Open letter to the Romanian Ministry for Culture and Patrimony

A group of organisations and interested persons from Romania are addressing an open letter to the Romanian Ministry for Culture and Patrimony about the Romanian cultural patrimony on the Internet, which can be published at Europeana.eu, where our country was to submit 789,000 works until 2015 and currently has managed to publish less than 36,000. We ask about the status of this project and propose the use of the images contributed in the recent Romanian Wikipedia photography contest. The full text can be read on the ProLinux website or in printable format (along with the signatures list) from the APTI blog.

Upgrade strategy

Later today Fedora 16 will be officially released, I am using F14 which is becoming quite long in the tooth, so now is probably a good time to evaluate my upgrade path.

Back in May after some testing I deemed F15 unsuitable for desktop/workstation usage and made the decision to skip a release. It was a first for me, the single one Fedora release I ever skipped, since RHL 9, when I moved to use Linux as my primary desktop. What's the status now, one release later? I acknowledge not doing any testing, had to fight with F14 day by day to get some work done, but I read enough so from what I can see: GNOME Shell is still the same, Xfce is still the same, KDE is still the same. Nothing new, nothing better. So I see ahead another skippable release, which is not that bad considering F14 still has a workable paradigm and is not self-expiring shareware, the applications are the problem and they are what matters most.

So after judging I came with the following strategy: skip F16 also, keep using F14 one more month until its EOL in December and then continue to use it unsupported a couple of months more until F17 Beta. Postpone any decision until then and with the bits released download and evaluate. What can happen by then:

• Xfce has a release in January, it may become good enough. Considering the current status and the TODO, the expectations aren't high;
• GNOME may become sane and usable again. Highly unlikely;
• I may lose faith and accept defeat, give up on the Linux desktop, go to W7. It would be sad after so many year;
• I may get into BDSM and start using something like Openbox, saying goodbye to any possible productivity;
• get some kind of strange revelation and give KDE a try.

Freeloading

I do release a lot of content, from drawings and clipart to photography and to videos and learned about many people using them, this always brings a smile on my face. But it can be otherwise :) Today I got a question about some of my clipart being used on some website, but with a twist: I am asked if credit is needed, as in such case the site owner has to adjust the layout to fit it, needing to think about that. My answer was dry "Since those clipart images are released into Public Domain, crediting is not compulsory, that's the license. Is up to you." opposed to an usual "the images are released into the Public Domain, you can use them in any way you want. credit is not required but is appreciated". Indeed, I released the stuff freely, no restriction can be imposed afterwards. But I can contemplate the laziness and freeloading. And smile.

More autumn wallpapers

I already did a post with some Free autumn wallpapers which I unexpectedly caught back in Milano, but as the last week-end I stumbled upon some more beautiful autumn leaves here in Bucharest, so I couldn't stop myself from taking pics and prepare them as wide-screen wallpapers. Enjoy, they are Free.