Last Post

Yep, I’m done here.

You can keep up with me at http://blog.grossmeier.net.

Hope to see you there!

New York users: Free Culture Salon

I thought I would pass this along for those of you interested in the Free Culture side of things*.

My coworker, Fred Beneson, has just announced the CC Salon in NYC for July.  A CC Salon is to Free Culture what a LUG Meeting is to Free Software.  At this salon he has lined up some great looking presentations from Wikia Search and Livable Streets Network along with a performance by comedian Max Silvestri (of Gabe + Max’s Internet Thing).

If you are interested it will be taking place on Wednesday July 23rd at The Open Planning Project ( 349 W. 12th St. first floor).

There will also be some free (as in beer) beer sponsored by the Brooklyn Brewery.

Don’t miss out on this opportunity to see other Freedom minded folks and have a good time!

You can RSVP on the Facebook event or emailing Fred at creativecommons.org (simply make that an email address).

*Full disclosure: I am employed by Creative Commons this summer

Bug Hug Day – July 3rd

I just wanted to remind everyone that this Thursday is another Ubuntu Hug Day!

I know what you are thinking: “But Greg, isn’t that the day after your birthday and the day before your nation celebrates its independence?”

Why yes, you are right, what better way to celebrate getting older and wiser along with Freedom than by helping out with a great Open Source project! Here are the details:

Area of Focus: Xorg bugs

Goal: Get all the bugs on this list into a Triaged state.  There are lists of “New” bugs (untouched) and “Confirmed” bugs (need a bit more diagnostics before being Triaged).

But wait, there are more reasons to participate!  Coming up is the Global Bug Jam and you want to be all prepared for that right?  This is the perfect time to get some questions answers and general advice from the community of triaging experts.

If you have been triaging bugs for a while, an Ubuntu Hug Day is a perfect time to sing up for the Bug Control team.  And as always, be sure to get yourself on the stats page for 5-a-day!

It’s Launched! Now use it!

The first project which I have been working on at Creative Commons is now launched.  It is one of those projects which will help everyone in the Free Culture/Open Source movement in some way.  Here it is:

Creative Commons, as a ‘movement’ (more correctly, as a part of the Open Society Movement), has many users, both content creators and content ‘enjoyers’.  But, if you are interested in releasing some of your work under a CC license, where do you go for information?  The Creative Commons website obviously.  But, just reading over what the licenses say doesn’t give you all the information you need to make your decision.  It would be like reading the GPL and than saying, unequivocally, that the GPL will in fact be the best option for your specific case.  Sure, most of us believe that to be the case, but no small part of that reasoning is the fact that the GPL has served us all very well over the years.

What if you could read some interviews and opinions from people who have done what you are thinking?  That would probably help you decide in a more informed manner, right?

Well, that is what we produced for you.  Here is the blogpost announcement that tells you a bit about the project.  But here is my quick description:

What is the field which you create in (photography, writing, movies, music, etc)?  Do you want to read stories and interviews of people who produce similar content and release it under a CC license?  We now have many such writeups on the Case Studies page.  As you will see, that page and all of the case studies linked from it, are in a wiki.  So if you see something wrong/misspelled/out of date, feel free to fix it and help us all.

One thing you might notice which is missing from that list of music case studies is a writeup for SeverdFifth.  That isn’t because I didn’t want to do it; I just only had a limited amount of time to do the ones I could.  Here is my plea for you:

Help me write the SeveredFifth case study on the Creative Commons website!

As the project progresses keep it updated with new happenings and discoveries.  This would be a great way to make sure Jono’s musical adventure can help others interested in doing the same.  I have some quotes from a short interview with Jono I can put up later, but I won’t be able to get to it for at least the next day or two.  I set up a skeleton case study page for Severed Fifth here, but it really needs to be fleshed out.  That is where you come in.

Just go to the Severed Fifth Case Study page, and scroll to the bottom and click on “edit with form” (not the normal edit, the form option makes life a whole lot easier).  Help me fill in the missing information.

Lets show everyone how many cool Open projects there are out there, and how cool they all really are!

Bug Watches

As a part-time bug triager, I’m always curious of the new tools out there that enable people to work better and more efficiently.  One such new project, which I think has some real potential, is Stephan Hermann‘s Leonov project.

Another thing which I just read in my news reader was the fact that Luca Nussbaum added a functionality to Debian’s package overview pages which lets maintainers see what version of the package is in Ubuntu and how many bugs are reported against it in Launchpad.  This seems like a great idea and could even be expanded upon for better results.

My thought process:

A. Launchpad’s ability to watch other bug trackers for the same bug greatly improves the ability of developers to find and fix bugs.

A.1. People really like that ability.

B. Launchpad is only able to do that in a one-way direction (it can’t tell the Debian BTS that it’s bug has been marked “Fix Committed”)

B.1. Putting all of the work on the dev’s/triagers to then go back upstream and report it for every bug is a laudable goal, but as we all know, time is precious for everyone.

C. The ability to get bug data from LP and use it for enabling productivity is there, albeit a little “hacky” (screen scrapping is never fun).

D. Wouldn’t it be cool if other Bug Trackers could watch LP in the same way it watches them?

It seems to me, from both Lucas’ and Stephan’s efforts that doing D is possible right now.  Yes, it would be a ton more easy if Lucas’ and Stephan’s concerns were addressed (text/XML export etc).

I know the Launchpad developers are working right now to implement support for reporting back to other bug trackers certain information but I’m not sure of its progress.

Some Blueprints which might be related but I can not read (they are private): Bugs Remote API and Remote Launchpad Python Library (if you know of any other blueprints or bugs with more information, post them in the comments, please).

Does anyone know of any other bug trackers which are actively working on or at least discussing the ability to grab data from LP (or other BTS)  about certain bugs?

And now, things begin to get busy

As some of you know, I am now working with Creative Commons as a Community Development Intern for the summer under the lead of Jon Phillips (of Open Clip Art, Inkscape, ccHost, etc).  Because of that, you might hear much less of me for the next 2.5 months (not that I was constantly blogging before).  Additionally, for you bug triagers out there, if you see a bug which I have commented on do not hesitate to take over the triaging process, I might not get to it as quickly as I should.  Don’t feel like you are stepping on anyone’s toes.

However, if you are thinking to yourself “I wonder what Greg is up to at Creative Commons right now?” you are more than welcome to watch the blog at CC, which is handily on the front page.  Today, in fact, I posted my first post.

Also, if you know of any cool Creative Commons/Free Culture related things going on in your area (physical or virtual), feel free to contact me.  And yeah, I already know about Jono’s new music project 😉

Michigan LoCo Bug Jam – Summer 2008

I am pleased to announce that the Michigan LoCo Team is holding a Bug Jam on June 9th at 6:30 pm.

What is a Bug Jam?
Every day people report bugs about Ubuntu in the bug tracker Launchpad [0] but the number of bugs reported is more than the current bug triagers can effectively handle. In short, the Ubuntu community needs more bug triagers. But how do you triage bugs? Bug Jams are events where people who are interested in learning how to triage bugs get together to learn how to do this and answer everyone’s questions. It is a fun learning event.

Also, it is a great way to get started doing your 5-a-day and add your name to this list and increase our team’s ranking:
http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/

When and where is our Bug Jam?
It is Monday June 9th at 6:30pm at the Main branch of the Clinton-Macomb Public Library [1]. We will be in a conference room with free wifi to library card holders. People without local library cards can sign up
for one in 5 minutes, but if you are planning on doing that, please try to show up a little bit early. Directions can be found here:
http://tinyurl.com/5rygg3 .

What should I do before the Bug Jam?
Check out some of the bug triaging resources online right now like:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HelpingWithBugs and
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/HowToTriage

There is a wealth of information linked to from this page:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad/KnowledgeBase

What do you do after the Bug Jam?
There are plenty of restaurant/bar options in the area to celebrate a jam well done and eat dinner.

Feel free to email the mailing list[2] for coordinating rides and asking questions before hand.

[0] https://launchpad.net/

[1] http://cmpl.org/

[2] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-us-mi

Lets start Intrepid right…

The release cycle for Hardy was awesome, and I definitely put more time and effort into it than any other.  But, I want to continue this momentum and increase my effort for Intrepid.  Luckily for me, next week is Ubuntu OpenWeek.

Seriously, I’m not just talking about the OpenWeek because Jorge talked about it last night at our release party.  I have recently triaged a fair number of bugs to a point where I know what needs to be changed and I could probably do it myself.  Simple string fixes are a good examples, or setting correct defaults, adding a dependency, etc.  But, to do this I should learn more about packaging.

One way to do that is to go to a Packaging Jam like what Rick put on for the Michigan LoCo.  I unfortunately was unable to make it (3 year anniversary is a good reason right?).  But, with the OpenWeek I should be able to get some basics out of the way before we do another Packaging Jam.

Also, if you’re interested in just learning how to report bugs, not even think about fixing them, there are events for you too at the OpenWeek (see schedule).  Be sure to remember that the times are in UTC, so that means subtract 4 hours for the eastern time zone (rest of you Americans can do the math from there).

I hope some of the people who attended our Hardy Release Party in Michigan last night can show up.  There was a lot of interest in helping with Ubuntu development in various ways from many people and this is the perfect place to start!

See you there!

—
My 5 today: #223230 (gnome-panel), #214695 (gnome-system-monitor), #223239 (hugin), #223262 (kdebase), #223263 (update-manager)
Do 5 a day – every day! https://wiki.ubuntu.com/5-A-Day

Change of venue

So, we need to change plans for the release party.  Ann Arbor Brewing
Co. has no available room as the University of Michigan has graduation
this weekend.  I tried to get a reservation today, but, no avail.

Instead, we do the next best thing: Corner Brewery in Ypsilanti
http://neotech.net/ABC/?site=cornerbrewery

Sorry for the late notice.

Get the word out to those who might not get this.

The Release of Hardy and 100 members

Today, as we all know, is the release of the latest and greatest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron.

However, what you may not know is that today is also the day that the Michigan LoCo team hit 100 members!  Yep, thats right, two momentous occasions on the same day.

For proof, see screenshot.

On behalf of the entire team I would like to welcome Tony to the Michigan LoCo!

Tony, if you are reading this, if you come to the Hardy Release Party on Saturday, you get an Ubuntu Hat for being the 100th member of the team!  Really, no joke.