We thought the story of their conversion from helpers of Windows users to promoters of Free and Open Source Software would be interesting.  The three co-hosts,   Michael Cady,  Nick Coons, and Mr. MODEM, were kind enough to submit to the usual SCALE grilling.  Here’s that interview:

———————————–

SCALE:  Tell us a little bit about the hosts of the Gutsy Geeks show - including stuff you can’t find in the ‘about’ section of gutsygeeks.com!

Michael Cady & Amy

MICHAEL:  We are all using Ubuntu and loving it, and unfortunately Ubuntu is not paying us to say that!

NICK:  I dabbled in Unix beginning in 1996, and then was thrown into Linux in 1998 when I took over an ISP; it was sink or swim. Luckily, Linux and open-source has stuck with me ever since.  Outside of technology, I’m a Libertarian and political activist.

Mr. MODEM

MR. MODEM:  I tried Linux seven or eight years ago and hated it. I tried it again approximately four years ago with SUSE, then at Michael and Nick’s suggestion, tried Ubuntu and that’s when it clicked for me. I’m a writer, syndicated columnist, publisher and friend to small, furry animals.

——————————————————————–

SCALE:  When did your previous show, PC Chat start and how long did it run?

MICHAEL:  Summer of 2001, a little more than seven years. It was a great show, but a little too broad to really stand out.

——————————————————————–

SCALE: At its peak, about how big do you think the audience for PC Chat was? How does it compare to your audience now?

MICHAEL:  Our audience remains about the same - just different listeners. We have several thousand local listeners on the radio and about 20,000 per show online.

MR. M:  Since making the change to Gutsy Geeks, feedback from listeners has been outstanding and very encouraging, so we’re definitely beginning an upward growth curve.

——————————————————————–

SCALE:  What experiences did the former PC Chatters have that persuaded them personally to move to FOSS? That is how did each of you get started with Open Source software?

MICHAEL:  We had always been focused on recommending what we felt was best for our own families to use, and had often mentioned FOSS on PC Chat (only because it was what we were using ourselves).

NICK:  When you work with computers as much as we do, the frustrations of Windows adds up. It takes no more than a few minutes with FOSS to see the advantages.

MR M:  As the publisher of a weekly computer-help newsletter that focuses on all versions of Windows, I receive several hundred questions each month. With subscribers in 38 countries, I continually hear from frustrated users worldwide who experience the same problems and share the same concerns about viruses, malware, and ever-escalating costs. The Linux OS and FOSS provide solutions to these concerns so I’m happy to share this information and recommend these alternatives to my readers.

——————————————————————–

SCALE:  What finally prompted the decision to switch the show over to FOSS?  Was there any tipping point?

MICHAEL:  All three of us are now using Ubuntu as our primary OS, and the breadth of FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) available is going to benefit MOST users.

NICK:  PC Chat’s content was far too broad, and it was no longer unique.  There is no broadcast FOSS radio program on the air that we’re aware of, so we decided to fill the void.

MR. M:  Humanitarians that we are, it was our gift to the broadcasting world to remove what was yet another “Windows” computer show from the airwaves. You can tune into virtually any computer radio show anywhere in the country and it’s basically the same format, the same information, the same Windows-based questions. Been there, done that.
We knew from our own experiences that Linux and Open Source were clearly the future, so being true to what we believed in, we rolled the dice and decided to make the change.

——————————————————————–

SCALE: What was the reaction of your PC Chat sponsors when you told them you were converting to Linux and Open Source? Did they stick with you, or did you have to find some new sponsors?

MICHAEL:  We lost about half of them (and expected it). We now rely primarily on donations from listeners.

MR. M:  We knew we were going to lose a good portion of our PC Chat listeners, as Michael said, but that was a risk we were willing to take. We were all utilizing Linux and Open Source more in our personal and professional lives, but we were somewhat “trapped” by the PC Chat focus, so rather than take our frustrations out on our listeners—who clearly suffered enough already—we did the merciful thing.

Continuing the Open Source “community” model, we welcome donations and are excited that our listeners are beginning to contribute to the show to help keep it on the air.

——————————————————————–

SCALE:  We’d assume that it’s harder finding sponsors for a show about a less popular operating system than Windows, since the audience is presumably smaller. Or is that not the case?

MICHAEL:  Sure, fewer companies benefit financially from FOSS. However being more focused and having a large international audience we expect to replace some of them with companies that benefit from and endorse using FOSS.

MR. M:  It is our objective to be on the air for years to come and in part lead the broadcast charge to Linux and FOSS. We know this is a “revolution” that is only in its very early stages, so we look forward to some of those potential sponsors that Michael mentioned joining us at this early stage and growing with us.

——————————————————————–

SCALE: How was the new Gutsy Geeks show received by your old listeners?  Did many of them follow you, or do you have a completely new audience now?

MICHAEL:  I would say about 50% of our old listeners stuck with us (we had been pushing FOSS more and more towards the end of PC Chat). We have discovered a much larger audience that is more committed to helping us.

——————————————————————–

SCALE: About how big is the audience now?  Any estimates?  (For both the AM show and on-line).

MICHAEL:  Again, locally (Phoenix, AZ) we have several thousand listeners on the radio, and around 20,000 per show online.

——————————————————————–

SCALE:  Is Gutsy Geeks being carried by any other radio stations besides KXAM at this time?

MICHAEL:  A couple other Arizona stations (outside the Phoenix market) re-broadcast our shows. Plus, we have a dozen websites that host and stream our shows.

MR. M:  Expanding the show into other broadcast markets and ultimately syndication is very much our goal.

——————————————————————–

SCALE: How do you come up with material for new shows?  What’s on the horizon?  Any new topics, segments, ideas for guest speakers, etc., that we can look forward to?

MICHAEL:  LISTENERS! We are only here for them—we  always encourage listeners to give us feedback on the website to help improve the show (in fact, we blame them for it being as bad as it is). Our new segment featuring LUGS around the country is showing some potential.

MR. M:  That’s right! We take absolutely no responsibility for anything. If the show stinks, it’s never our fault; it’s the fault of the listeners for not contributing better ideas. Obviously, humor is a big part of the show. We know what we’re doing isn’t neurosurgery, but we do have an important message to share with our listeners that may be life-altering to some. We welcome listener feedback and we stay on top of what’s happening in the world of Linux and FOSS, so we’re never really at a loss for show content as a result.

In the broadcast, SCALE, and FLOSS shows in general, are discussed at length.  It’s an excellent overview of how shows evolve and adapt to the changing landscape of the FLOSS community - recommended.  You can listen to it here: http://twit.tv/floss46

Joe: Yes - the opportunity to work directly with a FOSS project and help encourage Linux adoption.

SCALE: How have you been received by the community? Any surprises so far?

Joe: I think very well. I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how enthusiastic the openSUSE community is (I expected some enthusiasm, just not so much…) and how much fun it’s been to be working with the openSUSE community.

SCALE: What issues has the OpenSUSE community raised? How would you see those concerns addressed?

Joe: That’s a pretty large question, given that I’ve talked to hundreds of openSUSE community members and contributors… Some of the issues we’re working on right now include finding better processes for contributions, and electing a board for the first time (our first board is appointed).

SCALE: How do OpenSUSE and the commercial SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop differ? Do they share a common code base? Does one benefit from the other?

Joe: A couple of ways - one, SLED moves more slowly than openSUSE, with releases about every two years. Novell bases SUSE Linux Enterprise off of openSUSE releases. Specifically, SLED 10 was based on openSUSE 10.1 and SLED 11 will be based on openSUSE 11.1. So they do share common code, because openSUSE is the foundation for SUSE Linux Enterprise.

Both benefit from this — Novell engineers contribute to openSUSE as part of the work towards SUSE Linux Enterprise (and often on their own time as well) and obviously SUSE Linux Enterprise benefits from additional testing and contributions to openSUSE.

SCALE: As the community manager for OpenSUSE, do you interact with community managers from other projects such as Red Hat and Ubuntu?

Joe: Yeah, absolutely. I speak with them frequently at shows and try to maintain contact and find ways we (the projects) can work together, and also just commiserate about the community manager job and compare experiences. I suppose there’s a temptation to imagine that the various distros are all in opposition of one another, but in my experience, most people in the Linux community are more focused on improving and promoting Linux than competing directly with other distros.

The great thing about this industry is that you can collaborate with the competition, so to speak — though I really look to Microsoft and Apple as competitors to openSUSE rather than Fedora or Ubuntu (or other Linux distros). The mission for openSUSE is to increase the use of Linux everywhere. Inclusive to that is the need to work with other projects and improve Linux and drive its adoption in general, as well as trying to specifically drive adoption of openSUSE.

SCALE: Where do you see OpenSUSE going in the future? What are the biggest challenges you see?

Joe: I think OpenSUSE will continue to improve, expand its audience, and help drive Linux adoption. Our next release is expected in December. It will have the KDE 4.1 release (actually 4.1.1 or later) and GNOME 2.24, and many other improvements. We have a number of challenges, maintaining the technical excellence that SUSE has always been known for, helping expand the contributor base for openSUSE and continuing to help the project mature.

Ken VanDine of Foresight Linux was kind enough to chat with SCALE about life with Open Source software in general, and Foresight Linux specifically. This is that interview.

SCALE: Why don’t we start with you telling us a bit about yourself and how you got involved in the open source community.
Ken: Well, that’s a very long story. I got started using Linux in early 1993, and really loved it right from the get go. I quickly got into a sysadmin gig managing mostly Linux boxes and have been fortune to have been able to work with Linux, not just as a hobby, since about 1994. As a sys admin, I learned about filing bug reports, etc., asking for help on IRC and mailing lists, feature requests via Bugzilla, etc. I just fell in love with the community dynamic of open source, the real feedback into the products I was using, and developers willing to implement features I was asking for. I mean really, how cool is that?

Ken: Over time I started do more than sys admin work, I was also customizing distributions for work, basically building “appliances” without the term for it.
SCALE: who were you working for at the time?
Ken: At that time, Eli Lilly. At the same time, I was also involved in GNOME marketing. I think I have been on the marketing team and writing for the GNOME Journal since 2001.

SCALE: How did you get involved with the GNOME marketing team?
Ken: Honestly I don’t know. IRC I guess; it just happened. Several things all happened at just the right time. While at Lilly, doing all this rpm packaging work, figuring out how to manage thousands of these appliances, etc., I read the really great white paper written about Conary. That was in 2004, the first paper written about Conary. I read it, and couldn’t get to IRC to hit #Conary fast enough. Conary was exactly what I needed to build these appliances and manage them more effectively. I just saw this vision of my life getting much better

SCALE: What was it that appealed to you about Conary?
Ken: The integration of source and binaries, and SCM concepts.
SCALE: SCM?
Ken: Source Code Management, like svn, hg, git, bzr, etc. Not only are the repositories managed, so is your system. Conary also had a concept of a group: a group is like a manifest that defines what goes into your appliance/distribution.

None of the packaging systems really have a concept like this. Conary was specifically designed from the beginning to handle creating distributions and derivations. In a regulated environment, like a pharmaceutical company, knowing exactly what is on your systems is a huge problem. So you define your appliance, or server, or whatever with a group and updates ensure only the contents of that group is installed on your system.

SCALE: How long after discovering Conary did you start Foresight?
Ken: Eight months maybe?
SCALE: So it’s been around for awhile.. roughly 3-4 years.
Ken: Yeah, Feb 2005 was the first release.

SCALE: What prompted the development for Foresight Linux? Why another distribution?
Ken: Foresight came about because of lots of frustration. Two things were happening:

The Project Utopia stuff was really shaping up (udev, hal, dbus, etc.) but the distributions were slow to adopt that stuff. And the ones that did had very old versions, while that stuff was evolving very rapidly. So we had some cool desktop technology out there that wasn’t integrated into a distribution yet.

And within GNOME marketing, it was rather frustrating for us, getting a new release of GNOME out, writing release notes, etc. We got a little buzz right away but users couldn’t really try out the new version for a couple months without building GNOME from source. They had to wait for their distributions to ship a major release with it. I wanted a way to get those latest GNOME bits out there for people to be able to play around with it and see what all the buzz was about. I also wanted to see what the desktop would be like with all the cool new technology integrated.

So just for fun, I created Foresight. It took me a couple of weeks but then I had a full distribution built with the latest GNOME, by myself. The tools I had made it doable. Soon I had regular builds happening and was able to get all of GNOME built and released on GNOME release day. I can build everything on a development branch and promote it all to a release branch in one atomic operation. In our first release I had the latest udev and friends, great hardware support, and the latest GNOME, plus Mono, which neither Novell nor Suse had shipped yet.

SCALE: so Foresight is really designed around the latest available GNOME desktop, as well as some cool desktop related toys thrown in?
Ken: Yes.

SCALE: Is Foresight using the latest stable GNOME bits or do you ever include code that is considered development level or unstable?
Ken: It’s a mix. We generally ship latest stable, but as we get into the GNOME release candidates we start integrating that. So our users will start to get “unstable” but somewhat tested GNOME stuff shortly before GNOME releases it as stable.

SCALE: Given that Foresight is heavily centered around GNOME, I assume other desktop environments are supported and available?
Ken: Yes, there is work being done on KDE and XFCE editions. They use the same philosophy.

Another key thing for us is rolling releases. You never have to wait for major releases to get version bumps. We continually deliver on the innovation.

SCALE: Have there been any spinoffs like Ubuntu has seen with Kubuntu and Xubuntu?
Ken: Yes, there have been a couple other projects. It’s pretty easy to do. I think one of them is called ELinux. Considering we are built with tools designed for creating derivative works, I encourage people to do just that.

SCALE: Foresight Linux Version 2.0.3 was released very recently. What do you have planned for the future?
Ken: Oh, there’s some exciting stuff coming. Until now we have focused very much on staying as close to upstream GNOME as possible. However, now that Shuttle is selling systems with Foresight pre-loaded on the very cheap KPC systems, we have gotten some very interesting feedback.

SCALE: How did that agreement with Shuttle come about?
Ken: They were looking for a distribution. Someone from on-disk.com I know knows one of the guys at Shuttle. He told them they should really meet with me. They had looked at a bunch of distributions but what I think what really sold them on Foresight was the ease of rebranding. I created a rebranded derivative of Foresight for them in one hour. That’s not just changing stuff on a local system, but also packaging the changes into a repository and creating installable ISOs. I think that really won it for us. So that’s an example of a Foresight derivative. (Shuttle is shipping a re-branded Foresight, but they are keeping the Foresight name plastered all over it )

SCALE: Incidentally, wasn’t your meeting with Shuttle right before the last SCALE?
Ken: It was at SCALE Well, we had spoken a few times, but our face to face meeting was at SCALE.
SCALE: Nice.
Ken: The agreement worked well for us. They manage just their changes from Foresight and they inherit everything else from Foresight.

SCALE: Tell us a bit about the work you do for rPath. How is it similar to the work you do for Foresight?
Ken: About a year after I created Foresight I went to work for rPath, the company behind Conary, rBuilder, etc. I work on our management systems, and part of my work does include working on Foresight now, which is great.
SCALE: so rPath is paying you to work on Foresight?
Ken: Yes, part time.
SCALE: How did the name “Foresight” come about?
Ken: I give all the credit for that to my lovely wife, Laurie. I was looking for a name that reflected vision; vision of what the Linux desktop could be and would be.

SCALE: rPath has their own distributions, several thanks to Conary. Do any of them inherit anything from Foresight or vice-a-versa?
Ken: Foresight inherits from rPath. Things we don’t want to maintain or have a need to maintain, we just get from rPath Linux. It’s not designed to be a desktop,
but rather a platform for building appliances.

SCALE: so rPath could really be thought of as the development environment for Foresight?
Ken: yes.

Ken: Now that Shuttle is selling boxes with Foresight loaded on them to consumers that have never heard of Linux before we have gotten some very interesting feedback. For instance, the default panel layout in GNOME (having the workspace switcher applet on the panel by default) confuses them. If a user clicks on it they appear to lose all their windows. They don’t understand workspaces. So I am evaluating making some UI changes.
SCALE: What’s the solution?
Ken: Defaulting to a single bottom panel; not including the applet for workspace switching by default, and perhaps defaulting to slab (gnome-main-menu) which Novell wrote. I’m evaluating it, but I but really want some feedback.
SCALE: How will you get that feedback?
Ken: I plan to blog about it, mail the desktop-devel-list, etc. So watch my blog and comment It’s clear it is time for a change if we want to really make this easy for new Linux users.

SCALE: But the users of those low-end shuttle boxes don’t really read blogs. They think they’re buying a computing appliance.
Ken: Right, but we can get that feedback via support channels.

SCALE: That leads to another question - who supports the software on those Shuttle boxes?
Ken: Shuttle does to an extent; that’s a little unclear to me. They do support their customers who have questions, but we don’t know how it will work if they have real bugs… what the escalation process would be, etc.
SCALE: How’s their Linux expertise in their customer support area?
Ken: It’s improving. They seem to be taking Linux on the desktop very seriously. They are also doing great things for the Foresight project, such as donating build hardware, and paying for some of our expenses for our booth at Linuxworld in San Francisco next month.
SCALE: Thanks for taking the time to chat with us!
Ken: Great, thank you! We’ll be at SCALE again! We love SCALE. SCALE and OLF are my favorite events of the year
SCALE: And we love hearing that Thanks, Ken.

Here are the links:

1.  Don Marti -ifdown -a now!

2.  Dru Lavigne - Creating a Publication Using Open Source Tools

3.  Joseph G. Thibault - Introduction to Moodle

4.  Lorie Obal - FreeMind in Education

5.  Jeffrey Eastlack - FireAnt – Cell phone virtual supercomputer

6.  Charles Edge - Directory Services and Education

7.  Joseph Hartman - Open Source Education: 4-Step Linux MiniLANs

8.   Ted Gould - The Ubuntu Desktop: Bling for Usability

9.   Practical ATA Over Ethernet - Ed Cashin CoRaid

10.  Sunday Keynote - Stormy Peters

11.  Celeste Lyn Paul - User ­Centered Design in Open Source Development

12.  Seth Kenlon - Video Codecs and the Free World

13. Elizabeth Garbee - Open Source Animation

14. Christopher Blizzard - Firefox on Linux

15. Roy Rubin - Building an Ecommerce Site with Open Source Tools

16. George Kamis - Best Practices Locking Down Linux

17. Guy Martin - Linux Momentum in Mobile

18.  Cecil Watson - Linux Entertain Me!

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?

Ted: They do a little, but Canonical is not paying me to work on Inkscape. But the base technologies are the same. We’re using GTK+ and SVG all across both of the projects so in many ways there is no separation. Learning things like Debian packaging at Canonical has also helped out in solving Inkscape problems that would have been difficult before. So, they do overlap, but not “officially.”

SCALE: Inkscape is almost at version 0.46; what’s been added since the previous release?

Ted: Wow, it’s almost too much. The story behind 0.46 is that we kept delaying it to add more stuff, and now it’s simply huge. Some of the big user visible things are:

• the tweak tool, which allows you to naturally edit vectored paths similar to blend tools on bitmap editors;

• 3-d boxes, a way to create vectored pseudo-3d objects quickly;
• live path effects, making objects which are controlled and manipulated by single paths.

There are also things like upgrades to our font handling, printing, OCAL import/export, rendering speed, bitmap exporting, bitmap effects, grids, snapping… and that’s all the ones I can remember off the top of my head!  It has been said that working with 0.45 is the dark ages by users who keep up with the development versions. It’s a very exciting release.

SCALE: What’s planned for future releases?

Ted: We’re still focused on 0.46, so we haven’t thought too much about what’s next. I think there is a general idea that we need to focus a little on bug fixing and code clean up for a next release, we also want to tighten the release cycle some - a year was too long!

We want to get more scripting and pluggability going, perhaps by including a VM, so that other languages can be easily placed on top of it. We’re also hoping to finish off all the SVG filters and get the color management hammered out so that users can start using Inkscape for more print-ready type activities. But that isn’t a comprehensive list; I’m sure some developer will come along and impress us!

SCALE: What’s the typical Inkscape user like? Do you have any feel for how widely it’s used?

Ted: It’s really hard to say.  I’m always surprised at what people use Inkscape for. As far as GUI users go I think there are three main camps of users: free desktop artist (icons, backgrounds, etc.), web developers (prototyping, graphics) and fine artists. But I found out at SCALE that Open StreetMaps is using Inkscape for all their tile rendering. That probably makes them the biggest Inkscape user of all!

SCALE: You recently spoke at the So Cal Linux Expo on “The Ubuntu Desktop: Bling for Usability”. How was your talk received? What kind of feedback did you get?

Ted: I think it was received well overall. It was a little bit short, which is funny because last year I was very long (people started leaving) and I was trying so hard to be in my time limit this year. I guess I over compensated.  I think that some people thought that I was going to do a review, or a how to on the Ubuntu Desktop which wasn’t really my goal. The goal of the talk was to explain how the recent increases in graphics performance on the desktop have allowed us to explore usability in new ways. So, in that regard, some people probably didn’t get what they expected out of the talk. But, I heard some laughs and no crying, so that’s always a good sign

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.

SCALE: What role do you play in the Debian Development Community?
Don: I’m a Debian Developer; that means that I have the ability to upload packages to the archive, to vote, log into developer-accessible project machines, and run for elected positions. Specifically, I maintain a few perl packages, some sendmail related packages.

SCALE: What, if any steps, have been done to speed up the release cycles for Debian?
Don: The most major thing I’ve been working on is trying to make sure that the information that maintainers need to be aware of the bugs that affect their packages are made available to them, and that people who are interested in bugs can get information regarding them. Other than that, I’ve been doing things that everyone else can do: filing patches for RC bugs, fixing my own RC bugs when they happen, and making NMUs for unfixed RC bugs. Anyone who wants to see Debian release faster can do the first of these three; DD’s will handle the last for you once that’s done.

SCALE: What are your thoughts on the commercialized Debian based distributions? Xandros? Linspire? What about Click N’ Run?

Don: I don’t really have much of an opinion on them. To the extent that they give back to Debian, they’re a positive force. Some of them also fill a user-support niche that Debian will probably never bother to actually fill for itself (especially as we don’t have employees and likely never will.) There are some problems with commercial distributions that are just inherent, such as vendor-lock-in, lack of support for unusual configurations for smaller customers, presence of non-free software, etc., but those are the issues that you find with any type of commercial distribution.

SCALE: What are your thoughts on Ubuntu? Has it been good or bad for Debian?
Don: When Ubuntu is at it’s best, it’s good for Debian. When it’s not, it’s presence is pretty much irrelevant for Debian. There’s always a problem with highly skilled developers being hired out by companies and then being able to spend less time on Debian, but I’d imagine that a large number of Canonical-hired developers can actually spend more time working on Debian than they could in the past, just because their day job benifits by making Debian better.

The most wide-ranging impact is the market visibility for average users: Debian has always been present in the racks of dinosaur pens, but few outside of those who used Debian on servers use it on the desktop. The final impact in terms of developer mindshare still remains to be seen, but I hope it’s a positive force.

SCALE: Where do you see Debian going in the future? Will support for certain architectures be dropped?
Don: The big things that I hope we’re able to do are better support for different hardware, a more agile release process, and still maintain our fanatical commitment to technical excellence and long-term production-level stability. As far as architectures being dropped, I think that the critical aspect there is just developer time and machine availability. Architectures which do not have machine availability and developer mindshare we’ll have no choice but to drop, but we’ll probably keep adding new architectures like hurd-i386, kFreeBSD-{i386,amd64}, armel, armeb et al. as fast as we have to drop other architectures.

SCALE: What do you like most & like least about open source software?
Don: The best thing that I like about Free Software is the ability to modify the software at any time; with that goes the ability to often directly contact the implementor of a particular portion of a program and communicate and get inside their mindset to see what they were invisioning when they wrote and designed their software. I’ve never been able to write a single e-mail and get the engineer or developer responsible for a non-FOSS work (hardware or software) to respond.

The thing that I dislike most about Free Software is more of a double edged sword; a lot of FOSS is about scratching one’s one itch. Because of that, our doucmentation (when it exists!) tends to be written from the perspective of a person who is intimately familiar with the actual code (and usually unerringly correct) but often impenetrable to users who are not conversant with the sourcecode for a project, or at least the jargon that serious programmers and unix users use. The only way I can see to fix that

SCALE: What is the hardest thing about working on an open source project?

Don: Getting started, usually. There are few FOSS projects where it’s immediately obvious where to jump in and start working without duplicating work.

SCALE: Do you ever use any other Linux distributions? What about other open source operating systems besides Linux?
Don: I try very hard not to use other distributions; usually I leave machines which have had Debian surreptitiously installed in my wake. I sometimes use other kernels, but they’re usually all Debian too!

SCALE: What other open source projects are you most excited about besides Debian?
Don: I’ve really been following the work going on around OLPC, open cores, R, bioconductor, openmoko, gnu radio, and of course the open media work like IMSLP, Gutenberg, and Mutopia quite closely. I really hope that soon we’ll be able to have Free forms of all aspects of different forms of digital information where we can control every aspect of their function and mold them into our desired image.

SCALE: Thank you Don.