Sunday, December 8, 2013

Love and maintenance needed: Kaffeine

Opportunity ahead! Rex Dieter recently posted this link into the #kde channel: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.kaffeine.devel/1255. Here we find that the Kaffeine maintainer Christoph Pfister has found it necessary to step back from maintaining Kaffeine. He says to be qualified if you should know a bit about Qt and KDE and preferably have some Dvb / Atsc equipment at hand.

This probably describes a lot of the folks reading this post. Do you have the time and desire to love and polish Kaffeine? Please join the Kaffeine-devel mail list and step forward. https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/kaffeine-devel

If you know of any other projects needing more love and care, please write the Community Working Group, Community-wg@kde.org. Another good list to connect to is the new general Community list: KDE-Community@kde.org.

Good cheer to all this holiday season!

Thursday, December 5, 2013

Nelson Mandela is gone

I heard this afternoon on the radio that Nelson Mandela has died. Since it was NPR (National Public Radio), I soon heard a BBC documentary on Mandela, including his teaching the interviewer about ubuntu. That bit really pained me; he's gone, and his gentle idealistic flame is no longer lighting the world.

Hear him explain it on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vt72ORXUlao

But we have that flame too. Ubuntu the community and Linux distribution family takes inspiration from the concept of ubuntu. To me, the world encapsulates all of what is good in the open, free, software movement, and the free culture movement too. Mandela saw himself as human, no matter how inhumanly he was treated. He knew that bitterness and hatred on his part would engender bitterness and hatred in his beloved South Africa, and he wanted instead love, understanding, forgiveness, and democracy. I hope to continue to see his ideals in the Ubuntu community, and in my Kubuntu corner in particular.

I've often thought of Mandela as the embodiment of the saying be the change you want to see. Rest in peace, Madiba.