Ambiently Sharing Creativity

Putting Oracle a11y news in perspective

Oracle laying off GNOME contributors is certainly bad news for the project. It’s particularly bad news because Willie Walker, one of my favourite GNOME contributors, is now out of a job.

I just want to put this in perspective, though. In 2007, IBM made deep cuts in its support of GNOME accessibility, affecting contributors such as Peter Parente, Eitan Isaacson and Aaron Leventhal, who are no longer paid to work on GNOME accessibility work. The IBM cuts were perhaps deeper than those that Oracle are announcing right now (but I suspect that we’re not finished hearing bad news from Oracle). So we’ve been through this (and worse) before.

Next, it’s not all bad news on the accessibility front: other distributions are carrying a small amount of the accessibility mantle (Ubuntu, OpenSuse), with projects like MouseTweaks being funded by Canonical, the Inference lab in Cambridge has been funded for some projects (Dasher, OpenGazer (the newer development of OpenGazer is not yet available for download)) through the AEGIS project, and of course as others have noticed, the Mozilla Foundation has repeated its accessibility grant of the last two years to the GNOME Foundation, and supporting Orca is part of its accessibility roadmap. Mozilla has also funded work to port AT-SPI from Orbit to DBus, and other work on Orca and Accerciser.

So there are people who care about accessibility in GNOME, and there appears to be a potential for funding for accessibility work, for the right people with the right contacts and the right projects.

Perhaps it’s time for the GNOME Foundation to start seeking funds from government bodies, other public institutions and private funding to fund accessibility work for the greater good? I know that we’re currently raising funds for a sysadmin, and have not yet reached the level of support where we can make that position a regular fixture, but accessibility is different.

No one player is willing to put enough funding into accessibility to properly support Orca, gok, Dasher, AT-SPI, Accerciser, MouseTweaks, keyboard accessibility tools like SlowKeys and StickyKeys, and so on – but perhaps there are lots of people who are willing to support a project for a specific feature, or general stability & bug fixing work for a11y on the desktop?

If there is no commercial justification for a company like Oracle to pay two people to work full time on free software accessibility, then it’ll be a hard sell to any other company. But perhaps the GNOME Foundation could bear two full time accessibility employees with targeted grants working on a public roadmap? Raising $250,000 – $300,000 a year for accessibility from grants doesn’t sound that hard.

But then, maybe I’m nuts…

February 09, 2010 03:01 PM

Nicu Buculei: Some FOSDEM 2010 photos

Now that I can see beyond the snow is time to follow the Day -1 with more photos showing what happened during the event.

Travelling with a sponsorship from Mozilla (thank you guys a lot!) and being a rabid Fedora fanboy I shared my time between the Mozilla room and the Fedora booth:


And hanged with people from both communities:


Also, had the opportunity to take part in a planning for the upcoming Libre Graphics Meeting, where it looks like the Fedora Design Team will have a good presence:

It was impressive how many people have attended, many presentations had the rooms jam-packed, with more people in the audience than seats available:

Being there with two groups, one night I partied with the Mozilla people (food, drinks, bowling and laser tag):


And the other with my Fedora friends (food, drinks, jokes, photography)


I don't know from which project they were, but some people seems they had partier even harder than us:

It was not all fun, jokes and trying to impress girls:

I even managed to get some work done (if you can call that work):

February 09, 2010 02:30 PM

User:Hpcnl

New user account

New page

February 09, 2010 09:21 AM

Icon view in the Source List

Stephen “lostcookie” Griffiths recently started coding on PiTiVi, learning the codebase as he works through the PiTiVi Love list. He has done awesome work on the source list to implement an “icon view” mode and has managed to somehow not become insane while I pointed out all his mistakes and bugs :)

The icon view is especially useful if you are working on a wide, high-resolution monitor (ex: 1920×1200) with a large number of clips that have nice thumbnails, because you can fit more of them without needing to scroll.

Before:

After:

This definitely looks cool. Great work Stephen!

February 09, 2010 03:48 AM

rng-tools with TPM

In Ubuntu, I uploaded an rng-tools that supports the RNG in TPM devices (my patch is waiting in Debian). This hardware is available on a bunch of systems, including several Thinkpads and the Intel Q35, Q45 and newer main boards.

While most TPM RNGs aren’t really heavy-duty hardware RNGs, they are at least a mild source of randomness. I’ll be using an entropy key eventually, but for now, the TPM can supplement my collected entropy.

/etc/default/rng-tools:

HRNGDEVICE=/dev/null
RNGDOPTIONS=”–hrng=tpm –fill-watermark=90% –feed-interval=1″

After it’s been running a bit:

Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: bits received from HRNG source: 6180064
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: bits sent to kernel pool: 6166144
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: entropy added to kernel pool: 4624608
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2 successes: 309
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2 failures: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Monobit: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Poker: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Runs: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Long run: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS 140-2(2001-10-10) Continuous run: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: HRNG source speed: (min=5.207; avg=6.145; max=6.200)Kibits/s
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: FIPS tests speed: (min=66.925; avg=75.789; max=112.861)Mibits/s
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: Lowest ready-buffers level: 0
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: Entropy starvations: 308
Feb 8 19:10:51 linux rngd[13143]: stats: Time spent starving for entropy: (min=3150263; avg=3178447.994; max=3750848)us

And now the kernel entropy pool is high:

$ echo $(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail)/$(cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/poolsize)
3968/4096

February 09, 2010 03:32 AM

Main Page

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:07, 8 February 2010
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	* [[Website]] - updating the website		* [[Website]] - updating the website
	* [[User Accounts]] - how to get an fd.o account		* [[User Accounts]] - how to get an fd.o account
-	* [[Conference]] - Libre Graphics Meeting 2009 planning	+	* [[Conference]] - Libre Graphics Meeting 2010 planning
	* [[Distributions]] - distro projects that support Create		* [[Distributions]] - distro projects that support Create
	|		|

February 08, 2010 11:07 PM

Getting Things ‘Bird

This is a follow-up to my post from a few months ago about mapping GTD concepts to iCalendar.

Six months on, I owe the world a report on my attempts to implement GTD methodology in a standard calendaring application.  I chose Thunderbird with the Lightning extension,  because it’s cross-platform and because I already use it for so much else (in other words, AXIOM 1: Do Not Be Tied Down To One Device Or Platform, and AXIOM 2: Never Use A Single-Purpose Application When There Is A Flexible Solution).

What I did was this:

1. Created one “remote” calendar for each GTD context, using remote WebDAV storage, since that was available to me through a private domain I host junk on (e.g., webdav.freesoftwhere.org/cal/errands.ics)
2. Created a “Category” for each project
3. Managed my tasks through these lists, as individual VTODO items.

The rationale for (1) was two-fold: I want to be able to access my tasks from any platform that knows VTODO, and on small-form-factor or restricted platforms, I want to be able to see only a subset of the contexts.  For example, in the office, one might want to de-clutter one’s task manager by only viewing the “work” context.  That doesn’t apply to me, because I work from home, but you get the idea. You might also have a phone/mobile device whose task manager can only support a single iCalendar feed, and selectively choose just the “phonecalls” or “errands” context.

I accessed the feeds from Thunderbird/Lightning on Linux and OS X, and attempted — without success — to to so from Maemo and Symbian clients as well.  No editing on the latter platforms, and no actually working VTODO reading on Maemo at all.  There is no Web app support for VTODO in Google Calendar, or other free software web calendar services that I could find (if you know one, drop me a line).  For basic task management, I’ve stuck with it.

What I learned:

• Lightning: adding new categories is a royal pain in Lightning. It requires opening Thunderbird’s Preferences editor.
• Lightning: Lightning exposes noticeably less of the task detail in the main window than it does in the “new task” dialog box (e.g., status and category, but NOT location).  This makes it difficult to make use of these features.
• Lightning: The above also means you must right-click -> edit everything to update status/details, which is a pain if you’re trying to do GTD. GTD requires active task management, not just binary done/notdone lists.
• Lightning: multiple “color” inheritance in the user interface (i.e., from the calendar and from the category) is confusing at best; how to solve that not easy particularly (even in the mythical perfect calendar where you don’t need more than one calendar feed to manage everything)
• Lightning: In Lightning, you cannot simply click to show just one calendar (in this case, remember, that a calendar means a GTD context); instead every calendar you want to NOT see must be un-checked.
• Lightning: The task manager cannot filter what is shown by category, which would be helpful to view all tasks for a particular project.
• Lightning: I cannot figure out what the Tasks -> Calendar menu does while in Task mode; it lists the calendars, but selecting or unselecting them seems to have no effect.
• Lightning: Lightning is just more crash-prone in general for tasks than for calendars.  They’re hard to reproduce; it’s nobody’s fault, just due to fewer users filing fewer bugs.
• VTODO: sharing categories between tasks and events is not a good idea.  My usage of categories as GTD projects can sometimes cause overlaps, but projects are transient.  The GTD principle of only tracking actual appointments as calendar events almost always uses broad, permanent categories (”home”, “work”, “church”, “school”).  Mixing is confusing.
• VTODO: “due date” does not work real well for the GTD principle of next-action sorting, nor does “priority.”

In addition, I realized a few things about the way I use iCalendar-based calendars in general:

• I must use a separate feed for calendar and tasks, because nobody implements both of them correctly.
• I pretty much use Google Calendar solely for the email/SMS alerts.
• people use multiple “calendars” primarily for the ability to do color-coding. That is a UI issue which *should* be available as categories: one calendar for “Appointments” should be enough.
• most desktop task managers and mobile device task managers do not care about iCalendar/VTODO at all. Instead, they try to reinvent the wheel, which sucks.

On the latter point, I fully recognize that every GTD user is different, and the system is meant to be customized to the way you work.  But there are half a dozen “todo” managers for Linux that offer nothing beyond simple lists of items that you can cross off — like Tasque, Gto-do, Tasks, and so on.  Maybe a lot of people need those, but I don’t think it’s accurate to call what they do task management.  Task management is active, and it involves detail.  VTODO provides for that; it enables you to keep track of partial progress, categorize and sort what you need to do.  It has a real data model behind it.

The lightweight apps would better be described as checklist managers.  I don’t see that they provide any functionality beyond what is available in a simple notepad app like Tomboy or Gnote.  If you need that, that’s fine.  People need list management, it’s great for grocery shopping. But I want task management to be better than that.  That’s why I undertook GTD, and that’s why I tried to implement it in VTODO.

VTODO is probably always going to be the neglected sibling of VEVENT.  Probably better off than VFREEBUSY and VJOURNAL (seriously, I still can’t figure out what good the latter’s supposed to be), but supported secondarily.  In thinking about how hard it is to find a decent VTODO client, I realize I’m not forging new territory.  The same is probably true for any published standard.  It’s just that I see people attempting to reinvent the wheel a lot regarding to-do list apps, rather than even attempting to tackle it.  Which is a shame if there are already iCalendar parsing libraries out there — which there are.

February 08, 2010 09:33 PM

Category:Conference Talk 2010 Proposal

Created page with 'Proposed talks for the upcoming conference'

New page

February 08, 2010 04:36 PM

Template:Conference Talk 2010 Proposal

New page

February 08, 2010 04:36 PM

User:Yagraph

New user account

New page

February 08, 2010 08:51 AM

Drawing freedom: wearing a graphics hat at the Free Software Foundation

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:46, 7 February 2010
Line 1:		Line 1:
-	{{Conference Talk 2009 Proposal}}	+	{{Conference Talk 2010 Proposal}}

February 07, 2010 11:46 PM

Se débarrasser des lignes du papier avec GIMP

Puisque mes quelques recherches ont généralement été infructueuses (la technique «utiliser l’outil de teinte/saturation» ne fonctionne pas dans mon cas), je me suis inspiré du commentaire de rafter dans cette discussion MetaFilter. Voici mes notes/observations personnelles, au cas où ça peut aider quelqu’un.

1. Numériser le papier, en couleur 24bits 300 DPI
2. Prendre l’outil de sélection par couleur (Maj+O ou menu Sélection > Par couleur)
3. Dans les paramètres de l’outil, spécifier un seuil (par composite) d’environ 70. Laisser le lissage activé, mais ne pas adoucir les bords
4. Zoomer à 200-300% pour bien viser, sélectionner une ligne bleue. Si tout va bien, toutes les lignes devraient être sélectionnées d’un coup
5. Utiliser le menu Sélection > Agrandir… (pas adoucir!) et agrandir de 1 pixel
6. Supprimer le contenu de la sélection (Édition > Effacer), tout simplement. La technique des niveaux ou de l’ajustement de luminosité/contraste ne semble pas marcher dans mon cas.
7. Maintenant qu’on est débarrasé des lignes bleues, on peut convertir l’image en niveaux de gris pour que ce soit plus propre et léger (Image > Mode > Niveaux de gris)
8. Plus qu’à ajuster les niveaux (Couleurs > Niveaux…) pour foncer l’écriture pour que ce soit plus lisible/contrasté

À la fin, pour réduire davantage la taille du fichier, on peut redimensionner l’image puis la convertir en couleurs indexées (Image > Mode > Couleurs indexées). J’aime bien utiliser 10-20 couleurs sans tramage, puis enregistrer en PNG. C’est ainsi que j’obtiens un manuscrit bien numérisé, facile à lire, et pesant moins de 200 Kio, sans l’horrible compression du JPEG.

February 07, 2010 07:48 PM

User:Extreme

New user account

New page

February 07, 2010 11:38 AM

Video Format Pref

Discussion:

← Older revision		Revision as of 06:43, 6 February 2010
(One intermediate revision not shown)
Line 20:		Line 20:
	Can this spec apply to both standard-definition and high-definition video? For standard definition, there is a difference of frame size, being 720 by 480 for NTSC and 720 by 576 for PAL (in both cases, the aspect ratio of the displayed image is always 4:3). But this doesn’t seem to matter for high definition. For both standard-definition and high-definition, there is a difference of frame rates, based around 29.97 fps for NTSC and 25 fps for PAL.		Can this spec apply to both standard-definition and high-definition video? For standard definition, there is a difference of frame size, being 720 by 480 for NTSC and 720 by 576 for PAL (in both cases, the aspect ratio of the displayed image is always 4:3). But this doesn’t seem to matter for high definition. For both standard-definition and high-definition, there is a difference of frame rates, based around 29.97 fps for NTSC and 25 fps for PAL.
		+
		+	Note also that if a config file earlier in the search contains an invalid setting, the search does not continue even if another, later config file might contain a valid setting. This allows the user to override a system default with “no default”. Is this important? I think it could be.
		+
		+	==Reference Implementation==
		+
		+	The following Python code implements a routine called <tt>get_default_video_format</tt> that returns either one of the strings “NTSC” or “PAL” indicating the user/system-configured default format as per the spec above, or <TT>None</TT> if the default is invalid or not configured.
		+
		+	<pre>class xdg_base_dir :
		+	"Implementation of relevant parts of the XDG Base Directory specification" \
		+	" <http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/latest/>."
		+
		+	@classmethod
		+	def get_config_home(self) :
		+	"""returns the directory for holding user-specific config files."""
		+	result = os.environ.get("XDG_CONFIG_HOME")
		+	if result == None :
		+	result = os.path.join(os.environ["HOME"], ".config")
		+	#end if
		+	return result
		+	#end get_config_home
		+
		+	@classmethod
		+	def config_search_path(self) :
		+	"""returns the list of config directories to search (apart from the user area)."""
		+	return tuple(os.environ.get("XDG_CONFIG_DIRS", "/etc").split(":"))
		+	# note spec actually says default should be /etc/xdg, but /etc is the
		+	# conventional location for system config files.
		+	#end config_search_path
		+
		+	@classmethod
		+	def find_first_config_path(self, path) :
		+	"""searches for path in all the config directory locations in order of decreasing
		+	priority, returning the expansion where it is first found, or None if not found."""
		+	paths_to_try = iter((self.get_config_home(),) + self.config_search_path())
		+	# highest priority first
		+	while True :
		+	try :
		+	this_path = paths_to_try.next()
		+	except StopIteration :
		+	this_path = None
		+	break
		+	#end try
		+	this_path = os.path.join(this_path, path)
		+	if os.path.exists(this_path) :
		+	break
		+	#end while
		+	return this_path
		+	#end find_first_config_path
		+
		+	#end xdg_base_dir
		+
		+	valid_video_formats = frozenset(("NTSC", "PAL"))
		+
		+	def get_default_video_format() :
		+	video_format = os.environ.get("VIDEO_FORMAT")
		+	if video_format == None :
		+	config_file = xdg_base_dir.find_first_config_path("video_format")
		+	if config_file != None :
		+	try :
		+	video_format = open(config_file, "r").readline().strip()
		+	except IOError :
		+	video_format = None
		+	#end try
		+	#end if
		+	#end if
		+	if video_format != None :
		+	video_format = video_format.upper()
		+	if video_format not in valid_video_formats :
		+	video_format = None
		+	#end if
		+	#end if
		+	return video_format
		+	#end get_default_video_format
		+	</pre>

February 06, 2010 06:43 AM

More bug triaging

I have requested additional super cow powers on GNOME bugzilla to be able to do some serious bug triaging in PiTiVi’s bug list. I have

• Touched approximately 70 bugs or more today (out of ~230 initially), spending approximately 5.5 hours doing bug triaging and hunting (according to hamster)
• Confirmed many unconfirmed bugs
• Updated target milestones (even for already fixed bugs!)
• Added keywords (and added “Special searches” to the website)
• Reassigned components (so that Brandon can easily search for bugs that are related to the user interface)
• Closed a ton of obsolete/fixed/duplicate bugs.

Damn, this feels good. I hope Edward won’t be mad at me for doing the cleanup and flooding his inbox while he was on vacation.

February 06, 2010 02:15 AM

Conference

Past Conferences:

← Older revision		Revision as of 19:18, 5 February 2010
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	=== Past Conferences ===		=== Past Conferences ===
		+	* [http://dneary.free.fr/lgm06/ '''LGM 2006''' Lyon, France]
	* [[Conference 2007]]		* [[Conference 2007]]
	* [[Conference 2008]]		* [[Conference 2008]]

February 05, 2010 07:18 PM

User:Lukacu

Created page with '== About == Computer scientist and a hobby artist from [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slovenia Slovenia]. [http://mypaint.intilinux.com/ MyPaint] developer. More on [http://luka....'

New page

February 05, 2010 10:19 AM

Talk:OpenRaster/Reference Library

← Older revision		Revision as of 23:57, 4 February 2010
Line 1:		Line 1:
-	License: a exception which explicit allows for static linking would encourage proprietary usage. [[User:KaiUweBehrmann|KaiUweBehrmann]] 06:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)	+	=== License ===
		+
		+	a exception which explicit allows for static linking would encourage proprietary usage. [[User:KaiUweBehrmann|KaiUweBehrmann]] 06:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
	: agreed. I am not all that familiar with licenses (beyond GPL and LGPL) ... do you recommend something like BSD license perhaps? --[[User:Lukacu|Lukacu]] 09:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)		: agreed. I am not all that familiar with licenses (beyond GPL and LGPL) ... do you recommend something like BSD license perhaps? --[[User:Lukacu|Lukacu]] 09:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
	:: Yes a BSD-style license would allow this (BSD is very short, just read it...). --[[User:Maxy|Maxy]] 21:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)		:: Yes a BSD-style license would allow this (BSD is very short, just read it...). --[[User:Maxy|Maxy]] 21:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)
		+	::: No problem, I can change the license headers before my next push to the repository --[[User:Lukacu|Lukacu]] 23:57, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

February 04, 2010 11:57 PM

Talk:OpenRaster/Reference Library

← Older revision		Revision as of 21:44, 4 February 2010
Line 1:		Line 1:
	License: a exception which explicit allows for static linking would encourage proprietary usage. [[User:KaiUweBehrmann|KaiUweBehrmann]] 06:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)		License: a exception which explicit allows for static linking would encourage proprietary usage. [[User:KaiUweBehrmann|KaiUweBehrmann]] 06:07, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
	: agreed. I am not all that familiar with licenses (beyond GPL and LGPL) ... do you recommend something like BSD license perhaps? --[[User:Lukacu|Lukacu]] 09:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)		: agreed. I am not all that familiar with licenses (beyond GPL and LGPL) ... do you recommend something like BSD license perhaps? --[[User:Lukacu|Lukacu]] 09:54, 22 January 2010 (UTC)
		+	:: Yes a BSD-style license would allow this (BSD is very short, just read it...). --[[User:Maxy|Maxy]] 21:44, 4 February 2010 (UTC)

February 04, 2010 09:44 PM

Free vs. Open

You probably know about the ongoing debate of Free Software vs. Open Source. It clearly isn't a black-and-white debate, and some may even say they don't care what the difference is. But let me show you with a black-and-white example what the difference is, and why it matters:

Let's assume you are against slavery for obvious reasons, and there is a movement that clearly states it is "PRO black people".

Then there is a movement that states to be "PRO human rights" - not only including black people, but everybody. While both might fight for a same cause some just support certain behavior in certain cases while others care about the essential underlying reason.

In everyday life there might not be a big difference, but in the end of the day I would like to see Free Software to succeed. It really is something worth caring about.

February 04, 2010 05:56 PM

Ignite Lyon: A new adventure

I’m a big fan of short-form presentations, and I like to give one whenever I get a chance. I also like to encourage others to do them for other conferences I’ve organised or run, like  GUADEC, the Maemo Summit or Fostel (site seems to be down now – shame).

I’ve been an admirer from afar of Ignite for years, for the variety and quality of the presentations that you find at their events, and seeing Global Ignite Week announced a few months ago, around the same time that PLOSS Rhone-Alpes started coming together gave me an excuse to do what I’ve wanted to for a while, and host an Ignite Lyon event! The inaugural Ignite Lyon will be held on March 4th in Université Lyon 2 on the quais.

For those unfamiliar with the Ignite talk format, you get 5 minutes for your talk – 20 slides, which advance automatically every 15 seconds. There are lots of Ignite videos on the site.

Once again I’m teaming up with Vincent Mabillot from Colibre, with whom I co-organised Richard Stallman’s recent stop in Lyon last month, and François Aubriot from PLOSS R-A and DotRiver, as well as all of the members of ALDIL and PLOSS R-A who have time to give in this busy month (in addition to school holidays, ALDIL and Colibre are once again participating in the conference Primevere and the week-long “Libre en fête” festival of free software).

I’m looking for presenters! I want to hear cool stuff – personal passions, unusual hobbies or projects, complete with pitfalls and tiny successes that led to a fun conclusion, advice on how to handle difficult problems we all meet, tips on reducing your carbon footprint, how your non-profit group made a difference in your neighbourhood, cries of passion for people to stop doing something you care about *wrong*. Ignite is not just IT, and that’s what I love about it. I will be giving a presentation myself called “hacking your body”, talking about running as performance testing for real life. Of course, it’s also IT, so the geekier and cooler your project, the better If you’re into soldering your own chopper bicycles, I want to hear about it.

As you’ve figured out, I want to hear from you if you have something interesting to say. We’re expecing 100 people from a range of backgrounds, including entrepreneurs, hackers, makers, DIY fans and general geeks & freaks (in the nicest sense). If you want to submit a talk, please use the online form I set up.

February 04, 2010 05:04 PM

Quicktorials.org

My new project Quicktorials.org is about to take off. It is a new system for free software video tutorials and currently needs some applications to implement it. Ricardo Lafuente recently worked on a new development version of Shoebot that integrates quicktorials even in a code editor! But that's not enough.

Please contact me if you're a developer and interested in adding this to any free software application! The easiest way is to send a jabber message to mray@jabber.org or contact me on identi.ca.

You can also send mail to "mail at mray.de".

February 04, 2010 03:33 PM

CMYKTool unveiled

On January 23 Alastair M. Robinson silently released first public version of CMYKTool. That would go quite unnoticed if it wasn’t for someone liking to read all sorts of RSS feeds So the very next day linuxgraphics.ru community was already discussing the new tool, discovering bugs and requesting features. The thread was so [...]

February 03, 2010 09:25 PM

Learning how to fund-raise from other non-profits

More and more we’re seeing organisations outside the free software world  try to learn the lessons of our success, and integrate “open source” practices into their organisation.

Whether it’s companies adopting transparency and other cluetrain or pinko marketing strategies, proprietary software development companies integrating standard free software practices, or one of the other areas where “crowdsourcing” has become the cool new thing, it’s obvious hat we have gotten some things right, some of the time, and it is definitely worth learning the right lessons from projects like Linux, Mozilla, GNOME, or Wikipedia, and trying to reproduce the magic elsewhere.

Sometimes this feels like the cargo cults in the Pacific Islands, trying to make airplanes land as their ancestors saw 60 years ago, by building airstrips and imitation airplanes. But at least they’re trying to figure out what makes our communities successful.

But are we learning enough lessons from others? It seems to me like we’re charging head first like sharecroppers into undiscovered country, only to find that we’ve run into a highly advanced civilisation.

As developers, we’ve invented our own brand of everything, from scratch. We figure out how to run conferences, or raise money from people who like what we do, when these are not new problems.

This isn’t new in IT. The entire learned history of typography got thrown out the window more or less, because with the advent of WYSIWYG editors and the web, everyone has complete control of their authoring tools and Comic Sans is shipped by default, and if I need to reduce the margins to get the letter to fit on one page then by golly I will.

Merchandising and recruitment of new star talent are more examples of things that some other organisations are pretty good at.

So – as an open question – are we learning the lessons from the past which we should be learning, or is it too attractive to think that what we’re doing is so new that every problem we encounter needs a new solution?

One example of a place where there is a wealth of experience out there is convincing people to give money to a cause they believe in. There are dozens of organisations that do this well – humanitarian organisations, political lobbyists, political parties, universities – the list goes on.

Can we figure out how GNOME is like them, and learn the lessons from their fundraising campaigns?

A typical fundraising drive for an organisation like this has three main steps:

1. Get a list of potential donors
2. Convince them that you are doing good
3. Find a pressure point or argument which will convince them to donate

If you look at a mailing for Médecins Sans Frontières for example, you see all of these points in action. Find potential donors – through sign-up campaigns, former donor drives, referrals. Send them a mail package, with a newsletter outlining good work, but with just enough bad news (new conflicts, new refugees, unfinished projects) and artwork (a smiling nurse taking care of a village vs a child ill from a curable illness) to show that money given to MSF will do good, and the need has never been greater.

Your response rate may be small – perhaps only 1% – but that’s enough.

Whether we’re talking about lobby groups, political parties or humanitarian agencies, the same strategies come into play – construct big databases of potential donors, and get them riled up about the thing they’re passionate about being endangered – show them the shining light of all the good work your organisation does, and then drive the sale home by making it really easy to give money or sign up.

University fundraising is an interesting case – and in fact, GNOME’s fundraising model ressembles it now. Your primary source of donations is alumni, people who have been through the university, like receiving updates every year, maybe a class-mate just became a professor, maybe a friend’s daughter got a prize in the annual awards ceremony, maybe a club or association you were in had a good year? And then you leverage the affection with the flip side of the coin – the need, the things we’d like to do better, the project we’re fundraising for which will allow us to do great work.

All of these organisations invest heavily in direct mailing, in building and maintaining databases of supporters, and in monetising them. I recently read a book by a direct mailing copywriter called “My First 40 Years in Junk Mail” and it opened my eyes to what works in that world – and also gave some ideas on the kinds of strategies maybe the GNOME Foundation should be adopting.

The first step  is building and maintaining a list of GNOME fans and supporters, by any means possible, and ensuring that they are made aware of what we’re up to and what we’d like to do. And, of course, continuing to build great products.

February 03, 2010 07:54 PM

Inkscape used in schools

In the Los Altos School District in California, they have a Digital Design program to teach the students about graphics software and programming. For the vector graphics course they are teaching the students how to use Inkscape. Here is a gallery of art created by approximately 175 4th grade students of the seven schools that this course is being taught at. There is a link next to each of the images on the following page which will take you to the corresponding sub-gallery.

February 03, 2010 01:00 AM

Conference

Available rooms:

← Older revision		Revision as of 12:41, 2 February 2010
(5 intermediate revisions not shown)
Line 15:		Line 15:
	De Pianofabriek, Rue du Fort 60, 1060 Brussels, Belgium		De Pianofabriek, Rue du Fort 60, 1060 Brussels, Belgium
		+
		+	Location: http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=50.82796&lon=4.342175&zoom=16&layers=B000FTFTT&mlat=50.82855&mlon=4.34255
	An impression: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/index.php?level=album&id=35		An impression: http://ospublish.constantvzw.org/image/index.php?level=album&id=35
Line 22:		Line 24:
	'''By Train'''		'''By Train'''
-	LGM2010 is easy to reach by fast TGV, ICE, Eurostar or Thalys trains to Brussels South station (a.k.a. "Bruxelles Midi", "Gare du Midi" or "Zuidstation"). De Pianofabriek is a 15 mins walk from the station or you can take tram 51, 33 to Parvis de St. Gilles.	+	LGM2010 is easiest to reach by train: fast TGV, ICE, Eurostar or Thalys trains take you to Brussels South station (a.k.a. "Bruxelles Midi", "Gare du Midi" or "Zuidstation") which is a 15 min. walk from De Pianofabriek. Alternatively, you can take tram 3, 4, 81, 51 and 33 to Parvis de St. Gilles / Sint Gillis Voorplein.
	'''By Plane'''		'''By Plane'''
-	Book your plane to Brussels International Airport. From there you can take a train to Brussels Midi station (20 mins). De Pianofabriek is a 15 mins walk from the station or you can take tram 51, 33 to Parvis de St. Gilles.	+	Book your plane to Brussels International Airport. From there you can take a train to Brussels Midi station (20 mins) which is a 15 min. walk from De Pianofabriek. Alternatively, you can take tram 3, 4, 81, 51 and 33 to Parvis de St. Gilles / Sint Gillis Voorplein.
		+
		+	'''By Car'''
		+
		+	Parking long term is virtually impossible near venue; neighboring Forest has options. More details follow.
	==== Accommodation ====		==== Accommodation ====
Line 134:		Line 140:
	=== Wednesday May 26 ===		=== Wednesday May 26 ===
		+
		+	[these are pre-LGM activities]
	* Workshops / events targeting students of art- and design schools		* Workshops / events targeting students of art- and design schools
		+	* Evening: Meet/Welcome for participants that have just arrived
	=== Thursday May 27 ===		=== Thursday May 27 ===
Line 171:		Line 180:
	* 9:00 - 17:00 // '''Buenos Aires''' available for project meetings		* 9:00 - 17:00 // '''Buenos Aires''' available for project meetings
		+	* OPTION 1: presentations + wrap-up until 15:00 latest
		+	* OPTI0N 2: un-conference / discussion / plenary
	=== Available rooms ===		=== Available rooms ===
-	* 26 - 29 May '''Zabriskie Point''' (Main hall, 200 seats)	+	* 25 - 30 May '''Buenos Aires''' (Main hall, 200 seats)
-	* 25 - 30 May '''Buenos Aires''' (lunch/breakfast/coffee + meetings)	+	* 26 - 29 May '''Zabriski''' (lunch/breakfast/coffee + meetings)
	* 26 - 29 May '''Casablanca I + II''', '''Cadzand''' (large meeting/workshoprooms; can be divided in 3 or 2)		* 26 - 29 May '''Casablanca I + II''', '''Cadzand''' (large meeting/workshoprooms; can be divided in 3 or 2)
	* TBC '''Espace du web st. Gilles''' (3 rooms with PC-workstations)		* TBC '''Espace du web st. Gilles''' (3 rooms with PC-workstations)

February 02, 2010 12:41 PM

To spam or not to spam...

I'm keeping my promise to write a weekly update on what has happened in Krita. There's usually a lot to write about, and I'm trying to add some generally interesting things, some personal, some artistic, so it's not just a commit digest, but a little bit more.

But I'm wondering how to syndicate it -- Planet KDE is meant for personal blogs, and this isn't personal. I'm not sure about the other planets my blog is syndicated. And I've had complaints that having a pointer to the new issue on my blog is a bit spammy, and I think I agree with that. So I'm intentionally not linking to Krita.org this time :-) (But it's a good read!)

Does anybody have any bright ideas?

---

Update: I just learned that if I can teach krita.org to put the Last Week in Krita articles in an rss feed that's unique for what I post, i.e, personal, but from krita.org, I'm fine. I bet our webmaster can figure out how to do that, right Kubuntiac :-)

February 02, 2010 12:09 PM

Worldlabel: Clip Art of the Month: “Locked” Technology

p {clear: both} #pic1, #pic2, #pic3 {position: relative; float: left; margin: 0 0 10px 0; padding: 0px;}

Clip Art of the Month for February 2010 will focus on Content regulation.

Whether one stands in favor of Apple’s products or against them, it’s impossible to deny Jobs and Company’s impact on our technological lives. Last week saw the unveiling of what Apple believes will become a “third category” of mobile computing: the iPad. The iPad aims at simplifying the user’s computing experience by merging elements of Apple’s existing laptop and phone releases.

In the new millennium, computing platforms have trended toward more open source solutions. While it may offer the end user a more simple and streamlined experience, the iPad also seems to assert Apple’s intention to focus on technology as a controlled gateway for proprietary consumption.

Images by Frector, adam_lowe, Minduka, flomar, and Tranberry (all above) demonstrate Apple’s influence on modern design and why it cannot be ignored. The reception of their latest product has been decidedly mixed. How will the introduction of the iPad affect the Open Clip Art Community? What ramifications might this have as open source computing progresses? Time will tell. In the meantime, feel free to share your thoughts and continue supporting Open Clip Art Library by using and contributing vector artwork.

Clip Art of the month is sponsored by Worldlabel.com, a multifunctional label manufacturer.

February 02, 2010 11:47 AM

Conference

Programme draft:

← Older revision		Revision as of 20:08, 1 February 2010
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Line 36:		Line 36:
	==== Schedule ====		==== Schedule ====
-	'''Wednesday May 27'''	+	'''''Please note that May 27 is a THURSDAY and not a WEDNESDAY as it was stated before... I made the correction but I suggest to leave the present warning for a couple of days so people are aware of the error if they have already started planning their trip. [ Posted Monday Feb 1st 2010 ]'''''
		+
		+	'''Wednesday May 26'''
	* Workshops & events for art- and design schools		* Workshops & events for art- and design schools
-	'''Thursday May 28'''	+	'''Thursday May 27'''
	* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks		* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks
-	'''Friday May 29'''	+	'''Friday May 28'''
	* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks		* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks
-	'''Saturday May 30'''	+	'''Saturday May 29'''
	* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks		* 9:00 - 18:00 // Presentations and talks
-	'''Sunday May 31'''	+	'''Sunday May 30'''
	* 9:00 - 17:00 // Venue available for project meetings		* 9:00 - 17:00 // Venue available for project meetings
Line 131:		Line 133:
	== Programme draft ==		== Programme draft ==
-	=== Wednesday May 27 ===	+	=== Wednesday May 26 ===
	* Workshops / events targeting students of art- and design schools		* Workshops / events targeting students of art- and design schools
-	=== Thursday May 28 ===	+	=== Thursday May 27 ===
	* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)		* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)
Line 146:		Line 148:
	* 19:00 - 22:00 // LGM cocktail and dinner		* 19:00 - 22:00 // LGM cocktail and dinner
-	=== Friday May 29 ===	+	=== Friday May 28 ===
	* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)		* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)
Line 155:		Line 157:
	* 16:15 - 18:00 // Afternoon sessions (3 x 30 mins)		* 16:15 - 18:00 // Afternoon sessions (3 x 30 mins)
-	=== Saturday May 30 ===	+	=== Saturday May 29 ===
	* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)		* 9:00 - 11:15 // Morning sessions (4 x 30 mins)
Line 166:		Line 168:
	* 20:00 - 22:00 // Screening (?)		* 20:00 - 22:00 // Screening (?)
-	=== Sunday May 31 ===	+	=== Sunday May 30 ===
	* 9:00 - 17:00 // '''Buenos Aires''' available for project meetings		* 9:00 - 17:00 // '''Buenos Aires''' available for project meetings

February 01, 2010 08:08 PM

Come to StatusCheck Brussels at FOSDEM 2010 Next Saturday

That’s right! The StatusNet crew invites you #StatusCheckBRU to grab a beer on Saturday night, February 6, 2010 in Brussels at nearby “A La Mort Subite” for a couple of hours to talk all things StatusNet, the free network service microblogging software. Myself (@rejon) and @Evan will be on hand and  have free limited number of new StatusNet shirts, loads of new stickers, and lots of discussions to be had. This is a StatusCheck to coincide with FOSDEM, a Free and Open Software Developer Meeting. You don’t miss StatusNet CEO and Identi.ca Founder, Evan Prodromou’s presentation on Sunday at 4 PM at FOSDEM, either.

http://fosdem.org/2010/schedule/events/820

You are invited to this #StatusCheckBRU where we will have beers, free shirts, free StatusNet sign-ups for private beta, stickers, and great discussion fun. Please go to the wiki page and let us know you are coming!

Put it on your calendars and share it with your friends!

StatusCheckBRU, 6 PM

A La Mort Subite
rue Montagne-aux-Herbes Potagères 7
B-1000 Brussels
+32-(0)2-513.13.18

Map: http://ur1.ca/l16z

http://www.alamortsubite.com/

UPDATE: In addition to some other staffers and community members, StatusNet’s own User Experience Designer, @csarven(Sarven Capadisli) will be on-hand at FOSDEM and the StatusCheckBRU.

January 31, 2010 08:13 PM