Melançon Enterprises • a multidivision multinational since 1980

Read

Glenn Beck’s redemption song, Texas Observer online, August 30, 2010.
by Robert Jensen
http://www.texasobserver.org/thewholestar/item/16898-glenn-becks-redempt...

Another Feeble-Headed Nuke Drops Dead
by Harvey Wasserman
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/09/24-0

Listened to:
http://cdn.conversationsnetwork.org/ITC.oscon-Shuttleworth-2008.07.22.mp...
at http://daviding.wordpress.com/2010/05/24/mark-shuttleworth-free-software...

- the driver of innovation is disclosure; someone else has the idea, then someone else has the idea

How can we drive innovation even faster in the Free Software world?
- Architect for it - make it extensible. Addons.mozilla.org. "If you make it possible for people to innovate on top of your platform without actually getting stuck in the guts of your platform, you've massively increased their desire and interest in building on top of your platform." [Like Drupal!] Bazaar allows people to extend it.
- I'm passionately for the Linux platform, but we need Free Software to work across platforms.
- Choosing tools for participation. Have to be able to bring in fresh blood. It's the people around the core who do not define themselves on hacker on X who drive much of the innovation.

Agile and Scrum

Fundamentally, Free Software communities are built around interest.
Planning for co-location is planning for disaster-- on earth. We can't plan on pair programming.

Need to completely separate community control of software project from business built around it-- and we do need businesses built around Free Software.

Cannot enforce a choice of tools, but need to be able to talk to each other. We just got done funding improvements to Trac and . We have not yet released Launchpad's source code, we will i think within 12 months [this was 2008?... it was in July 2010]
Goal is permission free development -- allow people to get in and develop.

Think of the dysfunctionality we see in communities of people blocking what were good ideas.

My goal for Ubuntu is for anyone in the world to, with a single command, get a branch of a component of the project, make changes, and build community around those changes.

Cadence - building a rhythm. Time-based releases. Keep trunk stable enough it can be released at any time.

It is the combination of innovation in technology and in economics that really moves the world forward.

The demand-side economic for Free Software is very simple. [It's fantastic value.] On the supply side, it's much more interesting.

We're already better than the proprietary world in that we have multiple providers. What we can achieve ultimately is [an ecosystem] where every component [is self-sustaining]. What we have is services. Online services, must be a shared platform, benefit the providers of the services, and end users. [I'm not fully following here. - ah, hiring Gnome developers is about something that is built on top of Ubuntu-- it's another layer, that is its own independent ecosystem, but symbiotic.]

Need to lift the experience of the Linux desktop beyond sturdy and robust, to art. Can we not emulate, but blow right past Apple, in the experience provided to our end users. Jamie W said he really wants to build software that helps our users get laid.

I see this meme of beautiful, elegant software.

[end notes from Mark Shuttleworth]

Reclaiming Wealth - my own rant

For most of this vast wealth inequality, we don't have to go and take it. It's not real; it's imaginary. All we have to do is stop honoring it. Without this socially constructed wealth, the owners of 85% of our existence lose most of their power, and without their power, will have to negotiate on what physical property they can hold onto.

I cannot believe that there is not more realization and talk about Free Software as a form of wealth creation that is potentially shared equally by nature.

***

and now i shall run. Alone, since Dan left me behind for the road race.

***

Felt sore *before* the run, felt better after. Did not feel good or in the flow during the run. Felt damn good to finish though. I did between 17 and 20 laps on the track, in the middle lane the whole time. I lost track in the counting laps, twice, the second time after i'd decided to do an extra lap in case, but almost certainly 18 or 19 (where 18 is what i believe is 4.5 miles).

In just under 30 minutes.

Then rode my bike back home, looking at a glorious ray-ful sunset over Dug Pond, then 5 minutes fixing the chain (note to self: no easy gear allowed), and went swimming briefly again.

Had gone swimming in the morning, walked dogs with Mom, i swam out to the island, everything felt like going in slow motion but oh yes exercise is fun.

Fairly productive book/agaric day too-- got the Zing Auction site over to Liza for populating, among other things.