notes from the mousepad

Dear Yahoo!

Welcome to Ubuntu! As a regular contributor to the Ubuntu project, I think it’s great that you are partnering with Canonical.  Because of the agreement you signed, Canonical will be able to hire more people to work on Free software.  Also, your contributions will help Ubuntu continue offering their OS at no cost to users.  These are great things.

As things get going, though, there is one big thing (or a set of big things centered around one request) that you need to do to make the Ubuntu-Yahoo! user experience better.  In short, you need to index the crap out of Ubuntu- and Linux-related sites.  For example, if I do a Yahoo! search for launchpad bug 387765, I need the first link that comes up to be a link to the actual bug page for Launchpad bug #387765.  As it stands now, a Yahoo! search for that phrase brings up two results, neither of which are relevant.  The first of the two results is a link to the Debian Bugs page on Launchpad.  As a contributor, this is not what I need.

For comparison, the same search on Google brings up 273 results, with the first result being a direct link to the bug report on Launchpad (which is now closed, thanks to the efforts of Fabien Tassin and the other Chromium packagers and hackers)).  Google’s results not only link me directly to the bug that I am inquiring about, but also link me to a large number of pages that may be relevant to that bug report.

The example that I provide above concerns search results that are beneficial for contributors and developers, but what about regular users?  When I search Yahoo! for “Dual boot Windows 7 and Ubuntu,” the first page in the search results is for the Ubuntu 8.04 “Dual Booting,” official documentation page.  This page is out of date, especially given our migration to Grub2 in the 9.10 release.

These are just two examples, and my searches are likely not representative of the multitudes of search requests made daily on your site for Ubuntu-related tasks.  Moreover, I won’t pretend to understand how incredibly complex indexing the web can be.  I’m just writing to note that there is room for improvement, and I would like to see improvement so that our users can use your service to get relevant search results.

After all, improving Linux-related searches would be a win-win for us and for you.  Ubuntu developers and users would get their work done, and problems solved, more quickly and effectively, and you would get more regular users performing their searches on Yahoo!  This sounds pretty good to me.  Here’s to hoping it can happen.

Congratulations to Jannis Pohlmann on the release of Thunar 1.1.0!  For those who don’t know, Thunar is the Xfce file manager, and this release marks a major milestone for Thunar and for the Xfce project.  Why is this release so noteworthy?  With this new version of Thunar, users will be able to access networked file systems (SFTP shares, FTP shares, Samba shares, etc.) from within the file manager itself.

This means that desktop users will be able to access their networked files and folders via a couple of clicks.   Users of previous versions of Thunar who wanted to access network folders would have to hack around with FUSE file systems, or use a separate application altogether.  Configuring a special file system, or having to open a different file manager application to get files and folders on a network do not represent user-friendly approaches to networked computing.  Thus, providing network-share support from within the file manager represents a major improvement to the Xfce user experience.

Admittedly, for long-time GNOME and KDE users (or even for Windows or Mac users), adding network-share support to the file manager may not seem like a big deal. The respective GNOME and KDE file managers, Nautilus and Konqueror (or Dolphin), have provided network-share support for some time.  However, Xfce is a much smaller project than GNOME or KDE, so I’m sure that people can appreciate the effort of a small group of developers working to add important end-user functionality such as this.

For long-time Xfce users who don’t want or need the new network share support, and would prefer that things stay as simple and lightweight as possible, there is good news for you, too.  Jannis will be issuing a maintenance release of Thunar that includes several of the improvements from the 1.1.0 release, but uses the previous back-end of Thunar, called Thunar-VFS.  Thunar-VFS does not support native access to network shares.  Thus, individuals who package Thunar for their Linux/BSD distributions will be able to choose whether or not they want to incorporate the new network-share features into their packaged version of Thunar.

While the network-share support is the most prominent improvement that comes with this release of Thunar, several other improvements are also included.  Have a look at the release notes (best viewed in Firefox) if you want the full-scoop on the improvements and new features that come with this new release of Thunar.

[edit] as John Carr indicated in the comments, the GIO/GVfs back-end is the result of the hard work of GNOME developers, so credit is due to them, as well.  Also, the performance of the GIO/GVfs back-end has not been tested in comparisons against the Thunar-VFS back-end.  Thank you for the comment, John.

The Xubuntu team will be holding a meeting this Sunday, January 10th, at 20:00 UTC, and all are welcome to attend.

The primary focus of this meeting will be on team governance, as Cody Somerville is transitioning out of his role as primary project leader.  With that, we’ll be discussing changes to the Xubuntu Strategy Document.  However, there are still a few other topics to be discussed, and you can add topics to the agenda.

Hope to see you there!

The next Ubuntu Developer Summit will be starting up tomorrow, and although not everyone can attend the event, there are a number of ways to participate remotely.

Among other things, I like to follow the ‘dents (from Identi.ca) and tweets (from Twitter) from the event.  Typically, people will use Identi.ca and Twitter to share snippets about some particular topic that has come up during the conference, but I’ve found that some notices can be more helpful than others.

For example, here’s a fictitious example of what I think is an unhelpful dent/tweet:  “I’m going to attend the virtualization session! #UDS”

I saw a lot notices like this posted during the last developer summit.  Notices like these show that you’re excited (cool), and they can also help other attendees to know your location at the conference (pretty cool), but they don’t actually tell us much of anything (not very cool).  I know that sometimes you just can’t help it . . . you’re at this great event, and just want to share a bit of what is going on with the outside world.  I’m sure that this is not a big deal in the grandiose scheme of things.

With that, though, let’s take a look at some more interesting ways to make use of these social networking tools.

• Seek feedback from conference participants: “Experimenting with blip.tv for UDS videos: http://is.gd/1Fv5g what do you guys think?“  Notices like these can be used both during and after an event.
  
• Share information about a social event that will be going on after conference hours: “I’ve created a sign up page for Monday night @ the firing range. Everyone welcome https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UDS-L/FiringRangeNight #uds !uds”
• Let others know about room or schedule changes: “Due to overflow crowds, remaining Xubuntu sessions have been moved to Big Texas Conference Hall B. #UDS”  (Ok, I made up that dent.  I can dream, though, can’t I?)
  
• Inform others (okay . . . complain) about conditions at the conference: “Hmmm, my laptop kept me nice and warm during the pleniary sessions, but it’s still cold in the rooms. Anyone want to max my CPU? !uds“  After all, the conference organizers pay good money to an event site to host their event there, so rooms should be comfortable for attendees.
• Share technical information from a session (aka “live-tweeting” a session): “#uds “package-branches” is the tag used for bugs (in #launchpad) related to source package branches.” Notices like these may not make sense to everyone, but they will likely make sense to those interested in the topic.
• Presenters can use identi.ca or twitter as a presentation tool, too.  For example, Tom Johnson recently wrote an article noting that presenters can pose questions to their audience, and let the audience respond via Twitter.  This can provide for real-time feedback to the presenter about a particular topic, and can help to break down some of the barriers between the audience and the presenter.

Of course, I expect that people will use microblogging for fun, too.  I wouldn’t want for people to feel uptight about their tweets.  I just wanted to share a couple of thoughts for how people can better use microblogging at a conference, thus making things more enjoyable for those in attendance, and for those who are participating remotely.  If you have any other suggestions, feel free to share them in the comments.

Ara Pulido sent this message out to the Xubuntu-Users mailing list the other day, and I thought it was worth passing along to the greater Ubuntu community.  Testing for the Xubuntu 9.10 release candidate is going on now, so please read the email below and help out if you can.  Thanks!

Continue Reading »

This site lists who they’ve identified as the top 50 technical writers on the web, which I stumbled upon via a link from Scott Nesbitt’s blog.  While this list will certainly provide me with additional documentation resources, I notice a dearth of open-source documentation names in that list.  No Shaun McCance, no Emma Jane Hogbin, no Matthew East, and certainly no one with a name as cool as Milo Casagrande.

Paul Cutler, a member of the GNOME documentation team, has said that he wants to make documentation cool again.  He used some different phrasing (ok, he actually said, he wants to make it “sexy,” again, but I don’t really feel like going there), but what I take his comment to mean is that he wants to make documentation something that people see as technically innovative and relevant to users, even if most users instinctively turn to Google as their first line of support.  After all, Google’s search results don’t just grow on trees – the content that comes up in all of those search results has to come from somewhere.  Why shouldn’t the answers to user questions come from carefully prepared and researched documentation?

I don’t say this to denigrate blog posts, forums, or IRC support networks – that’s where users get most of their support these days.  Comprehensive documentation has its place, though.

With that in mind, I’m making initial, but steady progress on the Xfce 4.8 documentation, and really want to improve the Xubuntu documentation.  (I’m actually a bit ashamed of its current state given the beauty that is the rest of Xubuntu 9.10.)  I will be at UDS (though, unfortunately, only for the last two days), and look forward to meeting with fellow doc-team members, and anyone else who would like to discuss documentation and translations.

The VRMS program does a nice job of listing the non-free components on your system.  Let’s see what my VRMS report shows:

————

jwc@tereska:~$ vrms
Non-free packages installed on tereska

linux-generic             Complete Generic Linux kernel
linux-restricted-modules- Non-free Linux 2.6.28 modules helper script
linux-restricted-modules- Restricted Linux modules for generic kernels

Contrib packages installed on tereska

flashplugin-installer     Adobe Flash Player plugin installer
flashplugin-nonfree       Adobe Flash Player plugin installer (transitional pack

3 non-free packages, 0.2% of 1467 installed packages.
2 contrib packages, 0.1% of 1467 installed packages.

————

This report reflects the current “free” status of the software on my system, but my system didn’t start out this way.  What we see here is the result of a little bit of cleanup.  For example, some restricted Nvidia and ATI drivers were installed by default, but I was able to remove them because I don’t have any Nvidia or ATI hardware on this computer.

Also, Valide (the name given to the Vala IDE program) was listed as contrib software on this report.  I’m not sure why that is.  I eventually removed it from the system prior to rerunning the vrms command, so it does not appear in the list above.

Anyway, at this point it looks like all I have to do to get a completely Free system is remove the flash plugin and, um, my kernel!  Then I’ll be all set. : -)

Greetings!  I hope everyone has been enjoying their summers, and that things are progressing along smoothly with the 9.10 release cycle.  I want to share a brief note regarding Xfce documentation licensing with the hopes that others could provide some additional points for us to consider.

Before I do that, though, let me pause to reflect on the fact that I haven’t updated this blog since the month of May.  In the words of a wise master, “Sorry, I’ve been trying to think of stuff to put here.”

Back to considering documentation, though.  Per my post to the Xfce developer mailing list, I have proposed that any newly-written Xfce end-user documentation be licensed under the Creative Commons CC-by-SA 3.0 Unported license.  This would be a change from the documentation’s current license of GPL v2.

My post to the mailing list covers several of the advantages of using a CC-by-SA 3.0 license for end-user documentation, but I’m hoping to get some additional input on items that we may want to consider as part of making such a switch.  For example:

• Although the CC-by-SA 3.0 license would apply to new content, what qualifies as “new content,” when some of our content may include instructing users where to click to perform certain actions?  Certainly, a good portion of this language may remain the same in such cases.
• Is it possible to license code snippets under the GPL, while the rest of the documentation is licensed as CC-by-SA 3.0?  If the answer to that question is, “Yes,” would a GPL-specific notice need to be provided alongside the code sample, or could the GPL notice be provided in a less visually-obtrusive spot within the documentation?  (As a note, I don’t forsee a great deal of code samples within the end-user system documentation, but I want to make sure we have our bases covered in this regard.)
• What else might the group need to consider as part of making such a switch?

Thus far, the reception to using CC-by-SA 3.0 has been good amongst the developers, and several of them have already indicated a willingness to relicense their GPL v2 documents as CC-by-SA 3.0.  That, combined with the fact that I think contacting any existing Xfce documentation contributors would be much easier than in larger projects, leads me to think that re-licensing existing content isn’t out of the picture, either.

I know that a number of other projects have recently made a switch to CC-by-SA 3.0, though, so I am hopeful that I’ll be able to get some good input from others, and we can get this settled in short order.  Thanks very much!

I came across Xerox’s International Color Guide while reading through the items on my feed reader this evening. Because Ubuntu is developed for an international audience, I thought this color guide might be interesting to some of the artwork and desktop-UI folks in the Ubuntu community.

The guide also includes a link to a “color quiz” where you can get an idea of how well you know the meaning of colors in the U.S.  Unfortunately, I only got a little more than half of the answers correct.  : (

Thanks to Rhonda Bracey of the Cybertext Newsletter for sharing this on her own blog.

I recently posted a couple of ‘dents onto identi.ca regarding UbuntuOne, but wanted to follow-up with some more complete thoughts.

In thinking about UbuntuOne, there are a number of factors involved; it involves the need to build a sustainable business, trademark issues, and the level of one’s own comfort with using non-free software. To me, there it also involves issues of community, and the difference between the Ubuntu project and Canonical as a corporation.

This isn’t an exhaustive list, but the topics do allow for at least an initial framework for talking about things. So, if you’ll humor me for a couple of moments, here are a couple of my thoughts regarding these topics.

Some Caveats

First, I’ll get a few things out of the way. Yes, I’ve used You Tube and I use Gmail. The irony of my giving UbuntuOne a hard time for being non-free while I use these services is not lost on me. As for email, I have previously looked for options outside of Gmail, and am still considering other options. With regard to YouTube, there simply isn’t anything else that remotely provides something of the scale of that service in a free software context, nor do any free software services have the opportunity to provide a scale big enough to support a similar service. I think I am realistic about these things.

Moreover, I do understand that, as it is now, UbuntuOne is just a tool to synchronize files across desktops, and that I don’t have to use it if I don’t want to. I know UbuntuOne is currently available as a, “you can have a small beer for free, and you can pay money if you want a bigger beer,” service, and I have nothing against Canonical making money. I want the company to be successful.

Finally, with regard to the trademark issue, this is not a big deal to me, either, as Canonical owns the trademark, so they can violate even their own recommended guidelines if they want. No one has said that what they are doing is breaking any kind of law. It’s kind of like them painting their house pink or something. Someone else might not think it’s the best idea, but it’s Canonical’s house. It’s their decision, and that’s fine with me.

From my points above I think it’s clear that I am willing to make certain sacrifices of my computing freedom to use certain services, I know Canonical needs to make money, and I’m not concerned with how Canonical handles their trademark business.

Jim, dude, what is your beef?

My main concerns are that, while this might seem like a small application for now, it is a non-free element that is going to become more integrated with our desktops over time. Also, while Google and Twitter and Facebook may have their own reasons for keeping apps closed, Ubuntu is not Google or Twitter or Facebook, and (to me) Ubuntu (and I would like to think Canonical) operates under a somewhat different set of principles. Let me expand on these items.

UbuntuOne is currently a small service

A primary concern is that while this is a relatively simple service for now, it is going to get much bigger, and they show no intention of ever opening it up. Per the summary of this upcoming talk, there are significant plans to build more user-friendly applications attached to this closed-source web application.

I know people can get by without UbuntuOne’s cross-desktop file synchronization for now, but they are going to build a lot of other (probably really cool) functionality into this service, and it looks as though the back end of it will all be closed. If more and more applications are built around this closed web-app, it will make it a shame to miss out on some of those cool features while using Ubuntu if I want to avoid closed applications.

Depending on the level of integration, we may then find ourselves in a spot where we are using an open OS, but a good number of our favorite tools and applications are tied in with closed web-apps. As I posted on identi.ca, “If we go from having a closed desktop, to an open desktop that is strongly linked to a closed ‘cloud,’ what have we gained?” If the web becomes “the new operating system,” how will it help us if that new operating system is closed? While shipping only the open client as part of the distro may not technically violate the principle of “We only ship Free software (with the exception of some binary blobs to make some basic hardware work),” attaching it to a closed web application (to me) violates the spirit that principle.

Ubuntu != Google

Granted, what I have described above already appears to be somewhat of a reality. It certainly is getting more common for desktop client apps to be open while attached to closed web services. So why does this matter with UbuntuOne? To me, the difference is that Ubuntu, the Ubuntu community, and (even to a certain extent) Canonical are not Google. We are not Facebook or Twitter. The folks involved in Ubuntu work hard to create Free software. The distribution we work on is based on Debian, which has built itself up using the principles of Free software, and without which our project would not exist. I know that Canonical is a for-profit company, but we still have a choice here. We can’t control what Google does with their web applications. We can’t control Twitter’s Fail Whale. But we (Canonical / Ubuntu) can control this, and, to me, the Ubuntu project is supposed to be different.

We devote a lot of time to removing non-free software from our systems. Community developers work hard, paid Canonical employees work hard, and the folks in charge at Canonical spend a lot of the company’s own money so that we can remove non-free stuff from our systems, and I am thankful for all of this. With UbuntuOne, though, we’re getting more non-free components associated with our desktops when we should be working to get less non-free components associated with our desktops. It seems counter to the mission of the Free Software community aspect to have the parent company of this distribution actually introducing more non-free elements into the software ecosystem.

What really raises flags for me this time around, and perhaps I’m a little late to the game, is that we’re actually bringing the non-free components into direct integration with the desktop. It’s not like Soyuz (one of the main back-end components of Launchpad) or the (currently non-free, but soon to be Free) Launchpad, which have been developer and software building tools, and have limited integration with the desktop . . . but this actually integrates with our desktops in a non-developer-centric manner. I guess that’s why I didn’t notice or pay as much attention to the other non-free elements provided by Canonical previously – because they weren’t tightly integrated with the Desktop.

Could Canonical still make money from UbuntuOne as Free software?

I’ve got to assume that the folks working at Canonical considered whether or not they could do this in a Free manner. I have only read that the back end is closed, and that there are no plans or roadmaps in place that point to making it Free software. I haven’t heard anything along the lines of, “Yes, we considered it, but we didn’t think it would work out because of X, Y, and Z.” They are a business, and they have every right to not open up those kinds of discussions to the community, but based on the nature of their business I think it’s fair to assume some conversation along those lines occurred.

I am not a business guru, and I know that trying to make money off of an open platform in a real business world is a difficult nut to crack. That’s what we keep working toward, though, and I think that’s at least part of why so many people contribute to Ubuntu. UbuntuOne may currently have a closed back end, but with it now being released to the public, the cards are on the table. We can now talk about it. I know this is a Canonical effort, but I think there are lots of other smart people in the community, and it seems like it could be worthwhile to have a discussion about ways to monetize UbuntuOne as a Free software option. Perhaps this could be a good discussion for UDS.

I guess I should close by noting that I have written this because I do like Ubuntu, but what drew me to Ubuntu in the first place is that it is based around building Free software. I recognize that there are certain sacrifices that need to be made in areas we can’t control, but we have a choice here. Free software is what got us started, it’s what we work on, and I do not see a tremendous amount of value in fixing bug #1 if we get there by integrating ourselves with non-free networked systems.