SLUG formation meeting
29 Oct
I was at TSF's building again tonight, for discussion on the formation of the School's Linux Users' Group, which aims to promote volunteerism to drive teaching students and teachers to use their school Linux labs, which have been and will be installed by SLUG. I took minutes again, attached.
Open Source Citizenship
29 Oct
In his latest column, Jon Udell looks at Open Source Citizenship; mostly at organisations that use Open Source, but don't contribute back. This is a surprisingly complicated decision to make - Jon covers the major reasons for doing so, but not contributing back means that you will have a lot of trouble keeping up with the new features of the project you're using, as your patches will no longer apply. You either have to stick with the old version and atrophy, or put in possibly heavy merge-work whenever moving to a new version.
Yesterday evening, I attended a meeting on curriculum development, part of the School LUG's mission to get children at schools using computers. Some computers have been donated, and the labs have been set up by volunteers, and the computers are running Linux. Teachers and techies got together to plan an open-content curriculum using open source software to go with the labs. I took some minutes, which I've attached.
Addiction
24 Oct
This is my nineth day without coca-cola, and my third day without coffee. I feel better.
Congrats Barry and Pieter
24 Oct
According to this Information Week Story, Linux is doing better than many expected, and Microsoft is blamed and chastised for not being Linux-friendly by those surveyed. A lot better than Open Source having to compete with Microsoft on closed proprietary standards...
According to Tectonic, FotoFirst clicks with Linux.
FotoFirst South Africa has deployed Obsidian's Synchrony product as part of the Point Of Sale (POS) systems. Replacing an old manual process of recording sales information, the process is automated, and the Synchrony product keeps price lists and similar database information up to date at over 80 sites with ease. Great job Obs!
Aslam Rafee of South Africa's Government Communication and Information System ``was asked to get some feedback from the list on the adoption of an open source license for software the government creates.''. I replied supporting the BSD license, of course. Many replies just showed lack of understanding of the licenses, and other expressed the desire to prevent any non-open-source use of government-developed code.
SARS efiling unsupportive
16 Oct
A month back I sent an email to the South African Revenue Services electronic filing services regarding the requirement to use Windows and Internet Explorer to use their site. I promptly received a reply indicating that my mail had been received, and that it was to be discussed. A month has gone by, so I've sent a reminder email. And I figured I might as well attach my email here.
Truth and existential crises
16 Oct
I am a successful (I'm employed, right?) software developer, am a moderately-successful (I've helped hundreds of people, right?) open source advocate, and am rightly follow my own idealistic moral path through life. Or am I? And even if I am, does it matter? Have I been making the wrong choices all my life? Or is it just a bad month? I'm not depressed, just wondering about life and values and truth. Sorry (that is, if anyone actually reads this).