Kids on Computers folks have been busy, especially Hermes and Thomas and others in Oaxaca. In the past few months we’ve set up labs in a school for kids with disabilities and a boarding school for girls – both in small towns in Oaxaca, Mexico. The lab for the kids with disabilities will also help […]
Kids on Computers sets up more labs in schools Read More »
Can forking a free software project enable you to regain your internal motivation to work on a project? My current theory is that if you work on free software, then you get paid to work on it and then you get laid off, that you would work on a different project. Because the first one
Forking an open source project: regaining internal motivation Read More »
“How do I raise enough money to be able to spend all my time working on my favorite free software project?” is a question I hear often. I have a few ideas and I’m very interested in hearing others as I think the world would be a better place if we all could afford to
How do I raise enough money to work on my project full time? Read More »
Planning a hackfest is not an easy process. You need an: organizer – someone willing to put some time into making the whole thing happen topic – what are you going to be hacking on, what do you hope to accomplish attendees – this is usually a particular group of people that work on a
Putting all the Hackfest pieces together Read More »
I watched How to Train Your Dragon yesterday and I really enjoyed it. I plan on reading the How to Train Your Dragon book series. I started thinking of all the dragon books I’ve read … and realized that while I know a few really good series, I know fewer than I thought. (I must
Books to read if you liked How to Train Your Dragon Read More »
Here’s a writing tip from a reader: do not make things too easy for your protagonist. I’ve been reading fiction books by new authors. They often make the protagonist struggle throughout the whole book and then suddenly give them super powers. Or sometimes they sporadically give them superpowers throughout the book. Or have magical creatures
Fiction writing tip #1: Do not make things too easy for your protagonist Read More »
Recently I met someone who insisted on describing every department in his organization, all the acronyms and what they stood for. By the time he got around to describing how this whole thing related to me, he had lost my interest. (And I tried hard to hang in there!) He had given me too many
Words are important – just not always the way you think Read More »
Typically free software projects have lots of very smart developers. Large projects like GNOME might also be lucky enough to have lots of great translators, designers, artists and writers working on the project. However, marketing is not typically an area free software projects have worked much on. GNOME is changing that. Over the past couple
How does a free software project do marketing? Read More »
I’ve recently watched a few people struggle to get things done in online projects. I’ve written and spoken on 12 tips for getting things done in the open source community but now I see that people also need to learn how to work with mailing lists and virtual teams. Skills you should master if you
10 skills to master to get things done online Read More »
When it comes to web applications, I think free and open source software fans are settling for “free” instead of looking for the freedom they would get from open source. Here are some free applications that I wish had open source software equivalents. I am not unhappy with these applications. I just wish I had
10 free apps I wish were open source Read More »