Conservancy Blog

Displaying posts by Deb Nicholson

Friends of Outreachy, UX and the GPL

by Deb Nicholson on December 13, 2019

David Turner and Danielle Sucher are just two of the excellent people who are supporting our annual fundraiser by putting up matching funds. This year's match is our biggest yet! We've been challenged to match a total of $113,093. Donations help us support and protect free software alternatives and grow a bold software freedom movement where everyone is welcome.

David Turner has been working on free software for nearly 20 years. He's been a GPL Compliance Engineer at the Free Software Foundation, worked on Open Trip Planner (a Conservancy member project) and is a Senior Software Engineer at Two Sigma. Danielle Sucher is a polyglot who primarily works with OCaml these days. They are partners who live together in New York City, along with the best cats.

Picture is available under a CC.BY license and was taken by Danielle Sucher.

David and Danielle were gracious enough to participate in an interview -- thanks!

1. What do you think is the most exciting thing that happened in free software over the past year?

David: As a user of free software, I think the renewed focus on UX has been valuable. Two examples: Git has added some new subcommands like "switch" and "restore" and that put the emphasis on the task the user is trying to accomplish rather than on what happens internally. And Blender has a whole new UI, just in time for me to start playing around with it.

2. How does software freedom fit in with the other causes you support?

I think the notion that it's possible to cooperate with folks with whom one might not have very much in common seems increasingly rare these days. I think of freedom of speech as a sort of treaty: I won't try to censor you, and you won't try to censor me. Free software is very much the same: you're doing your thing with the software, and I'm doing mine. Because freedom of speech is threatened, we support the ACLU.

3. Danielle, you went from being a lawyer to being a developer when most people in this field go the other way if they're going to switch! What was the most unexpected thing about that change?

Danielle: I thought I would like front-end stuff because I love art, but in fact, I hate it and am very happy doing backend development and distributed systems.

4. Do you ever dream of writing a software license? Why or why not?

David: I do sometimes dream of writing a constitution. But I don't really feel the need to write a license, because I think the GPL does a fine job.

5. What do you hope to see Conservancy accomplish in the next five years?

We continue to enjoy seeing new folks joining the movement through Outreachy. And I'm sure that whatever else you do will be great too.

Participate in the match and have your donation doubled through the generosity of folks like David and Danielle, today!

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Tags: Outreachy

Coming to Your Town? We'd Love to See You!

by Deb Nicholson on October 11, 2019

Conservancy staff are on the road this month. Check and see if we're coming to your town!

WineConf in Toronto, Canada

Karen will keynote WineConf, please say hello if you're there.

All Things Open in Raleigh, NC

Deb will be at All Things Open on October 14th and 15th. We're having a Supporters event on Tuesday night at 8pm, at Humble Pie in downtown Raleigh.

LISA in Portland, OR

Conservancy has booth 12 at the Portland Marriott Downtown Waterfront, during LISA -- taking place October 28 and 29. We could use your help between noon and 7pm on Monday the 28th and from 10am to 2pm on Tuesday the 29th.

If you can help with the booth at LISA please email us -- we'd really appreciate it!

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Tags: Wine, events

Conservancy News Round-up August

by Deb Nicholson on September 11, 2019

Updates from many of our projects' departing summer interns, updates on what our contractors have been up to and pictures from recent events.

Karen Sandler on the Abstractions stage with a screen that says: I have a big heart

Picture is available under a CC.BY license and was taken by Sarah Withee

Karen Sandler on the Abstractions stage with a screen that says: We may be collecting data about you and transmitting it to third parties... Would you like this life-saving device?

Picture is available under a CC.BY licenses and was taken by Zach Harris

Neal Stephenson, GNOME's Executive Director wearing his Conservancy t-shirt and sitting outside

Picture is available under a CC.BY.SA license and was taken by Deb Nicholson

Various people sitting around at an outdoor cafe

Picture is available under a CC.BY.SA license and was taken by Deb Nicholson

Recent Videos and Pictures

Our Executive Director, Karen Sandler, is going to be part of an upcoming French documentary about the global fight for software freedom. The English version will be titled "Hackers For The Commons" and you can already check out the trailer (along with a fundraiser for the English version), right here. There are a few upcoming screenings scheduled of the French version.

Check out these two pictures from Karen's Abstractions talk last month! (top)

Deb held a "Supporters & Friends" event during GUADEC. Check out these nice pictures of folks talking about software freedom in Thessaloniki! (below)

Upcoming talks from staff

Bradley is keynoting the 8th edition of Kernel Recipes in Paris on September 26 & 27. Conservancy is also this year's featured non-profit beneficiary. Registration opened this week.

Karen will be keynoting State of the Map in Heidelberg in September, on Saturday, September 21st.

Deb is speaking about "Selenium and Conservancy" at Selenium Conf this October.

Deb is also co-presenting with Nithya Ruff (the Head of Comcast’s Open Source Program Office) at All Things Open on "Companies and Communities: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?"

Interns are wrapping up for the summer

Read this lovely wrap up from Niharika. titled: Last post!
Plus this parting blog post from Priscillah, about her work on mUzima mobile.
From Buildbot, Rajdeep Bharati reports on his Google Summer of Code work on MacPorts.
Asami finishes his work adding QEMU/AArch64 Support to Coreboot
A big omnibus report on Godot's eight GSoC students.

Also, applications are currently being accepted for the next round! Outreachy internships are remote, paid ($5,500 stipend), and last three months. Initial applications for the Dec 2019 to Mar 2020 internships are due on Sep 24 at 4pm UTC. Please help us reach folks who could benefit from an internship by sharing with your networks!

Conservancy contractors have been working hard

Lots happening at Reproducible Builds, including more work on diffoscope, new variations in their testing framework.

Over at phpMyAdmin, in addition to the intern that was sponsored directly through Conservancy, work focused on the request router and time with the Google Summer of Code interns who both wrapped up and reported on their work this summer, here and here.

Clojurists Together started work on four new projects. You can read about them all here.

Loads of fresh code!

Member Projects: Fall is for learning

North Bay Python has tickets on sale now!
Selenium Conf London also has tickets on sale now!

Thanks to Chris Lamby for promoting Conservancy with complimentary beer mats at the recent Debian BBQ!

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Tags: conservancy, Google Summer of Code, conferences, Outreachy

Conservancy News Round-up July

by Deb Nicholson on August 7, 2019

Plenty of code and free software discussion! This month we again have news from interns who are writing free software, plus lots of upcoming events with staff and several more put on by our member projects.

Recent Videos

Our Director of Community Operations, Deb Nicholson went to DebConf last month to connect with supporters and folks from member projects.

Deb also gave a talk on Free Software/Utopia.

Upcoming talks from staff

Our Executive Director, Karen Sandler, will be keynoting Abstractions on August 21-23 in Pittsburgh, PA.

Deb will keynote GUADEC at the end of the month in Thessaloniki, Greece. She’ll be talking about free software and utopia. While there, she’ll be holding a local Supporters meet-up later on Monday night at Elefantas at 6pm and sticking around for the open days to SpinachCon with GNOME projects on Tuesday.

Our Distinguished Technologist, Bradley M. Kuhn, is keynoting the 8th edition of Kernel Recipes in Paris on September 26 & 27. Conservancy is this year’s featured non-profit beneficiary. Registration opened this week.

Karen is also keynoting State of the Map in Heidelberg on Saturday, Septemebr 21st.

Outreachy: Interns are past the halfway point

Shraddhaag’s internship is with Fedora Happiness packets which includes working with a lot of new tech.
Nikki Sharpley is working on testing at Mozilla.
Priscillah has learned that tests and documentation take lots of time to do well, through her work on mUzima.
Carolina Jiménez Gómez wonders What’s after Outreachy?

GSoC students working on Conservancy projects this summer

jwgarber describes flashing a chip with Coreboot.
Four different Godot projects have news on their work this summer.

Code releases

Member Projects: Summer Work and Fall Plans

Clojurists Together is funding four projects over the next three months.
GodotCon and a Godot Sprint are planned in October. Come meet the Godot community in Poland this fall!
The North Bay Python CFP closes very soon, on August 9th!
What Reproducible Builds got up to in July.
Tickets are available now for SeleniumConf in London this October.
Teaching Open Source held a sprint to develop FOSS courses.