Utah Open Source Blog

Hey folks, this Friday is Geek Lunch time!  The theme this month is ‘Indian food’ so come enjoy your ‘Chicken Tikka Masala, or Lamb Saag, Naan and a Mango Lassi

Here’s the Details

Meet at the nearest location to you at 12:30pm this Friday, January 29, 2010.  If you have never been, look for the group with this logo at their table.  Geek Lunch is organized by the Utah Open Source Foundation, but you must pay for your meal.  We look forward to seeing all of you there.

Date: Friday, January 29, 2010
Time: 12:30pm

Salt Lake County

Weber / Davis Counties

Utah County

This weekend, I spent some time getting the UTOSC 2009 audio content ready to be released and realized that because we are now using wordpress-mu for our blogging structure, it would be a good time to make our new media site.  Our old site, podcast.utos.org while nice, doesn’t provide the flexibility that wordpress can.

I’ve added the new Utah Open Source Media blog at http://media.utos.org and will be slowly porting over the audio and video from our blog and podcast site to this site..

The benefits for doing this are going to be very nice when we get the design for utos.org (work is ongoing) complete.  The main benefit will be that we can directly pull in posts from media.utos.org to utos.org and display the latest audio and video from a UTOS sponsored event. There are other benefits too, like podPress, which makes it easy to publish audio or video from a remote site in one place, has an easy rss feed and provides iTunes support (should we ever decide to use that feature).

I hope you all enjoy it and the developments that will make the UTOS sites a better experience for everyone.

Cheers,

Clint

Video of Richard Esplin’s presentation on “Technology Cooperatives” is now available on YouTube at the following URL: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNjSbvBgV70>.

Richard Esplin at UTOSC 2009

Traditional technology businesses do not achieve optimal alignment between the interests of the developer, the business investor, the consumer, and the global community. Open source businesses attempt to improve on this situation, but unfortunately, most business models do not foster open source solutions. Technical expertise is expensive and awareness of the benefits of collaborative solutions is often lacking. Companies with significant technical know-how have many incentives to guard that know-how behind proprietary licenses. Companies who should be focused on their core competencies often have to build significant technical know-how to employ open source solutions.

There is a way that non-technical businesses can take advantage of the services of technical professionals without needing to worry about maximizing capital returns. This problem is similar to how a community can pool resources in a common investment fund and take advantage of banking experience (think credit unions), how a bunch of mountain climbers can take advantage of bulk procurement expertise to lower costs (think REI), and how a collection of rural municipalities can provide shared electricity and communications infrastructure (think rural utility providers). For the last two hundred years cooperative businesses have been refining a collection of operating models which encourage collaboration and sharing of resources. These principles apply to information technology solutions. In this presentation, I’ll share my research into cooperative business models, and my experience trying to catalyze a technology cooperative for educational institutions.

Since being indoctrinated in the philosophy of free software as a CS undergraduate, Richard has been a vocal free software evangelist. After trying a variety of open source business models, Richard thinks he has found an innovative solution to many of the common problems involved with making money building open solutions. By spreading the meme, he hopes to find the right partners for this endeavor.

Richard’s website is at <http://richard.esplins.org/>.

The Utah Open Source Foundation, in its goal to promote Open Source throughout Utah and beyond, is proud to promote the following events. These events are generally related to Open Source and Technology in Utah.  If your event is not listed below, please contact clint@utos.org to get it added.

Utah Technology Community Announcements

* Southern California Linux Expo is coming soon – Learn more at http://www.socallinuxexpo.org/scale8x/
* PyCon is coming soon – Learn more at http://us.pycon.org/2010/about/
* PodcampSLC Registration is now open – Read more at http://podcampslc.org/

If you have announcements or events for February 2010 or beyond happening which you would like included, please contact clint@utos.org.

Upcoming Activities for January 2010

Saturday, January 9, 6:00pm – 8:00pm
Ubuntu Utah LoCo Meeting
Link: http://utah.ubuntu-us.org
Where: MEB building at the University of Utah Room: 2555
Contact: Christer Edwards, christer dot edwards aT ubuntu.com

Wed, January 13, 11:30pm – 1:00pm
SLLUG: Daytime SIG Meeting
Link: http://sllug.org
Where: BetaLoft SLC – 357 West 200 S, Suite 201, Salt Lake City
Contact: Clint Savage, herlo1@gmail.com

Wed, January 13, 7:30pm – 9:00pm
Provo Linux Users Group
Link: http://plug.org
Where: Omniture
Contact: Ryan Simpkins, simpkins.ryan @gmail.com

Thu, January 14, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Utah Python User Group Meeting
Link: http://utahpython.org
Where: Bill Good Marketing, 12393 Gateway Park Pl #600 Draper, Utah
Contact: Dave, tonedevf AT gmail.com

Tue, January 19, 6pm – 8:40pm
Utah Mobile Developers Group
Link: http://www.utahmobiledev.org
Where: 8th Avenue & C Street Salt Lake City, UT 84103 (Jon and Karen Huntsman Education Center, LDS Hospital)
Contact: Glen Lewis glen aT glenlewis.com

Wed, January 20, 7:10pm – 8:40pm
Salt Lake Linux User Group (SLLUG)
Link: http://sllug.org
Where: University of Utah, Warnock Engineering Building (WEB) room 101 (or 103) (Previously known as EMCB)
Contact: Marc Christensen marc aT mecworks.com

Thu, January 21, 6pm – 9pm
Utah Java User’s Group (ujug.org)
Link: http://ujug.org
Where: Intermountain Medical Center, Doty Family Education Center, Murray, Utah
Contact: Chris Maki, chrismaki AT me.com

Thu, January 21, 7:00pm – 8:30pm
Utah PHP User Group (UPHPU)
Link: http://uphpu.org
Where: Bill Good Marketing, Draper, Utah
Contact: Victor Villa, vvilla @ gmail.com

Tue, January 26, 6:30pm – 8:00pm
SLC Ruby (slc.rb)
Link: http://groups-beta.google.com/group/urug
Where: Neumont University Room #300
Contact: Jake Mallory, tinomen @gmail.com

Friday, January 29, 8:00am -  10:00am
CTO Breakfast
Link: http://www.windley.com/cto_forum
Contact: Phil Windley, phil AT WINDLEY dot org

Friday, January 29, 12:30pm – 2:00pm
UTOS Geek Lunch
Link: http://blog.utos.org/geek-lunch/
Contact: Victor Villa vvilla at GMAIL

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Each of the events are from the Utah Tech Events calendar.  Feel free to subscribe by clicking the link below (or adding the following feed to your calendaring program)
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Utah Tech Events Calendar – Google Calendar: http://sn.im/ute-calendar
Utah Tech Events Calendar – iCal Feed: http://sn.im/ute-calendar-ics

The Utah Open Source Foundation is proud to announce a new mailing list, announce@utos.org.

The idea behind this mailing list is to simplify the announcements that UTOS provides to the community.  While we do a fair bit on our blog, we’d like to keep the mailngs going, but it has become complex to send mail to each Local User Group (LUG) every time we need to advertise an event or announce something.  In addition, sending mail to more and more LUGs will make it difficult as we grow the free and open source community in Utah and the Mountain West.

Therefore, we are going to be moving all of our announcements and news to the official Utah Open Source “announce” mailing list.

It is easy to sign up for this list, just visit our mailing list page and add yourself.  Here’s the link:

http://mail.utos.org/mailman/listinfo/announce

There will be a few announcements for this list sent to the individual LUG mailing lists.  I also suspect that every so often there will be reminders for those who are new to the community.  Beyond that, we plan to try to send email just to the UTOS announce list.

Please feel free to invite your fellow nerds and those you think might benefit from activities that we promote.

That is all.

Clint

Stormy Peters, executive director at the GNOME Foundation and one of the wonder-women of the open source world, delivered a powerful keynote presentation at the 2009 Utah Open Source Conference.

Video of the complete presentation is available on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzyaM7VWqOg

Stormy Peters at UTOSC 2009

One of the things about the free software community that continues to baffle those non-open source people is, “why do you do it?” Free software developers work on open source software for a number of reasons from scratching an itch to gaining a reputation to building a resume to contributing to a good cause. The interesting problem comes when money enters into the equation. Research shows that when someone works on something for free (for internal rewards) if you start paying them you replace those internal rewards. Then if you stop paying them, they will stop working on it. Does that hold true for open source software? Are commercial companies killing open source by paying people to work on it?

Stormy Peters currently works as the Executive Director of the GNOME Foundation. Stormy joined the GNOME Foundation from OpenLogic where she set up their OpenLogic Expert Community and helped Global 2000 companies develop open source software policies. Previously, Stormy worked at Hewlett-Packard (HP) where she founded and managed the Open Source Program Office that is responsible for HP’s open source strategy, policy and business practices. Stormy joined HP as a software engineer in the Unix Development Lab after graduating from Rice University with a B.A. in Computer Science. Stormy is an advisor for HFOSS, OpenSource World, IntraHealth Open and Open Source America, as well as founder and president of Kids on Computers, a nonprofit organization setting up computer labs in developing countries. Stormy is a frequent keynote speaker on business aspects of Open Source Software at major conferences such as the Open Source Business Conference and the O’Reilly conferences, as well as government organizations such as the United Nations and the European Union. Stormy is involved in GNOME and free source software because it is changing the world and the community is full of smart, passionate people!

Well, we had around 10-15 volunteers show up throughout the day for the UTOS Installfest at the Electroregeneration Society.  It was a great day.  I’ve got some pictures to share, which really tell the story.  I am happy to report that we installed more than 20 computers with Ubuntu and Fedora this past weekend.  I think this event will become a yearly one as long as there are computers to install and people that need them.

The Electroregeneration Society doesn’t just need help during the holidays, please consider helping throughout the year.  They are open most Saturdays and you can volunteer anytime.  Watch for our classes coming soon as well.

Enjoy these pictures (the set is available on flickr):

See you all at next year’s UTOS Installfest at the Electroregeneration Society.

This month’s geek lunch was a blast, hope you all had a good time.  I’m looking forward to the January 29th Geek Lunch.  See you all there.

Here’s one picture from this month’s event!

The rest are available on flickr.

Cheers,

Clint

As the holiday season comes upon us, many think about those who are a bit less fortunate than us.  I am no different in this category and feel like I would like to do something to help those who need a hand.   This year, I plan to help the Electroregeneration Society (http://electroregeneration.org/) by heading down there for our inaugural “ERGS/UTOS Holiday Linux Installfest”.

I hope this might interest a few of you as well.  And if so, please consider coming down anytime and donating your time.  Here’s the details:

Location: Electroregeneration Society Warehouse (555 S 400 W, Salt Lake City, UT) (map: http://sn.im/ergs-map)
Date: December 19, 2009
Time: 9am-5pm (Installfest starts at 10am)

What can I bring?

We’ll be setting up the equipment at 9am.  ERGS has power strips, etherrnet switches, computers and monitors.  If you have Ubuntu, Fedora or openSUSE install media (CD or DVDs are what we need), bring them with you.  Please also bring your laptops so we can look up settings and the like if needed.  I’ll be bringing my laptop with a tethered phone too, just in case we’re overwhelming the internets there.

Please come on down and donate your time, here’s a bit of a spiel from Dave Turnbull, one of the many volunteers at ERGS:

The Electroregeneration Society enriches lives through affordable access to technology by repurposing electronics, supporting technology education, and developing community partnerships.”

We primarily serve two groups — charities and low-income families or individuals. We provide computers to 501(c)3 nonprofit organizations without regard to mission — all nonprofits qualify. For individuals and families, we have a service-for-equipment program, where they provide 15 hours of service to ERGS in exchange for a desktop computer.

The Utah Open Source Foundation’s goals align with the Electroregeneration Society’s goals because we’ll be installing Linux on machines that will be repurposed.  Sometimes, the machines are a
bit older, Linux is the only simple way these machines will be able to be repurposed.

If you have a few hours on Saturday, December 19, consider coming down and donating a bit of your time for a good cause and help us install Linux on as many machines as possible.  I will be  there with my family.  I sure hope you can come as well.  It’s going to be a blast while helping the community get connected to the world :)

See you all there,

Clint Savage

Utah Open Source Foundation

Hi all you fellow geeks, it’s time once again for the monthly Geek Lunch.

This month’s lunch is a bit late for November so we’re combining it with December’s lunch and moving it to the first Thursday this month. The reason we’re doing this is because we have a special guest who is joining us.  She’s a former Utahn who’s returned for the holidays and wanted to spend a little geek time with the ones she really loves, us!

If you don’t know her, come and meet this local celebrity.  She’s the one and only Sheri Bigelow…

Back from New York for a few days, she will be dining with us at Pat’s Barbecue.

If you’ve never been to Pat’s before, it’s an amazing BBQ place.  We’ll be meeting in the main area in the back at one or two of the tables there.  Make sure to look for our geek lunch logo.

Here’s all the details:

See you all there!

Cheers,

Clint