Chris Tyler's Blog - TeachingOpenSource Planet

Come and Speak at FSOSS 2010

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 22:24:09 -0400

The 9th Annual Free Software and Open Source Symposium (FSOSS, "eff-sauce") is coming up on October 28th and 29th, here at Seneca College in Toronto. This is a great event with a wide-ranging, eclectic mix of workshops and presentations.

I've been involved in planning FSOSS for the past few years, but stepped back a bit to catch my breath this year. Mary Lynn Manton has stepped up to the task of chairing this year's event with Rose Saliba, who is co-chairing for her third year.

FSOSS is still looking for interesting workshops and presentations on a variety of open source topics. If you're working with open source in any way, this could be a great opportunity -- please check out http://fsoss.ca and submit a presentation proposal right away!

Fedora 13 Release Event

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 10:51:52 -0400

Fedora 13 was release a few weeks ago. We're going to celebrate the release at a release event in Toronto on July 5th. Here are the details:

Who: Fedora Community -- and anyone interested!
What: Fedora 13 Release Event
Where: Seneca@York, TEL Building, room T1009
When: Monday, July 5, 6 pm
Why: To celebrate the release of Fedora 13 "Goddard", distribute Fedora 13 discs and discuss its new features, and meet up with other Linux contributors and users
Wiki URL: http://bit.ly/f13-toronto

Please join us if you're interested. I hope to see you there!

Sugar on a Stick - Activities

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 11:44:44 -0400

Sugar on a Stick is a project which aims to create a live learning environment on a USB stick. This environment is a Fedora spin hosting the Sugar environment (the learning software original created as part of the OLPC project).

In previous versions of SoaS, the activities were not thoroughly screened before inclusion in the Spin, and so the SoaS Activity Criteria were introduced. I've been working with some other POSSE RIT participants to try and get three activities - Abacus, Maze, and Memorize - to the point of meeting the criteria. It's been a frustrating experience, but we've made some progress:

Abacus

Performed a package review (not passed, but close) of Peter Robinson's sugar-abacus package in Fedora
Created a basic page for recording smoke test results

Maze

Filed a bug against the sugar-maze package in Fedora (apparently missing an essential .py file)

Memorize

This activity meets most of the criteria, but we weren't able to save to the journal (know issue) and could not confirm that collaboration works (might have been our Sugar configuration or networking)

It's apparent that the Sugar project needs more contributions, including wiki gardening, testing, and documentation -- all of which are areas in which new contributors can become quickly involved.

Seneca and the Fedora ARM Secondary Architecture

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 11:04:20 -0400

ARM processors power the digital mobile age. Billions are produced per year, ending up in the majority of cellphones as well as in e-book readers, plug computers, the OLPC XO 1.75, tablets, netbooks, intelligent RJ-45 network jacks, and even microSD cards.

The Fedora ARM Secondary Architecture project has done a great job of porting Fedora releases to ARM. To assist this initiative, this semester's Software Build and Release course at Seneca (SBR600) put together a new Koji build farm for the ARM architecture in preparation for using koji-shadow to follow the primary architectures. It's been a fascinating and challenging project -- working with cross-compilers, emulators, and hardware with much smaller configurations than standard PCs. A large amount of effort was spent benchmarking various configurations to determine optimal memory and storage arrangements and to compare emulated vs. hardware ARM performance to guide the configuration of the build farm.

So now we're at the end of the semester. Where do things stand?

We have a working Koji build system, with two hardware builders plus emulated (VM) builders
Since we're at the end of the semester, things will be quiet for the next week and a half, but then we've hired a graduate to work on this full-time (intros coming up shortly )

What's next? In May-June we expect to:

set up FAS2 certs
add 10+ hardware builders
implement koji-shadow

Running Fedora-ARM in emulation under virsh

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 14:30:09 -0500

The Fedora qemu-system-arm package provides pretty good ARM processor emulation, which can be used to run the Fedora ARM secondary architechture. This is an easy way to get started working with ARM -- for example, while waiting for your plugcomputer, beagleboard, or OLPC XO 1.75 to arrive

The previous wiki notes on using ARM with QEMU didn't cover using qemu-system-arm under libvirt management. This meant that you couldn't easily take advantage of libvirt benefits such as automatic network setup (with DHCP and NAT), the virt-manager GUI tool, guest autostart, or disconnection/reconnection to the console.

I've updated https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Architectures/ARM/HowToQemu to include some basic notes on setting this up, and provided some files to simplify and speed up the process. Jump in and join Fedora-ARM, the water's nice!

Dear Lazyweb: How can you find a process ID given a window ID?

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 15:14:34 -0500

As far as I know, there is no way to reliably get a process ID from an X window ID for local clients (to implement Richard's View Source idea). I would love to be wrong!

Questions:

(1) Did I miss something? Can this be done now?

(2) If this can't be done now, what would it take? Could we create an X extension so that the server can supply connection info for a window, and then trace that connection info back to a specific process?

StudentProject keyword in Fedora Bugzilla

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 10:33:55 -0500

One challenge of teaching inside an open source community is finding projects which are appropriately for students to work on: they shouldn't be really trivial, because that won't provide a challenge or allow the student to engage with the community; they can't be huge, or the student won't finish them within the semester; and they can't be blockers or part of the critical path to a release, because the student may not be able to complete the project on the community's timeline.

My colleague David Humphrey introduced a new keyword into the Mozilla bugzilla tracker last spring, and it has been successfully used to identify many potential student projects (108 at the time of writing).

Good ideas are worth copying -- and since I'm bringing students into the Fedora community, and the POSSE-APAC professors will bring even more, I asked Dave Lawrence to add the StudentProject keyword to the Fedora/Red Hat bugzilla (thanks Dave and Paul!).

Your help in adding this keyword to any appropriate Fedora bugs you file, triage, or notice would be appreciated. Let's aim to identify 100 suitable bugs by FUDCon!

Kids vs. Students

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 22:57:31 -0500

Last week, at both FSOSS and the Teaching Open Source Summit, I heard a word that jarred me slightly, because I had dropped it from my professional vocabulary a number of years ago: "Kids".

I stopped using the word "kids" to refer to students for several reasons -- including the fact that I had a student twenty years my senior, and another who was a fully accredited Civil Engineer in his home country -- but the main reason that I dropped it was that it is simply incompatible with the way open source communities work. In open source, roles are defined by contribution, not age or formal training. Some of the youngest members of the community are the most active, and make crucial and valuable contributions.

If we're teaching inside open source communities, then it's important that we value students as full members of those communities -- and I think that the term "kids" is dismissive of their abilities.

Fedora 12 Toronto Release Party Alternative

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 09:30:50 -0500

Fedora 12 is almost here!

For the past several releases, we've held a release party in Toronto, complete with freshly-burned discs and origami disc covers. This time around, we'd like to invite all Toronto-area Fedora users to instead come out to FUDCon Toronto 2009 (where, in addition to great presentations, discussions, and hack sessions, I'm sure there will be real pressed discs with printed labels and real sleeves!).

Please help us get the word out! Point your friends, colleagues, and neighbours to http://tinyurl.com/fudcon

FSOSS Presentation Slate

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 09:55:20 -0400

The presentation slate for FSOSS 2009 has been finalized, and it looks like a interesting and diverse line-up including such topics as:

Apache Qpid (AMQP)
technical writing and documentation
Mozilla Dehydra and DXR tools
Processing.js
open source in South Africa's universities
communication in open source projects

...and more.

I'm looking forward to a great conference! If you're within driving distance of Toronto, please consider joining us on October 30. Advance registration -- and the corresponding discount -- ends this weekend as the Toronto Open Source Week gets underway.

Thank you, Jesse Keating!

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 08:40:35 -0400

A big thank-you to Jesse Keating for being a virtual guest in our SBR600 Software Build and Release class via teleconference last Thursday! Jesse is the Release Engineer for the Fedora Project and candidly discussed his role in getting Fedora into the hands of millions.

With his permission, a recording of the interview is available.

You need a browser that supports the <audio> tag to play this directly in the browser. Consider updating to Firefox 3.5 or higher.

The Best Open Source License...

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 15:29:13 -0400

I have had the honour of informally judging a debate entitled "Which Open Source License is Best?", held this past Monday by the FOSS Learning Center. Unfortunately I could not watch the debate live, so I've had to wait for the videos to be processed and posted - my apologies for the delay.

Each debater made an excellent case for the license they represented:

Michael Milinkovich, Executive Director, Eclipse Foundation - Eclipse Public License (EPL)

Matt Asay, VP Business Development, Alfresco - GNU General Public License (GPL)

David Maxwell, Open Source Strategist, Coverity - Berkeley Software Distibution License (BSD)

I come to this debate not only as an professor, but as a software developer, a consultant to the SME sector, and as a participant in the Fedora project. There was at least one point made in favor of each license that I found notable: that the EPL guarantees perpetual freedom of code, but enables proprietary products to be constructed on top; that the GPL fundamentally creates an atmosphere of trust; and that the BSD license's brevity and simplicity provides reassuring clarity and confidence.

Of the three cases presented, I found the case for the GPL to be the most compelling. I hadn't previously considered that the GPL creates an environment of trust, but that resonated deeply with my experience and particularly with my observations within the Fedora project and as a consultant.

But more importantly, as the debaters concluded: each of these licenses has a place in the Open Source ecosystem, and the users of each license generally agree about much more than they disagree. Long live Open Source!

---

Debate video and the conclusions of the other judges.

Debate on Open Source Licences - Today

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:43:28 -0400

FOSSLC has organized an interesting debate today on "Which Open Source License is Best?". Matt Asay, Mike Milinkovich, and David Maxwell are arguing the merits of various licenses and will will be webcast live. Randal Schwartz, Jay Lyman, and I will be judging the debate and blogging our conclusions. I hope you enjoy this lively and informative event.

Professor's Open Source Experience - POSSE - This Week

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 23:53:22 -0400

The first edition of Red Hat's POSSE program -- Professors' Open Source Summer Experience -- kicks off tonight (Sunday) and continues through Friday. Based on the premise that Open Source is best taught by someone with one foot in the academic world and one foot in an open source community, this week will be an immersive experience for five professors from around North America.

I look forward to teaching this program with my colleague David Humphrey (also from Seneca). It's going to be an intense learning experience for us as well, because we've never passed along our open source teaching model in a bootcamp format.

The brainchild of Greg DeKoenigsberg, POSSE's goal is to pilot a person-to-person approach to spreading the teaching of open community-based open source, and to be the first in a long line of professors' bootcamps around the world.

Working in the Open, in the Open Source Way

We'd love to have you join us online during POSSE. You can follow the play-by-play via @posse2009 on Twitter, or better yet, interact directly with the participants on the #teachingopensource-posse channel on the Freenode IRC network. Because we're teaching community-based open source, you will also see the POSSE participants popping up in various open source projects, including Mozilla and Fedora.

Help Wanted: Fedora Packaging Sponsors

We're going to be doing some Fedora packaging. If you're a Fedora packaging sponsor and have a bit of time later this week to accelerate some FE-NEEDSPONSOR cases, I'd appreciate your help Wednesday onward. Ian Weller (who is himself a packaging sponsor) and I will be working directly with the participants and doing initial reviews.

TeachingOpenSource Conference Call - Monday July 6

nospam@example.com (Chris Tyler) — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 11:46:08 -0400

The monthly TeachingOpenSource conference call is coming up on Monday. The focus of this call will be the textbook project that Greg DeKoenigsberg is starting up, and we'll also have an update on the Teaching Open Source Summit '09 (TOSS09) and other TOS projects.

The calls are open to everyone, so if you're in any way involved with or interested in the teaching of community-based open source, please feel free to join the call -- and if you're not already part of the TeachingOpenSource.org community, please jump right in!

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