and technology leaders.

The barriers are detailed in a report entitled “A Report on Education Leaders’ Perceptions of Online Testing in an Open Source Environment,” completed by a marketing firm Grunwald Associates. I have to read the PDF download when I get the chance, but the article summed it up as follows:

Perceived benefits of open source assessment:

• Potential cost savings based on absence of licensing fees;
• Common formatting, data standards, and development standards improve/would improve adaptability and, subsequently, efficiency; and
• Collaboration benefits, including shared resources, ideas, testing standards, and even risks

Concerns about open source assessment:

1. Possible hidden costs, including maintenance, technical support (sometimes a cost when using an open source product), product development necessary to make modifications, and ongoing professional development for educators using original and modified versions;
2. Perception of security risks to both source code and content; and
3. The potential downsides to collaboration, including lack of leadership, lack of alignment in thinking among those recognized as experts for the purposes of development and modifications, and both inherent and unforeseeable inefficiencies.

Additional observations:

1. The greater a state’s current investment in open source technology and its education leaders’ and educators’ awareness of what it offers, the greater the prevailing interest in increasing its use, in advancing its quality, and in becoming better educated about the technology and the content it propagates and has the potential to offer;
2. Education leaders need to be better educated about both the benefits and risks of open source technology and its related issues;
3. Quality, security, ease of use, and access to effective support are of far greater concern than cost savings to users and potential users of the technology;
4. Because effective evaluation of students’ comprehension, progress, and potential requires more complex and in-depth assessment, in order for the education community to embrace the technology for the long term, it must evolve to include more than multiple-choice and short answer options; and
5. Many of the prevailing issues surrounding the use of open source technology for assessment can be addressed with strong leadership, reliable structure, and a well organized approach.

As an advocate for open source the additional observations left me feeling good because I can assist with many of them. I currently present at educational technology conferences about FOSS and how it provides greater value to education than merely lowering costs. This addresses both items 2 and 3. One of the greatest pitfalls I have seen other advocates fall in to is focusing solely on the ‘cost’ portion of FOSS. You can see the slide deck from my latest presentation that talks about 21st Century Skills and FOSS on the New York Team Site. This presentation also included material from the new NETP 2010 recommendations from the US Department of Education that was released on March 5th. I am a strong believer that Canonical or another vendor of a Linux distro could work with the US DoE to meet some of their goals. I am glad to see that more mainstream educational media are picking up the stories about FOSS as it will increase awareness amongst education leaders.

Report: Ed Tech Day 2010

This year the NY State Ubuntu Local Community attended the 20th Ed Tech Day at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY. Last year the team joined forces and manned a single booth with the Ithaca Free Software Association. I delivered a presentation on FOSS and ISTE 21st Century Skills to a small early morning crowd of 33 people. The team of deejoe, cws, ducky and slick666 manned the booth and talked to hundreds of people about Free Software.

The most impressive thing was the twitter comments from people saying that they had to give Ubuntu and FOSS a closer look; that is all you can ask for right?

The crowd around the IFSA and Ubuntu LoCo Booths

The crowd around the IFSA and Ubuntu LoCo Booths

Ubuntu One and the Lucid Lynx (Ubunt 10.04)

I know many people that are not happy that Ubuntu One is a default package with Ubuntu; I am not one. I have found the service to be invaluable with the diverse machines I use in a week. With Lucid Lynx (Ubuntu 10.04) I noticed that there is a right click option on folders to sync the folder with Ubuntu One. I have not given this feature a try yet, but this feature could make it easier for me to use Ubuntu One. Check out the full image from the thumbnail below:

It will be interesting to see if and how this changes the Ubuntu One usage for most people.