Will Code For Beer

Sep 27, 2010 GMT

 People ask me why programmers write code and give it away “for free”. There are many reasons, but one I often give is that a programmer might end up at a conference and a grateful user of their code might “buy them a beer, or even a dinner.” It was February or March of 1995, and the port of Linux to the Alpha processor was well underway. In talking with some of the developers over the Internet, I started to hear rumors that the Alpha port would not have “shared libraries”, but instead would have statically-linked binaries. For those of you who do not understand the ramifications of statically linked binaries, it means that every program has all of the libraries...

Goodbye Ubuntu, hello Fedora!

Sep 20, 2010 GMT

Many times people come up to me and ask me what distribution I use on my notebook (due to my traveling my notebook is my main "production and testing" system) and why. I tell them I use the distribution that makes sense for me, and often that is dictated by the work that I am doing and the company for which I am doing that work.Over the weekend I switched my notebook distribution of Linux from Ubuntu to Fedora.So, the rest of this blog will not be some sort of rant against Ubuntu, Mark Shuttleworth or any of the Ubuntu community. Ubuntu has been a great distribution for the past three years that I have used it.This decision to switch at this time was all about the current work...

Stuff

Aug 31, 2010 GMT

The late George Carlin once did a comedy routine about “stuff” and I sympathize with him entirely, but while his concept was that he had all his “stuff” in houses, in suitcases and in bureau drawers, I have most of my interesting “stuff” on disk drives.....Over six years ago I purchased a new IBM Thinkpad X31 laptop notebook. I intended on having it a long time, so I outfitted it with the maximum amount of memory that I could get (2 Gbytes), along with the largest disk, which at that time was 80 Gigabytes, and an extended warranty covering five years.About three years ago I started feeling a bit pinched for disk space, so I upgraded to a 160 Gbyte disk and thought that would...

Live Penguins

Aug 28, 2010 GMT

One of my readers, Corfy, commented to my last blog posting that he wished the Ohio Linux Fest would bring back “live penguins”, which inspired me to write this blog entry.Many years ago a company called "Magic Software" brought some live penguins to one of the first Linuxworlds. They got the penguins from an animal farm which had raised the penguins by hand from eggs, and used the penguins in television commercials. These penguins had never been "wild", but had spent their whole life in captivity, often under the bright lights of television cameras.These penguins had their own hotel room, with a plastic swimming pool, and newspapers put down on the floor so the...

When being Free costs Money

Aug 26, 2010 GMT

 The Ohio Linux Fest (OLF, September 10-12, Columbus Ohio) is a great regional conference that happens every year. An all-volunteer driven conference, the organizers work hard to present a great set of speakers and offer to the attendees the change to learn about Free Software, as well as partake in activities such as LPI exams, …. all at no admission fee. The most OLF asks is a “contribution” from people who want to be “supporters” of the conference, and for that “supporters” get a T-shirt, lunch, etc. There are additional Tutorials that have a "Professional" fee attached to them. And of course the organizers pass the hat for attendees to make...

Day One at LinuxCON: Open Cloud Mini-Summit - and Cannoli

Aug 09, 2010 GMT

 Sunday, August 8th, 2010 had three claims to fame. It was: One day after the 60th anniversary of my birthday, and I thank all the people that sent birthday greetings. It is nice to have so many friends who took the time to do this simple act.  Father's Day in Brazil, and I thank all those that sent me Father's Day greetings. As someone who has no children, they meant a lot to me.  The start of LinuxCON North America 2010, held at the Renaissance Boston Waterfront Hotel in Boston, Massachusetts.  LinuxCON actually starts on Tuesday, August 10th, but is preceded by a series of Mini-Summits. Father's Day therefore started by getting up an an unusual hour to take a...

maddog celebrates his 60th birthday

Aug 07, 2010 GMT

 Today, August 7th, is the sixtieth anniversary of my birth. To mark this occasion I am going to inaugurate a project of my retirement called “maddog's mansion and marina of math, music, micro-computing, micro-brewing, micro-winery, micro-distillery and bait shop”, a nice place by the beach where I hope to house and inspire young people who wish to be involved with producing Free Software. Part of this “inspiration” of the students will be to ask various people that I have known over the years to come to “maddog's mansion” and give a talk on the topic of “Three things I have done right with my life, and the three things I have done wrong.” Since I can not in...