Linux Collaboration Summit Video freely available!

The Linux Foundation recently decided to release free video coverage of this year's Linux Collaboration Summit, in response to increased interest in this Summit from the community and developers as a whole.

The full list of videos is available here. Sweet!

Here are some of the videos that you can find there:

Jim Zemlin - The State of the Linux Union:

Keynote-- How to Prevent Community (a cautionary tale):

Keynote -- Chris DiBona, Google Open Source Program Manager:

Why your life may depend on your code:

Keynote-- MeeGo:

Winners of "We're Linux" video contest announced.

The Linux Foundation has recently announced the winners of its "We're Linux" video contest.

The winners are below.

First Place:

Second Place:

Third Place:

The videos are pretty good, but I'm not sure if any of them singlehandedly would convince someone to use Linux. Any opinions?

Google Summer of Code 2010 Mentor Organizations announced!

Google has again announced the mentor organizations that will be participating in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC) 2010.

For those that are not familiar with the Google Summer of Code program, here is Google's explanation from the Summer of Code 2010 website:

About Google Summer of Code

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers student developers stipends to write code for various open source software projects. We have worked with several open source, free software, and technology-related groups to identify and fund several projects over a three month period. Since its inception in 2005, the program has brought together nearly 3,400 students and more than more than 3,000 mentors & co-mentors from nearly 100 countries worldwide, all for the love of code. Through Google Summer of Code, accepted student applicants are paired with a mentor or mentors from the participating projects, thus gaining exposure to real-world software development scenarios and the opportunity for employment in areas related to their academic pursuits. In turn, the participating projects are able to more easily identify and bring in new developers. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

The complete list of mentor organizations for GSoC 2010 is available here, but I'd like to highlight some of the organizations:

• The Battle for Wesnoth - A free, turn based strategy game, open to customization and portable to a wide variety of operating systems (Win, Mac, Linux, Maemo, Amiga, Solaris, RISC OS, OS/2, etc.).
• beagleboard.org - group dedicated to developing powerful and open embedded systems. Makers of the Beagle Board.
• CoreBoot- A project aimed at replacing proprietary BIOS systems with open, modifiable ones.
• Drupal - Open source web content management. The framework that runs whitehouse.gov, linux.com, linuxjournal.com, and other large websites.
• Etherboot - Organization responsible for gPXE, an open source network bootloader
• Rockbox - An open source firmware for mp3 players, developed from scratch.
• The Linux Foundation - Organization that employs Linus Torvalds. It promotes, protects, and standardizes the use of Linux worldwide.

It is wonderful to see so many great projects will be receiving support through Google's Summer of Code this year. I look forward to the innovation that results from this influx of talented coders to high quality open source projects.

Linux.com -- a community site for a community OS.

If you're reading this blog, you've probably heard of Linux before. What you may not be aware of is how the Linux Foundation and linux.com figure into the equation.

The Linux Foundation is a non-profit consortium decicated to fostering the growth of Linux. It was founded in 2007 in a merger of the Open Source Development Labs (OSDL) and the Free Standards Group (FSG). More about the Linux Foundation can be found in the organization's about page. An item of note about the Linux Foundation is that they employ Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux.

In May of 2009, the Linux Foundation also relaunched linux.com as a community site for Linux users, having acquired it from Sourceforge Inc./Geeknet in early 2009. Their newly launched site is a site that I have enjoyed quite a bit since its launch. It contains a wide variety of Linux related news, as well as also containing a rather large community portion. Linux.com allows you to create your own groups, either pre-existing (such as NEWLUG) or brand new, (such as Pandora Console Fans). This offers Linux geeks an opportunity to gather and communicate in a central location.

For new users of Linux, there are quite a few positive aspects to linux.com. The site features a variety of newbie friendly resources, most of which are located in the Free Linux Support section of the website, such as tutorials, new user guides, answers, and documentation. It is nice to have all of this information in an easily accessible place.

I'm a member. Here is my user tag:


If you like linux.com as well, feel free to friend me, participate in groups, and comment on my community blog posts!