On Tuesday last week I drove down to Half Moon Bay with Jeremy and Ilan for the Open Source Leadership Summit. I always enjoy this event: it is smaller and more focused than the bigger conferences, which helps facilitate some great discussion. Angela's team at the Linux Foundation do a fabulous job running it.

As those of you who follow me on social media may have picked up, I was knocked down by some kind of weaponized fully-automatic navy-strength flu. I spent the entire event holed up in my room feeling thoroughly sorry for myself and living off room service. Over a week later, I am finally about to shake it. I am not quite sure how this happened, but I blame Stuart while he was at SCALE: he must be patient zero.

Anyway, before this all kicked in, I sat in the CommunityBridge announcement by Jim Zemlin after lunch on the Tuesday. I wanted to sketch some thoughts about CommunityBridge, what it is, and what I think of it but because of the flu-related downtime, I have been delayed in writing up some thoughts.

Now, a caveat: I have a close relationship with the Linux Foundation. They are a client of mine, and I consider Jim a good friend. As is always the case though, I formulate my own opinions, and my opinions here are my own and not that of the Linux Foundation.

The News

For those who didn't see the news, the Linux Foundation announced a new platform called CommunityBridge. In a nutshell, this is a platform that provides a set of services designed to serve open source projects and developers. The first set of services announced include:

• Funding - provides a place where people can donate to projects, and policies can be defined about how the money is used. For example, what proportion of donations can go to hardware, events, travel, etc.
• Security - provides an overview of vulnerabilities that relate to a project, links directly with the CVE database, and is able to identify vulnerabilities across the dependency chain.
• People - provides a dashboard to connect together mentors and mentees to streamline how mentoring initiatives are structured and run.

The Linux Foundation just took the wraps off this, so it is early days, but they are eager for people to start using it and provide feedback. They have also been providing donations matching to help build up the available funds in the platform.

My Take

For a number of years now, I have been talking about how code is one artifact of a strong community. Successful communities don't just forge great code: they are able to build healthy teams with workflow and tools that are simple and tightly integrated.

As one such example, GitHub have over 96 million repositories that serve over 31 million developers. The most successful projects that live in GitHub integrate their engineering workflow (such as issue management and pull requests) with a raft of other elements, including but not limited to:

• Open communication, code, build services, and planning.
• Efficient code review and release management.
• Simple onboarding to get new developers from piqued interest to pull request in next to no time.
• Designing security policy, managing bugs, and maintaining security across binary distributions and dependencies.
• Regular meetings to review plans, discuss architectural decisions, resolve problems, and more.
• Soliciting donations and managing how that money is distributed, as well as the tax paperwork that is associated with it.
• Measuring contributions to the project and optimizing and improving developer workflow based on this data.
• Effective incentives and rewards for great work contributed in the community.
• Building growth and participation to keep the community growing.
• Building awareness of the project via a website, social media, campaigns, and more.
• Providing support to users, managing feature requests, and setting expectations.
• Speaking at conferences and events, building out a network, and opening up new opportunities for the project.

These are an amalgamation of workflow, policy, engagement, and growth. The problem is that weaving together this diverse range of ingredients in a successful open source project requires having people with the skills and experience to put them in place. Sadly, there are relatively few people who actually have this experience.

The fundraising component.
Credit

This puts notable pressure on the sustainability of open source. To keep open source growing, we need to be able to systematize and integrate these components into platforms more efficiently while also continuing to grow skills and expertise in these areas.

The platform piece is critical. We should have platforms that tell us what are the most effective dimensions for tracking projects, and have those metrics integrated. We should have platforms that represent an optimal fundraising workflow, and connect together donors and projects who use the money. We should have platforms that help people book and coordinate meetings, track meeting notes, and more.

From what I can tell, this is the sandbox in which CommunityBridge is playing: to provide a simple and extensible set of tools that help to fill in these gaps for a broader range of open source projects.

There is enormous potential if the Linux Foundation get this right. Sourceforge had a transformative impact on open source by making free, simple, and ubiquitous tools available to developers. GitHub took this to a radical new level. CommunityBridge has the potential to augment tools such as GitHub in a way that layers on functionality needed for these projects to be successful.

Ahhh, memories.
Credit

I also think the Linux Foundation is a good home for this work. They have quite a heritage in forging an ecosystem that invests in open source, bringing in many companies who historically would have been reluctant to throw their resources into the open source hat. We shouldn't underestimate this accomplishment: open source is culturally alien to many different companies, and the Linux Foundation helped to forge a path forward in which these firms could dip their toes in, safely and securely, and build up their understanding and capabilities of how open source works. Now many of these companies are not just participating, but paying thousands of developers to work on open source and maintaining hundreds of projects.

As such, the Linux Foundation has produced an environment across their projects and events in which independent discussion and development can happen. Is it perfect, no, but nothing is. What I do know is that we wouldn't be where we are today with open source if the Linux Foundation hadn't helped facilitate a lot of this.

As such, CommunityBridge seems like an entirely logical next step. The only way we can grow to serve the broader ecosystem is to not just help the big-ticket projects like Kubernetes, but also the long-tail of projects too. A clear, featureful platform will pay dividends here in the broader success of open source.

Now, this isn't going to be a walk in the park. For CommunityBridge to succeed, it needs to be informed and guided by the broader community. The Linux Foundation can't possibly have all the answers, none of us do. They are have been open in expressing their receptiveness to feedback, and it is important that projects provide it. This will ensure that CommunityBridge shapes the most critical needs in the open source ecosystem.

The post CommunityBridge by the Linux Foundation: Digging In appeared first on Jono Bacon.

21 Mar 2019 8:30pm GMT

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ExTix 19.3 Linux Distro Released With Kernel 5.0, Kodi 18.2, And Xfce 4.13
Source: https://fossbytes.com/extix-19-3-linux-released-features-download/

Ubuntu 14.04.6 Trusty Tahr Released With High-impact APT Bug Fix
Source: https://fossbytes.com/ubuntu-14-04-6-trusty-tahr-released-download/

KDE Plasma 5.15.3 Desktop Environment Released with Flatpak Improvements
Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/kde-plasma-5-15-3-desktop-environment-released-with-flatpak-improvements-more-525273.shtml

GNOME 3.32 'Taipei' is finally here! The best Linux desktop environment gets even better
Source: https://betanews.com/2019/03/13/gnome-332-taipei-linux/

Mozilla introduces Private Encrypted File Exchange with Firefox Send
Source: https://www.pro-linux.de/news/1/26862/mozilla-stellt-mit-firefox-send-privaten-verschl%C3%BCsselten-dateitausch-vor.html

Canonical Releases Minor Linux Kernel Security Update for Ubuntu 14.04 LTS
Source: https://news.softpedia.com/news/canonical-releases-minor-linux-kernel-security-update-for-ubuntu-14-04-lts-525308.shtml

Linux 5.1 Might Add Support For Using Persistant Memory As System RAM
Source: https://fossbytes.com/linux-5-1-kernel-persistant-memory-as-system-ram/

Parrot Home: Enjoy the Privacy Extras
Source: https://www.linuxinsider.com/story/Parrot-Home-Enjoy-the-Privacy-Extras-85886.html

21 Mar 2019 2:56pm GMT

No deal Brexit will mean shutting off most of the supply capacity from the EU to Great Britain, as the government says this will be chaotic. Many of the effects are unknown but in the days and weeks that follow food supplies and medicine supplies will start to fail. The rules on moving money about and even making a phone call will be largely undefined. International travel will get unknown new bureaucracies. EU and WTO law means there also needs to be a hard border in Ireland again, restarting terrorist warfare. Inflation will kick in, unemployment will sky rocket and people will die.

Although the UK government has dropped the dangerous saying of "no deal is better than a bad deal" it is astonishing they were allowed to get away with saying that for so long without challenge. There are still many members of the UK government who are perfectly happy with a chaotic no deal Brexit and the Prime Minister, unwilling to change any tactics, is using more and more Populist language to say how everyone should support her and threaten the whole UK society in the greatest game of chicken since the cold war. It would be trivial to revoke the Article 50 process but unless that is chosen a no deal Brexit will happen.

The political process is broken and has been for many years on this topic, there is no campaign from the normal groups I would expect to have one that I can join. The SNP, Greens and Quakers are not doing what they would usually do and enabling their members to have a voice. Religions in general exist to look after their members in times of crisis but so far nobody in Quakers that I've spoken to has any interest in many any practical mitigation steps.

Most people in Britain still think it'll never happen as the politicians will see sense and back down, but they are wrong because the politicians are not acting rationally they are acting very irrationally and all it takes for no deal Brexit to happen is for no other decision to be taken.

So I find myself waving an European flag in Edinburgh each evening for the People's Vote campaign, a London based campaign with a load of problems but the only one going. I'll go to London this weekend to take part in the giant protest there.

Please come along if you live in the UK. Please also sign the petition to revoke article 50. Wish us luck.

by

21 Mar 2019 2:43pm GMT

I know I'm very late, but I really wanted to talk about this year Google Summer of Code.

For the third year in a row, I was a mentor. And this year I have a huge deception to share. I'm really sad. This week, I'v received the GSoC 2011 t-shirt. They sent me the wrong size. XXXL. I can use it as a sleeping bag with my girlfriend. I'm really disappointed.

Hopefully, GSoC is not only about receiving a t-shirt. It is also about mentoring a student.

Nearly two years ago, I started working on a complete refactoring of GTG. The code was a mess, with a lot of duplicate everywhere, with two bugs appearing while you were trying to solve one, etc.

I abstracted the structure we were using in several places and started to write a library to handle those "Acyclical Directed Graphs". As usual, it appeared that development was taking longer than expected. Weeks turned into months. Then, when it started to look good, I discovered that I forgot one critical point: thread-awareness. I felt hopeless.

Because I didn't had the motivation to do that heavy work, I proposed it as a Summer of Code project to a very motivated student: Izidor Matušov^[1].

Words doesn't do any justice to the excellent work that Izidor did this summer. He's simply awesome. Some students are goods because they have previous experience. Izidor kicks asses. He learns so quickly, he's so assertive. The work was even harder than what we anticipated. But he managed to achieve everything, including feeding me with cookies at the Desktop Summit, where we met and had an awesome hacking week.

As much as I'm deceipted about the t-shirt, I'm delighted about the work achieved this summer. Izidor now knows GTG nearly as much as I do. He's taking initiatives, like organizing an online GTG hackfest on November 26th^[2] and he's a bug-answering machine.

Dear Google, GNOME foundation and Lanedo^[3], I would like to thank you. Thanks to your support:

1. I received a worthless piece of clothes that travelled half of the world in order to clean my cat's dirtiness.
2. GTG 0.2.9 should be released before the end of the year
3. GTG gained a new co-maintainer
4. I gained a new friend. And it probably worth everything else.

Congratulations, co-maintainer Izidor. And welcome to the community!

06 Nov 2011 6:23pm GMT

Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click

When I started installing the best desktop possible for Marie and Jean, we were still in the GNOME 2.X era. GNOME 3 solved my previous concerns. No in the way I envisioned it, but solved them anyway. No more desktop icons, no more tray icons.

But now that I'm introducing Marie and Jean to GNOME 3, I still have some concerns. And one of that main concern is the infamous double-click!

Do you remember? Jean is a very brilliant mind, even though he never used a computer during his whole life. As a reasoning scientist, he was trying to find the logic behind my teaching.

During one of our first lesson, "Using the mouse", the conversation went like this:
- How do I know if I have to click or double click?
- Well, you double-click on icon and simple click on links and buttons.
- How do I know what is a button or an icon?
- …

Since that time, I've tried many times to find a logic behind single or double clicking. There is not. You have to learn it by experience. And it is totally, utterly pointless.

I also realized that a single click was something really hard for Jean. Achieving to click on a given point without moving the mouse is really hard for older people. Then, ask them to click twice, with a completely arbitrary speed, without moving the mouse, not to quickly, not to slowly. Impossible.

Marie, on her side, was double-clicking everywhere. And, surprisingly, it works most of the time.

So, why do we have double-click in some places? Because we want to be able to select an item without "activating" it. How often does it happen? Never for Jean. Very rarely for Marie.

To summarize, we are making the most frequent action very hard to nearly impossible in order to allow a very rare action?

I tried to disable completely the double-clicking in Nautilus.

Do you know what?

It works. Even for me. I had chronic pain in my hand and disabling double-click was a relief. I explained to Marie to never double-click anymore. She's still double-clicking from time to time but everything works even better than before. Jean was eventually able to launch a file from within Nautilus.

Selection of one or multiple file with single mouse click

What about selection of files? I explained to Marie to draw a square with the mouse. And, yes, she found that absolutely intuitive. The only drawback I found so far was the inconsistency with lists, where double-clicking is still required. Marie called me one day because she tried to play a specific song in Rhythmbox. It wasn't working. I realize that she had to double-click on the song. "But you told me to never double click anymore!". Sorry Marie.

I'm myself incredibly frustrated by any system that requires double-click. Why do we still have double-click by default in GNOME3?


Part 1 : Introduction
Part 2 : Home is Desktop
Part 3 : There's no tray icon in GNOME !
Part 4 : Kill The Double Click


Picture by Dave Dugdale

05 Nov 2011 12:17pm GMT

Si vous deviez me décrire en deux mots, nul doute que fourbe et profiteur vous viendraient spontanément à la bouche. Paresseux, parasite et inutile suivraient de près. Et j'en suis fier. J'en ai même fait mon mode de vie.

Ma technique est simple mais éprouvée. Je croise un inconnu dans la rue à l'air affable. Tenez, prenez ce jeune homme à l'allure dynamique. Il s'appelle Jean, c'est ma prochaine victime. Il ne se doute encore de rien mais j'irai dormir dans le lit de sa femme tout en vidant son frigo.

Au premier abord, je fais le numéro du sympa-sociable, les circonstances m'ont conduit dans la rue, où j'ère sans but précis, mais je ne me plains pas, je ne quémande rien, au contraire, je refuse tout geste de pitié trop ostentatoire. J'ai ma fierté.

Lorsque Jean se propose de m'emmener manger à la maison, juste pour la soirée, je fais d'abord mine de ne pas être intéressé. Mais mes yeux acquiescent et Jean, en rigolant, insiste, me forçant presqu'à le suivre. Inutile de vous dire que c'est ce que j'attendais mais la victime doit croire qu'elle a l'initiative, c'est primordial.

Martine, la femme de Jean, n'est que moyennement contente de cet imprévu. Qu'à cela ne tienne, je fais mon charmeur, je séduis tout en ayant l'air de ne pas vouloir déranger. Je fais également un peu le pitre pour la dérider.

Et ça marche. Avant la fin de la soirée, elle discutera avec moi plus qu'avec Jean lui-même, ce dernier étant parfaitement inconscient du destin de proie que je lui réserve. De manière indirecte, je fais comprendre que je n'ai nul part où aller. Jean et Martine n'ont pas le cœur de me renvoyer seul dans le froid de la nuit. Ils se proposent donc de m'héberger, juste pour une nuit. Tandis que je m'installe confortablement sur le sofa, j'entends Martine descendre l'escalier. Elle est en déshabillé, prête à aller au lit.

- « Bonne nuit ! » me lance-t-elle avec un sourire innocent avant de remonter dare-dare dans sa chambre.

Je ricane. Je n'ai même pas eu besoin de répondre. Une seule soirée me suffit. Homme ou femme, nul ne me résiste. Je suis comme ça moi.

Bien entendu, le « seulement pour une nuit » se prolongera. Je commencerai doucement à faire comprendre mes goûts précis, envoyant Jean au supermarché afin de m'acheter ce que je souhaite. Lorsqu'elle rentre du travail, Martine a à peine un regard pour Jean. Elle se rue à l'intérieur pour voir comment je vais. Pendant ce temps-là, je me prélasse sur le canapé, je me balade un peu. Avec mon air faussement négligent, j'ai pris soin de casser quelques bibelots auxquels ils tenaient beaucoup, par pure cruauté.

Lorsque Jean partit quelques jours dans sa famille à l'étranger, je n'hésitai pas: je me glissai une nuit dans le lit de Martine, sans même lui demander, sans même m'annoncer. Elle prit un air faussement surpris mais je sais qu'elle n'attendait que cela. Elles sont toutes les mêmes. Jean nous a surpris en rentrant plus tôt. Cela ne lui a pas plu. Il m'a dit qu'il m'avait sorti de la rue, qu'il n'acceptait pas cela.

Par méchanceté, j'ai répondu en déféquant sur la moquette du salon. Il a pu tout nettoyer. Il n'était vraiment pas content mais Martine a fini par le convaincre de me garder et d'exercer le moindre de mes désirs.

Il faut dire qu'ils sont vraiment bien mes deux esclaves. Je dors dans leur lit, ils me nourrissent, nettoient sans que je n'aie besoin de faire attention à rien. Quoi que je fasse, ils me regardent avec un air attendri et me trouvent adorable. Même au milieu de la nuit, il suffit que je me mette à miauler pour qu'ils s'enquièrent immédiatement de mes besoins.

Des esclaves aussi dociles, c'est rare. Je vais les garder encore quelques temps.

28 Oct 2011 4:59pm GMT