Lazy Reading for 2011/03/27

I’ve found enough good links I’m able to schedule this post ahead of time.  Yay!

Summer of Code 2011: We’re in!

We made it into Google Summer of Code for a 4th year!  (yay!)

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/org/show/google/gsoc2011/dragonflybsd

If you want to mentor, apply here:

http://www.google-melange.com/gsoc/mentor/request/google/gsoc2011/dragonflybsd

(You will need to create a login if you don’t have one.)  I’m assuming the applicants are going to be people I know with a direct history with DragonFly; otherwise be prepared to give a good history.  Signing up to mentor does not mean you must mentor if there aren’t any projects that interest you; it does mean you need to review applications and provide feedback for students March 28th – April 8th.

If you want to be a student with DragonFly:

Check the projects page for ideas:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/developer/gsocprojectspage/

… or come up with your own.

Get your application together by March 28th.  Start talking about it on the mailing list or IRC or however as soon as you can; there’s a direct relationship between the amount of preparation we see beforehand and people getting accepted.

Here’s the timeline:

http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/timeline

Copied from my email to users@/kernel@, cause it has everything you need.

 

 

BSDCan 2011 announced

Dan Langille has announced the BSDCan 2011 schedule/list of events in several places.  There’s some fun stuff in there, like discussion of Sendmail from the guy who (originally) wrote it.  There’s a talk about Roff (it’s that old?)from Kristaps Dzonsons, whose mdocml also happens to just have been committed by Sascha Wilder to DragonFly’s contrib.

NYCBSDCon 2010 was crazy fun.  I hope I can make it to BSDCan…

BSD Needs Books, the video

Michael Lucas’s “BSD Needs Books” talk from NYCBSDCon 2010 is online, in video form.  I got to see this as it happened, and it was a excellent talk.  Mr. Lucas is able to put some reasonable arguments together as to the why of things, since he’s been published multiple times, plus his sense of humor keeps it moving.

Hey, wait – there’s more from the conference on BSD TV!  How did I miss this?  Hopefully even more will show up; the facility was perfect for recording.

Lazy Reading: down memory lane

Entertainment, this week.  There’s several items here that will be more entertaining if you’re over 25.  Or maybe 35.  Get clicking!

Lazy Reading: code repos, events, open source stuff

Stuff!

  • I find this erasure of the separation between remote code repository and local code editor very interesting.   It may upset more traditional people.
  • If you haven’t been watching the BSD Events Twitter stream, Dru Lavigne’s written a nice summary of the next few months, including BSD Exam dates/locations.
  • The XFCE 4.8 release announcement hinted at some problems with BSD.  It’s apparently because udev, a Linux-only product, is the only consistent way to access various items, so XFCE’s power and volume controls use it.  There’s no udev on BSD, so we get left out.  I’d normally end this with a call for a compatibility layer, but udev is the latest in a series of jumps from framework to framework in Linux, so I don’t know if it would actually do any good.  (Thanks, sjg on #dragonflybsd for the link)
  • The Economist has an article on open-source that does a hype-free job of describing the state of open source today.  It points out two trends that I don’t think are covered enough: the large amount of open-source work funded by companies, and the hidden costs of training and integration.  One downside of the “software is free, training costs money” model for open source is that it creates an economic incentive for byzantine configurations and difficult setups.  That idea could use some exploration, but I don’t think many people want to, precisely because it’s negative.  The article doesn’t go that far, but they should.