It seems years ago now since I first read Karl Fogel’s Producing Open Source Software. That’s because it is. The book, made available at producingoss.com in 2005 and published by O’Reilly in 2006, was one of the first to offer an accessible and thoughtful look at how to run a successful free software project. Back in 2005 and 2006, that was something I was keenly interested in, not least because I was working for OSS Watch at the time.

Time passes. Things change. Even the world of free and open source software changes over time.

I was delighted to learn recently that Karl Fogel is setting about producing a revised and updated edition of Producing Open Source Software.  What’s more there is an easy way that interested individuals can help this project come to fruition. Karl has posted his project on Kickstarter, which is a funding platform for creative projects. Check out Karl’s video on his project page. And then consider making a small contribution to help kickstart the project. It’s a great opportunity to make a small contribution to the ongoing success of free and open source software.

Plus, just as with the first edition, the new edition will be released online under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike licence so it too will be freely available to read and share with others everywhere and anywhere.

Very much looking forward to the new edition of Producing Open Source Software.

My ageing laptop (2007 Dell Inspiron 1520) has been around the world, literally. It served me well in Kathmandu and Bamako, London and Paris, and even here in Waterloo. A couple of years ago I replaced the keypad. But otherwise it has been rock solid. In the past six months, however, it has developed numerous ailments that probably signal its end time. For example, there is now a constant high pitched whine coming from the hard drive, which I’m sure can only be heard by canines, Superman, and me. More significant, however, is the emergent power conflict such that I can no longer run the laptop plugged into the mains. Doing so automatically leads the screen to very shortly black out.  So I am forced to use the machine solely on battery power. And even the battery is now a bit long in the tooth and drops its power rapidly and inconsistently.

Still, it’s been a good machine and I’ve learned a lot with it. But one thing I’d never done was an Ubuntu distribution upgrade. In the past, whenever I wanted to move up to a never version of Ubuntu, I would burn a disc and install the distribution from the disc, entirely wiping out what had previously been on the hard drive. On a whim today I thought I would attempt a direct distribution upgrade. Could my machine manage it with its dodgy battery, high pitched whine, and travel stickers from Nepal?

Yes, it can!

It was touch and go. I started up the machine and went quickly to the software updater. I already knew that Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS was available for upgrade, so I immediately clicked on the button for distribution upgrade. Then I ignored all the warnings about how long it might take (it said it might take hours) and that I should definitely not attempt it without being plugged into the mains (but hey, what could I do? It’s not risk taking when it is your only option.) I then stepped back and crossed my fingers.

Sure, crossing your fingers is probably not best practice for techies, but then it’s long been clear that I’m no techie. Initially the laptop claimed to have almost 2 hours of battery life left, and the upgrade was estimating that it would take over 3 hours to download and install everything. But what are numbers, eh? Soon enough the download speed picked up (I had plugged directly in to my router to optimize my throughput). Of course the battery time took a dive as well. After about 30 minutes the laptop was claiming to have just over an hour’s worth of battery left, but the upgrade was by then estimating that it needed only slightly less than an hour more.

I should have filmed the sequence because over the next hour the battery jumped down and then up and likewise the estimated upgrade time went up and down. It was like a high (or slow) speed action thriller. In the end, the upgrade completed with less than five minutes to spare on the battery.

Of course the battery life vs upgrade time drama is not really all that significant. Much more important is the fact that the upgrade appears to have gone through perfectly. Even my crappy wireless card continued to work post upgrade. Well done, Ubuntu!

I don’t know how many more months this laptop has in it. But till the end of its days it will happily stay an Ubuntu machine.

I bought a Dell Inspiron 1520 back in 2007 when my wife and I moved back to Canada. For much of its life it has been a dual boot machine – Windows Vista and whatever the latest version of Ubuntu was. It’s not really an old machine, but it has been around the world. Literally. From here to Kathmandu and many stops in between. Throughout these four years I have paid for virus protection (for Windows). But I don’t use the laptop so much these days, since I’m not on the road now, and because I’ve now got an iMac as my base desktop. And even when I do use the laptop, I tend to use it in Linux. So, with my most recent year’s licence for virus protection (for Windows) running out, and with a new version of my favourite Linux distribution released (Ubuntu 11.10), I finally made the move and turned this laptop into a single boot machine.

That’s no big deal for many Linux users, I’m sure. For me, though, there was always a barrier to such a move. Perhaps if my first Linux machine had not also been a dual-boot machine (with Windows), I might not have developed this psychological dependency on that other operating system. This, despite the fact that I almost never used it. But I knew that I could, if I needed to, right?

It is no surprise to learn that there is a cost to most software decisions. For me the cost of yet another year’s licence for virus protection (for Windows) when it wasn’t really being used was just too much.

And now here I am with a lovely “new” laptop. So far it seems to do everything I’ve always expected my Linux installs to do. (The fact that I can listen to the cricket on Test Match Special whilst typing this post is all the evidence I need.) It has been a long time coming, but I can now finally say that I have a Linux machine. Full stop.