May 25th, 2008
Posted in News | Comments Off
March 2nd, 2008
After each Linux Expo, the SCALE chairs get together and compare notes on what went well, and what needs improving on the just-concluded Expo. We also discuss preliminary planning for the next SCALE.
We had that meeting yesterday at Stu’s house in Thousand Oaks. Since we only get together physically once or twice a year, the meetings tend to be long. This one was no exception: we started at 3 p.m., and finished up around 9:30 (!). That was continuous meeting, except for a short break around 7:30 when Stu grilled up burgers and dogs.
All the chairs reports on their portion of SCALE, and others made comments. The results of the meeting will be forthcoming, but the bottom line is SCALE made enough money to continue on with SCALe 7X. It’s always a bit nervewracking waiting for the numbers to come together.
More later when the final report is done (some of that is only for consumption of the chairs, but most of it will be made public).
Orv
SCALE Publicity Chair
Posted in Commentary | Comments Off
February 17th, 2008
| …but it’s worth a look. This is the wall in my workshop. Notice that the poster from the first SCALE is labeled “First Annual”. How’s that for being optimistic? Here’s a larger version: |
 |
Posted in Commentary | Comments Off
February 15th, 2008
Ted Gould is an open source developer working on desktop and usability on Ubuntu for Canonical. He’s also an active developer on the Inkscape project and enjoys photography. He lives in LA with his wife and son.
SCALE: Ted, tell us a bit about yourself. We know you work on Ubuntu, for Canonical, and you’re a developer on the Inkscape project.
Ted: And I use vi. I’m not sure if such a divisive question should start the interview 
I’ve been an Open Source developer for a while, working on Sodipodi and GNOME before Inkscape started. Recently I got a job at Canonical which allows me to spend time doing more mainstream GNOME development.
Inkscape is a GTK+ program, thus using several GNOME technologies, but isn’t in GNOME proper. I’ve never lost my GNOME roots, remaining a member of the foundation and on e-mail lists but now I have more time to act.
I’m really enjoying working in Open Source. There are so many less secrets and things that “we don’t tell customers.” Sure, they know, but we couldn’t tell them, right? It’s frustrating for developers not being able to have an honest conversation and solve problems for people. I feel like I help more people when working in the open.
SCALE: Describe your typical day - how much is Ubuntu work and how much is Inkscape work? Do they overlap at all?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
February 15th, 2008
SCALE interviewed Debian developer, Don Armstrong following SCALE. He was kind enough to answer question about his favorite Linux distribution as well as open source in general.
SCALE: Gareth J. Greenaway, SCALE Community Relations
Don: Don Armstrong, Debian
SCALE: Please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Don: My name is Don Armstrong; I’m currently a graduate student in the Cell, Molecular, and Developmental Biology program at UC Riverside, where I study lipid membranes and lupus using Debian (and other Free Software tools.)
SCALE: How did you get involved in Open Source software?
Don: I started using Free Software in 1997 or thereabouts (though I had been using some bits of the GNU toolkit and perl earlier). At first I started because I was doing more work programming and was tired of having to deal with problems that I had to work around instead of resolve completely. By around 1999 I was using Free Software almost exclusively, and have been almost continuously since then.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
February 10th, 2008
SCALE chatted with Ted Haeger, formerly of Novell, now at Bungee Labs. In the interview, Ted talks about Bungee’s business model, and what his role in Bungee is. The interview is here.
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
February 10th, 2008
SCALE is in its third day. For the most part it’s gone exceedingly well, with only minor glitches.
Some good points:
The redesigned registration system, while showing the rough edges of a new application, worked exceedingly well. We had just as many people show up yesterday and today as last year, but the lines at registration trailing clear back to the hotel entrance never occurred. The faster registration process plus a half dozen self-check in kiosks prevent the wait from ever being longer than a few minutes. Kudos to Lei Zhang for the redesign!
There were only the usual couple of defective cables in the SCALE network; the Internet link (4 bonded DSL lines) and the LAN (100 VLANs!) came up with only a bit of debugging by Stu’s Tech Committee, and has stayed up since. Props to Stu, Mike Maki, and the rest of the Tech Commitee volunteers!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Commentary | Comments Off
February 8th, 2008
On the eve of the 6th Annual So Cal Linux Expo, Jono Bacon of Canonical was kind enough to grant SCALE an interview. Orv Beach of the Linux Expo sat down with Jono and discussed a variety of topics. The interview, recorded on this device, is here.
Jono will give the opening day keynote at SCALE, entitled “Standing On The Shoulders Of Giants: The Coming Of The Linux Desktop”
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
February 7th, 2008
SCALE interviewed two PostgreSQL developers, Joshua D. Drake and Josh Berkus on the eve of PostgreSQL appearing at SCALE. They were kind enough to answer question about their favorite database.
SCALE: Gareth Greenaway, SCALE Community Relations
JD: Joshua D. Drake
JB: Josh Berkus
SCALE: What role do you play in the PostgreSQL community? In the development of PostgreSQL?
JD: I am the PostgreSQL SPI Liaison. The majority of my focus is within fundraising and advocacy. However, I also contribute to docs and the website. Command Prompt, Inc (my employer) is also one of the most pervasive contributors to the PostgreSQL community.
JB: I’m on the PostgreSQL core team, which is a kind of “steering committee” for the project. Mainly we set the dates for releases, and provide leadership on the rare occasions when consensus doesn’t work. I mainly do PR for the project, public speaking, and benchmarks.
SCALE: What do you think is the single most important feature from the 8.3 release? What feature are you most proud of?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
February 5th, 2008
SCALE: Ilan Rabinovitch: SCALE Chair
HP: Bob Gobeille, Hewlett Packard Open Source & Linux Organization FOSSology lead developer
SCALE: HP participates in a number of community run Linux and open source conferences such as SCALE, Ohio Linux Fest, Linu.conf.au, etc. How do these community events fit into HP’s strategy when compared to more commercial Linux / open-source conferences?
HP: We feel that events like SCALE are an excellent way to demonstrate how important the community is to us. It’s also a way to show how HP participates in the evolution of open source. We haven’t forgotten that if it wasn’t for “community”, Linux and open-source would not be what it is today. On a personal level, events like SCALE are also an opportunity to meet others involved in FOSS. This personal touch, is not something that shows up in a balance sheet but it is priceless, and something I hope all the conference attendees take advantage of.
SCALE: What can SCALE attendees expect to see at the HP booth this year?
HP: Our booth may not be what you expect from a company as large as HP. Rather than invest in fancy displays and advertisements, we are going to display our most valued assets, our people. We will put some interesting HP’ers in the booth and hope people will come by and chat. Bryan Gartner, an HP engineer and original architect of linuxCOE (http://linuxcoe.sourceforge.net/) will be demonstrating that project. It’s an easy way for people to try out linux or install it and keep it up to date. HP has used it internally to install many different Linux distros on thousands of machines. Bdale Garbee, HP Linux/Open source chief technologist and uber-geek, will be in the booth after his talk (Peace, Love and Rockets) on Saturday. His daughter Elizabeth will also be there. Elizabeth (a high school junior) will also be giving a talk on Saturday (animation with open source tools).
Adaora Onyia and Susan Bowen are HP program managers active in LinuxChix. They will try to spend some time in the booth talking about communication and women in open source. I’ll be in the booth on Sunday and happy to talk about and demo FOSSology and FOSSBazaar and HP’s involvement in open source governance. We will also have some give-aways, like a very chic FOSSology/FOSSbazaar t-shirt. Well, maybe “chic” is not the word most people would use, but I like them. Of course, I hope people will also come by the booth (or catch us walking about) and talk about whatever interests them.
SCALE: HP recently released 2 projects, FOSSBazar and FOSSology, which have been generating a lot of discussion in the Open Source community. Can you tell us a little about these projects and their goals?
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Interview | Comments Off
