[sf-lug] SF out-reach for FOSS

Tue Feb 12 12:30:23 PST 2008

Thank you very much for this update Christian! 

From: sf-lug-bounces at linuxmafia.com [mailto:sf-lug-bounces at linuxmafia.com]
On Behalf Of Christian Einfeldt
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:04 PM
To: Linux userGroup
Subject: [sf-lug] SF out-reach for FOSS

hi,

I thought I would update this about our progress in showing FOSS to new
users.  The school continues to hum forward with Linux for students, but the
teachers will remain with Windows for a long time, because the school
partnered with several other Bay Area schools to get tech support, and sadly
they chose a company that focuses on Windows.  Plus, the principal really
hates computers, and does not want to learn anything new, nor does she want
her teachers to learn anything new.  The teachers all work 12 hour days to
begin with, and so learning new computer technology is not something that
the principal has room in her life for.  Sad but true.  But most of the
student facing technology is now FOSS.

[Charles N Wyble] 

Wonderful news. Perhaps some of the other schools could also be switched
over to FOSS and a tech support co op created? Is there any way that the
teachers work load could be lessened with software? Ideally free software. J

We have recently contacted a girls' after-school empowerment program located
in the SOMA district, and we have delivered a PClinuxOS box to them.  I know
that Asheesh and maybe a few others don't like PClos, but I chose it because
it is really simple to use and it looks like Microsoft Windows and it is
pretty to look at.  I am not married to PClos, though, of course, and any
distro that they like is okay with me.  This box is one of the newer
computers that has come from James Burgett of the ACCRC.org, and so thanks
to James for that!  This girls' program is evaluating whether they like FOSS
or not, and maybe they will reject it, who knows.  We have recently
introduced one of our local FOSS experts, Toya, a woman, to them in the
hopes that there will be chemistry there between Toya and this group.

[Charles N Wyble] 

Excellent. I am happy to see progress on this front as well. PC Linux OS is
just fine for many many many uses. J I have used it briefly and like it. I
happen to run Ubuntu on my systems. As you say any Linux is good! J 

There is a senior center in the Western Addition district that has expressed
an interest in evaluating FOSS boxes.  The manager of that group is also
involved in two other non-profits might be able to use FOSS.  I am going to
meet with this manager again on Thursday.  I have told her that our upstream
supplier does not support religious organizations per se, and that he would
need to approve any placements that sounded as if they were maybe religious.
(The upstream supplier to whom I am referring is James Burgett, of course).

[Charles N Wyble] 

This concerns me a bit. Any discrimination against a particular group could
reflect very badly on SF LUG and the FOSS community in general. I don't know
James, or his views. Certainly he is providing the boxes for free (I
presume) and as such can choose where they go. However I would be very
careful about restricting where the boxes go, and the reasons for denying
access. 

My motivation for doing this outreach at this time is that, as you all know,
Andrew Fife announced at the SVLUG meeting last week that there will be a
large number of boxes that will be installed with Ubuntu GNU Linux on March
1.  Andrew and James are coordinating that activity, and so I will defer to
Andrew as to the details of that event.  Since we will have a lot of boxes
coming down the pipe, I wanted to offer our upstream supplier (James) with
several selections of placements for those computers in addition to the
school.

[Charles N Wyble] 

I believe this is the install fest that Untangle is handling yes? I learned
about it on Saturday at SCALE. I certainly plan on attending the event. 

Also, I have been meeting with Kari Gray, who works with a contractor for
the City & County of San Francisco (CCSF) to do two additional community
outreach programs.  One will be in late April, and the other will be on
March 1, 2008.  It is important that we not get those two events confused.
Andrew and James are coordinating a massive installfest on March 1, 2008.
There will be several locations that Andrew will announce.  One of those
locations will be the KIPP public middle school at Geary and Scott.  We hope
to install between 60 and 100 boxes there on March 1.  The April event will
be a general tech day to get people in the Mission District interested in
technology, both proprietary and FOSS technology.  I will post more info to
this list when I find out about it, presumably by February 28 or so.

[Charles N Wyble] 

That is very cool. Having successful rollouts that you can reference at the
April event, will certainly bolster the case for FOSS adoption. 

We will probably only need about 5 people to be at SAF on the day of the
event, but we will need many more than that for the massive ACCRC.org
installfest.  So please start planning now if you are interested in helping
out on March 1.  

[Charles N Wyble] 

Excellent idea. I plan on brining a couple machines with a full 32 and 64
bit package mirror (well pretty much all the packages one would need anyway
such as GNOME/KDE/Ubuntu Studio). They can also be used as boot/provisioning
servers, which will vastly speed up installation. I can also bring a couple
24 port cisco switches which can be used for wired network access, as that
will most likely be needed. 

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