There are time when, I swear, I think people are channeling me. Usually, when this happens, I will point to the article and say, “This — just this.”
Christine Hall did this — just this — recently at FOSS Force. In her article about the myth of too many distros, she eloquently points out things that I have been railing about for years, while pointing out some things I hadn’t touched upon.
Read the article. Do it now — I’ll wait. Thanks for that, Christine, and good work.
Meanwhile, somewhere near Austin . . . : Also this past week, my good friend and baseball buddy Ken “Go Astros” Starks has taken Reglue to a new level and the clock is running on an Indiegogo campaign to help finance the project.
For the few of you out there who don’t already know this, Reglue (formerly the HeliOS Project, with the HeliOS Project now Reglue’s educational wing) places Linux hardware — desktops and laptops — in the homes of underprivileged kids in the Austin, Texas, area, and they also maintain a computer lab for kids in East Austin.
(In fact, I just found this out watching the Indiegogo video on Reglue, but Reglue is an acronym for Recycled Electronics and Gnu/Linux Used for Education, in case it ever comes up in conversation)
Ken, who is in remission from cancer and has been clocking in long hours in playing catch-up, reported recently that Reglue/HeliOS Project has installed its 1,600th computer into the household of a child who could not afford one any other way.
If you’re going to give to any project this year, this would be the one. Open your wallets and purses for this one, folks.
98 shopping days left: Mark your calendars, folks. There are 98 days left until Software Freedom Day, which is Sept. 21. I’m proud to say that Felton LUG is on the bandwagon for this one this year — I just gave a presentation and rallied the troops for the project at today’s meeting and got a good response. If all goes as planned, we’ll be doing a Lindependence-style event with reps from various FOSS programs and distros at the historic Felton Presbyterian Church hall (historic insofar as it was the site of Lindependence event in 2008).
If you haven’t signed on yet for Software Freedom Day, by all means do so here. Get a team together and organize an event in your area, or if there is one in your area already, get involved. It’s really as simple as this — just this.
See you next week.
This blog, and all other blogs by Larry the Free Software Guy, Larry the CrunchBang Guy and Larry Cafiero, are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND license. In short, this license allows others to download this work and share it with others as long as they credit me as the author, but others can’t change it in any way or use it commercially.
(Larry Cafiero is one of the founders of the Lindependence Project and develops business software at Redwood Digital Research, a consultancy that provides FOSS solutions in the small business and home office environment.)
