Leaving Edubuntu

[David Van Assche]

I was actually looking for real items you are tackling within our community
(Edubuntu) right now! Outside that, yes your list of good deeds is
impressive and wonderful (Most of the so called leadership can probably
write a good couple pages on their good deeds too...) We all know the story
of how you couldn't get in contact with the Canonical guys, and how this has
made you feel unappreciated.  But I think there's been enough repetition of
that story for now, surely we can find more interesting things to talk about
than the failure of communication during a meeting at one of the UDSes...
(spilled milk comes to mind...)

Anyway, this doesnt' really have much to do with giving perspective... it
has to do with getting things done... all the perspective in the world is
not gonna make any difference if it isnt followed by coding, documentation,
bug squashing or the hundreds of other tasks open to volunteers...

kind regards,
David Van Assche
www.nubae.com

On Mon, Oct 5, 2009 at 2:08 PM, R. Scott Belford <scott at hosef.org> wrote:

> 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
>



-- 

Stephen Leacock<http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/s/stephen_leacock.html>
- "I detest life-insurance agents: they always argue that I shall some
day
die, which is not so."
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/edubuntu-users/attachments/20091005/26dda8b5/attachment-0001.htm