Archives de catégorie : Ubuntu Planet

Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

OpenMoko phone now shipping, new web site launched

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As previously announced, the open phone has started shipping its developer preview model. OpenMoko has also become a division of FIC, their OEM provider, who restructured their mobile division so it became OpenMoko, a commercial entity by itself.

From Wikipedia:

OpenMoko is a project to create a smartphone platform using free software. It uses the Linux kernel, together with a graphical user environment built using the X.Org Server and the Matchbox window manager. The OpenEmbedded build framework and ipkg package system are used to create and maintain software packages.

OpenMoko was announced in 2006 by founders First International Computer (FIC). The initial hardware product supporting OpenMoko is the FIC GSM Neo1973 device.

A few links to get you started:

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

Venezuela Launches Sale of Bolivarian Computers – and they run Ubuntu too :)

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In less than 1.5 years the Venezuelan governement went from zero, creating a partnership with a Chinese company, to mass production of affordable desktop and laptop computers running free software (full specs here), with a big price difference compared to other local offerings, up to 40%! This is less than 3 years after announcing a massive move to free software in all government agencies.

I’ ve blogged before about the action in Venezuela, but this blows my mind. Well, at least as much as the Guadalinex project and their 400 000 desktops deployment.

Although they remain vague in the choice of operating systems, all the annoucements about the « Bolivarian » Computers launch do mention they will run Gnu/Linux and  » be compatible  » with Windows. Even production is local. And what capacity do they have ? 150K units a year, that’ s right 150 000 systems every year. In case you haven’t noticed, Ecuador and Cuba have recently announced free, open-source software policies to replace existing IT operations agressively. Coincidence ? I think not.

Scrolling down to the very last question in their FAQ, we can see:

De manera consecuente con la misión de alcanzar la Independencia Tecnológica de la Nación, VIT promueve el empleo del Software Libre, por lo que los equipos son entregados a solicitud del cliente con sistema operativo bajo ambiente Linux, siendo compatibles con Knoppix, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian y otros.

which translates to

Followin our mission to reach Technological Independency of our Nation, VIT promotes the use of Free Software, so the systems are delivered to customers with Linux operating systems, compatible with Knoppix, Kubuntu, Ubuntu, Debian and others.

Other related resources:

 
Ubuntu Planet, Conférences, GNU/Linux

Freedom takes the streets in Bogota, Colombia

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If you are in Bogota, Colombia or know anyone interested in free culture and content production living there, this may be of interest 🙂 There will be a screening TONIGHT at 6:30PM of the BBC’s Codebreakers documentary at the Mediatorta, a public cultural space provided by the city 🙂

I am really excited that the spanish subtitling was possible after I managed to obtain a release of the original english transcript under a Creative Commons BY licence. Getting the transcript was the easy part but translating it to spanish was a huge effort by a few dedicated individuals – credit goes to Gustavo Gonzalez at Kazak for his dedication to have this completed!

See: Bogota esta empapelada and this announcement for more information.

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

New Launchpad release out, news blog online

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This morning I was really excited to see the Launchpad 1.1.6 milestone announcement! Launchpad is a collection of services that assist in software development. Ubuntu uses it to manage its specifications, bugs, meetings, events and other assorted things. the Launchpad HowTo describes how this is done.

Among the many details of bugs and new development in this announcement, a few are of particular interest to any Ubuntu LoCo teams using Launchpad to manage their community and keep track of participation:

  • Teams can now only join other teams with the approval of the first team’s administrator.
  • Team members can now renew their own memberships, when their membership is close to expiry if the team is set-up with an on-demand policy.
  • Answer contacts will now receive notification of new questions in their preferred languages only. – as a team administrator, visit any project’s page (like Ubuntu’s, then go to the Answers tab, and choose  » Set answers Contact » from the left menu. Previously you also received notices in English. If you don’t select a preferred language, it will automatically be set to your browser language preferences.

This last feature alone is very important for local teams that wish to have their members keep track of the help they provide to local communities in their native language. I also think it will be a good way to keep answers to common support question out of the mailing lists – sometimes a few technical questions can generate a *lot* of email traffic. An added bonus, you loco team members will get precious karma for every participation.

There were also two nice changes to improve privacy of participants in Answers and the bug trackers:

  • Email addresses inside the Answer and Bug Trackers are now obfuscatedto anonymous (not logged in) users – e.g. Google.
  • Quoted emails and standard signature lines are now stripped from emailed responses to Answer Tracker questions and also bug reports.

There are many more improvements and new features, the full announcement is in the Launchpad-users mailing list archives.

Additionally, there is now a Launchpad News blog now available at http://news.launchpad.net/ – it’s great to have another channel with regular updates and insight directly from the users and developers behind Launchpad.

Now, to make this a perfect « Launchpad fans » day, it would have been lovely to see an update about making Launchpad free and open source under the GPL or another licence… 🙂