Upcoming panel on Geek Parenting – LCA 2009
November 25, 2008
I’ve just posted the details of an event we’re planning for Linux.conf.au (LCA) 2009 which I’m pretty excited about – a community panel on Geek Parenting. We are looking for some experienced geek parents as well as an expert or two (educator, counsellor or other professional who is experienced in matters parental) who would like to share some ideas, tips and discussion on the challenges that being a parent can present. Read the full details over at my other blog, The Open Source Report. 
Fox Force Five is go!
November 9, 2008
Welcome to my new net home, foxforcefive.com. My name is Sarah Stokely, I’m a tech writer, editor and nerd. This blog will talk about Australian politics and culture (digital and otherwise) and probably a smattering of commentary on US politics as well.
You may know me through my personal blog (blithespirit over at LiveJournal) or from my open source blog, The Open Source Report. But this is going to be my main home now.
Interview with Leo Babauta of Zen Habits on open source as a model for online publishing
July 22, 2008
One of the fascinating things about open source, to me, is the way that its ideas about freedom of information have inspired everything from software licensing to music mashups. The possibilities, but also the problems, of applying notions of open source licensing to other areas such as publishing were brought home to me on the day that the Zen Habits blog announced it was going open source.
On 7 January 2008, visitors to Leo Babauta’s Zen Habits blog were greeted with a simple message: Open Source Blogging: Feel free to steal my content. It was a cool moment – a high profile blogger taking the chance that by taking a potential hit in Google rankings/ad revenue, the free & open distribution of his work would actually benefit him more. As he said when he announced the move: “I think, in most cases, the protectionism that is touted by “anti-piracy” campaigns and lawsuits and lobbying actually hurts the artist. Limiting distribution to protect profits isn’t a good thing.”
(This was before high profile musicians like Trent Reznor turned the major label music distribution model on its head by releasing free music on the internet and still selling out of the “special editions” of the same music packaged for fans and sold at premium price. Another example of copyright being dismantled for the benefit of the content creator.)
I was intrigued to find out why Leo had decided to embrace the open source distribution model for his online publishing, and curious why he’d elected to relinquish copyright altogether rather than opting to use the Creative Commons model (I’d note that my blog, www.theopensourcereport.com is published under Creative Commons). So I interviewed him to find out more.
I’d also note that at the time of this interview, Leo predicted that if he landed a book deal with a traditional publisher, he expected his book would have to be published under copyright in accordance with the traditional publishing model – and he has in fact since landed a publishing deal. Congrats Leo.
On with the interview!
Vote with your dollars
April 28, 2008
I’m going over my notes from LCA 2008 as I write a feature on open source for MIS magazine, and this quote from Dirk Hohndel, Intel’s chief technologist for open source, still stands out to me:
“Next time you buy hardware, think very hard about a way that you can signal to the vendor that you don’t want Windows. The message gets passed on as soon as its loud enough.”
He was talking about desktop computers, but of course it’s equally applicable to servers and other hardware.
Bravo to the vendors who do offer alternative operating systems on their desktop PCs and laptops – including Dell, HP (later this year) and ASUS.
If you think this post is just a way for me to justify buying an Eee PC, shame on you.
I was lucky enough to be invited to attend Senator Kate Lundy’s pre-2020 Summit event, the Foundations of Open, last week. I was the only media representative there, and it was a fascinating event.
The day covered a range of topics about open source tech and its potential for the government and community/not-for-profit sectors, as well as open standards and open access to information. I couldn’t possibly hope to cover everything that was discussed but I hope to tease out a few more stories from the event over the coming weeks. Here’s the first story, anyway. It was published at ITNews:
Open Source the biggest potential game changer for government: Lundy
Senator Lundy asked all participants to create submissions to be taken to the PM’s 2020 Summit which is happening at the end of this month. It would be great to see more systemic use of open source tech – and particularly its ethos of sharing information and tech solutions – across government.