Leaving Edubuntu

[R. Scott Belford]

On Sun, Oct 4, 2009 at 8:56 PM, David Van Assche <dvanassche at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Anyway, people like Scott (-not- sbalneaves) would do well to involve
> themselves in 'fixing' the problem, rather than spewing destructive
> criticism at every possible turn of events. All I've ever seen from your
> emails is reasons as to why the people who really are working on things (the
> leadership you call them, though non would consider themselves that) are
> doing it wrong. If that's the case, why don't YOU show us how its done?

With the greatest of respect, please allow me to clarify why I feel
that I have invested enough by now to have a valid, experienced, and
urgent perspective.  I am an advocate for users.  I am one who sews
seeds in my community in hopes of inspiring tomorrow's engineers and
software developers.  I am not a software developer, but I am a
community developer.  I am the one, and HOSEF is the charity, that has
sent pre-installed Edubuntu computers to Western Samoa, American
Samoa, San Manuel, Manila, and Isabela in the Philippines, orphans and
women rescued from the sex trade in Cambodia, and given thousands of
gnu/linux computers to individuals and schools here in Hawaii.

When you are a foster child in Hawaii, or you have aged out of the
system, you have possibly come across me indirectly when seeking a
computer or a laptop.  You got one that was tested and pre-installed
with Debian Sarge, then it was Mandrake, then it became Edubuntu.  If
you have been lucky enough to go through my Computer Guts class, then
you are likely a foster child who learned how to build your own
computer, install software, and type a one page essay, 12-point font,
no skipping lines, on what you learned.  Chances are you were a 10-12
year old girl, and you are now only a few years away from having these
gifts blossom for you.  For about 5 years, twice a week, if you wanted
hands-on help with open source software, you wanted to donate a
computer, or you wanted to see what this 'linux thing' was all about,
you found me waiting on you at a local school or business.

If you are transitionally homeless, then you possibly got exposed to
the K12LTSP at the Next Step homeless shelter.  If you are homeless
and on our beaches, as many are, then perhaps you have access to the
Edubuntu (now Debian) computers, with a printer and scanner and
covered by a free but filtered wifi cloud, that I manage in 4 City and
County Park recreation centers.  If you owe the State community
service time, then you can serve our 501(c)(3) mission to promote and
sustain FOSS by helping to set up our Free, donated, Gnu Linux
Edutainment Learning centers.  You can help to pick up or to deliver
donations.  Along the way you learn how kind and sharing those of us
who care of FOSS can be.

If you are one of our 300 schools in Hawaii without enough
computers,or without enough knowledge, to bring the enterprise down to
your size, for free, then you have been helped by me and the HOSEF
volunteers.  The school project that gave birth to Fedora, now
K12Linux, is maintained to this day by me for the sole reason of
perpetuating the shining legacy that it should be.   In 2005 Hawaii
became the first K12 school system in the US to offer Linux+
certification to its students, and if you were in school then, you had
access to manuals and training due to the relationships I forged with
Novell and our DOE.  Lately, if you were Microsoft and you thought you
were going to get America's only centralized DOE to use MS Office
Live, then you were blindsided by how well-briefed and connected the
Google Apps Education Team was when they swept in out of nowhere with
a timely proposal.  You see, I am the 'linux guy' or 'that open source
guy' that all of these people turn to for help, for answers, for
support, and more, for free.

If you are Richard Stallman, John Terpstra, Bruce Perens, Jon "maddog"
Hall, Larry Rosen, Allen Gunn, or Aaron Seigo, among others, then I or
someone kind to HOSEF has paid for you to come to Hawaii and join
guests like Andre Hill, CJ Coppersmith, Dave Pickens, Barton George,
Horst Herb, Jim Thompson, our City CIO, Hawaii Legislators, and
others, for our annual conference.  While here you might have joined
me at the Hilton Hawaiian Village where the world's A-List of Telecom
Executives - Boeing, France Telecom, ATT, Verizon, Rogers, China
Telcom, Korean Telcom, Orange, etc., etc., checked email and did their
conference web-browsing on an "e-waste" 30-station thin-client email
garden that I set up and supported for three years as a ubiquity test.
 FOSS passed in flying colors.  I did, and do, all this as a volunteer
service in reciprocity for the great software you help me use for
free.  I am hoping to inspire more creators with, and less users of,
Free and Open Source Software.  If I cannot pick up the developers
torch, then maybe they can.

The projects I am working on now are bigger than any of this other
stuff.  I am disappointed, David, that you would personally pile on
like this without any awareness of or respect for the greater good
that I am working for.  I have admired your work using Opensuse and,
in particular, your indexing and compiling efforts of late.  I am
friend to all, and I am a defender of the newcomer, the newbie, the
person who wants to feel the vibe of Egoboo, and those who wish
someone was here to help.  Oh, and if you look at our website to find
most of this, you won't find it because I hate, no, I HATE, no,
actually, I kind of *HATE* the tedium of doing that kind of stuff and
have long wished for a Bard and a Scribe.

I am not sure if this is "how its done", but it's what I do.  Last
year, in August, during Linuxworld 2008, I addressed my Edubuntu
issues with the most senior Canonical employees available at IBM's
reception at The W.  I set up meetings for Canonical/Ubuntu with the
University of Hawaii's CIO and the City and County of Honolulu's CIO
to catalyze a support-oriented relationship.  Canonical failed to
follow through.  Wherever you are, seriously, go get the CIO of your
State or your Country's leading University, and the CIO of America's
11th largest City, to agree to meet with people from Canonical about
supporting a Desktop rollout only to get blown off.  Do this while
being the volunteer marketing and support department for Edubuntu and
FOSS in general, and do it for about 8 years straight, and you'll
appreciate why I find great offense that a volunteer in Ace came and
left and all I see, again, is the circling of the developer clique.

With Aloha

--scott