Social norms govern whether you are willing to help a friend move or cook dinner for your family. Market norms govern what you are willing to do for how much money. In an experiment to show how social norms vary from market norms, Dan Ariely created a computer task where volunteers had to drag circles […]
Social Norms vs Market Norms Read More »
501(c) organizations are US non profit organizations. 501(c) is actually the name of the IRS tax code that defines non profits. There are actually 28 kinds of 501(c)‘s. I’ll focus here on just two: 501(c) (3) – the GNOME Foundation is a 501(c) (3) 501(c) (6) – the Linux Foundation is a 501(c) (6) They
501(c): (3) versus (6) Read More »
The GNOME Foundation is a nonprofit organization, a 501(c)(3), and is funded by donations from individuals and companies. So as executive director of the GNOME Foundation I figured I should learn a bit more about fund raising. While there are a lot of books about fund raising, there’s very little information out there about fund
Fundraising for a technical nonprofit Read More »
I gave a talk at LinuxWorld called "Avoiding Open Source Lawsuits: Five Steps to Effective Open Source Governance in the Enterprise." I suppose it wasn’t the wisest title since my point was to dispell FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) not create FUD. (I borrowed the title (and a few slides) from an OpenLogic webinar, although
Afraid you’ll get sued for using open source software? Think again. Read More »
I didn’t see Danese Cooper‘s talk "Why Whinging Doesn’t Work" but the title has really been bothering me. I almost titled this post "stop telling me to stop whining!" I should start by saying I have never complained about my career in technology. (And I’m sure Danese wasn’t thinking about me personally when she wrote
Imagine twice as many developers Read More »
I had a good conversation with Walter Bender, former president of One Laptop per Child (OLPC) and the founder of Sugar Labs. Sugar is the software that comes on OLPCs. It also comes in some of the Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu and Fedora and can run on most laptops. Walter is interested in how
Sugar (the software on OLPC) and my conversation with Walter Bender Read More »
So earlier I blogged that I had seven bosses. (It was mostly in reaction to the fact that I felt like I was getting way too much attention!) But I realized this morning that I really feel like I got seven mentors. What a way to start out a new job – with not one
John Mark had a great post 10 Survival Tips for the Modern Wageslave. I thought I’d follow up with another piece of career advice that I never got: every aspect of a job offer is negotiable. I actually got advice from my university career office to NOT negotiate a job offer. Luckily I got other
20 things you can negotiate in a job offer Read More »
One of the things I’m passionate about is encouraging women in technology. With that in mind, I’m going to talk about something that’s never discussed in mixed company: crying at work. Or rather, trying desperately not to cry at work. I’ll tell you how I try not to cry at work and I’ll tell you
Learning not to cry in today’s work place Read More »
Here are some of the misunderstandings around open source software that I hear every day. Feel free to add your own! The most important thing is whether you modify the code or not. I keep hearing from people, “we’re ok because we didn’t modify it.” Or they create a policy that doesn’t allow anyone to
7 of the most common open source myths Read More »