OStatic

If you happened to be perusing the recent commits to the upcoming 2.6.29 Linux kernel release (and why wouldn't you be?) you probably noticed Linus Torvalds' stamp of approval that cleared Tux to go on walkabout this release cycle, and welcomed Tuz as Linux's substitute mascot.

Tuz is a Tasmanian Devil cleverly disguised as a penguin. Assurances abound that Tux is on sabbatical, and the screeching, meat-eating endangered marsupial from Australia hasn't devoured him. How did Tuz get from the forests of Tasmania to the Linux kernel tree? It started at a conference...

Documentation is a vital part of any open source project but it's often overlooked because it's not very glamorous. It's difficult to find the time to keep up with a project's constant changes and find people to come up with skillfully-written material. While bigger projects like OpenOffice and Eclipse can afford to hire documentation specialists, in most cases it's a job that's left to the FOSS community at large.

Documentation is a topic that's touched on often at large open source conferences but now it's getting a turn in the spotlight. Registration is now open for the Writing Open Source Conference slated for June 12-14, 2009 in Owen Sound, Canada.

This week, the Gran Canaria Desktop Summit began accepting proposals for its upcoming event. The event, aimed at encouraging interaction between KDE's Akademy and GNOME's GUADEC developer conference attendees, gives prospective speakers the opportunity to bring their passion to a more diverse audience.

At the Southern California Linux Expo (SCaLE) late last month, Ubuntu community manager, Jono Bacon, spoke to attendees about community, and why it means so much to open source projects. Ryan Paul at Ars Technica put together a concise, informative overview of Bacon's SCaLE talk.

Bacon says that community -- and building a sense of belonging -- are crucial to growing and maintaining any open source project. No doubt this is due to the heavy element of voluntary participation in the open source world, but the belonging concept is one that any project or company -- open or closed, with paid employees or non-compensated volunteers (or any mix of the two) -- would benefit from applying to its management techniques. It is, without argument, one of open source's strongest traits.