This has been on my mind for a while, and in a discussion with Mel after she did the same thing, I realized it was time to fish or cut bait.

The bottom line is, I don’t know what value my content can bring beyond what it’s done for me already, and I’ll never know unless I assign the rights so that others can reuse or build on my work.  I am specifically not using the no-commercial use (NC) variant of the CC license; most of my reasoning is inline with this article from freedomdefined.org.

If there any bad actors who would use the free content license in away against my interests or preferences, I have to figure that i) they would do it anyway and regardless of my licensing, and ii) who am I so paranoid of?

Seriously, when you have a choice to spread peace, love, and understanding or fear, hatred, and doubt … choose love.

To get permissions to edit the wiki, I have put a human in the way (currently just me).  I’m working on getting up content on the user creation pages that explains how to request access.  I don’t like adding this barrier in an otherwise self-service process, but … default wiki configurations invite spambots, and we don’t have the resources to watch the wiki that way.  For the time being, we’ll have humans create accounts for other humans.

Maybe I can tweak the wiki permission structure so any normal user can create other user accounts?  That plus a detailed how-to page could go a way toward lowering the barrier a bit.  My goal isn’t to approve/disapprove people; anyone who asks and agrees to license under the CC BY SA 3.0 is welcome to participate.

It’s an ongoing situation, and that’s the difficult part of release early, release often.  If I waited until all these things were perfect before releasing, it would take even more months.  As it is, the content itself hasn’t been updated since September 2009.  That was because we got it to the point of being good enough to start working on externally, and it has taken the interim time to arrange and create the upstream hosting.  It’s rough around the edges, but improving every day, in part thanks to all of you finding and reporting problems.

The next goal is to move beyond the “file bugs and help test things” stage as quickly as possible.

Our Fedora presence is growing, both in depth of roots in the area and the scope of what we are trying to do.  A local Fedora Ambassador is organizing the Fedora Project expo presence.  There are a few stalwart Fedora community members flying in from afar, and Larry, the kids, and I are making the full pilgrimage via wifi-and-XO-laptop-sporting minivan.

In addition to contributing to the Fedora effort, I’m going to be representing Red Hat in talking about “Being a catalyst in communities – the scientific facts about the open source way“.  I’m really excited because the SCALE organizers have asked me to present that as the Saturday morning keynote.  Yeah, you heard that right – first keynote for little ol’ me.  Instead of flying in a rock star from remote, a local boy is going to represent.

Where last SCALE 7x was the first time we ran the revamped Fedora Activity Day (FAD) program, the FAD model has been richly tested and proven over the last year.  A FAD is a focused work effort by Fedora contributors, usually around one or two topics.  This year we are going to run our second SCALE-based FAD on Friday.  We’re still looking for a topic, so if you are thinking of coming there is still time to influence the planning and preparation.

On the Friday before the expo weekend are a host of other SCALE mini-events, including the Women in Open Source (WiOS) summit.  Our daughters, who did a lot of hard work as self-described Fedora Mascots last year, are presenting “Ultimate Randomness – Girl voices in open source” at WiOS at 10 am.  They are going to talk about how they use and contribute to open source, then take questions from/have a discussion with the audience.

I also see other talks from the ecosystem around Fedora and Red Hat, including Richard Fontana on “Improving the Open Source Legal System”.

See you there, especially Saturday morning right after registration.

Fedora Mascots make the booth look even cooler.

http://www.TheOpenSourceWay.org/wiki (read and participate)

http://www.TheOpenSourceWay.org/book (HTML, HTML single page, PDF)

This is a handbook for creating and nurturing communities of contributors.  It was originally thought of as a cookbook to provide recipes for enacting community the open source way.  It is released under the Creative Commons BY SA 3.0 Unported free/libre/open content license.

We originally wrote this handbook for internal-to-Red Hat use.  Our community team tells many of the same stories and makes the same points to different audiences, and we thought a handbook or cookbook would be a handy way to practice our own methods.

No surprise, it was immediately clear to us that this type of content is better if it draws from and benefits a wider community.  In this case, the community of practice of people interested in contributor communities.  That community writes this kind of documentation for itself.

As a source for repeatable and successful recipes, the book follows a simple format:

• First is a principle, explained in a paragraph.
• Second are implementation details, in one or two paragraphs.
• Third is an example demonstrating the principle in an implementation, in or two paragraphs.

If you want to use the book, you can start referring to the wiki pages immediately.

It has a nice PDF version, which currently prints to 30 pages (double-sided.)  This one is Red Hat branded, but you can take the DocBook XML sources and build it using whatever look you want.

It is also incomplete, specifically in the area of examples.  I don’t want this to be full of only technology examples.  That’s one place you can come in.  Give up some examples of the principles in action, from the real world, and ideally in realms outside of technology.

But it’s more than time to have this content out in the open.  Release early, release often.

After all, the open source way can be practiced in many more parts of life than just technology.

One final note.  What we refer to as the open source way is a rebranding of what are really techniques utilized in creating freed software a.k.a. free/libre software.  The brand of open source has a lot of recognition and traction with people entirely new to the discussion, looking how to apply these concepts in their communities.  When practiced properly, open source software is good enough as free software.  That’s how we do it in the Fedora Project.  As an effort to spread information about how to use free and open community techniques, we are relying upon the current strong Open Source brand in helping to amplify the message.

One section I hope to add to The Open Source Way soon is a version of the article by Richard Fontana, “The free software way“, published on opensource.com.  My goal is to provide a new, canonical location that explains the right way for free and open to interact.

(Update – first both links to HTML book fixed.)

What I see here is a new type of discussion …

… one where our experiences in free/libre and open source software technology and collaboration informs the greater topics …

… one where the greater topics are how to apply the principles of collaboration and community (the open source way) to wider and important issues – education, government, health care, and so forth …

… one where the greater community of readers can participate and help direct the topics …

… one that builds on the brand “Open Source” that already has meaning outside of technology circles, to spread a valuable methodology (the way) to new audiences/communities.

But not …

… not one where a few pundits pontificate while other voices are lost in the comments …

… and not one where a controlling organization is hiding behind faux authenticity.

The degree to which we continue to do that is the amount of attention and help we get from all the other real people out there. The more we enable each other to spread these principles, this open source way, the better free content we all make for each other. Easier our jobs become. More enjoyment we get out of life. Nirvana.

I have high hopes, clearly.

Full disclosure: I am a long-time employee of Red Hat, which is  a major force behind opensource.com and the ones who originated the plan.  I did not work on the design and deployment teams, but I did participate in an internal pilot to help iterate on the site before it launched.  As a proponent of the open source way, I’ll continue to support the site partially by leaning on everyone to improve, iterate, and improve.

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Contributor_CVs

It’s an opt-in system to track an individual’s contributions and recommendations from others within the Fedora Project community.  (Naturally, FLOSS for code and content, use it for your own project, etc.)

For recommendations, we can get started today with a simple process.  You leave a comment in a user’s talk page on the wiki, using the ~~~~ signature format plus the page’s history to verify the recommender.

These recommendations can later be pulled in to a semiautomagic system, which would also provide a nicer interface for making a quality recommendation than a wiki page.  (Or not, if the wiki system proves itself.)

That system can pull in all sorts of data of a contributor across the Fedora Project world.  I imagine it as a module of the Fedora account system (FAS).  Count of wiki edits, numbers of contributions to mailing list discussions, code and content touched in SCMs, count of blog posts on planet with tag cloud, IRC help statistics (somehow) … any ways we can pull in and massage data to give a meaningful result.

Run that in to a cool code/tag/collaboration swarm animation alongside a set of personal recommendations from other project members.  This page is something that can help you get in to school programs, get new jobs or promotions, and who knows what other ways that might have meaning in your life.

All of this to add value to contributors, giving them more reason to enjoy what they do around these parts.  It’s also cool to show your non-project friends and family how and why you spend the time you spend on your FLOSS and community pursuits.

Of course, the data is all exportable; you aren’t trapped carrying this CV at a fedoraproject.org domain, nor are you required to use the project’s service.  There are a ton of privacy concerns involved, solving those has to be a first priority.  People will get competitive or try to game the system, to varying degrees. *shrug*

Um, so … anyone want to help build this?

This is a follow-up to the successful CLS that occurred before the last OSCON in San Jose.  The idea was born at the first CLS to have additional, regional, and smaller CLS events in between an international, annual event.  Well, small was the idea originally, but it sounds as if CLS West has nearly as many people attending.  In addition, the Ignite session on Saturday night at Google HQ gives a handful of us a chance to bring a message to the assembled attendees and a few guests.  I’m planning to break out our new upstream project – an open content community book we’ve started and are ready to open for wider collaboration.

If you want to attend CLS West, there are still free tickets as of this writing.  If I know you and you want to come to just the Ignite event, I’ll gladly hook you up as my guest.  That, I believe, is first come, first served.

Taught by a Terrible Disease

This interested me for several reasons.

• We are all going to have phases in life where we are disabled, either in comparison to the rest of the world or by our own definition.   It’s cool seeing how people creatively use technology to not only re-enable but to improve their interactions and experiences.
• As a remote team member for the last 10 years, I appreciate seeing how people are able to do their work from remote.  In this story, we read of how the professor’s teaching has improved by being remote from her class.
• Open source methodologies provides a way for massive improvements in accessibility through various hackability efforts, such as the Open Prosthetics Project.

Sometimes the only way to show educators is by immersing them in collaborative experiences where they learn personally the value of open participation, such as POSSE.  It makes them better able to help their students become open participants when the students see the learning and modelling from the instructor.

Why am I reporting this?  The Gallup headline for their own results is, “U.S. Clergy, Bankers See New Lows in Honesty/Ethics Ratings“.  Of course, their take on the story is that, surprise surprise, people trust bankers even less than before.  Now you’ll tell me car sales people are lower on the list now, too?  Oh, yep, there they are, 7% dropped to 6% this year.

I found the story about the nurses more interesting and wanted someone, somewhere to do a story on that tidbit.  Here it is.

Naturally, the story angle about the drop in trust of bankers is what other articles picked up, including one from the New York Times that was referenced from this story about Darth Vader ringing the NYSE bell.  The Times article did mention “(t)o be fair, the perceived integrity of most other professional groups that Gallup asked about — including clergy, lawyers and pharmacists — has also been falling in the last year. Police officers are the only group that seems to have enjoyed a significant increase in public esteem.”

But really, the part that jumped out at me was the fact that trust for nurses is 20% higher than for police officers, and a full 14 points higher than the nearest ranked profession.  I doubt the drop in trust from 84% to 83% is very important, comparatively.

Oh, I see one reason, there is a trend here.  In 2008 Gallup wrote, “Nurses Shine, Bankers Slump in Ethics Ratings,” which followed up the 2007 report, “Nurses Top for Ethics and Honesty.”  Nurses have been at the top of the list since they were added in 1999, with the exception of 2001 when firefighters took the top spot.  I’m wondering if the real story is, while Gallup is providing a good service in keeping track of this information, they really don’t have much to say about it otherwise.  A rise or fall in a few percentage points in a single year could indicate many different things.

I will give them one thing – the banking profession’s fall from 41% in 2005 to 19% now, that definitely shows something is afoot.

An example I saw today is in this bug report, where Adam had noticed that some of the content in the Fedora 12 Virtualization Guide (English) was actually for Red Hat Enterprise Linux v5.  This, it turns out, is an artifact of the development process.  The content was for Enterprise Linux 5 first, then was converted to Fedora 12 content.  In the process, the author didn’t have the time to update the screenshots.  (Which is fine, release early and release often should be the rule; the screenshots can be updated later, as this process is showing.)

By writing out and exposing all the tasks of a project, such as converting a guide from Enterprise Linux to Fedora, you make it possible for other contributors to catch the 20% that you may not have time for.  Even where that 20% is not essential for you to call it complete, there is definite value in that 20% for others to exercise legitimate peripheral participation.  In this case, the process of updating the screenshots is only going to take a handful of hours, and at the end, the other contributor is going to be more familiar with Docs process, tools, culture, and that one guide in particular.  That is part of growing capacity in the project, helping make others in to experts, too.

As it progresses, Adam is interested in helping finish this part of the guide, and Eric gave him some direct tips on getting the work done, all recorded in the bug ticket.  Now it can be reassigned to Adam, and he can use the usual resources to find answers and get the updated guide published.

The challenge is, no task ticket tracking system is going to expose all the details to the granular level.  The screenshots might have been one on a task list somewhere, but there is a social element to all this.  For example, this is why we blog about what we are stuck on as much as writing about what is going well.  It’s like the easyfix idea, not everything everywhere is going to get tagged with that, but enough are to make it easier for new people to move from participant to contributor.