Canonical launched today an U.S.-based on-line shop for Ubuntu-branded merchandise and software. With a new fulfillment house in St. Louis, Missouri, shipments are faster and less expensive for Ubuntu users and enthusiasts in the U.S.

The U.S. Ubuntu Shop (shop.ubuntu.com) carries a wide range of Ubuntu-branded items, from best sellers like organic cotton t-shirts to CDs and DVDs of the latest Ubuntu software, and will soon include Kubuntu merchandise for the first time.

Canonical's international shop, on-line since August 2007, also carries commercial software, support and training.

Adapting the technology to your community

If you are writing software intended for other developers, you probably don’t have much to worry about—they are likely to enjoy messing with the tools as much as you do. But if your software targets other users—engineers, scientists, mechanics, or homemakers, for example—then the people who know the most about how well your package is working may need a more accommodating and less cluttered environment.

Don’t fall into the trap of predicting your future community needs based only on your present community’s skills and temperament. You may very well have a small group of people who excel at using the tools you have, but that’s a selection effect! You may have those people only because those are the only people who will contribute under the present circumstances.

The “edge” for free software over proprietary software comes from volunteer effort. You should spend just as much effort on designing a comfortable and inviting project as you would on any consumer establishment: you may not be trying to convince customers to part with cash for your product, but you are asking volunteers to part with their time for your project (which is not easier).

Non-commercial licenses

A concept in competition with the idea of copyleft is the “non-commercial” license, which attempts to restrict the use of a work for “commercial” purposes. This is a somewhat compelling argument for aesthetic works, since for aesthetic works it is much harder to develop the kind of “service and support” models that have worked so well for free software.

Many people (wrongly) think of free software products as being “non-commercial” because you can’t (or can’t profitably) sell individual copies of the software. However, there are many other ways of using software “commercially” (such as providing support for it, using it as a promotional, delivering advertising with it, and so on). A “non-commercial” clause forbids them all.

In the proprietary production world, what matters about a copyright is who owns it. In the free production world, however, who owns a copyright is relatively unimportant. What matters is what license it is offered under. There is a very simple rule of thumb about the best license to use: use a “free, copyleft license”. Such licenses provide the ideal balance of freedom versus limitations, and projects that use them are overwhelmingly more successful than ones that don’t (both those with more free “non-copyleft” licenses and those with more restrictive “non-free” licenses).

Some time ago I was required to adapt a bespoke website application (which I had originally written) so it not only supported multiple languages but also multiple character sets. The website, MakingContact.org, is a on-line community for families with disabled children run by the charity Contact a Family. It required “support” for four languages in addition the English it was currently in: Somali, Arabic, Farsi and Simplified Chinese. Yes, I know the latter is not actually a language but for these purposes the cap fitted.

Question:

Hi,
I have installed Ubuntu 8.10, uninstall software that I don't need and install new packages like OpenOffice 3.0 etc. I have install/uninstall more then 50 applications. So I polished Ubuntu to my needs.
Is there any simple way of saving this "my new distribution" to CD and install it on another PC at my friends? I just don't like to install/uninstall all 50+ applications over again at my friends - it would be just nice if "my distro" could be installed/restored on any other computer. It would be nice to have some kind of silent install, that I could just give CD to my friend and say: "Put CD in CD-drive and don't touch anything until install/restore finishes."

Source: http://dot.kde.org/1225455418/

News emerged recently that Qt Software (formerly Trolltech) were working on their first IDE for Qt, code named Project Greenhouse. Today saw the release of the first technical preview under the name Qt Creator. The initial release is binary only, and under the terms of the Qt preview license, but the final release will be released with source code under a GPL compatible license. The initial release is available for Linux, Mac OS X and MS Windows. Read on for a users review.

Question:

Hi all,
I'm currently using Transmission Bittorrent Client on Ubuntu 8.04. I'm happy with it, but I was wondering if anyone knows of a Bittorrent client that can be set to start at a specific time. For example, if I want to begin seeding / leeching at 2:00am, and have it stop at 10:00am, I'd like to preset to do this.

Posted October 25th, 2008 by ernest.park

http://web.nvd.nist.gov/view/vuln/detail?vulnId=CVE-2008-0166

http://cwe.mitre.org/data/definitions/310.html

In the Debian example, the open source community trusted that someone else would look and find the problem. Users believed that the power of community review would reduce the risk of using the software.