DoctorMo's Blog

This is how bored I am people, posting my damn hair cut:

I want everyone who is even slightly interested in what went on at UDS to watch this awesome video by Benjamin Humphrey (of the manual project fame)

The UDS-M Experience by Ben

I’d show the video here on the blog, but youtube doesn’t work without a plugin which I can’t seem to install right now.

People who read my blog regularly know I’m big on looking into discovering what it is that will allow software creators, bug fixers and all the other people involved in producing functional products with a sustainable income.

Only two weeks ago I was talking with Matt Lee of the Free Software Foundation about this problem and apparently someone he knows had sold himself online for 6 months as a free software hacker by setting levels of pledges and some rewards and products for people who invest in the project and although the FSF doesn’t consider economics important enough to be a goal (much to my disappointment) the activists there are aware of it.

Now computer world uk is reporting on the exact same system, one where the artist, programmer or team sets out to raise money for a project and does so by setting a structured list to encourage higher amounts of money to be pledged.

Just like me they’ve avoided using words such as “charity” and “donation”, which I think are really not applicable to what we’re trying to do: viz. find a way to make Free as in speech economically sustainable.

What do you think about a stepped pledge model? Do you think that the model requires far too many direct supporters and existing backers before it can be made to work? Should I conduct myself in a similar fashion by creating a set of pledges for the ground control project and advertising it very widely?

I asked one of the great artists on deviantArt who uses Ubuntu to see if he could animate my deviantArt, bowler hat wearing, vectorised in inkscape avatar. I wanted it to drink tea… and here it is:

Please go to ~hienhen’s gallery and have a look at his work and comment on it.

While at UDS I found a number of people working on iPad support, both getting ubuntu running on the device and making sure libpod works out the box for the device’s databases.

If you’ve never been to a UDS, the plenaries after lunch are perhaps the only times at the entire event when someone can communicate in a one to many fashion with the majority of attendees. I’m hoping that next UDS I’ll be able to show off Ground Control.

Welcome to this month’s artwork gallery showcasing some of the best artwork that has been made in Ubuntu and posted to our Ubuntu Made gallery in the Ubuntu Artist’s group on dA.

Something of an unknown change in the way Canonical does design is the new design.canonical.com site for the Canonical design team to blog about and start the conversation about design decisions that are made and discussed. this goes along with the Ayatana irc room and mailing lists.

I’ve been very pleased with the blog posts on the new design team and I think they’re learning to have a constructive conversation where people can have their say, so long as the conversation is constructive and it doesn’t devolve into flame wars.

There has been mistakes made and I’ve been one people complaining and trying to work out what went wrong with the way the process worked. Button and branding changes just days before the UI freeze with very limited prior involvement from the community certainly is a way to fan the flames of resistance to changes.

What are your thoughts?

So my trip to UDS in Brussels this weekend was a little troubling, my flight with American Air was cancelled. I managed to book another flight though and got here safely.

I’m looking forward to a week of interesting discussions.

I was due to get a flight for UDS but it was cancelled. Thanks American Air.

I’m re-scheduling now and hopefully I’ll make it on time.