Apparently someone tried to show off that “Nerds are not insensible to the feminine body“.

Here are the results:

And this is the end of the story:

Apparently sometimes there are higher priorities, like Counter Strike for example.

So, here’s the news.

In a mail response, Skype revealed the intention to open source their Linux client.

[...]
We are happy about your interest in Skype!

We understand that many users complain that there is no Mandriva
version at present.

We are happy to be able to inform you that Skype will from now on be
part of the open source community.

Therefore Linux developers wil be enabled to influence the development
of the Skype client for Linux - which will most certainly result in
specific versions for the different distributions.

We understand the concern of the Mandriva users - on the other hand we
can assure that the indicated versions 8Fedora and static) will work
on a Mandriva system.
[...]

As Olivier points out in his FAQ, that doesn’t probably mean they’re opensourcing the protocol, but still is a great news.

I can easily see a GTK Skype client coming, as well as support from Pidgin and Empathy/Telepathy.

While I find a bit of bitter irony in the timing (now that Empathy is all the rage and has finally voice/video support), but it’s still a wonderful news.

Focusing their business on providing a (proprietary but) open service instead of a closed source client seems a nice step towards the freedom for Skype.
(ps: given their economic situation, they may just be looking for a way to decrease the costs, btw)

Do you welcome the move as I do ?

[source]

For those who may have not noticed, Lifehacker published a long article with a bunch of things they’d like to see in Ubuntu.

While ironically the first wish is already in the works, the other suggestions are down to earth and would provide some real boost to the Ubuntu userbase growth.

I recommend you to read the article, and tell me what you think about it.

Jo Shields has been kind enough to provide an Ubuntu (9.04) remix without Mono apps.

This is done by simply removing (without replacing in anyway) the offending packages.

Chicken Little Remix 9.04, AMD64 edition
—————————————-

Chicken Little Remix is a modified copy of the Ubuntu “alternate” installer, with all packages relating to Mono removed from the image entirely. No Mono-related packages will be installed onto your system if you install using this ISO instead of an ISO from ubuntu.com

This process is achieved relatively simply. Firstly, a copy of the original ISO’s contents is made to disk, and all offending packages are removed. here’s the list: f-spot tomboy binfmt-support cli-common gvfs-bin libart2.24-cil libflickrnet2.1.5-cil libgconf2.24-cil libgdiplus libgif4 libglade2.0-cil libglib2.0-cil libglitz-glx1 libglitz1 libgmime-2.0-2a libgmime2.2a-cil libgnome-keyring1.0-cil libgnome-vfs2.24-cil libgnome2.24-cil libgnomepanel2.24-cil libgtk2.0-cil libmono-addins-gui0.2-cil libmono-addins0.2-cil libmono-cairo2.0-cil libmono-corlib2.0-cil libmono-data-tds2.0-cil libmono-data2.0-cil libmono-getoptions2.0-cil libmono-i18n2.0-cil libmono-posix2.0-cil libmono-security2.0-cil libmono-sharpzip2.84-cil libmono-sqlite2.0-cil libmono-system-data2.0-cil libmono-system-web2.0-cil libmono-system2.0-cil libmono0 libmono2.0-cil libndesk-dbus-glib1.0-cil libndesk-dbus1.0-cil libsqlite0 mono-2.0-gac mono-2.0-runtime mono-common mono-gac mono-jit mono-runtime

Next, the ubuntu-keyring package is modified and replaced to inject my (Debian Mono co-maintainer) GPG key. This is required in order for the modified package manifest on the CD to be accepted as signed off by the CD creator, otherwise installation is refused. The modified keyring package is replaced on first update, but the GPG key remains trusted in the apt-key store.

For the paranoid amongst you, this does indeed mean that I (Debian Mono co-maintainer) have had the opportunity to tamper with any packages on the install media, and that you need to trust me (Debian Mono co-maintainer) to have your best interests at heart before using this CD. Trust is so important these days, isn’t it?

While I think the effort is pretty much worthless, since it doesn’t really solve any problem, it’s a nice thought from Jo and I welcome it.

I should also say Jo is a little bit disappointed by our secret plot to not talk about that, so I thought I could blog about it.

The most zealous of Mono opponents seem to have a policy of pretending this doesn’t exist. Roy’s known about it for days now without mentioning it on his site. This is the only anti-Mono blog to talk about it. Essentially, there seems to be some effort to pretend it doesn’t exist, from the people who should be supporting it most.

You can download the ISO’s from the PirateBay [32-bit][64-bit].

Also, since it’s doubtful the project will be mantained in the future, I suggest any willing taker to contact Jo at his blog http://www2.apebox.org/

Summer makes me feel so lazy

[Source: Mono-nono]

I am not sure if I should write about this or not.

Reading the Ubuntu Planet today I noticed a post about sexism written by Melissa Drapper.

Interestingly, she points as a subtle sign of sexism a post by Emgent, where he made her grandma try to crack a wireless network with the last version of a Python tool.

I read it again. And again. Really ?

It’s not that sexism isn’t a problem, but are you sure of what you’re claiming, there ? I find the crying wolves tale to apply pretty well here:

The Boy Who Cried Wolf, also known as The Shepherd Boy and the Wolf, is a fable attributed to Aesop (210 in Perry’s numbering system[1]). The protagonist of the fable is a bored shepherd boy who entertained himself by calling out “Wolf!”. Nearby villagers who came to his rescue found that the alarms were false and that they had wasted their time. When the boy was actually confronted by a wolf, the villagers did not believe his cries for help and the wolf ate the flock (and in some versions the boy). The moral is stated at the end of the fable as:

Even when liars tell the truth, they are never believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth. [wikipedia]

While obviously, nobody is lying here, screaming out at non issues will just make you go unnoticed when a worthy issue happens.

I also find her post dis-respectful to Emanuele in a number of ways.

• Who told you Emanuele’s grandpa is still alive ?
• Are you claiming he is subtly sexist ?

Not to say that if I were emgent’s granpa and he came to me with that black thing asking me to “crack a wireless” I would just have just ran after him with a baseball bat and threatening him to stick the black thing where the sun - well he knows where.

So, why not doing some real work ?

Another matter I find interesting is the post title “Starting somewhere’.

Since sexism is out there (and I’m not certainly talking about Ubuntu grandmas) , and there are some sensitive places to monitor, such as the forums and IRC channels, why not starting the work from there, and tackling some real issues ? For more real I mean issues that raise sexism concerns in a less contestable way.

Also kindly asking people who don’t agree with you to shut up is not really an option (see the comments linked from such post).

Since sexism is a real issue, tackle it in the approriate places and then report your findings and results on the planet. False positives don’t help the cause.

That’s to say

I really think Melissa should apologize to Emgent.

It’s interesting how much misleading Lefty’s last blog post is.

After receiving (he claims) interesting mails from Boycott Novell’s folks he suddenly realized that the community is under attack.

I’ve come to realize that our community and the people in it, are under attack. We are being disrupted, we are being defamed, we are being lied to, and, in some instances, we are even having our lives invaded.

The attacks seems to come from:

More importantly, I feel as though I’ve started to see a consistent thread running through these attacks, invasions and disruptions. This attack comes not from Microsoft, but from a parasitical pseudo-”community” that attempts to pretend it’s actually our community.

What I am seeing is people making a pretense of involvement in FLOSS and in our community, people who we don’t actually know, people who never join us at conferences, don’t work in projects, and only participate in mailing lists to instigate flame wars. I am seeing people who seem to be making a sort of religion out of “free software” and issuing their demands to the rest of us to do things their way.

It’s nice to note that a normal Linux user is not and should not be considered part of the community. It’s a parasite. I’m under the doubt he refers to Linux users who don’t agree with him, not really to your average-ubuntu-using mom. Because Moms do cookies !

These are people who will excoriate you as something less than a “true GNU/Linux user” if you should touch a Macintosh or (heaven forbid!) a Windows box. These are folks who will berate you for buying a piece of software or owning an iPod. These are people who will classify you as a “freedom hater” if you express reservations about the GPL v3.

Interesting claim, I do not think he’s a freedom hater, though I begin to have strong reservations on his good faith, at this point. And no, I’m not posting from my iPhone (because it’s not comfortable to do so), I’m posting from a Mac OS. Here’s my current kernel:

tacone-macbook:~ tacone$ uname -a
Darwin tacone-macbook.local 9.7.0 Darwin Kernel Version 9.7.0:
Tue Mar 31 22:52:17 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1228.12.14~1/RELEASE_I386 i386

By the way, Linus Torvalds himself is sticking to GPL2 and I don’t see that many people classifying him as a freedom hater. Have I missed something ?

He goes on with the old Mark Fink argument, a guy whom I begin to doubt really exists. Basically an ubuntu-devel thread where he raised the Mono argument censorship on Ubuntu forums issue. There’s really not much to say about it, some people (not just Fink) claims the issue really existed (as a sub-issue of closing/deleting flames of any kind). The laughable thing is Fink’s (ridicule) proposal to make BoycottNovell’s Roy Schestowitz a forum moderator.

I won’t discuss this, but it’s pretty laughable as well the fact that he marks Fink’s as your average quarterly anti-mono guy. Is it too difficult to substantiate shortcomings of the rest of the mono-concerned people ?

Then we see another classic: patents in the kernel.

Scott James Remnant asks “Remco” an intriguing question at one point, and maybe Mr. Schestowitz and Mr. Varghese would like to tackle this, too, sometime: if they’re all so concerned about the presence of patents which Microsoft claims to both hold and actively enforce getting into their free software, why haven’t they started a discussion about removing the Linux kernel from the default Ubuntu install?

What a great idea. Remove the kernel itself. That’s what I call being in touch with reality. I’m sorry he didn’t feel appropriated to include some ‘double click patented’ paragraph in there, it would have been the icing on the cake. Not that the FAT32 driver isn’t being patched, uh… but aren’t the kernel and the Mono stack entirely different things ? No, eh ? ok…

I say enough is enough. We should put our collective feet down as far as strident demands from complete non-participants in the community go. We should say “no” to Faux FLOSS Fundamentalism, and people like Roy Schestowitz, Sam Varghese, “Penguin Pete”, “Jason” of mono-nono, and the like, as well as the assortment of associated and sympathetic trolls who post endless anonymous comments to blog postings they dislike and start up flame wars on development lists.

Yes. Just shut up. Wait, didn’t you write..

As I’ve said, our community thrives on disagreement, and we (mostly) deal with it in healthy ways. We reject uniformity of opinion and we always have. In stark contrast, this pretense “community” insists that their way is the One True Way, and we should all just shut up, learn the catechism, and do their bidding.

Intriguing. Find me a post where someone asks Mono people to shut up. Pretty difficult uh ? I’m waiting for links.

Final thoughts

Nice post. Be sure to print it and conserve it. Be sure to use soft paper.

I’m unsure why the Mono argument is referred to in the post. It very easy to point at BoycottNovell to criticize the whole anti-mono movement. Is less difficult address the concerns in a meaningful way. (made up example)

A: Ehy ! Linq falls out the ECMA specs and it is so great ! That sucks
B: You must be Mark Fink’s friend. Go away troll !

It’s also very easy to forget the awful amount of work done on BoycottNovell on another whole range of issues: OOXML irregularities coverage, SCO case coverage, patent trolls coverage and so on. Easy to forget that BoycottNovell is probably the only site on the net brave enough to mirror the defunct Patent Troll Tracker. And more.

And easy to forget the awful number of attacks and anonymous trolling comments, and IRC trolling it had (and even worse), but of course if you troll BoycottNovell it’s fine, because you’re fighting for the good side. Right  (read some of Lefty’s own performance here - assuming it’s really him)?

Still, Roy, Jason, Varghese and alikes should shut up.

Well, welcome to the 21th century and freedom of speech.

Thank you Hicham !

Install Solang on the last Fedora with the following command.

su -c ‘yum –enablerepo=updates-testing install solang’

Enjoy !

The release date of Launchpad has been changed from 21st July to July/August.

On https://dev.launchpad.net/OpenSourcing, I recently changed the date
for when the Launchpad.net code is being open-sourced: it now says just
“July / August 2009″, instead of “21 July 2009″.

To be honest I had doubts about Launchpad being opensourced in time, even when I created the countdown banner. What I didn’t guess is that the delay is due to testing on a new Bzr branch format, not really to Launchpad code itself.

Anyway, thumbs up from me: one month makes no big difference. I’m looking forward to the release.

Want to try Android without downloading the SDK or buying a G-1 ?

Look no further, download the Live CD ISO (roughly 90mb), fire up your VirtualBox and tell me what you think about it !