Okay now that F9 is out the door, and before I've voted out of office, its time to take another stab at a discussion about building and strengthening the abilities of role based SIGs inside the Fedora projects moving forward.

I've come to picture the work the Fedora project needs to do as structured in terms of two types of communities (I have to credit Greg for some of the refinement on the image from the last round of discussion about this a few months back). One such type of community I would name "Subprojects". A subproject would be a group of peers who are doing roughly the same things, and could be considered a guild for a particular type of skilled labor. The other type of community I would name "Special Interest Groups" (SIGS), and each SIG would encompass all roles from users to developers that are needed to sustain the growth of software usage and development for a particular purpose.

Common tasks or experience define the membership of Subproject
Common interests but different tasks and experience define the membership of a role-based SIG.

SIG roles would map directly to subprojects. The idea being that people from different SIGS who are doing the same sort of tasks can establish best practices through discussion in the subprojects associated with that role. For example we'd have a packaging subproject, and each SIG should have members filling the package maintainer role who were also participating in the packaging subproject to learn and refine best practices. Same goes for documentors, triagers and so-on.

But its not a one-to-one mapping. There would be needed Subprojects which don't necessarily map to a common SIG role, but they would still exist to get specific work done or to establish a peer group of experts. I would hold up our infrastructure,translation and marketing teams as an example of this type of Subproject construct, a Resource Subproject.

They key idea is that for the role-based SIGs idea I am putting forward, we turn the SIG concept deliberately into a construct that encourages direct user participation, so that SIGs can more easily recruit for their own expanding workforce needs their own by connecting with users who are already interested in and using the software in the scope of the SIG. Experienced, veteren SIG members take on the role of mentoring and sponsoring new recruits.. and the SIG becomes a self-sustaining community with the goal of growing the capabilities of open software for a particular area of interest.

It is my very fervent belief that we need to build a recruitment and retention program inside of the Fedora Project that encourages enthusiastic users to become active contributors, and I think the role-based SIG construct has the best potential of doing that.. we just have to shake-up and tighten-up what we mean we we talk about a SIG. And that is exactly what my role-based approach to SIG building is meant to do.

Okay so I think that was close enough to a thousand words. Here's the updated cartoon diagram of what I mean when I'm talking about role-based SIGs:



-jef

Man I really wish someone would have told me Fedora 9 was coming out today.....

Because I'm an idiot the maps for the bittorrent activity didn't go online until after the release was out. So no movie of the release lighting up the torrent server this time around. But maps are up now!

You might be most interested in watching the bittorrent seeder activity here
and the mirrorlist activity here

Considering the effort made this time around to produce the multi-cdrom sets, I really hope people are making an effort to download and use them. And I really really hope that such an effort is not represented in the meager torrent seeder numbers currently displayed in the maps.

We need to find a way to get metrics from our mirrors and jidgo setup so we can get a comprehensive view of the relative view of how popular the different images are so we can make appropriate infrastructure allocations.

-jef

For the sake of argument... let's say you happen to have access to one of the Pioneer DRM-7000 cdrom/dvd jukeboxes and you are interested in using it to archive data, scientific data with reliably parsable header information describing the contents of each file. For the sake of argument.. lets just say that those files look a lot like ogg vorbis files. They aren't but I think everyone can imagine a 720 dvd scsi auto-changer full of music.

How would you go about indexing the contents of all the files on all the cds/dvds in the jukebox so that you could efficiently locate which disks had the files you wanted and then could direct the auto-changer apperatus to load those disks so the files could be retrieved.

I understand stand how to do the mechanism of the actually auto-changer operation. mtx supports this beastie, from an operations point of view. But... operating it is only part of the problem. I need to be able to build an index that maps file header information to physical cd in the library. is there any framework out there that exists for this sort of thing? Or am I basically going to end up writing some python glue around a sqlite db that I can then query via a homebuilt interface? I'm looking to leverage as much pre-existing code as I can.

And yes... i realize that in the final analysis just setting up a 2 terabyte raid of sata disks is probably more cost effective... but where's the fun in that. This thing makes some kickass noises when its moving its robotic arm around changing media...and if I can change out some of the paneling with see-through plexiglass and pimp it out with internal lighting...it will be super hot.

-jef

So here's a question....
Is there space under the Fedora project to introduce consumable content for Fedora users... made by Fedora users... using Fedora tools?

Off the top of my head here are a couple of things I'd like to see created for consumption for the Fedora user community, by the Fedora user community, using only the tools being put together by the Fedora development community:

A webcomic. It doesn't even have to be funny or even reasonably good. But I'd love to see a Fedora branded webcomic illustrated using only tools in the Fedora distribution (inkscape and gimp come to mind), with screencasts of the illustration process on occasion. As a Board member, I'd like to be able to tap an artist/group with a specific vision to produce a series of webcomics for a set period of time, and then at the end of that period, select a different proposal and do it again. Is anyone other their interested in being the official cartoonist of the Fedora community for a release?

A Fedora songfight. We have enough tools inside the distro right now to do a range of music production and spit out flac and vorbis files. Can we make a recurring Fedora songfight happen? And build a feed of the results that our client music applications can consume? We can't really police that all submissions are made using just Fedora tools, but we could probably find a way to seed the submission pool with individuals who make a firm commitment to dogfood Fedora distributed tools. Anyone out there dabble with music production and is up to the challenge of dogfooding Fedora?

I think both of these are great way to dogfood our own creative tools, and generate some dynamic content for our userbase to enjoy.

But as a project are we ready to try to put this together? Can we make F10 or even F11 the "open media" release and have vetted content channels in place that inspires people to create their own open media which they can submit for inclusion into the content channel, so on and so on? Obviously something like a Fedora songfight would require a web presence and hosting space and some organization. Do we have the resources and the manpower to attempt it inside the project umbrella?

-jef

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that my xo took so long to get to me because it was specially delivered to me by sleddog from the east coast, as a sort of arctic homage to the Olympic torch ceremonies.

But I have it now.

I wish I had it a week earlier so I could have shown it off to all the teachers at the end of the year curling tournament. Oh well, I'm gonna have to have a party or something this summer and invite all of them over and then do a bait and switch and make then listen to be lecture about it.

-jef

Its time to find out.

Starting this evening and running through Sunday morning... I will be competing in the Fairbanks 73th Annual Auto Service International Bonspiel.

If I do my job right, I'll lose the first 2 games, so that I'll be able to play more games and end up having a chance to win the C or D bracket championship. Yes, I have a better chance of winning.. by losing. It's a pretty deep concept.


But more importantly, the webcams for the club are back in operation, and there should be people playing pretty much any time of the day friday and saturday. No matter what timezone you are in, you might get lucky enough to catch me play. There's no telling when I'll be playing or if I be on the sheet with the camera.

I'll be filming dv footage as well when I'm not playing.. to make a promotional video for the club to send to the rockstar curling producers.

Between now and next year, I'm gonna try to play with a flumotion video server and see if I can stream a better feed than the webcam setup the club has now.

-jef

what would it look like if we thought of independent open source developers as artists, with a full range of support opportunities from 1-month grants to multi-year residencies backed by a large assortment of overlapping groups at the local, state and national levels.

Who wants to help fund the operating costs of an open developers commune in the Alaskan wilderness? Where a group of open source developers live in relative isolation as a group for several months and concentrate on creating?

-jef

So league curling season is over when the dust settled Friday night, we ended up with 3rd place for the Friday night league.

So I earned a 1st place t-shirt for the Monday night league and a 3rd place t-shirt for Friday night.

And I have to admit, getting the 3rd place shirt felt like a much bigger accomplishment. The Friday night league was far more competitive.

Tbough I think my Monday night team could probably kick my Friday night's team butt in a best of 7 series. Only problem is I'd need a clone of myself to put that theory to the test.

-jef

I sort of agree with what Chris has said about Miro... and I sort of completely and utterly disagree at the same time.

We have a real problem in how we apply different definitions of "open" and "free" as it comes to content and code. It's a really painful problem...it keeps me up at night. I personally wouldn't call most of the content Chris describes as "open" nor would I call it "free"... I'd call it "consumable". I'm certainly not allowed to redistribute or reuse the bulk of that material to generate my own content. I doubt that I can legally take wired science video and make use of it beyond simple viewing.
The PBS website's default rules for hosted content certainly doesn't guarantee that sort of "freedom" to be as a user of that content: http://www.pbs.org/aboutsite/aboutsite_rules.html

It's the same sort of problem that's lingering over Creative Commons, concerning the confusion over what CC licensed really means. People keep running afoul of the restrictions on use for some CC material because those restrictions restrict freedoms that we've come to expect for "open" and "free" code. The differences between code and content will continue to be confusing, especially if our prominent proponents who straddle both areas of digital works don't make it a point to use terminology consistently.

That being said, it's great that Miro is a platform for getting access to "consumable" content. Its not so great that for the vast majority of that content... you have to be a "consumer" of encumbered software too. In a very fundamental way Miro has punted the hard problem in the space... encumbered video playback. The technology that Miro represents is built assuming that Miro users have legal access to the necessary technology to render the video that Miro organizes. For users of a commercial operating system, that assumption is easily met.. but it's not an assumption based on "openness" or "freeness" as we have come to apply them to software. So again, i have issues with using these words in association with the technology.

But Chris is right, Miro as an organization should be applauded for taking direct action and solving the problem they care about. Regardless of whether or not I think Chris should parse his words more careful concerning "open" and "free", Miro as a group is out there doing work and making things marginally better in a space they care about.

So the question is.. for those of us who care about truly "free" and "open" content, through its entire lifespan from creation to consumption, and then re-use.... what direct actions can we take to make things marginally better?

For those of us in the Fedora project specifically, what are we doing to make "open" content generation feasible? What are we doing to make consumption of "open" content feasible? And just as importantly who among us has the talent and the ability to create compelling and truely "open" video content that can be viewed in applications like Miro?

-jef

My Monday night curling team WON the Monday night fun league, with a 10 and 2 record. And more importantly I've got the t-shirt to prove it! It's probably the most expensive 'free' t-shirt I've ever paid for if you include the club membership dues, and the ice fees, and the curling shoes.

My Friday night team isn't doing so hot. Friday night is far more competitive, I don't think we have a chance to even place 3rd. But I do plan to wear my trophy shirt Friday night at the last game of the season, just to lord over my Friday night team a little bit.

Just one more event left in the curling season, the International Bonspiel which will starting about a week and 1/2. Its an around the clock tournament/party with like 50+ curling teams. You play games at 3 in the morning, with cases and cases of beer stacked up next to the ice to keep it cold. It's difficult to tell if its a beer festival or a curling event.

After that curling is done till the fall. I'm Still working on trying to get rockstar curling to hold tryouts up here, assuming they are still working towards a production.

-jef