Off the Beat: Bruce Byfield's Blog

Hating Microsoft

Apr 04, 2016 GMT

Hating Microsoft has been part of open source from the start. Infamous for its executives calling Linux unAmerican, the equivalent of communism and a cancer, Microsoft has been the arch-enemy, working behind the scenes in reality almost as much as in the minds of conspiracy theorists, the proprietary and corporate antithesis of everything that open source is about.The attitude has been so strong that even suggesting that open source was too strong for Microsoft to destroy was once enough to brand you naive, and an unwitting dupe of the Enemy.The attitude is so in-grained that, even now, when the evidence appears to be mounting that Microsoft has reversed its position and is open...

Why the Ubuntu tablet matters

Mar 28, 2016 GMT

I am not generally a technophile. I don't obsess over hardware stats, and I judge hardware on how well it does its job. Yet recently, I find myself anticipating the release of three pieces of hardware. One is the pi-topCEED, the Raspberry Pi-based computer for education. The second is the open source keyboard being produced by Keyboardio. The third is the just-announced Aquaris M10 Ubuntu Edition, which has the potential to be the most important of them all.In some circles, this statement may sound surprising. Over the years, I have criticized aspects of Ubuntu ranging from its business to its design decisions, to the point that I have been called anti-Ubuntu. Sometimes, I have even...

Compensating with Neon

Mar 25, 2016 GMT

A basic tenet of organizational theory is that, whenever the formal structures are inadequate, other structures emerge to compensate. And that, in a sentence, may explain why KDE Neon has emerged.KDE Neon is a project organized by Jonathan Riddell, the ex-community leader of Kubuntul. Its goal is to provide a repository for the latest KDE packages.That sounds like a simple goal, but it was questioned almost immediately. In particular, podcaster and openSUSE marketer Bryan Landuke criticized KDE Neon as being basically Kubuntu under another name. Landuke also seized on a comment that KDE Neon was based on Ubuntu because it was "the best technology" as an insult to other...

Why I Chose a Creative Commons License

Mar 17, 2016 GMT

On April 10, I'm publishing a book called Designing with LibreOffice. The experience can be surreal, and some other time I've got to blog about incidents like my photo shoot, which was continually interrupted by a two by two line of ten year olds coming and going, or trying to plan a book launch menu that included vegetarian options and satisfied two different sets of allergies.However, one of the most peculiar aspects is the congratulations I hear when I mention that the book will be published under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. After all, the idea is hardly new. Besides, given my goals, what other choice do I have?To start with, I am entering my thirteenth year of...

David Graham Provides Glimpse into FOSS in Canada's Government

Mar 11, 2016 GMT

Ordinarily, free and open source software receives little attention in the government of Canada. A rare exception occurred on Thursday, March 10 when David Graham, the Liberal Member of Parliament for Laurentides—Labelle (Québec) began asking questions before the Standing Committee On Government Operations and Estimates (Shared Services). The exchange was less than seven minutes long, but provided the sort of detailed information that is usually unavailable.If David Graham sounds familiar, you might know him  better as cdlu (short for "confused debian linux user"). For years, cdlu was my colleague at Linux.com and Newsforge and well-known in Debian circles as well. Since...

Wesnoth's Strange Legacy

Feb 29, 2016 GMT

I usually avoid massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). The reason is not that I despise them, but the near certainty that I would like them too much, and spend too much time in them when I need to be productive. Instead, when I want more than solitaire or backgammon, I sometimes turn to The Battle for Wesnoth, avoiding online games and playing single-player campaigns, which are usually divided into campaigns, most of which can be finished in under an hour, giving me a convenient point at which to quit and do something else. However, that usually reliable strategy led me astray soon after Christmas 2015 when I discovered the Strange Legacy scenario.You see, Strange...

Miguel de Icaza and his ostracization from FOSS

Feb 24, 2016 GMT

Just before I settled down to write today, I read that Microsoft had acquired Xamarin, the company founded by  Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman. To many, the news is the logical end to a story that has been unfolding for years now, and if the first cries of, "Traitors!" have not appeared on blogs and articles, then I expect they are only a matter of time.However, you won't hear my voice among those screaming accusations. I'm too busy thinking about how events might have been otherwise, and how people in the free software and open source (FOSS) community are as responsible for this turn of events as de Icaza and Friedman themselves, having left them with no place to stand.As...