Archives par mot-clé : Advocacy

Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

Ubuntu Hardy gets Brother printers drivers

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Well, it seems Brother printer drivers will make it into Hardy (Ubuntu 8.04, coming up next month), under GPL and Brother Software Open License Agreement – all driven by the community and with some help from Canonical.

Although I’d rather have 100% free Brother printer drivers, it’s still nice Brother has made their license clear about what can be done with their drivers, effectively opening the door to packaging by anyone:

This Agreement provides terms and conditions for license grant from Brother Industries, Ltd (« Broher »). Brother, who owns all copyrights to the software that is distributed with this Agreement (« Software ») to recipients thereof (« User »), for use of the Software. User shall have the right to use the Software only in accordance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any use by User of the Software shall be deemed as its agreement hereto.
Note:

Please click on « I Accept » while holding down « Shift » or right click on « I Accept » and select « Save Target As,,, » from the menu.

Brother retains any and all copyrights to the Software. In no case this Agreement shall be construed to assign or otherwise transfer from Brother to User any copyrights or other intellectual property rights to whole or any part of the Software.

Brother grants User a non-exclusive license: to reproduce and/or distribute (via Internet or in any other manner) the Software. Further, Brother grants User a non-exclusive license to modify, alter, translate or otherwise prepare derivative works of the Software and to reproduce and distribute (via Internet or in any other manner) such modification, alteration, translation or other derivative works for any purpose.

Even nicer is actually seeing the first mention of these drivers a bit over two years ago and the path and work leading to its final packaging and testing just hours ago by many community people and even Canonical through the bug report on Launchpad and a corresponding wiki page.

I hope this raises the importance of supporting Linux properly for Brother and, who knows, perhaps they will be more visible for scanner and PC to Fax support in Ubuntu (and generally, Linux) in the near future. I would bet increasing Ubuntu + Brother customers would already justify this.

I do own an MFC model at home and it makes me think of the same comparisons I hear about the  » readiness of the Linux Desktop « . Compare this to all Hewlett-Packard does to support its printers under Linux, there still is a lot to do before both can be compared on equal grounds. Or is it ?

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

Ubuntu now available to Dell customers in Canada and Latin America

It’s as if these news were specially written for me. I am originally from Colombia and have been living in Montreal, Canada for the past ~20 years.

Dell announced on their blog that their systems will now be available in Canada and Latin America (including Colombia initially!).

Check the original announcement on their english blog, as well as the spanish annoucement for Latin America. It’s nice to see they have a blog for hispanic customers.

In Canada, visit http://dell.ca/open . Phone orders only in Latin America for now.

What a week!!!

 
Ubuntu, Ubuntu Planet, Conférences, GNU/Linux

Colombian Team FLISOL 2008 meeting

This weekend the Colombian LoCo Team had a meeting to get things organized for the FLISOL 2008 in Bogotá, Colombia. The FLISOL is a huge InstallFest across LatinAmerica, this year it will be on April 26th.

The minutes of the meeting are now online, thanks to Hollman Enciso and Julián Alarcón for getting this going!

 
Ubuntu Planet, Ubuntu, GNU/Linux

Ubuntu Community Council on Feb. 21st: don’t miss it

I missed the last Ubuntu Community Council even though I was subscribed to its wiki page. To make a long story short, I am posting this « just in case » so it gets maximum exposure 🙂

The next meeting is coming up this Thursday Feb. 21st at 20:00 UTC (so, 15:00 EST). See the agenda for more information. See you there!

ps. Keep an eye on the agenda as apparently there are other meetings conflicting, so time may change.

 
Ubuntu, Ubuntu Planet, GNU/Linux

Ubuntu and the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet

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It’s been a few weeks already that I joined the Maemo contributor program, which entitled me to a good discount to get a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet.

While I’m proud I was chosen among 500 other contributors-to-be, it really was an ordeal to just get the device. I imagine it’s not easy to set this kind of program up, including coordinating discounts in differents currencies, inventory, shipping, etc. But this being Nokia and their third time running this kind of program, it’s very sad they chose not to tell when problems and delays occured, letalone the fact those happened in the first place.

Unfortunately the holidays came and went and the devices were available at full price for a good time before any contributor got their device. Combine that with dog-slow online stores filled with hungry Flash animations, rude customer service reps and it’s almost a miracle the N810 made it my door. I can’t see what the greater plan is in terms of building a contributor community. Maybe this is some kind of « Amazing Race » obstacle course, for sure the few remaining are the bravest.

Some of you will hunt me down and spam me with threaths and « die, ungrateful spoiled kid » messages, but in the end this won’t change my opinion that this is the worse consumer experience I’ve had in a long time, and I think it is unfair to just go about it like it doesn’t matter. I reminds me of the OpenMoko debuts. Who cares if a product is a precursor in technological freedom if it can’t even be delivered to developers on time ?

Now, going back to the topic of blogging about the N810…

As a full-time Ubuntu user at work and home, I am planning to report about everyday use with an emphasis on VoIP, free media formats use and support (or lack thereof) and generally its « level of freedom » in terms of applications and sync’ing. I don’t intend to write a single line of code – instead I chose to help with bug reports, documentation and some blogging.

For now I am just putting together any links directly related to Ubuntu or LInux in general at the Mobile Devices / Nokia page on the Ubuntu community docs wiki, and trying some of them. If anyone’s interested in contributing to that resource or just finding out about its updates, consider registering to the Ubuntu docs wiki site and subscribing to that resource.

I’d love to see Ubuntu installed and working on the Nokia devices, but just to be clear, I don’t intend to work on that nor do I have any personal or professional plans to do so. To be super-extra clear, I just want to see how well the open Internet tablet scores with Ubuntu – while making it better at it, hopefully. And no, this has nothing to do with Ubuntu Mobile.

Sad as it sounds, there may never be a « year of the Linux Desktop. Linux world domination by 2008 as Eric S. Raymond described it will most probably happen with mobile and embedded devices.