Tag Archives: FLOSS

Linux

Law Librarian Creates LibreOffice, gscan2PDF How-to Videos for 100 Linux Tutorials Campaign

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By libbyclark

Library technician John Kerr was one of the first Linux community members to add his how-to videos to the 100 Linux Tutorials Video Campaign this year.  The brief screencasts showcase software that he uses everyday in his job at the county court house library for the Wellington Law Association in Guelph, Ontario, Canada.

The tutorials include “How to Use LibreOffice to Create Labels (and) Book Cards with Ubuntu Linux” and “How to Use gscan2PDF for Libraries.” By creating and sharing his videos, thousands of Linux users across the globe have watched and learned from his experience with these programs. 

The Linux Foundation late last year kicked off the video campaign to collect 100 Linux tutorials in order to help create a knowledge base for Linux users. We’re now 25 percent of the way to our goal and counting.

“It is fun. But more than that, making the tutorials is my way of giving back to the FLOSS community,” Kerr said via email.

Kerr started using Linux five years ago when he got the urge to tinker with computers and software. But he didn’t want to be in danger of breaking copyright or EULA so he turned to open source software.

“Linux allowed me to tinker to my heart’s content,” he said.

Since then he’s discovered many useful free programs that help him with his work, including LibreOffice, gscan2PDF and a free bibliographic add-on to Firefox called Zotero. The program is intended to help scholars research and write papers, though he uses it at the law library to catalogue books, case law, websites and more, and to organize research.

Other favorite programs include Gedit, Sigil to create e-books, and BlueGriffon, his choice for HTML. And recently he’s taken Linux beyond his work to help record services at the church he attends using Audacity.

To those just getting started with Linux, Kerr recommends reading magazines such as Linux Pro and Ubuntu User, which have live DVDs along with helpful articles. Joining an online Linux user is also a great place to get your technical questions answered and to meet interesting people. And, of course, watching video tutorials!

“I have met some great people through my involvement with Linux,” Kerr said, “and I thank the members of the Kitchener Waterloo Linux Users Group and Marcel Gagne’s WFTL-LUG for their help and friendship.”

Do you have experience with Linux? Share your knowledge with the community by uploading or embedding a video tutorial to videos.Linux.com and help us meet our goal of gathering 100 videos. See the full details at the 100 Linux Tutorials Video Campaign web page. 

…read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Linux Foundation

Linux

Fan-taz-tic: Document Freedom Germany Award goes to TAZ

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taz café

taz café at Rudi-Dutschke-Strasse

Today is the international Document Freedom Day. There are always local actors that serve as good examples for respecting document freedom and enabling users to participate in the digital society. The international documentfreedom.org communities award such exemplary local actors with the Document Freedom Award. The Document Freedom Germany Award this year goes to *drumroll* the TAZ newspaper.

Ralf Klever, head of IT for TAZ, explained how it’s political mission since the turbulent founding of the newspaper was to allow everybody to form their political opinion relatively independently of their financial means. It is a priority for TAZ to be available in various electronic and printed channels. In essence, this means giving readers the freedom of choice, and that is exactly what the Document Freedom Award is about. TAZ is available in various DRM-free electronic formats, even plain text.

In Document Freedom Germany Award was presented by FSFE and FFII. FSFE works to enforce software and data freedom for users and consumers. FFII is dedicated to the development of information goods for the public benefit, based on copyright, free competition and open standards. As Eric Alberts said for FSFE: “We are awarding the TAZ with the Document Freedom Award for their longstanding commitment to Open Standards and continuos efforts in offering their newspaper without restrictions”.

There are a press release and a few other mentions of the award, but… In the collaborative fashion the award called for, FSFE brought the cake and TAZ the coffee. Here you will find a few more original impressions from the scene, like coffee decorated with edible document freedom stickers and the whole TAZ, FSFE and FFII crew hard at work devouring the cake. It was good. And I realised I need a better camera.

The cake for the 2013 Document Freedom Germany Award

Cake no more

Cake no more

taz café coffee

taz café coffee

document freedom edibles

document freedom edibles


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Filed under: CreativeDestruction, English, FLOSS, KDE, OSS Tagged: Creative Destruction, DFD, FLOSS, free software communities, free software foundation, free software foundation europe, FSFE …read more
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

FOSDEM’13: Community development and legal issues devroom

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Hello! I am at the FOSDEM’13″>FOSDEM, the Free and Open source Software Developers’ European Meeting, in Brussels. The flight here last night from Berlin was delayed, so I missed the pre-party. Instead I bumped into Frank Karlitschek of ownCloud and his buddies. This immediately sparked a discussion about company-community relations over a pint and something to nibble on. After an interesting excursion into the city of Brussels this morning (we trusted the navigation system and ended up at the wrong university campus in the first trial), I finally made it to the venue. In the following, find some notes from presentations I attended.

Messaging for Free Software Groups and Projects

Deborah Nicholson presented on messaging for Free Software communities, a topic that commonly gives contributors that shivering feeling down the spine that they should do something about it, and then procrastinate about it. Her suggestions are simple and easy to implement: Tell a positive story about your project. The audience pointed to Thumper’s rule: “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.” My children probably heard it a thousand times by now, but it never grows old. Teach people how to help themselves. Use neutral examples and by that, avoid stereotypes (like presumptions about income levels or technical inclinations of certain groups). Be welcoming and approachable. Welcome all contributors, not just coders, and regularly thank them for their work. Be approachable to users and contributors – when at a conference, do not hide behind your laptop (maybe do not even bring one). Have two people at your booth, showing that the project is fun to work on. Consider standing in front of the booth to remove the barrier of the conference table.

Deb explained how people respond more to the “Why” of a project than the “What”. The choice of programming language or database system may not be as interesting for them up front than the problem that the project will help them to solve. Following her simple guidelines to FLOSS projects attracts contributors and users. They are a good thing to keep in mind.

(to be continued)


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Filed under: English, FLOSS, KDE, OSS Tagged: city of brussels, deborah nicholson, FLOSS, FOSDEM’13, free software communities
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

Job opening for an artist/graphical designer at openSUSE Team at SUSE

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openSUSE Team at SUSE is looking for an Artist / Graphical designer who help us in two main areas:
This work will be done together with the openSUSE community so, besides good technical skills, it will be welcome previous experience in FLOSS communities. We have at SUSE several senior graphical designers, so the candidate will work in coordination with them too.

The candidate might work in Nuremberg, Prague (preferred) or even remotely (if you have previous experience working this way). Must be available to travel internationally three to four times per year, beside some regular visits to our offices in Nuremberg, where most of the openSUSE Team at SUSE currently works.

We are an international team so English is a requirement. Other languages will be welcome. The candidate will give talks, presentations, workshops, etc. so good communication skills will be also required.

We are looking for somebody that can join us soon since we would like to begin working on our release, to be published this fall, as soon as possible.

If you are willing to work at SUSE for openSUSE, please send us your CV through our career website. Please include external and internal (SUSE/openSUSE) references, if you have them, along with links or examples of your work.

If you have further questions, I would be happy to answer them.
Agustin Benito Bethencourt (Toscalix)
KDE eV and KDE Spain member
Spanish Blog: http://abenitobethencourt.blogspot.com
Linkedin profile: http://es.linkedin.com/in/toscalix

Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE

Linux

Today’s lecture: “Open Source and Standards”

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Today’s lecture was about Open Source and Standards. What made it special is that while there was a lot of theoretical background, most of that could be discussed based on the UK Open Standards Consultation last year. The questionnaire for the consultation covered pretty much all aspects discussed in the session. The KDE and the FSFE responses illustrated the position of the Free Software community. Here is the session summary:

Standards play an important role in increasing productivity and competition. After a brief introduction of the economic role of standardization, the idea of an Open Standard will be introduced. While there has been plenty of discussion around the definition of Open Standards, what constitutes such a standard is ambiguous. The requirements of Open Standards to be supportive for Open Source software will be discussed in relation to the definition of Free Software by the Free Software Foundation, and contrasted to the definitions applied by the International Telecommunication Union, and the European Interoperability Framework.

Standards can only be as open as the licenses of the essential patents that are necessary to implement them. The industry often pushes for the adoption of patented technologies under RAND or FRAND terms. The relation between FRAND terms and Open Standards will be analysed, and compared to the requirements of the Four Freedoms. It will be shown that again, openness applies to the standards themselves, and to the processes in which they are developed.

Open Source has caused a massive standardisation in the use of IT for institutions and individuals. The majority of the Open Source products are never made into formal standards, and usually innovate faster than standard setting organisations can keep up. Depending on the type of Open Source licenses applied, different network effects apply: When copyleft licenses are chosen, there are often converging network effects, leading into the development of a single dominating product like Linux. With permissive licenses, forking of derivative works is more common, as can be observed with the BSD family of operating systems. So while the Open Source licenses are guaranteeing the same essential freedoms, the projects may develop differently due to the economic effects caused by the choice of license.


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Filed under: CreativeDestruction, English, FLOSS, KDE, OSS Tagged: Creative Destruction, FLOSS, free software foundation, international telecommunication union, science
Source: FULL ARTICLE at Planet KDE