My experience with the Fedora Project

I think it was about 2015 when I contact my dear friend tatica to say to her that I wanted to contribute to the Fedora Project. I was using Fedora about 2 years then and I was tired of the way the contributions worked in Ubuntu. I find hard how to make contributions in Ubuntu, almost everything was to organize events and I felt a little bit alone there.

Then, she told me that there was a group called Fedora Ambassadors and although part of their activities was to organize events, there you get to meet a lot of people and learn tons of fun stuff. It was there when I found out how the Fedora Project was organized and the most important lesson to me was that everyone is invited to work in anything.

The Fedora Project works based on trust, that means that people trust when you say you’re going to do something and if you accomplished the task or even if you just try to accomplish the task, show interest in completing it by looking for help, asking then you gain trust. It’s not like that is measured, but it helps a lot when you want to do another task. It can be frightening at the beginning to say “I want to do this”, but there is where finishing tasks, by asking, contacting who can help or just doing things pays off. It’s that trustiness what makes me believe in Fedora as a project.

The people

Fedora is a worldwide community where tons of people work together through several tools like IRC, mailing list, pagure (a git server) and so on. The interesting thing is that no matter where are you from, what’s your occupation, job, religion, political position, race, gender or any preference you can have, you are welcome. People is generally nice and if you ask for help, you will find help.

My history: Freedom and trust

Like I said before, trust is important in Fedora. But in this part I want to talk about how people in the Fedora Project trust in you, just if you show willingness to work. And here is where my real story with Fedora starts:

I was in my first steps wondering where to ask for things and I found the design team. A wonderful and talented team that create wonderful stuff for anyone who ask. But I’m not a designer, so that wasn’t my place even when I really felt welcomed in the team. Looking more I found the Marketing team. At that time the team were 2 people, but one outstanding guy, Justin Flory (from now on jwf), ask me if I can send and email informing the minutes of a meeting. A simple task, but a powerful message, it was my first meeting with the team, and I wasn’t sure how I could help. After that and reading more emails and attending meetings, Marketing became home. At some point in time, jwf ask me to chair the meetings because he was more focused towards CommOps, another team I was involved a little bit, since some stuff where related to Marketing. Maybe 2 weeks later I was totally in charge of the Marketing Team, me, a Sysadmin.

I tried my best to keep the team working, gathering Talking Points and Screenshots of each release. At some point I started to be involved in several teams that where appealing to me, like the Fedora Magazine team, and a new committee was forming. Mindshare was called to solve some problems that seems to be happening around several “non-technical” teams. This basically means teams that are not packaging the distro or maintaining the infrastructure. I was elected to be the representative of Marketing and in other part of the project, Latam Ambassadors where trying to reform the way they worked. Tons of mails, opinions, events and contributions, Latam decided to form a team to have a FAD (Fedora Activity Day) in person to work in the problems but in person. And here is where I felt honoured, I was invited to the FAD and the Fedora Project pay me a travel ticket and accommodation to attend the FAD in Peru. It felt weird, but great. A plane ticket isn’t cheap, and it wasn’t my thing to be travelling to work on an ad-honorem work.

In this travel I met Brian Exelbierd (from now on bex), who was the F-CAIC at that moment. F-CAIC is an enabler position in the Fedora Project, a position paid by Red Hat to ensure that people have what they need to work in stuff in the project. I was involved a little bit with podcasts and I suggested to Brian that it would be awesome to have a Fedora Podcast. He said: “Ok, it sounds great. What do you need to work on that?” and again that feeling, it was weird, it was overwhelming, but I felt honoured as well. The Fedora Project paid for an account on a podcast platform, and after the 2nd episode, they pay for a Microphone. In this part I want to stop to say that the feeling was still there: Matthew Miller (from now on mattdm), who is the Fedora Project Leader, was in a council meeting saying that my work was awesome, and I never felt that I was doing nothing exceptional for the Project, I was running some ideas from the point of view of a hobbyist, nothing to elaborate or professional, like the Design team producing the official Backgrounds and swag and badges, or the FPC discussing the packages that are included in the distribution, or FESCo talking about the engineering parts of the project, I was with my mid-resources laptop with Fedora, and my headset to make interviews to the people I always felt like the “important” people of Fedora.

With the Mindshare committee ready to work and with a new documentation system in place, I was invited to 2 events, one in Spain, a docs’ FAD, to help contributors to write documentation in the new platform and to produce the first set of documents; and another in Italy to the 1st ever in person meeting of the Mindshare Committee. Something that people, users and media don’t understand sometimes is that most of the Fedora Project is voluntary people working for something they believe in. It’s understandable that being sponsored by Red Hat, and they taking the distro as the upstream project of their main product, people tend to think that everyone in the Fedora Project is an employee of Red Hat. But no, and I have a work and a family, and maybe it’s not like I saw it but they make me feel like it was because I wasn’t being able to travel twice to Europe, that the events where put together in the calendar, of course it was cheaper since at least 4 people attending the FAD was going to attend the p2p meeting of Mindshare, but I think that I was the only one that wasn’t able to travel twice. And indeed, both events where paid by the Fedora Project, and the feeling was again there, me, that was just doing some stuff in free time, nothing related to coding or maintaining an application or a website, was receiving funding to attend, not one, but 2 events in Europe, and the events where planned to allow me to be in both!

In the 2nd event I understood something, that is the base of my final message with this post: People is what is important. Bex told me once: “if you have an idea, and you will be continuing contributing, we will want you to work on that idea, no matter how crazy it is, Fedora is a place for innovation, and innovation can happen anywhere: in the market, in a podcast, in a home server.”

Now, I had the idea, again inspired by jwf, of having a Fedora Spin with i3wm. Why? Because it was bothering me that I have to install a full desktop, then install i3wm and remove all the stuff I wasn’t using. And here is the final message of this post: If you have an idea, write it, publish it, ask people about it, take bad and good opinions; you don’t know if someone else can help or even if there are people interested. Once I started to do the bit parts (creating the SIG structure, creating a repo in Pagure, etc) I asked in several of the Fedora mailing list and the amount of people interested was amazing, a lot of people was wishing a Fedora Spin with a WM. I gather some people together, and to be plain honest, they are doing all the work, I’m just testing and voicing my opinion! And my dream will come true when in Fedora 34, a Fedora i3 Spin will be official.

In the Fedora Project, it’s people what matters, and our ideas can became reality if we are wiling to work on them!

FAD Latam 2017: x3mboy’s Event report

Last week ( from 13 until 15 July 2017) I had the honour of attend the FAD Latam 2017 representing Chile, the country where I’m currently living. This FAD (Fedora Activity Day) was organized by Alex Oviedo, an Ambassador from Perú, with the intention of discuss several topics and problems that Latam community is facing. I’m going to divide this in 2 parts:

Organizing the event

At first, Alex come with this idea after a new that affect all Ambassadors in different ways: Council rip out the FUDCon lines from the yearly budget. A lot of emotions were dropped in meetings an emails. Having this out, Alex, as well as others, though that was our (Ambassadors) fault and then he came out with the idea of an activity to work in the internal problems, to cover the community part of our FUDCon.

At first it wasn’t easy, a lot of things needs to be done, a ticket, a properly wiki, also to convince other ambassadors that we need the event, and try to make them choose a representative per country. I try to help Alex as much as I can, but the accomplishment of the FAD is totally on him, that dedicate a lot of time and effort, communicating with the council, fixing the tickets, with FAmSCO, and finally putting 2 bids to choose where to run the event.

Right now, I’m very proud of him, he made something really good, almost without help, sending email. But mainly because he is worried about our Latam Community. Even fighting against time and flight prices. Finally we get the list of attendees:

• Alex Irmel Oviedo Solis from Cusco, Peru
• Tonet Jallo from Puno, Peru
• Itamar Reis Peixoto from Uberlandia, Brasil
• José Reyes from Panama City, Panama
• Adrian Soliard from Cordoba, Argentina
• Brian Exelbierd from Brno, Czech Republic
• Samuel Gutiérrez from Managua, Nicaragua
• And finally me: Eduard Lucena from Santiago de Chile, Chile

It was a hard journey, but we finally made it.

The event

The event was held in the Universidad Global del Cusco, where people was really interested in help a Linux Community in their city. We need to thanks their rector, who give us a warming welcome in a great welcome speech. After that we start by doing a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is a methodology that allow team to identify identifying Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats, cross them and create strategies to improve the work an attack the weaknesses and threats detected, taking advantage of the strengths. We work during the first day we work identifying the 4 points:

Strengths

• Diversity (diversity of technical skills)
• Strong Community
• Initiative
• Availability of tools

Weaknesses

• We don’t offer right solutions to users
• Language barrier
• Cultural differences
• Ignorance of rules
• Lack of presence in Colleges
• Budget isn’t well managed
• Lack of communication

Opportunities

• Red Hat support
• Presence on upstream lines in compatible projects
• Impact generated for Fedora
• College’s support
• Possibility of show Fedora to students from different branches

Threats

• Collaborator’s economic activities
• Microsoft communities and use of the term “Open Source”
• Greater presence of Ubuntu in colleges (users and labs)

We spent a lot of time talking about this topics, and we brainstorm a lot trying to figure it how to attack them. Finally, on the second day, we came with some strategies:

SWOT Analysis

On the second day, we try to discuss about how to attack the events in a better way, to fit the new Fedora Mission Statement (thanks to Brian “bex” Exelbierd) and the Council point of view (again thanks to bex). Attacking in a better way the 4 questions that Council is now asking for funding events, and what these questions means. At this point, we understand what the no FUDCon in the budget means, and how the Council is looking for original ideas, and better and greater ways to people contribute and improve the Fedora Project. We came out with a new process, that will improve our internal communications and how we promote our events, taking advantage of our tools (fedocal and Fedora Magazine):

1. Pre-event
   1. Create wiki event page
   2. Create a ticket
   3. Create event in fedocal
   4. Post in Magazine
2. Post-Event
   1. Make reports
      1. CommBlog
      2. Wiki
   2. Request reimbursement

This will allow us to improve the visibility of the ambassadors work, both to the project and to the public.

On the last day we talk about budget and swag, where bex help us a lot, also Eduardo Echeverría (echevemaster) and Abdel Martinez (potty) join us in this discussion where we understand better how Council is funding the project this year, opening, for example, the door to fund other contributors aside ambassadors, trying to expand the vision of people about the Fedora Project. Talking about Swag, we hit the same wall that is always our great obstacule: Distribution. Even when we could find printing quality in our countries, the problem is that produce little quantities is expensive, also not all providers accepts the payment methods that the project have to pay, and not all contributors can pay and wait for reimbursement. Finally, we came out with a strategy that allow us to move to a central production, this suppose to allow us to save money and move those savings to distribution; and also, taking care about countries that have problems with mail and couriers, to produce swag in their places without worries, because the general case is solved and possibly with savings.

Special thanks to Neville Cross (yn1v), who takes a time to explain us how his community has been working and improving.

Final thoughts

It was a really long journey, with a lot of work, a lot of discussion, sometimes is hard to a group that diverse and with so many different point of views to make agreements and finally came with a solid plan, solid strategies and consolidate a great region work. I want to thank bex, who take the work and the time to come to our region and help us, his help is really appreciated and we hope he can come back soon. We really hope that a lot of people, and hopefully all regions, can use our work and the guidelines to help them improve their work.

The Final User

This is the first entry written in English in my blog. I will allocate some ideas about Linux, Community and, more than anything, about Fedora.

I want to thank the Fedora Community to let me be part of this great project.

Now, the article.

The issue

We, the old linux users are used to our environment, and we should understand what can be done and what can’t be done on Linux, limitations, advantages and everything related to our OS. With the pass of time we become power users and we forgot how is to be a new user.

When users come from Microsoft Windows, they have expectations, and they have things that normal users want to do in their OS, and more important: “THEY DON’T CARE ABOUT FREEDOM”.

The Ambassadors Project

Fedora project members had an idea to bring new contributors to the project. The Ambassadors are the representative of the project and they are the one who supose to attract new contributors to the cause, they are the face of Fedora. If we think a little on this, maybe we should supose that we (the ambassadors) should be the ones who understand the Final User, but this isn’t always true. In my opinion this is because of the issue I describe above: we forgot about the feeling of coming from another OS.

Examples

Desktop Environment

For me, the best example is the Desktop. When a user comes from Windows 10, and before it has Windows 7, they ask about the Graphics Effects. They normally come to Linux with low expectations, because “Linux is Ugly“. But they don’t know that we have “Peek” since at least 7 years, or the “Task View” since 5 or 6 years, the same is with “Action Center” or “Multiple Desktops”, and a lot of the New Features of Windows.

With this, the problem with Linux is the multiple choices. But how is this a problem? Well, we, as old linux users, tend to take defensive positions all the time, and this is not the exception. A normal discussion about the Desktop Environment can last 2 or 3 hours, just saying why a DE is better than other: XFCE is light, Gnome is more productive, KDE/Plasma is better looking, LXDE is light and modern, Unity is for Ubuntu users, Shell Desktops are the future, and a long list continue. Then the issue became present: We forgot the user.

Codecs

Almost all multimedia files can’t be played without restrictions in Linux, at least no with only free software. This is because codecs are usually released with restrictions, just “free to use”. Almost all distributions have a workaround for this, in the form of a non-free repository, or a 3rd party repository, but I don’t remember a Linux distribution that have non-free codecs enabled out-the-box. This usually means that extra steps needs to be taked to make things work. Then the usual answer of old time linux users became present: “It’s not free”. Again the issue: We forgot the user.

Hardware Support

This is a hard point to bring to the table. Why? Because hardware support doesn’t depends on the community, it depends on the manufacturers. But this became a problem when a new user come to an install fest and receive the answer: Your hardware is not compatible and THIS IS YOUR FAULT. Sometimes I think: Really? I remember the first time I had a computer of my own and I want to install Linux, I didn’t ask about the BIOS, or the graphic card, or the most painful, the wireless card; I was just so happy to install Linux in MY computer. I’ve passed through a lot of forums receiving “google it”, RTFM and a lot of this kind of answers. That is where the issue become present: We forgot the user.

Gaming

This is one of the big “missings” of Linux. Even when there is a lot of good games for Linux, like alien arena, 0 a.d. and so on; it’s not a lie that none of the most popular games came for linux. and won’t come soon. Steam and sites like GOG or itch.io have opened a door for Linux users, and now it’s a little better to be a gamer on Linux, but still we miss some of the titles that are released on Game Conferences. But looking again to the community, some of the more common answers are: “It’s not free” or “Gaming isn’t a need”, one of the answers that make sense is “dual-boot” but then the linux users look at you like a demon or an alien and you became an outcast. Again: We forgot the user.

Office

This is my last example. It’s no a secret that MS Office is one of the most powerful tools that is created by Microsoft. With more than 20 years in the market and with a lot of users, it’s one of the biggest reasons for people to keep MS Windows in their machines. I know that OpenOffice (now owned by Apache Foundation) and LibreOffice (by The Document Foundation) are doing great efforts to bring a suite that can replace MS Office in the people machines and both have great features, but still the race is hard against MS Office. For me, having more than 10 years using Linux, it’s still hard to replace MS Office, even with Google Docs, because some things simply aren’t mature enough or the way to work with it it’s harder or take too much time.

It’s not FLOSS

All members of any linux community, or working for any FLOSS project need to remember how is to be a new user, and to understand what are the needs of the computer’s users. We shouldn’t let the pass of time to became us indolents, and forget how is to migrate from a privative OS.

Someone that want to listen the music that he convert in mp3 from his CD, or a teen gamer that want to play the latest Diablo, or just a mom or a dad that want to read some news, some emails, maybe check the facebook to have a connection with their family, a student that put all his effort to buy a new laptop and only can afford the economic serie of any brand. That final user need to be listened, and the answer for them is not freedom. You can educate them to freedom, but you shouldn’t close the door of something they want or need just because “It’s not FLOSS”.

P.D.: Final User or End-user is the same in Spanish, sorry that I missed that.

[bash-tip] Trabajando con fechas

Trabajar con fechas en una versión actual de bash es algo muy simple, el comando date de la mayoría de las distribuciones es bastante robusto (proveniente del paquete coreutils de GNU Project). Por ejemplo obtener la fecha del día previo al actual (ayer):

date -d=yesterday

Existen también formas de formatearlo según las necesidades, los parámetros se pueden leer el manual del comando (man date) pero los que yo más utilizo son los siguientes:

Parámetro	Descripción
%d	Día en formato dd (rellena el espacio con cero [0])
%m	Mes en formato mm (rellena el espacio con cero [0])
%Y	Año en formato yyyy
%D	Fecha en formato americano (lo mismo que %m/%d/%y
%F	Fecha completa (lo mismo que %y-%m-%d)
%y	Últimos dos dígitos del año
%H	Hora en  formato hh
%M	Minutos en  formato mm
%S	Segundos en  formato ss
%T	Hora en  formato hh:mm:ss (lo mismo que %H:%M:%S)
%x	Fecha en formato local

Para utilizar los parámetros se introduce un signo de suma “+” seguido de los parámetros, vale decir que lo que no es leído como un parámetro se imprime de manera literal, y el resultado es un string o cadena, esto para las asignaciones en scripts. Como pueden notar en la tabla, pueden ver la hora; es muy importante notar esto porque aunque existe el comando time, el mismo no es para mostrar la hora sino para mostrar el tiempo de ejecución de un comando o programa.

Ejemplos:

x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%d-%m-%Y
05-02-2015
x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%D
02/05/15
x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%F
2015-02-05
x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%T
10:37:06
x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%x
05/02/15
x3mboy@Liss ~ $ date +%D" "%T
02/05/15 10:37:09
Como pueden ver en el último ejemplo, si los parámetros van a estar separados por espacios en blanco, se debe colocar ese espacio entre comillas.

Personalmente utilizo mucho estos comandos en asignaciones de scripts, sobretodo cuando estoy trabajando con archivos que se generan diariamente, pero la razón original por la cual realicé este post es porque en versiones antiguas de bash no existe algo como la opción -d o el parámetro %x, es por ello que he tenido que aprender a manejar el comando date, pues algo que suponemos tan simple como calcular la fecha del día de ayer se vuelve algo un poco complicado. Les dejo este script que hice hace algunos años para trabajar en un BSD con el comando date, sirve para calcular el día de ayer:

https://gist.github.com/X3MBoy/e934c967eac98b6d9c86

Espero les sea de utilidad.

Be Free, Be Linux
X3MBoy

Comunicado a favor de la libertad y neutralidad de la red

Nosotros, los abajo firmantes, en nuestra condición de ciudadanos venezolanos, miembros de las comunidades organizadas de usuarios de Software Libre y activistas de la libertad del conocimiento y la neutralidad de la red, defendemos un Internet libre y abierto, apegándonos a la Declaración por la Libertad de Internet la cual citamos en su totalidad:

“Apoyamos procesos transparentes y participativos para regular internet y el establecimiento de cinco principios básicos:

• Expresión: No se debe censurar internet.
• Acceso: Promover acceso universal a redes rápidas y asequibles.
• Apertura: Internet debe seguir siendo una red abierta donde todas las personas son libres de conectarse, comunicar, escribir, leer, ver, decir, escuchar, aprender, crear e innovar.
• Innovación: Proteger la libertad de innovar y crear sin permiso. No se deben bloquear las nuevas tecnologías, y no se debe castigar a los innovadores por las acciones de los usuarios.
• Privacidad: Proteger la privacidad y defender la capacidad de la gente para controlar como se utilizan sus datos y dispositivos.”

CONSIDERANDO

La violación al derecho de libre acceso a la información evidenciada recientemente por:

1. Restricción del acceso a los siguientes sitios Web:

1.1. twimg.com, que hospeda imágenes de la red social Twitter
1.2. pastebin.com, utilizado para compartir información como texto plano.
1.3. bit.ly, acortador de enlaces
1.4. zello.com, aplicación walkie-talkie virtual para hablar con otras personas en canales públicos y privados.
1.5. Diversos portales de noticias a nivel nacional.

Esta lista es meramente enunciativa y no restrictiva, por cuanto el bloqueo de sitios se extiende a un número bastante mayor de éstos, de aproximadamente 500; pero debido a falta de transparencia desde el ente regulador respecto a cuales son estos sitios bloqueados no se cuenta con una lista completa. Los sitios bloqueados han sido reportado por usuarios alrededor del mundo en un proceso de monitoreo constante, y verificados de igual manera.

CONSIDERANDO

2. La violación a la privacidad de los ciudadanos evidenciada por la instalación de un Centro Estratégico de Seguridad y Protección de la Patria (CESPPA), entre cuyas actividades, delineadas en el decreto 458 de la Presidencia de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela, publicado en la Gaceta Oficial N°:40266 del 7 de octubre de 2013 y cuyo reglamento interno se define en la resolución número 011-14 del Ministerio para el Poder Popular del Despacho de la Presidencia y seguimiento a la gestión de Gobierno de la república Bolivariana de Venezuela, publicada en la Gaceta Oficial N°: 40355 del 13 de Febrero de 2014, está la vigilancia permanente de los flujos de información, aún cuando la Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela establece el derecho inalienable a la privacidad en su artículo 48.

CONSIDERANDO

3. El corte generalizado del acceso a internet a una región del país por parte de la compañía nacional de teléfonos de Venezuela (CANTV) desde el día miércoles 19 de febrero de 2014 hasta el viernes 21 de febrero de 2014 evidenciado por múltiples reportes ciudadanos en el estado Táchira, en atención a que las Relatorías de Libertad de Expresión de la OEA en su comunicado R50/11 consideran el acceso a Internet parte fundamental del acceso libre a la información y expresión y por tanto necesario en el ejercicio de estos derechos humanos. Agregando que existe un precedente, presentado el 14 de abril del 2013, cuando el acceso a Internet fue cortado por 4 minutos en expresas palabras del Ministro Arreaza, en respuesta a ataques a sitios y cuentas oficiales.

CONSIDERANDO

4. Las repetidas y consuetudinarias violaciones a la neutralidad de la red, principio plasmado en nuestra Ley Orgánica de Telecomunicaciones, el libre acceso a la información y la prohibición de la censura previa, presentes en la Constitución de la República Bolivariana de Venezuela (art. 58 ejusdem), e incluso normas supraconstitucionales a las que el Estado Venezolano debe apegarse por haber suscrito acuerdos, entre ellos la Declaración Universal de los Derechos Humanos en su artículo 19.

ACORDAMOS

Fijar nuestra posición en los siguientes términos:

1. Apoyamos la declaración de la neutralidad de la red y el acceso libre a la información como principios fundamentales para el desarrollo de nuestra nación.

2. Expresamos nuestro desacuerdo con la creación del Centro Estratégico de Seguridad y Protección de la Patria (CESPPA), fundamentado en los siguientes puntos:

2.1. Viola nuestro ordenamiento constitucional, nuestros derechos humanos y por tanto constituye un abuso de poder.

2.2 Está en contra de los ideales y principios que defendemos como parte de los movimientos de Software y Conocimiento Libre, puesto que CESPPA se configura en un ente de censura previa a partir de criterios de seguridad y defensa de la nación, contraviniendo normas constitucionales establecidas en el art. 57 ejusdem.

2.3. Es un acto irresponsable de nuestra parte como ciudadanos, usuarios y especialistas en tecnologías; no hacer de conocimiento publico nuestra opinión al respecto.

3. Expresamos nuestro desacuerdo con las acciones por parte de cualquier empresa o institución nacional y/o extranjera que puedan representar restricciones al acceso a la información.

4. Consideramos evidente la necesidad de motivar la concientización de los ciudadanos sobre las ventajas y riesgos del uso de Internet, así como el desarrollo de habilidades que les permitan tener un desenvolvimiento activo en el mismo.

5. Reconocemos la existencia de un instrumento legal en la Ley Especial Contra los Delitos Informáticos, para la protección, prevención y sanción de delitos cometidos contra sistemas que utilicen tecnologías de información, la cual sanciona el espionaje electrónico como delito contra la privacidad de las personas en sus artículos 20, 21 y 22. Consideramos que cualquier acción ejecutada por cualquier entidad en aras de protegerse o prevenir ataques informáticos debe estar enmarcada en los preceptos establecidos en esta Ley.

6. Reconocemos las potencialidades del sistema educativo, así como el crecimiento de la Fundación Infocentro, que ha hecho posible el acceso de millones de venezolanos a recursos de computación e Internet de manera libre y gratuita. Consideramos que el uso eficiente de estas herramientas pueden garantizarle a los ciudadanos el desarrollo de habilidades necesarias para un uso libre, sano y positivo de Internet y de las herramientas informáticas.

7. Consideramos que la privacidad de los ciudadanos no se puede garantizar sin hacer uso de Software libre y estándares abiertos, por lo que hacemos énfasis en la necesidad de promover el cumplimiento de la Ley de Infogobierno promulgada en Gaceta Oficial N° 40.274, que establece que todo programa informático que se desarrolle, adquiera o implemente en el Poder Público deberá ser Software Libre, con estándares abiertos, transparente y comunitario, salvo las excepciones expresamente establecidas en la Ley y previa autorización del ente competente.

Suscriben

Manuel Lucena Pérez, UNPLUG

Maria Leandro, Fedora

Arturo Martinez, Mozilla Venezuela

Héctor A. Mantellini, VaSlibre

Jeferson Herrera, VaSLibre

Manuel Camacho, Mozilla Venezuela

Jesús Contreras, Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

Kelvin Moya, VaSlibre

Sebastián Ramírez Magrí, Mozilla Venezuela

Loris Santamaria, Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

María Gabriela Pérez, UNPLUG

Alfieri Morillo , Gimp-Ve, LibreOffice-Ve

Flamel Canto, Comunidad Software Libre de Venezuela

Diego Barrios.

Luis Salazar

Eduardo Melendez

Alexis A. Sánchez O, Comunidad PinguinoVE

Julio J. Montaño C, GRULICA

Alberto Chirinos, GUDISLIP

Kleiber J Perez, GUDISLIP

Xavier Pernalete, GUDISLIP

Juan Pablo Gómez A., Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

William Cabrera, Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

Johan Gonzalez, Mozilla Venezuela

Eduard Lucena, UNPLUG

Oliver Hernández,Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

Jonatan Mejías, Mozilla Venezuela, LibreOffice-Ve

Nelson J. Delgado Ubuntu-ve

Miguel Useche, Mozilla Venezuela

Angel Cruz,VaSLibre

Williams Campos, Gimp-Ve

David Rivero #ubuntu-ve

Cesar Bermúdez,  LUGMA

Alejandra Ortiz,VasLibre

Gloria Alvarez, GUSL

Luis Alejandro Martínez Faneyth, Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

Jesús Delgado

Alberto Medrano, Comunidad de Software Libre de Venezuela

Karla Hurtado, VaSLibre

 

 
Si quieres firmar tambien en apoyo a este comunicado, puedes hacerlo acá: https://www.change.org/es/peticiones/público-en-general-comunicado-a-favor-de-la-libertad-y-neutralidad-de-la-red

[bash-tip] Instalando Turpial

Conversando por twitter con Wil Alvarez (@satanas82) Carlos Guerrero (@guerrerocarlos), sugirieron hacer un script de instalación de turpial (de hecho se pusieron más creativos, pero luego iremos con otros cambios), basados en el script de actualización del post anterior.

Bueno, hay muchas cosas en este script que no voy a explicar en este momento, pero lo más importante es el uso de los “if”. Les recomiendo que chequeen esto bastante bien, pues hay muchas cosas que notar en estos condicionales.

Bueno sin más preámbulo, el script:

http://paste.ubuntu.com/6636151/

No coloco el script directamente pues son más de 100 líneas de código.

Be Free, Be Linux
X3MBoy

[bash-tip] Actualizando turpial

Desde que comenzaron las primeras versiones públicas de turpial (el cliente de microblogging) he estado participando en las discusones del grupo de desarrolladores de tan maravillosa herramienta. Para la última versión (v3.0) he estado haciendo testing y pues para estar al día con las actualizaciones es necesario actualizar 2 cosas: libturpial, el motor que mueve todas las conexiones; y turpial, el front-end de la herramienta.

El problema es que ambas cosas están por separado en github, y hay que actualizar cada cosa por separado. Por ello me he crado un script que haga el trabajo por mí. Lo dejo por acá:


#!/bin/bash
USER_HOME=$(eval echo ~${SUDO_USER})
if [ `whoami` != root ]; then
echo Please run this script using sudo
exit
fi

cd $USER_HOME/libturpial
git pull origin master
sudo python setup.py develop
cd $USER_HOME/turpial
git pull origin development
sudo python setup.py develop


Lo único que tiene de especial este script es que chequea el directorio del usuario antes de convertirse en root para encontrar la ruta de los directorios, lo demás es algo de git e instalación de cosas con setupotools de python. Este script requiere tener instalado sudo en su sistema, cosa que si es un debian-derivated ya viene por defecto, pero en mi sistema (Fedora) no. En estos dos SO he porbado y funciona a la perfección, teniendo cómo único requerimiento que turpial haya sido instalado siguiendo las instrucciones de la wiki de desarrollo de turpial.

Be Free, Be Linux
X3MBoy

[bash-tip] Condicionales

Una estructura muy importante a la hora de programar son los condicionales, también conocidos como if (inglés de “si” en el contexto de pregunta lógica “si voy, entonces voy en avión”). Y de eso se trata básicamente, tomar una decisión de que acciones tomar dada una condición. Este punto ya lo expliqué en los post de python, no voy a profundizar mucho en la lógica de los condicioneales, voy a ir directo a la sintaxis en bash:

if condición; then

condición es una experesión lógica, que devuelve verdadero o falso, pero en el caso de bash, que no es un lenguaje de alto nivel, evalúa 0 ó 1. Esto significa que:

if 0; then echo "Hola"

Siempre imprimirá Hola en la pantalla. También es necesario saber que para evaluar expresiones es necesario colocarlas entre comillas, y cualquier evaluación que devuelva 0 ó 1 es válida.

Tenemos una larga lista de parámetros que se pueden evaluar, cómo pueden notar en la tabla siguiente:
http://tldp.org/LDP/Bash-Beginners-Guide/html/sect_07_01.html#tab_07_01

IMHO las más importantes son -a con la que puedes verificar si un archivo existe, -d con lo que puedes saber si es un directorio y las evaluaciones aritméticas -eq, -ne, -lt, -le, -gt y -ge que significan igual, no igual (diferente), menor, menor o igual, mayor y mayor o igual respectivamente.

Espero les sea de utilidad este pequeño tip.

Be Free, Be Linux
X3MBoy

[bash-tip] Automatizar tareas

Lo primero que hace cualquier usuario linux cuando es novel (nuevo o newbie). es personalizar los comandos con alias. Pronto descubrirá que esta prática es muy mal vista además de ser insegura, y encontrará que lo más común es tener pequeños scripts que le faciliten la vida. Lo primero que tenemos que saber es que un script simplementes son instrucciones una después de otra, tal como las instrucciones o sentencias de un lenguaje de programación.

Veamos algo rápido de sintaxis:

Comenzamos el script con algo llamado “shabang“, simplemente consiste en decirle al interprete de comandos “ con qué se come” el script. Simplemente le decimos con que programa debe interpretar las sentencias dentro del script. En este punto resalto que un script es un conjunto de sentencias o comandos, uno debajo de otro, guardados en un archivo de texto. Los que han seguido mis entradas de Python me entenderán, y ya estarán familiarizados con el “shabang“.

Mi primer script fue el siguiente:

#!/bin/bash
sudo aptitude -y update
sudo aptitude -y safe-upgrade
sudo aptitude -y clean
sudo aptitude -y autoclean


Muy simple, sin estilo, pero en ese momento hacía lo que yo quería. Luego de eso, simplemente darle permisos de ejecución, y ejecutar con ./:

chmod +x actualizar.sh

./actualizar.sh

Be Free, Be Linux
X3MBoy

Post sobre bash

Leyendo un post de @phenobarbital me encontré con la frase:

¿para qué planear aplicaciones en cónsola en otro lenguaje, si bash viene integrado por defecto y es muy poderoso?

Y he recordado que tengo varios días trabajando con bash en mi empleo, incluso en distintos sistemas (Linux, HP-UX y un customized-FreeBSD). Así que me he decidio ha llevar en paralelo a los post de python, algunos post, tipo nota, de Bash. Espero que les puedan ser útiles.

 

Saludos,

Be Free, Be Linux…