Chuck’s Words

I’ve been keeping myself pretty busy lately with several things going on.

The Ubuntu Maryland Local Community Team will be starting plans for Software Freedom Day on September 19th soon. The tentative thoughts are to have a similar event to what we did last year with a day of tutorials and discussion on Free and Open Source software. This event will be targeted at end users and cover as many topics as we can. Please feel free to email sfd09 at ubuntu-maryland.org if you have any thoughts or ideas for this year’s event!

Unfortunately due to a scheduling issue and my only being able to be in one place at one time I’ll be unable to attend this week’s Ubuntu MD team meeting. It will be at the Howard County Library Central branch from 7-9pm. For those that attend let me know how things go!

Peg introduced (putting it nicely;)) me to a walking group called American Volkssport Association. Its a group that has various events both manned and unmanned throughout the US. We went to our first meeting of the local group last week and Saturday we did our longest walk via the organization at 6k. So if you’re into walking and want to find some walks in your area check to see if you can find a group near you. They give out patches for various themed walks!

I waited and debated on what, if anything, to post on this topic. I didn’t want to chime in and just be another voice but every voice should be heard if it wants to speak. I was hoping that after Mark Shuttleworth spoke his thoughts on the matter of the naming of the Ubuntu One project that something would clear up in my head on this and keep this post from being needed in my mind. Unfortunately Mark’s response was as I thought it might be, as I read it, that the Ubuntu trademark belongs to him via Canonical and they’ll do as they see fit with the name. That is a fair response as it reflects the rights of the trademark owner.

My issue with the project is not, as others have expressed, that the back end of Ubuntu One is closed source. Canonical as a company has a track record of closed source web services. These are reflected in the Launchpad product and the Landscape service. The community was told early on that Launchpad would eventually be open sourced after it aged and components stabilized and matured. This promise from Canonical is about to be realized at least in part with the majority of Launchpad opening up on July 21st.

The Ubuntu One project is carrying no such promises of opening it up or hints of it to come. It is at this point simply a closed source ‘cloud’ product with an open source client. I’m sure that already there are some open source groups looking at the client to see how it integrates into the back end and how the server might be cloned via reverse engineering. After all the FLOSS world has some very smart people among us. I think that the iFolder people are looking at this with some interest to see how others are implementing the same ideas they have going in their existing project. This is another reason that I’m surprised Canonical labeled this as ‘Ubuntu’ when there is obviously more people and groups that would like to take advantage of the product without being limited to the Ubuntu desktop in reality or perception.

This Ubuntu One product I think creates a break of trust between Canonical and the Ubuntu community at large when it comes to how the Ubuntu name is used. Up until now I have felt and explained that the Ubuntu brand and name stands for software freedom. The distribution is as free as you can get and adds the closed options to play with the vendors who do not understand what is gained by opening their drivers and software. The Ubuntu logo is a way to show that you believe that Free software is the right way to do things. Yes, I explain Canonical provides closed commercial web services and projects but they do so under their name and express their Free software stance by supporting the Ubuntu project. Yes Mark, when it comes to this project you are the daddy. You’ve raised this kids to believe in free software, standing up for what we believe in and we’re letting you know we learned the lesson. This means even family can be called out when they do the wrong thing in spirit if not in law.

Now as an advocate and member of the Ubuntu project I have to go an extra step when explaining Ubuntu. That it is Free on the desktop but when you reach the clouds you may lose sight of that freedom when you see the Ubuntu name, at least to some extent.

I hope the skies clear up and we see a nice patch of blue but I’m packing a small umbrella because there looks to be a touch of grey to the clouds…

Day: Saturday April 25, 2009
Time: 12 pm
Place: Fuddruckers at 6486 Dobbin Way, Columbia, MD 21045

Join us to celebrate the release of the Jaunty Jackalope!

We are going to try to have some home made CDs to hand out.

Bring a 1GB or larger flash drive and we’ll set you up with a LiveUSB version of Jaunty Jackalope! (Time and power/battery life permitting)

A first for this meeting! I will be going to Microcenter to do some shopping Thursday evening. If you want I can purchase a 2gb or 4gb flash drive for you and preload it with your choice of Ubuntu, Kubuntu or Xubuntu live images or copy various ISOs to the disk for you. Considering the prices listed on their site currently (April 17th) the 2gb will cost you $8 and the 4 gb will be $10. Those prices reflect the original price+tax+I-don’t-want-to-deal-with-coins charge. Send me an email with the size drive you want, the live image you want loaded on and/or the images you wish to have copied.

First the DojoSec meeting was very well done and well attended. The videos are up on the multimedia page. Thanks to Marcus J. Carey for putting these together and speakers like Marcus J. Ranum for attending them.

Then a reminder that the Columbia Area Linux Users Group is meeting this Wednesday, March 11 at the offices of Tenable Network Security in Columbia, MD. Sean Wilkerson of Aplura will be giving his talk “Centralizing Security Data - Current Threats, Trends, and Deployment Considerations”. Sean talked with us in October 2007 about SIM deployment preparation. This presentation will pick up where his previous presentation ended, and will address current threat trends facing networks today and how to monitor activity across your enterprise using central logging solutions deployed on Linux systems. Sean will share what has worked and a lot of what hasn’t worked during some of his recent central logging implementation projects covering 4 different US agencies and commercial organizations.

Finally don’t forget to fire up a VM, an extra machine or take a risk and install the current testing version of Jaunty and report any bugs you come across!

And to show there are no hard feelings Jason, the OpenSolaris user group is having their inaugural meeting March 11th.

In a previous post titled Free Happenings I mentioned the March meeting of DojoSec.

Since I posted there has been another speaker added to the evening, so now the line-up is:

iPhone Forensics - Walter Barr and Sean Morrissey
Snort - The Forensics Tool? - David Warren
Cyberwar is BS - Marcus J. Ranum

Also there will now be a $1 entry fee to help cover costs.

See you there!

So last Saturday the Ubuntu Maryland Team got together at the Howard County Library to jam on some bugs with the rest of the world. First of all thanks to everyone that turned out. We had about a dozen people show up and many of those were new faces.

I started the morning with the main talk on how to report and triage bugs. This was a talk that I put together the last time and it worked as well the second time around so that was a good thing.

After the questions were done we settled into our work and started looking at bugs. As things progressed we started coming up with questions and noticing the tools our neighbors were using. This lead to discussions on things from screen usage to gpg to where to buy surplus hardware.

Lots of good things happened on the day and everyone had a good time. We’re defiantly looking forward to the next event.

So much going on, where to start.

I’ll start with a big thank you to Paul W. Frields from the Fedora Project for an excellent talk at CALug last Wednesday. He gave us a presentation on remixing Fedora that led to pleasantly running over our regular end time. Many things were discussed and asked about that may lead to a neat new feature or two.

A short time ago I finally finished updating my bug triaging presentation for the Global Bug Jam next weekend. It has been posted to the Running A Bug Jam page on the Ubuntu wiki for all those giving a talk next weekend. Here in Maryland we’ll be going to the Howard County Library’s Miller Branch from 9am-1pm on February 21st. I’ll be starting the presentation about 9:30. If you’re closer to the DC area the DC Loco will be starting their jam at 1:30pm and running until 6pm.

Our regular team meeting will be this Thursday the 19th from 7-9pm at the Central Library.

March 5th we will be seeing the next instalment of the Dojosec presentations sponsored by Sun Tzu data. Marcus Carey started these talks, described as dinner theater for security geeks, back in October. Each month has featured a terrific set of speakers. March’s talk will feature Marcus Ranum and his ‘Cyberwar is Bullsh!t’ talk. This will take place at the Charles I. Ecker Business Training Center in Columbia, MD. The evening normally runs from 6-9:30 but be sure to sign up for the mailing list for all the details and to RSVP.

FOSE is coming up in March. David Cafaro recently posted to the CALug mailing list asking for volunteers for the Tux.org booth this year. Trade a couple hours of your time if available to spread the word on Free software!

Congrats to Matt Kenseth on winning the 51st Daytona 500! Rain shortened races are always a drag, particularly if you are there in the stands, but a win is a win.

I think that about does it for the evening. I feel that I left something out but there’s always another day to post that stuff.

Come out and join the Ubuntu Maryland Team for the Global Bug Jam!

February 21 is the big day that we will be getting together at the Howard County Library’s Miller Branch. I’ll be giving a talk at 9:30 am on how to report and triage bugs in Launchpad. After that we will work on bugs until about 1pm in launchpad and help reduce the number of open and new bugs and deal with them in the proper way.

Check out our page for an overview of what will be going on and what you can do to prepare yourself for the day. Updates will be posted as available.

That’s what Peg said to me earlier today in reference to my Dell Mini running KDE 4.2.

Early last week her laptop broke in such a way [at the hinge] that I’m unable to fix it myself and it is so old that it is not worth the cost to repair. It is at the point where it might boot some of the time but as soon as a key is pressed the screen goes black. So between now and when she gets a new (or new to her) one she’s using mine. Both my laptop and mini run Ubuntu and Kubuntu respectively. Her laptop had an Ubuntu partition that she would use on occasion to play games and to at least try to use Linux where she can. The machine had some odd lock ups that I did not dig into and would cause her to go back to Windows.

She resigned herself that if she was going to use one of my machines in the mean time it would be under Ubuntu. What she didn’t realise was that I was going to install Kubuntu onto the mini because I’ve been enjoying using it on my new desktop. I wanted to see how it would adapt to the mini. After the initial ‘This is not what was here before [Ubuntu/Gnome]‘ phase she settled into it. After a few days of usage she declared how much easier and intuitive KDE was to use over Gnome.

For now, I’m going to be using Kubuntu on the desktop and mini with Ubuntu on the laptop.

On another related topic, Friday night we went to the DC KDE 4.2 release party which was a great time. Celeste picked a nice place with a unique atmosphere. She even got some pics up of the group. We were at the end of the table that were Gnome users there to have a good time and support our KDE cousins. It was good to meet some new people and chat with some familiar faces.

A quick update on the Ubuntu Maryland’s Global Bug Jam participation. I believe I have the location booked, just waiting on the final word. It will be held February 21st from 9:30a, until 1pm if all comes together as I expect. I should have final word on Tuesday at the latest.

Finally a reminder of the next CALug meeting. We will be hosting Paul W. Frields of the Fedora Project. He will be giving a presentation on using tools in Fedora to remix for custom live DVD/CD/USB instances.

I forgot to include in yesterday’s post that Microcenter will have their in-store clinic at all their locations (according to their site) this Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. The reason I mention it here is that the topic will be Linux Basics. This is the first time they have offered this topic so I do not know what to expect of the tutorial but it might be interesting to find out.

If you decide to go and you are experienced with Linux please be gentle with any helpful tips you may want to offer.