I’d like to see more bad English on mailing lists, and fewer apologies from non-native speakers about their poor English skills. There’s nothing to be ashamed of in trying to communicate in a second, third, or fourth language and not being an expert. And it’d be a shame if non-native speakers let fear or embarrassment hold them back from making a vital contribution or asking a question that could help them succeed in contributing or using FLOSS tools. ...

I was surprised, to say the least, this morning to read Simon Phipps’ tweet that “ Richard Stallman and others declare GPL inadequate to protect software freedom.” Lack of caffeine, maybe? Nope. Stallman and Knowledge Ecology International really have sent a letter to the European Commission saying that Oracle shouldn’t be permitted to acquire MySQL in its merger with Sun. Why? Because Oracle would then be the only party able to release MySQL under licenses that are not the GPL, and because Oracle could prevent MySQL from forking under a license other than GPLv2. ...

If you’re hoping to get sponsorship funds for your event, it’s better to ask early than to ask often. And even better to ask professionally… For larger companies ( i.e., the ones that actually do have a fair amount of cash for sponsorships) it is vitally important to ask early about sponsorships. Especially for events that are not yet established. Annual events like LinuxTag fall more easily into budget planning because you can establish a baseline for funding those events and plan year to year whether it’s worth attending and how much it actually costs. In addition to sponsorship, companies have to factor in travel, shipping, materials, etc. — the costs of participating in a conference are not limited to the funds that are put in for sponsorship. ...

If this blog was a child, family services would have taken it away by now… Sorry for the blog neglect, life’s been a whirlwind of activity for the last month or so. For those of you who don’t know already — I switched jobs at the beginning of September. I’m now working as the editor-in-chief of Linux Magazine (the original, accept-no-substitutes Linux Magazine, by the way), which is an awesome gig. However, with “awesome” comes a lot of work and a lot of getting up to speed on doing things the print way. After years of doing the online publishing thing, print is a whole new world. (” Word count? What’s that? What do you mean we have to fill space / cut word count? How, exactly, can a paragraph have an orphan?”) ...

One of the more humorous ad series today is the Geico “caveman” commercials, featuring a caveman complaining about the stereotype of something being “so easy a caveman could do it.” Since we don’t have to worry about offending cavemen (or cavewomen), companies can safely poke humor at that demographic group and not worry about alienating anyone. However, you might want to think twice about saying “it’s so easy your mom can do it.” ...

Vim’s flexibility and countless features are a major asset for experienced users, but a challenge for newbies. If you’ve always wanted to try Vim but were put off by your first attempts, you can start off gradually by getting to know Vim’s GUI and easy mode. This article is a primer for those who haven’t used Vim much and want to wade in gradually. If you’re new to Vim and vi-like editors, the Vim GUI is probably the best way to get started. You can perform the operations you’re familiar with using Vim’s keybindings, but when you get stuck, you can use the mouse and the gVim menus to get things done quickly and efficiently. ...

Here’s another writing pet peeve — when folks confuse peak (or peek), and pique. Here’s an example of proper usage: I live in Denver, Colorado, so I have a lovely view of the mountain peaks when I look to the West, but my interest is piqued when I find a good book about world history. Instead, what I see most commonly is “this really peaked my interest,” or “I thought this would peek your interest.” ...

After coming back from Linux.conf.au last week (I stayed in Sydney an extra week for vacation) I noticed that the WordPress folks had released 2.1 while I was busy getting sunburned. I’ve upgraded my blog to 2.1 and all went well. Definitely worth a look if you’re the blogging type. I’ve got a review up on Linux.com. This release includes a couple of nice improvements — nothing Earth-shattering, but some nice stuff, nonetheless. ...

Before Vim 7.0 was released last May, I usually had six or seven xterms or Konsole windows open, each with a single Vim session in which I was editing a single file. This takes up a lot of screen space, and isn’t very efficient. With Vim 7.0, users now have the option of using tabs within Vim. With Vim’s tab features you can consolidate all your sessions into one window and move between files more easily.

Mutt just happens to be one of the mail clients that sucks less. I’d been getting tired of Sylpheed lately, so I decided to try out several text mail clients and see how they fit my email volume. Part of the fruits of my labor is this tutorial on configuring Mutt’s behavior. If you’ve ever thought about running Mutt, but were put off by the amount of configuration required and the paucity of howto material online, the tutorial just might help. ...