Atlanta Linux Fest 2009 and Crowdsourcing

A couple months ago, upon reading the tentative speaker schedule for Atlanta Linux Fest 2009, I was surprised at the Canonical omnipresence. There was personal trepidation regarding how such a presence may be interpreted, and sure enough, I wasn't alone. Certainly in my talk, I kept the vast majority of the physical speech focused on current FOSS and mentioned Ubuntu only in the confines of what we've done poorly and how we're resolving those shortcomings.

For instance, one of the most difficult things to "get right" in a default (clean) install is configuring various audio settings. A great analogous post by Ed Felten really made me reconsider the command line as the preferable interface for troubleshooting.

Many parts of Ubuntu are contributed by volunteers (thank you!) like myself. There seems to be a considerable amount of bad blood in the Linux community regarding what Canonical "doesn't do". We all need to do a better job of thanking our fellow volunteers and remembering that corporate overlords do not drive everything.

That said, I enjoyed the brief moments spent at this year's ALF (had to leave early to return to work), particularly the thoughtfulness of all the organizers (please thank them!) and attendees.

See you this weekend at Ohio LinuxFest!