Issue121

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue #121 for the week December 7th - December 13th, 2008. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

  • Note to translators and our readers: We are trying a new way of linking to our translations pages. Please follow the link below for the information you need.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Four Thousand People attend Ubuntu France Release Party

http://blog.didrocks.fr/index.php/post/Ubuntu-Party-Paris%3A-more-than-4-000-visitors%21

Ubuntu Developer Summit Jaunty

http://www.youtube.com/user/ubuntudevelopers

http://videos.ubuntu.com/uds/jaunty/Interviews/

http://www.flickr.com/search/?q=udsjaunty&m=tags

Hall of Fame: Alberto Milone

http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/?feature=alberto-milone

MOTU

  • We're very happy to announce that David Futcher just joined the MOTU team. He did great work in the last weeks and lives in Scotland.

Ubuntu Stats

Bug Stats

  • Open (#) +/- # over last week
  • Critical (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unconfirmed (#) +/- # over last week
  • Unassigned (#) +/- # over last week
  • All bugs ever reported (#) +/- # over last week

As always, the Bug Squad needs more help. If you want to get started, please see https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

Infamous Bugs

Translation Stats Intrepid

  1. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  2. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  3. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  4. Language (#) +/- # over last week
  5. Language (#) +/- # over last week

Remaining strings to translate in Ubuntu 8.10 "Intrepid Ibex," see more at: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/intrepid/

5-a-day bug stats

Top 5 contributors for the past 7 days

  • crimsun (392)
  • maco.m (60)
  • chrisccoulson (47)
  • hew (35)
  • angusthefuzz (29)

Top 5 teams for the past 7 days

  • dcteam (452)
  • ubuntu-au (35)
  • ubuntu-us-ohio (29)
  • ubuntu-pl (15)
  • ubuntu-cl (12)

5-A-Day stats provided by Daniel Holbach. See http://daniel.holba.ch/5-a-day-stats/

Interview with (huats), Leader of the French Team

***need to fix up a bit, also there might be an additional question***

- Who are you? Where do you live? What do you do for a living? My name is Christophe Sauthier, huats on the IRC. I am 31, I live in Toulouse (France), and I am in a relationship.

On a more ubuntu oriented stuff, I am the leader of the French Loco. My main other community role is coordinating the motu mentoring reception, which aims at helping new comers on the Ubuntu development world. I also try to be active on a development level, helping on the packaging of some applications mainly around the GNOME environment.

My day work is working for a french service company (makina corpus) that only works in the open source world. I am doing some ubuntu related stuffs (training, assistance, migration), but also some development in PHP (Drupal) and Python (Plone).

- How did you get involved with Linux and Ubuntu initially? A long long time ago (something like 1996) I went to ask someone his opinion on a perl script I was doing (a cgi for a website in fact). He told me : "if you plan to develop a bit in Perl, you should use Linux. Here are some stuffs to install it...". That was my first contact Smile :) Later on, I have mainly used Suse and the Debian. And then one day, I went accross something which was based on Debian but not named yet. That was Ubuntu. It was in 2004, and since that day I am just using that.

- How did you get involved with the French LoCo? I was doing some french translations for some softwares (mainly in Gnome) for sometime, and then one day I noticed a post on the wiki french LoCo that was mentionning a bunch of projects that were about to be launched, and one of them was the organisation of interview (and then translations) of some key members of the community. This project evolved later in various stuffs like BehindUbuntu.

- How did you come to lead the French LoCo? After that first experience in th french Community (since I didn't even know it was called a LoCo), I stayed a bit around, hanging on the IRC on various french channels, or looking from time to time at the forums. That is where I have seen the future campaign of thsirt selling from the LoCo. My first thought was 'I was one', and then 'I am sure I can help them to organize it'... After ordering mine, I contact the guy who was behind it, and there was so much work that my help was welcome... it turns out that Yann (the guy I contacted), was the leader of the LoCo, and after lots of talks he told me that some help was also needed on the website development area. Of course he alske me to show some proof that I able to help, by developping a module for the punbb (the forum we are using at the french LoCo), and then I was introduced to the other guys who run the LoCo. I took more and more part in the French LoCo life, and when some of the guy who runned the LoCo decided to step down, they went to ask me if I was willing to face the challenge to build a new team and a new organization to run the LoCo. This is how I become the leader of the French LoCo, by building a team... Because this is clearly the way I see things : a team work.

- What are the challenges of running a large LoCo? How does a LoCo communicate and reach such a large area? They are many challenges, but it is thrilling. The first one is of course trying to put everyting in one day. There are some many sollicitations that it is impossible to please everyone even if of course we wanted to. So it ends up, with some people feel that we are just centered in some area, and that we don't care of all the others, while in fact it is usually a lack of manpower and/or time. To show that, we are communicating more and more using a report blog. The blog is part of the French planet so it can reach many people. But we don't only limit ourself to blog, since we are also trying to be as transparent as we can on every decisions. Every month or so, we are running a public IRC which is in fact our regular meeting. We try to deal with every aspects of our community : talking about the past actions (since the last meeting), the current ongoing actions and the short/medium term ones. There is also an amount of time dedicated to questions where every can come and talk to us. And I think that this transparency interests people, since by instance at the last one something like 60 people have atteneded it.

- How is the French LoCo organized? Is it centralized or decentralized? It is a mix. Of course we are a bunch of guys at the core of the LoCo. But with the new team, the core has grow a bit. The aim of the each one of core is to have a big picture of everything that happens in the LoCo (or at least to maximize its knowledge), so that every people who step down might be easily 'replaced'. Around the core, a bigger circle of people, who are more involved in one or two areas. This second circle can be seen as dedicated teams for one areas. So to sum up : a core of less than 10 people, that lead some team/activities that are quite independent each others. Each team has a wide perimiter of action, even if of course we like to be aware of big decisions Smile :)

- Sometimes LoCos go through a slow period, where member participation or motivation may have decreased? How does the French LoCo battle that? Indeed I think there has been a slow period like that in the French LoCo too. But I think its effect has been lowered by the change of the team that I mentionned earlier, that was some 6-8 months ago. Something noticeable is during that period, hile the 'leaders' of the community were slowing down a bit, there was not a big slowing down in our activities. This is surely the privilege of big community, who can live by themselves for sometime without any dammage... As long as it don't last too much of course... Since that the LoCo is again on good tracks, very active. Goods examples are the parties we had all over the country for Intrepid. And the Paris example with more than 4000 attendants over the week end is the perfect example. And since we don't want to slow again, we are again, launching some small projects, that will help us to tackle some areas that we really likes, and also help us to grow the community. You know, the kind of the project that made me enter in the community, so you can clearly imagine that I am really attached to them. We can say that our way to fight a decrease in the motivation of the member is to find some new areas...

- What are your short term and longer term plans for the LoCo? On the short term plans, I'd say to keep the current work we have just initiated : to complete the various teams (some are still a bit blur or are juste gathering). By instance there was not really a web development team, since we were just gathering some ressources when needed. Right now a bunch of very talented people are gathered to tackle the needed various aspects but more importantly to do that on a long term basis, not only on demand. This is really necessary if we want to be able to always be innovative. So on the short term list plans, we can found a new skin for the whole pack of ubuntu-fr sites (www, documentation, forums and planet), taking advantages of our new www website (drupal) to give editors right to many teams (by instance the kubuntu or the edubuntu one), in order to get provide a more living window. We hope to be able to do that in the next couple of months. On more longer term, we really want to continue our effort on spreading Ubuntu every where in France, which results in the organisation of some more and more parties all accross the country (surfing on the success of the whole intrepid campaign). We want to have some regular events, were people can gather and realize in real life (in opposition of the IRC which is sometime an edge for a newcomer) that they are part of the community. It might be some bug jams, some documentation jams (like a bug jam but to verify the current available documentation), and why not some translation jams. Finally will try to setup a real policy for the attendance of events, because we think necessary to offer the chance to anyone to come ask meet us, asking us any kind of questions once again in the real life...

- One of the ideas that you have talked about with the LoCo Council is twinning. What is that? And have you put it into practice yet? Many meannings can be giving to the twinning of LoCos. The one I really care about is the help that a big LoCo, like the french one, can provide to a smaller one. That help can be its experience of course, but some more materials stuffs by planning some large scale campaign (of CD order by instance), or even give some money to help them to start their events. This is something that we faced at the beginning and without the financial involvment of some French member we couldn't have done many stuffs... Since the french LoCo has more power now, it might be a great thing to help the other to start. In fact it is quite close from some of the key concepts that lead to the creation of ubuntu-eu some years ago. Ubuntu-eu is a joint german/efforts to share hosting of their website. Since that day many more LoCos are hosted there, which is clearly helpful for the starting ones. Back to the twinning process, we have started to work a bit on it with the Tunesian LoCo, but we are not very far in the process because of a lack of time lately. I am very confident that we will work on that soon again.

> * The Ubuntu French Team had a release party attended by 4,000 people. > Can you describe the event? How did you plan the event? How long did > it take? This event that took place in Paris was a mixed of the various kind of parties that we can have : install, release, conference... That is why we simply call it an Ubuntu Party. We are doing that every 6 months, on a week end, about a month after the release. During the event, many peolple went to get an installation of intrepid, or because they were facing a problem with their current ubuntu installation. We have also offered more than 14 hours of conferences, but also a a bug jam... and even a livre radio during the whole week end that was broadcasting from the event, The event has started to be planned since the end of the previous one (which was in early june), so it is almost the result of a 6 months work of a whole team. Some of us were working on the communication (with medias, with the desired audience), some others on the materials to get for the event or even planning the envisaged conferenced. We are currently doing the analysis of this event, before starting to prepare the next one, that will happen in May 2009.

- What do you do for fun? Besides my LoCo activities, I do some Ubuntu development Smile :) Well I know it is still related to our community, but this is clearly a separated activity from my point of view. But I also do quite a lot of sports : mainly baskketball, but I also go hiking in the Pyrenees (some mountains which are very close from my home) some time. Beside that I realy enjoy to cook for my friends. In fact I clearly see a common link in cooking for others, and doing some free software...

Ubuntu Hall of fame interview: Alberto Milone

http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com/

LoCo News

New in Jaunty Jackalope

Launchpad News

LaunchPad goes Open Source

Ask Rinchen for details

Launchpad Drupal modules

There are 2 new Drupal modules for Drupal 5.x:

  • openid-launchpad: delegate your Drupal site's user authentication to Launchpad
  • openid-teams: assign Drupal roles to logged-in users based on their membership of specific Launchpad teams.

These modules require the Launchpad modified version of the Drupal OpenID module. There is a help file for setting up these modulesf[1], and more information available[2] These modules allow you to set up the ammount of participation a team member has as reflected in Launchpad.

Launchpad in Twitter and identi.ca

Matthew Revell is experimenting with posting Launchpad news and status updates to Twitter[1] and identi.ca[2], and is interested in feedback from readers. Of course, these are not meant to be official information. For terms of use changes[3] or notifications[4].

Launchpad off line Dec. 17th

Launchpad will be offline Wednesday, December 17.

  • From 22:00 UTC.
  • Expect to be back up 23:00 UTC.

This is a scheduled outage to allow them to roll out the 2.1.12 release code. http://news.launchpad.net/notifications/offline-2200-2300-utc-17th-december-2008

Launchpad plugins for Drupal

http://news.launchpad.net/notifications/offline-2200-2300-utc-17th-december-2008

Launchpad on Twitter and identi.ca

http://news.launchpad.net/general/launchpad-now-on-twitter-and-identica

Ubuntu Forums News

In The Press

http://www.govhealthit.com/online/news/350715-1.html

http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS8284021470.html

http://community.zdnet.co.uk/blog/0,1000000567,10009946o-2000498448b,00.htm

In The Blogosphere

http://okiiliving.blogspot.com/2008/12/is-linux-ready-for-average-user-my-wife.html

http://www.workswithu.com/2008/12/12/system76-launches-biometric-ubuntu-linux-laptops/

http://www.workswithu.com/2008/12/12/review-zareason-makes-desktop-linux-a-breeze/

http://blogs.gnome.org/awalton/2008/12/10/new-notifications-for-jaunty/

In Other News

OpenSolaris tackles Ubuntu dominance

http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/software/soa/OpenSolaris-tackles-Ubuntu-dominance/0,130061733,339293697,00.htm

Meeting Summaries

Upcoming Meetings and Events

Community Spotlight

Updates and Security for 6.06, 7.10, 8.04, and 8.10

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 Updates

Ubuntu 7.10 Updates

Ubuntu 8.04 Updates

Ubuntu 8.10 Updates

UWN #: A sneak peek

Archives and RSS Feed

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Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

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Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

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