Issue45

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WORK IN PROGRESS

Welcome to the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, Issue ## for the week June 10th - June 16th, 2007. In this issue we cover ...

UWN Translations

In This Issue

General Community News

Mark responds on Microsoft patents

With recent rumours that Ubuntu and Canonical might be signing a deal with Microsoft, similar to the patent deal that Novell, Xandros, Linspire and others have signed, was debunked by Mark this week in his blog. Mark stated "We have declined to discuss any agreement with Microsoft under the threat of unspecified patent infringements.". Speaking further about the OpenXML spec, he stated "have no confidence in Microsoft’s OpenXML specification to deliver a vibrant, competitive and healthy market of multiple implementations". However, Mark did not rule out any future participation with Microsoft, provided they "adopt a position of constructive engagement with the free software community". You can read the full blog post at http://www.markshuttleworth.com/archives/127.

Gutsy translation now open

Matthew Revell announced that the Gutsy translations are now open, much earlier in the release cycle this time due to Launchpad improvements allowing translations for a new release to be started without restarting Launchpad. You can read more at https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-marketing/2007-June/002059.html.

New Developers forum on ubuntuforums.org

We have a new sub-forum on UF: the Dev Link Forum within the current Development (Gutsy Gibbon) forum. The rationale is to allow developers to request feedback from the forum userbase without all the noise.

Developers can start threads, and regular members are welcome to comment and give feed-back.

Please see the dev sub-forums here: http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=265 and the "gnash 0.8.0 + easy-codec-install in gutsy" thread asac has started yesterday there: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2853762.

You can subscribe to the ubuntuforums.org via RSS at: http://ubuntuforums.org/cv_rss_feeds.php

Keep it up!

Interview of the Week

This week we interview Matthew East, one of the recently appointed Community Council members.

UWN reporter: Since when have you been member of the Ubuntu community?

Matthew East: I tried out Ubuntu towards the end of 2004 but didn't begin to use it as my main system immediately because I was too hooked on gentoo. In those days I was a student so had plenty of time to play around with my system and research/fix problems that arose. Eventually I began to get busier and needed to spend less time maintaining my computers, so I moved to Ubuntu. I became involved in the Ubuntu community quite soon after beginning to use it regularly in around March 2005 as I was drawn into helping out with the newly born Italian community. Quickly I became involved in the documentation team as well and became a member in May 2005.

UWN: What do you think the next year will look like for Ubuntu?

ME: The next year should be quite exciting for Ubuntu. First of all, in terms of adoption Ubuntu is beginning to flourish and get into the mainstream news more and more often. Secondly, in terms of quality I feel that Ubuntu 7.04 was a big step forward and the next two release cycles will build on that nicely towards a long term release, which I hope will be something really special.

UWN: What do you think can be improved in the Ubuntu community?

ME: Two main things at the moment. First, intra-community communication - now that the community is very large, teams need to work harder to communicate with each other and to make everyone in the community aware of what work they are doing and how others can help. The UWN is absolutely essential in helping this happen. Secondly, the relationship between Canonical and the community needs some work. Often, each does not know enough as it needs to about what the other is doing. It's a difficult balance to get right because there are a number of private aspects to Canonical's work, but I hope that we will be able to work to get that balance right over the coming months. The fact that there are now a few Community Council members (including myself) who do not work at Canonical and are coming from a purely community perspective should help with this.

UWN: What are you most active in the community?

ME: I am heavily involved in the documentation team in terms of team management and administration. I'm the contact for the Italian local team and am involved in high level issues in that team. I'm an editor of the Ubuntu website and a Fridge editor, although I don't do much work for the Fridge at the moment.

LoCo News

This Week's Quiz

Thanks to the UbuntuTrivia Team, we had another exciting quiz this week.

Quizmaster

Champion

Sponsor

Prize

Upcoming for next week:

Sponsor

Prize

More info: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuTrivia

To participate in the quiz, join #ubuntu-trivia on irc.freenode.net on Friday and/or Saturday UTC-nights - the topic will usually tell you when the next quiz is scheduled.

For more info on prizes, donating, quizzes and giving quizzes see the above link.

New in Gutsy Gibbon

Launchpad News

Gutsy translations are open!

If you’re an Ubuntu translator, you can get to work on Ubuntu Gutsy straight away! Simply visit: https://translations.launchpad.net/ubuntu/gutsy/+translations

Thanks to some great work from the Launchpad Translations team, Ubuntu translations will now open much earlier in the development cycle. The Launchpad Translations team can now importa new Ubuntu release translation strings without taking Launchpad offline. This means that translations for future Ubuntu releases will open as soon as the Ubuntu developer team is ready.

For more details, please read Matthew Revell's email: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/launchpad-users/2007-June/001574.html and the fridge annoucement: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/node/1010

In The Press

  • Marie Boran, of Independent.ie, provides a biography of Mark Shuttleworth and his work with Ubuntu. Talking about Ubuntu, Mark says: “Of all the things that I have taken on, this is the most challenging, and the thing that should potentially bring about the best changes in open source movement.” While many think Linux is complicated, "“Linux is something that can bring extraordinary potential to the lives of people who don’t think of themselves as experts.” Marie points out though Mark is wealthy and has "achieved a great amount for the open source community, he is modest enough to know his place in the grand scheme of things." Read more at http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/rocket-man-701637.html

  • Mathew Newton, at PC World, reviews Ubuntu 7.04. PC World has ranked Ubuntu among their list of Best Products of the Year for the last two years. Ubuntu 7.04 is described as "a few major new features, and distinguishes itself mainly with its continued focus on usability, especially for newcomers to Linux." The review mentions the Live CD, partitioning and migration of files from Windows, and the wealth of applications installed. Mathew notes that many have predicted the advent of Linux on the desktop, "Feisty Fawn is exactly the sort of polished, friendly release that is necessary to make the dream a reality." Read more at http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,132799-c,linux/article.html

  • Computerworld interviews Mark Shuttleworth and discusses how he became interested in Linux and cultural tidal waves. Mark was introduced to Slackware at the university and was amazed at the wealth of available tools. Linux was pivotal in the success of Thawte. Similar to tidal waves, the Internet and FOSS are sweeping through society and making changes to everything. Mark points out that the concept of collaboration has a stigma, but the Internet and FOSS is proving that shared work "can become more valuable than something that is closely held, as long as it is both shared and contributed to by everybody who is sharing in it." Read more at http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=linux_and_unix&articleId=293960&taxonomyId=122&intsrc=kc_feat

http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2144791,00.asp

http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/osrc/article.php/3682576

http://polishlinux.org/linux/ubuntu/ubuntu-704-feisty-fawn-cool-fresh-and-unstable/

http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3682596

http://lwn.net/Articles/236142/

http://inside.123-reg.co.uk/archives/why-ubuntu-linux/

In The Blogosphere

http://www.seopher.com/articles/why_dell_should_offer_more_than_

http://www.ericlee.info/2007/06/ubuntu_and_the_unions.html

http://www.insidesocal.com/click/2007/06/a_ubuntu_dapper_day.html

http://googlesummerofcode.blogspot.com/2007/06/spreading-open-source-in-africa.html

http://allaboutubuntu.wordpress.com/2007/06/13/paging-michael-dell-wheres-my-order/

http://techiqmag.com/2007/06/13/dell-ubuntu-linux-pcs-delayed/

Meetings and Events

Sunday, June 17, 2007

Georgia US LoCo meeting

Catalan LoCo meeting

Tuesday, June 19, 2007

Technical Board Meeting

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Edubuntu Meeting

Thursday, June 21, 2007

Mozilla Team Meeting

Ubuntu Development Team Meeting

  • Start: 20:00
  • End: 22:00
  • Location: #ubuntu-meeting

Friday, June 22, 2007

Forums Council Meeting

Saturday, June 23, 2007

Ubuntu US LoCo Team Meeting

Community Spotlight

Updates and security for 6.06, 6.10, and 7.04

Security Updates

Ubuntu 6.06 LTS Updates

Ubuntu 6.10 Updates

Ubuntu 7.04 Updates

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/HelpingWithBugs

Check out the bug statistics: http://people.ubuntu-in.org/~carthik/bugstats/

Infamous Bugs

UWN #: A sneak peek

Archives and RSS Feed

You can always find older Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issues at: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter

You can subscribe to the Ubuntu Weekly News via RSS at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed

Additional Ubuntu News

As always you can find more news and announcements at:

and

Conclusion

Thank you for reading the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter.

See you next week!

Credits

The Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter is brought to you by:

  • Corey Burger
  • Nick Ali
  • Isabelle Duchatelle

RSS

You can subscribe to the UWN feed at: http://fridge.ubuntu.com/uwn/feed

Feedback

If you would like to submit an idea or story you think is worth appearing on the UWN, please send them to ubuntu-marketing-submissions@lists.ubuntu.com. This document is maintained by the Ubuntu Marketing Team. Please feel free to contact us regarding any concerns or suggestions by either sending an email to ubuntu-marketing@lists.ubuntu.com or by using any of the other methods on the Ubuntu Marketing Team Contact Information Page (https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MarketingTeam). If you'd like to contribute to a future issue of the Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter, please feel free to edit the appropriate wiki page. If you have any technical support questions, please send then ubuntu-users@lists.ubuntu.com.