lex naturalis - txwikinger's blog Free Software - Law - Politics

Since the inception of Gnome, there seems to have been a never ending flame war about desktops in the FLOSS community. I am really getting tired of it, because it not only is boring, but also continuously diverts us from being productive.

During a presentation about the Ubuntu Canada LoCo, and an ensuing unconference session at a conference this weekend, valuable time that could have been used trying to discuss ways how the Ubuntu LoCo can be more effective to promote Ubuntu, was instead lost by arguments about Unity and its direction.

After having run several Ubuntu global jams in the last couple of years, I would like to try something new this year.

Global Jams so far have been a lot around bug triage and educating new members on how to get involved with the Ubuntu community, This year, I would like to start a development project that has the aim to create another tool that could allow more people to get involved with the community.

It is almost the time again. Less than on week left for the newest Ubuntu release. As every year, lots of work has been put into the release. Not only directly by the Ubuntu community, but also by the Debian community and all the upstream projects.

After all this work, it will be time to celebrate the fruits of the work that has been achieved. In the Ubuntu community we traditionally do this by having release parties all over the world. The official Ubuntu Loco in Canada also participates with several such parties in Ontario and Quebec.

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Apparently the Pirate Party in Canada is on its way to achieve similar popularity, especially among young voters as it has become normal in Europe. In a debate for the federal election in Canada's premiere research and technology, Kitchener-Waterloo, the home of RIM's blackberry, according to this survey, the local pirate party candidate won.

Drupal has now its own Q&A site at Stackexchange. Currently, the site has just reached its public beta stage.

Stackexchange provides a service to communities that allow people to ask questions and receive answers for a particular topic. More and more Open Source communities have created such sites on Stackexchange with good success, even there are some arguments about the fact that the Stackexchange site itself is not licensed under an Open Source licence. However, the data (i.e. the questions and answers) are made available to the public via a common creative licence.

On Saturday, March 12 at Kwartzlab in Kitchener, the inaugural open data code fest for the Region of Waterloo will commence, from 11am to whenever. Bring a laptop and your enthusiasm to do interesting things with open data.

The Open Data Waterloo Region web site announces the following about this event:

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A couple of minutes ago, AskUbuntu has been visited by the 10,000th user. It took less than 4 month since the official launch to mark this milestone.

The 10,000 users have asked more than 7,300 questions, and gave more than 16,000 answers. They have cast more than 72,000 votes, collected 15,000 badges and made more than 25,000 comments.

The star reports that the Government will reverse the "Metered Internet" / "Usage Based Billing" decision by the CRTC if the CRTC will no do so itself.

It seems that in the current political climate 300,000 signatures on a petition can make a difference.

Open Media has started an online petition against the CRTC's decision to allow Bell Canada to meter Internet services sold through resellers with additional fees.

The CRTC approval of this form of usage based billing (UBB) is raising the overall Internet costs for consumers to upto 50% of the current costs.

Less than 4 months after the successful launch as permanent Q&A site in our new Ubuntu design, we have reached the 7000 question threshold. Those 7000 questions have been asked and answered to 90% more than 15000 answers by 9800 users. 70000 votes have been cast for the questions and answers.