8 Interns Selected for Gnome Outreach Program for Women

Nov 05, 2010 GMT

  I first wrote about the Gnome Outreach Program for Women back in September and in the December issue of Linux Pro Magazine and Linux Magazine. Today the Gnome Project announced the eight new interns, their projects, and their mentors. Best wishes to the new interns: Tiffany Antopolski, Nanci de Brito Bonfim, Luciana Fujii Pontello, Eugenia Gabrielova, Laura Elisa Lucas Alday, Hellyna Ng, Natalia Andrea Ruz Leiva, and Chandni Verma. The Gnome Project is also sponsoring Tiffany Antopolski and Eugenia Gabrielova to attend GNOME's Boston Summit November 6-8. You can find out more about the new interns on Marina'z Blog.

Growing Participation By Women in Ubuntu Community

Nov 04, 2010 GMT

As the Ubuntu community has grown, the percentage of women participating in that community continues to increase. On her blog, Elizabeth Krumbach discusses the increase in participation and says, "It’s exciting to watch Ubuntu become a more inclusive community and to see the passion and support of new people joining from existing community members overcome (or negate) many of the barriers that may have been problems in the past." She also explains some proactive steps that have been taken since 2006 to grow participation by women from an estimated 2.4 percent to 5 percent.Perhaps you're thinking, "Well that's all fine and good, but gimme some $ for participating." If...

Whitehouse.gov Wins OSFA Award

Nov 04, 2010 GMT

Melanie Chernoff, Public Policy Manager for Red Hat, posted a story on opensource.com about the recent Open Source for America awards handed out at the Government Open Source Conference. Chernoff draws special attention to the White House's commitment to open source and says, "But, of course, the migration of whitehouse.gov to an open source platform (Drupal) was one of the biggest open source stories in the federal government over the past year, so it's probably not a surprise that it won the award for Outstanding Government Deployment." Check out her post for a link to the acceptance video and her thoughts on contributions our...

Android Takes 44% of U.S. Mobile Market

Nov 01, 2010 GMT

On Poynter.org, Regina McCombs writes, "We've known this was coming, but new research announced today from Canalys makes it official: Android is now the largest selling smart phone operating system in the U.S., with nearly 44 percent of the market, and it's making inroads on Nokia around the world." McCombs recommends that readers also check out Sarah Perez's ReadWriteWeb post, Android Becomes Top Mobile Operating System in U.S., No. 2 Worldwide. Perez writes, "For Apple, there is some good news - it has now jumped ahead of Blackberry maker RIM with a 26.2% market share in the U.S. compared with RIM's 24.2%. Worldwide, Apple reached 17% share, beating RIM's 15%."

Acquia raises US$ 8.5 million; Interview with Dries Buytaert

Nov 01, 2010 GMT

Sarah Kessler, features writer at Mashable, is having a particularly productive Monday. She just posted an interview with Drupal founder and Acquia co-founder Dries Buytaert. In the interview, Buytaert says, "One of the things I’ve learned from Drupal is that commercial interests are a really good thing. But they have to be managed properly." Earlier today Kessler also wrote about the US$ 8.5 million round of funding Acquia just announced.

Women & Mozilla Survey Results

Oct 29, 2010 GMT

WoMoz internal survey results and conclusions are now available. The blog post says that the main purpose of the survey was to "... detect areas of improvement related to gender issues in Mozilla and FLOSS communities," but also notes that finding women who are active contributors to Mozilla was a challenge. Only 18 of the 30 women contacted responded to the survey. From these responses, the survey team concluded that many of the women have experience with the Ubuntu project, so reaching out to Ubuntu Women might help attract more contributors. Some of the women who are contributing to Mozilla are doing so as a result of being contacted from somebody already involved with the...

Graner Fire Fund

Oct 28, 2010 GMT

My friend and colleague, Amber Graner, lost her home to a fire this week. Luckily, the family wasn't in the house at the time and no one was injured. Pete and Amber were at UDS, the kids were with relatives, and the dog was rescued from the fire. Even if you have home-owner's insurance, the immediate expenses add up as you scramble to get some necessities, including clothing, toiletries, food, and new housing. The Graner family is well-known in the open source community, and many of their colleagues and friends have expressed a desire to help them get back on their feet. I created a page for anyone who would like to chip in to help the Graner Family get some clothes and other...