March 6th, 2015

Free Bassel Day, Bodhi Linux Chromebook Giveaway & More…

FOSS Week in Review

As the week finally becomes Friday, here are a few things that deserve mentioning in the FOSS realm:

Bodhi Chromebook Giveaway: What’s better than having a Chromebook? Having a Chromebook with Bodhi installed on it, of course. We’ll let Jeff Hoogland explain:

“Whenever I am done working with development hardware I picked up for Bodhi Linux, instead of letting it rot in the corner of my basement I would prefer to give it back to our users,” Hoogland writes in a post on the Bodhi website describing the giveaway. “Last year we gave away an ARM powered Samsung Chromebook and this year I find myself with a spare Acer C720 Chromebook after recently upgrading to the i3 based version.”

So on May 15, some lucky Bodhi contributor — key word here is “Bodhi contributor” — will receive “a gently used Acer C720 Chromebook powered by Bodhi Linux.”

Says Jeff: “If you have already donated or contributed to the Bodhi project in 2015 no extra effort is needed on your part. If you have been thinking about getting involved or sending a donation our way now is a fantastic time to do as you might end up getting something back!”

Details on the giveaway are on the Bodhi site.

But wait, there’s more: FOSS Force’s Christine Hall will have an article on Monday looking at current activity around the 3.0.0 release in which she talks to Jeff about it.

I Want You…: Like the old Armed Forces recruiting posters with Uncle Sam pointing a bony finger at you, it looks like Linux techs are a sought-after species. Demand for skilled Linux professionals continues to outpace the supply of qualified candidates, according to the Linux Foundation. This week, the foundation released its 2015 Linux Jobs report, which they’re providing as a free download.

EWeek went into more detail about the report, quoting the Linux Foundation’s Amanda McPherson, who said, “Linux is being used in so many places in so many ways that its pervasiveness in computing is growing faster than the pool of Linux talent.”

So get that resume polished and out there….

Free Bassel Day 2015: Sunday, March 15, marks the third anniversary of the arrest in Damascus, Syria, of Bassel Khartabil (Bassel Safadi), a computer engineer who was Creative Commons lead in Syria and who started a hackerspace, Aiki Lab, in Damascus in 2010. This is only a small part of Bassel’s resume, which includes numerous other open source and free culture projects.

In support of Bassel, the plight of Syrians, and in efforts to raise awareness of both, #FreeBassel day events are being held around the world to mark this date.

Closer to home — at least closer to my home — the Electronic Frontier Foundation will be hosting a community-building event at their San Francisco offices, organized around a Wikipedia edit-a-thon in Bassel’s honor. They’ll be working to improve and add articles and media content related to Bassel and articles of interest to him, while discussing his case and brainstorming about new projects and ideas to help bring awareness about his plight.

One more thing: I said I wasn’t going to mention SCALE 13x again, but I have to go back on my word for musical reasons. At the Fedora Project booth at SCALE 12x and SCALE 13x, Fedora guy and Biblical scholar Scott Williams had musical instruments in the Fedora booth for those who wanted to play. In conversation this week, it was suggested that following Scott’s and the Fedora Project’s lead, perhaps there should be a FOSS band — maybe Scott on guitar, Red Hat’s Paul Frields on bass…heck, I’ll even break out the old trumpet and join fellow horn player Lance Albertson, of the OSU Open Source Lab, in the brass section. We can even let Jono Bacon — no longer at Ubuntu, but still a FOSS guy — play guitar or drums or whatever he plays in his San Francisco Bay Area band.

Can you think of anyone else who should be part of Sgt. Torvalds’ Lonely Hearts Club Band?

See you next week.