A few days ago, I caught a special on Geeks.com for a refurbished Dell Studio 1747 with the Core i7-720QM CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 500GB 7,200 RPM hard drive, and 17-inch display at 1,600×900 resolution. It’s priced around $1,000 new as configured, and the Geeks price was less than $900. I was looking for a good laptop that had enough horsepower, storage, and screen space that it’d be equally useful in the home office and on the road and it looked like the Dell fit the bill.

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At OSCON 2010, a group of industry experts attempted to answer that question during a series of lightning talks titled “Web Services: How Can Open Source Software Compete?” Stephen O’Grady from Redmonk, Even Prodromou of StatusNet, Aaron Williamson of the Software Freedom Law Center, Mark Hinkle of Zenoss, and several others weighed in on the health of open source.?

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Many businesses want the functionality of Microsoft SharePoint without the limitations and lock-in that come with building on a Microsoft platform. While SharePoint 2010 is undeniably a strong product, it has hefty system requirements and its use limits an organization’s IT choices in other areas. The only way to get full functionality out of SharePoint 2010 is by using Windows Server 2008 and Microsoft Office 2010 on the desktop – upgrades your organization may not be ready to deploy.

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• Assume you have less than 150 words to make your case. Many sites that aggregate content from RSS like to pick a short excerpt from the beginning of the article. Make the first 150 count.
• Your lede should give the reader some idea what the topic of the piece is. By name. Don’t stammer about for 200 words without getting the topic of the piece into the lede. If you’re going to write about Eclipse, the lede shouldn’t be 300 words on the history of Java IDEs without using the word “Eclipse” even once.
• Don’t assume the reader is checking out the lede on the site it lives on, or that the reader is a follower of your blog/column/whatever. Always assume that the reader is completely new to your publication and byline. They don’t care what you wrote yesterday, so an introduction like “following my article yesterday,” is pure fail.
• It’s great to tell the reader what to expect from a piece, without actually using the words “this article will.” Boring. Tell the reader how a tutorial will benefit them, don’t say “this article will tell you…” — you might as well sing them a lullaby instead.
• It’s OK not to disclose the outcome of a story from the lede, but you should at least identify the players and give a general clue as to what the story is about.
• There’s an age-old rule in newsrooms (the Kann Rule) that you shouldn’t start a lede with “I” — this is mainly in reference to journalism where reporters are discouraged from putting themselves in the story. It’s still a good rule, and you should think hard about whether a reader cares deeply about your experience.

I could go on, and on… again, not saying that my ledes are the best in the world, but there’s great, good, passable, and horrible. I’ve been seeing a lot more “horrible” lately. At some point I might put up some examples when I can take the time to look for examples outside the immediate range of publications I read where it’s likely to offend the writer who crafted the sucky lede. Just to mollify anyone reading this post — you may think this post is about your writing, it’s not. Well, not any one person, anyway. This is something that’s been building for a few weeks.

Oh, and for non-journalists and writers in the audience, it really is “lede” though “lead” is acceptable — but I prefer lede.

Ohio LinuxFest Speakers Announced and Registration Open

Columbus, OHIO — August 9, 2010 — The Ohio LinuxFest is proud to announce that registration is now open for Ohio LinuxFest. The schedule has also been announced, and this year will feature a fantastic line-up of talks for new and experienced Linux users. The 2010 Ohio LinuxFest takes place in Columbus, Ohio at the Greater Columbus Convention Center from September 10 through September 12.

As always, the main schedule takes place on Saturday. The schedule kicks off with a keynote from GNOME Foundation Executive Director Stormy Peters, followed by five tracks of talks from open source and Linux experts like Tarus Balog, Amber Graner, Catherine Devlin, Dru Lavigne, Paul Frields, and Jon ‘maddog’ Hall. This year’s OLF also features a special medical track for those interested in the use of free and open source software in medicine.

The final keynote will be a real treat for Linux and open source enthusiasts interested in free media. Christopher “Monty” Montgomery of Xiph.org will be talking about next generation open source media formats.

Once again the Ohio LinuxFest is free to all, but space is limited. Sign up today at http://ohiolinux.org/register.html. If you want to support OLF, the organizers have made a supporter package available for $65 that includes lunch and an OLF t-shirt. For those who want to attend Friday’s OLFU sessions, a professional pass is also available for $350.

Hotel rooms are also limited. The Ohio LinuxFest organizers have made arrangements with Drury Inn for a low rate available on a first-come, first-served basis. Note that rooms usually sell out, so book early! More info is available at http://ohiolinux.org/hotel.html.

About Ohio LinuxFest

The Ohio LinuxFest is a grassroots conference for the open source community that started in 2003 as an inter-LUG meeting and has grown steadily since to become the midwest’s largest open source event. It’s an annual event for Linux and open source enthusiasts to gather, share information, and socialize.

At the O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON), held in July in Portland, Oregon, a four-person panel moderated by Rob Lanphier of the Wikimedia Foundation weighed in on financial incentives in open source. Donald Smith of the Eclipse Foundation, Leslie Hawthorn (formerly of Google), independent developer Todd Crowe, and Stormy Peters of the GNOME Foundation explored some of the models for providing financial incentives and how companies and communities might work together.

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If your organization has standardized on Microsoft Exchange, switching may be a bit tricky (but can be done). But if your organization hasn’t started down that path, it’s a good habit to avoid. The good news is you’ll find several robust Exchange alternatives for Linux.

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Spicebird has been in the works for some time, but the 0.8 release is finally ready for a wider audience. To see if it’s ready for everyday use, I downloaded Spicebird 0.8 a week ago and started testing.

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So, why is GNOME 3.0 slipping? That was the first question I had for GNOME’s Executive Director and GNOME developer Vincent Untz when they contacted me earlier this week. The simple answer is that the GNOME Release Team evaluated the components that make up GNOME 3.0 and decided that they’re not ready to go gold. GNOME 3.0 is more ambitious than the average GNOME release.

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