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Wiki gardening in the garden

26-May-08

Today is a holiday in the US (Memorial Day), and I’m spending part of mine working on the Fedora Project wiki migration. To be honest, I’m not a big BBQ party type of person, and living in a beach community that is the target of tourism, sometimes it is nicest to enjoy a holiday from inside my own backyard.

So, I am gardening the wiki from within my own garden. The weather is clear and a bit windy, with cloudlets migrating West to East. In my current view are a revealed wild rose bush in all its seasonal glory; we cleared out a big planter box and weeded yesterday to reveal yet another hidden treasure. In the far view, redwoods and tall palm trees are pulled in the wind. One stand of palms are blowing steady, as they might on an island. This is a bit unusual, our winds here in the valley/river bottom tend to be whippy and change directions often. The effect is bucolic and a bit tropical, although it’s only 16C. In a few minutes I’ll move out of the encroaching sun to get some shade. It’s not a bad place to be, if you have to be somewhere doing something.

(Hat tip to Max, who said I should post about this. It’s good to reveal the work-personal balance happening in real time.)

Filed in Fedora, Urban Farm | | Comments Off

Wiki mid-migration update

26-May-08

Howdy from your friendly Wiki Gardener crew. Saturday’s early-import of data from Moin Moin to MediaWiki went well, after the usual sunburn and problems with attachments. The new wiki is alive for work, but is subject to random outages as Ricky thinks of clever new things to make the final migration days go easier.

Many of us have begun doing these things:

  • Updating our personal pages
  • Working on our project pages to fix formatting problems
  • Reattaching attachments to pages
  • Making how-to and to-do pages so everyone has some help with the floodgates open on Tuesday

If you want to help, drop by #fedora-docs on irc.freenode.net; check out the /topic for updated links and such. We’re starting to populate the new master to-do list.  By tomorrow we need to have some deep clarity for contributors who are ready to start using the new wiki.

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Looking for Northwest Ambassadors for OSCON

22-May-08

Who is in the Pacific Northwest and might want to go to OSCON for Fedora? Existing Ambassadors, yes, but if you’ve been wanting to step-up as a Fedora contributor, this is a good opportunity to join.

To be clear, I’m just asking as another Fedora Ambassador, not as anyone who has purse strings to open. You’d likely be on our own dime for travel and lodging. OSCON isn’t really a premier Fedora event, but it could be, especially if you help make it so. If you are interested, definitely follow the Ambassadors join process, but also contact me or one of the Community Architecture folks to let us of your interest in this event. Go ahead an comment on this blog post, too.

Filed in Events, Fedora, Marketing, Open Source | | Comments (1) »

Is Fedora for newbies?

21-May-08

Last week I responded to an email sent to the webmaster@fp.org address. Most of the replies we make to those emails are stock-answers, such as http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/ServerTestPage when they email that Fedora stole their website and replaced it with “your page,” or a pointer to the Fedora communicate and get help page. I felt compelled to respond to this one because the person seemed to have so widely missed the mark that I was sure he wasn’t going to email fedora-list to continue the Q&A.

The situation was typical, with a twist that hit me a bit personally: he got this great thing for no cost but it was broken because his usual stuff didn’t work (meaning multimedia codecs and a Flash player); when he tried to fix it, he was told he had to pay for something that he should get in the distro for free (meaning he hit Codeina and the for-sale codecs from Fluendo); and Fedora was obviously not interested in newbie users like him if we couldn’t get this basic stuff right.

If you guessed that the twist that hit me was the reference to Codeina/CodecBuddy etc., that was it. However, it was easy to respond by pointing at the Wikipedia page on gratis vs. libre. IMO, that is the crux of the situation. He is used to getting something for no cost, where the real costs are actually hidden elsewhere or secretly shifted over to him in the form of legal risks and restrictions on his freedom. I should have known that a subtle argument like that isn’t going to work without some explanation.

The point that I keep going over in my mind, “Is Fedora trying to be a distro for newbies?” is beginning to answer itself. Jono Bacon from Ubuntu pointed out that Fedora ships non-free firmware, and in his opinion isn’t any more or less free /ethical than Ubuntu. You can hear it in this audiocast, it starts at 30:15. He may be totally right about that. The difference is in distro goals. Last week I had dinner with Christer Edwards, who has been doing Ubuntu stuff for a long time. To paraphrase him, he said that Ubuntu’s goal is to not abandon the newbie user. To make sure that all documentation and tools begin at the most basic level and work someone upwards. In this they make a few compromises, from codecs to carrying patches on Debian and upstream, but only when it is necessary to keep the user experience from sucking.

You know what? That is a great goal to have. Because of it, Ubuntu is introducing many people to a 95%+ free and open source software experience. Arguably much better than, say, 0% or 20%. (Yay Firefox, the cross-distro open source bunker buster!)

But that doesn’t make it the best goal for Fedora to have, just because it is a best goal for someone else to have. I think Fedora is taking the long view when setting goals, and we have proven, since before there was a Fedora, that this methodology is better for the advancement of free/libre and open source software. There are always easy ways to get new people involved in using FLOSS. Fedora is working on the more interesting and rewarding, IMHO, problem of getting people involved in contributing to FLOSS.

Rather than dispose of the entire morning where I couldn’t help myself in responding, I’ve decided to publish most of the email I wrote here. If you are reading this on the Fedora Planet, the idiom “preaching to the choir” is applicable.
Perhaps it will be useful to someone in some other way. (The text from the original writer is completely changed but accurate as to content and context. This is an entirely original work of mine and I am not exposing any details of the actual email I received.) Read on for the full response …

More…

Filed in Fedora, FLOSS, Free Culture, Freedom, Linux, Open Source | | Comments (3) »

Evil planning and world domination to continue for six more months

20-May-08

That’s right, meta-evil planning continues right here, as I remain appointed to the Fedora Project Board. There was only one appointed seat remaining, and through legerdemain, geomancy, and the deployment of the correct team(s) of evil minions engaged in doing my bidding … well, let’s just say it was no contest.

To quote myself:

On Tue, 2008-05-13 at 21:53 +0000, Paul W. Frields wrote:

> As everyone probably knows, the Fedora Board is moving into an election
> season due to the release of another Fedora. In advance of the
> election, Red Hat appoints one seat, and the final seat is appointed
> afterward to make sure the Board is fairly balanced to represent the
> Board’s many constituents.
>
> In addition, to fix our scheduling so that only half the Board is
> turning over at each election cycle, Red Hat has agreed to extend one
> appointment by a single release of Fedora (or about six months).
> Karsten Wade will remain in his current seat on the Fedora Board until
> just after Fedora 10. At that point, Red Hat has the option to appoint
> someone else to his seat.

And I hope they take that option!

Aside from the chance to yet again be the sacrificial lamb who represents Shadowman, I really wanted to keep myself out of the election this time. Too many incumbents and people with high visibility makes it harder for newer folks to get elected, by drawing votes and attention away.

Then, if I still feel like doing this, I can run next time when all my most electable colleagues are already in their seats, leaving me room to receive a 100% vote mandate!

World domination and Fedora-based femmebots, here I come!!!

– Karsten

Yes, oh, yes.

Filed in Fedora, Leadership, Responsibility | | Comments (2) »

OpenJDK installation instructions for Fedora – now on openjdk.java.net

19-May-08

Thank you Mark Reinhold for reaching out to make sure the OpenJDK website was ready for the Fedora 9 release with instructions on installing OpenJDK 6/IcedTea 7 under Fedora 8 and 9 and EPEL 5. Full instructions are here:

http://openjdk.java.net/install/#fedora

Mucho appreciado a Andrew Overholt, Andrew Haley, and Lillian Angel for technical and functional edits. By the time Mark Reinhold was done, they were transformed from this into something consumable. ;-D

This also brings full circle the question I raised in another post, “Where is the “Now available in Fedora” button for OpenJDK.” It’s right there on the front page. (Also posted on Dev Fu.)

Filed in Fedora, FLOSS, Linux, Open Source, OpenJDK | | Comments Off

The Fedora wiki is migrating next week — Tuesday 2008-05-27

19-May-08

… in case you haven’t heard.

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Infrastructure/WikiMigration

If you haven’t heard about this, it might be because your subproject/SIG leadership is already taking care of things.  For example, a bunch of us from Fedora Docs have been working on this migration since the beginning, so people in the Docs Project can be fairly sure we have their needs covered.

If after all that thinking you decide that you have something to ask, answer, or otherwise know about, your two best options are to:

  • Email/contact one of the contacts on the WikiMigration page
  • Contact people who you know are leaders in your subproject/SIG

If that doesn’t add up for you, then just go ahead and email me. 🙂

Filed in Fedora | | Comments (1) »

Free distro love – an audiocast

19-May-08

When we met at CommunityOne to have a “battle of the GNU/Linux distros,” (or “smackdown” as Barton called it,) I didn’t expect it to be imbalanced.  But it was.  There was entirely too much love, respect, and violent agreement for me.

You can witness for yourself by hoisting down this audiocast that includes a cool cast of characters. OGG if you are cool, MP3 if you drool.  It weighs in at :45+ minutes, but it’s a fun and informative listen.

From Sun, Barton George deftly led the interview as the Iconoclastic Toastmaster, and Glynn Foster not only brought the OpenSolaris scene (and live CDs), but he also had an upstream perspective from his years in GNOME.  From Novell and OpenSUSE, Joe ‘Zonker’ Brockmeier had a very fresh view through the eyes of someone who has been on the free and open source software scene for a very long time.  From Canonical and Ubuntu, Jono Bacon served his brand of wit and style while keeping his rapier strikes accurate.  I held down the Red Hat and Fedora side of the tent.

Out of this day and discussion I seem to be teeming with new thoughts and things to write.  Rather than write them here, I am going to slice and parse them into meaningful posts over time, let it influence my thinking, and see where it goes.

Filed in Audio, Fedora, FLOSS, Free Culture, Leadership, Linux, Open Source | | Comments Off

Should we use the CC when it’s not truly freeing?

14-May-08

If you haven’t read the well-reasoned article on FreedomDefined.org about not using the non-commercial (NC) clause of the CC license, please do. Recently I saw Benjamin Mako Hill give a talk about free culture, and he showed some graphics that are several years old about the proliferation of CC licenses, especially which types are used. Statistics from Creative Commons from two years ago still show a very high usage of the NC license, especially in comparison to the SA license.

The question I’m wondering is this: If your CC license choice is barely granting more rights than normal copyright gives, should you even both to license the content?

In other words, if you are not allowing anyone to even share the content if there is a hint of commercial activity, such as Google AdSense on their blog?, and they cannot make derivatives, so no remixing, why bother putting a license on it. What can they do above normal copyright? Copy it in its entirety? Might as well just link back to the source instead of mirroring it.

So, that is my question to Jon Phillips et al. Do you want us using any CC license just to spread the usage? Or should we stop using the NC clause and otherwise leave it under regular copyright?

Filed in Fedora, FLOSS, Free Culture, Freedom, Writing | | Comments (3) »

Partition /dev/sd* namespace FAIL

08-May-08

Just as I zipped my backpack closed to head home from JavaOne, I overheard a conversation. One of the JBoss booth staff had been trying to find something on a media for an attendee. I inquired, and it turned out they were looking for Fedora media; one of the fellows had a laptop to resurrect.

Naturally I said, “I can take care of that,” and I woke my machine from sleep while getting out a USB flash drive. Unfortunately, in packing, the extended battery had moved a bit and the machine was powered down. I booted, where I faced the usual sight of Compiz (aka “Desktop Effects”) not started, except this time it won’t start manually.  Not wanting to waste their time (or mine), I switched to a virtual console. I could get them the live USB of Fedora 9 Preview in a few seconds that way, too, straight from memory without referring to the Fedora Live USB How To.

Plugged in the USB drive and typed:

sudo livecd-iso-to-disk /home/iso/Fedora-9-Preview-i686-Live.iso /dev/sda1

The copy started, and we commented on how fast it was going. But after it reached a small percentage, it complained the disk was full. That seemed odd, but I figured I would reboot and see if it worked; maybe the media was bad?

OK, some of you have figured it out already. Can you guess what happened when I rebooted?

I got told “No operating system.” Hmm, guess the live USB didn’t take, right? No, reboot again and see what happened. No operating system found for the laptop itself.

Oh! The USB key first partition was /dev/sdb1. My laptop’s hard drive /boot partition, that was the one on /dev/sda1. That was the one I filled up. At the same time, the MBR must have been overwritten, so GRUB wouldn’t boot.

Naturally, I had no rescue media on me and couldn’t recover quickly and get these gentlemen on their way. I had to send them off disappointed, and myself home, speeding down the peninsula, with a thrashed MBR.

Lesson? Well, sure, be careful. But we are telling people it is so easy to make these Live USB keys, yet … if they get one letter incorrect in the wrong direction, they hose their system and ability to recover easily when they do reboot. It’s a hidden problem, too; it could be weeks until they reboot and have no recollection of the chain of events.

Not sure where to focus for a fix. Is it in using the sd* namespace? Having all media be in such a similar path is a bit scary, since some media is treated destructively (CD and DVD writables, flash media) where others are not.

We certainly need to educate people who are going to be making these drives to very carefully check what the device path is for their mounted media before proceeding. We don’t typically direct normal users to do things so close to their /boot, or, well, any other partition. The fact that this happened to me, a fairly experienced Linux sysadmin, could either be a clear case of PEBCAK and moving too fast, or it could be a sign of warning about spreading these tools to people.

Perhaps I should make a feature request of livecd-tools to do a check that the partition about to be written to doesn’t happen to have a system label, such as /boot or /home. 🙂

Filed in Fedora, Linux, Tip and Tricks | | Comments (7) »