
Erm…
Congratulations to the FSF for managing to get the legendary Stephen Fry to [celebrate the anniversary of GNU](https://www.gnu.org/fry/). I am just somewhat surprised they decided to license it under a non-free license (Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States).
Boot’s on the other foot now, eh?

Two Years Going Strong
Two years ago today [I came to work at Canonical](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=737) as the Ubuntu Community Manager. When I started at Canonical, it was just me working with Mark to define my role and focus and to determine what I wanted to do to help grow and facilitate our stunning community. Since then I have become part of the wider Ubuntu team at Canonical, and I have grown out my own team with my fellow horsemen Daniel Holbach and Jorge Castro. I am looking forward to continuing to grow the team and continuing to help our community to do amazing things.
Canonical is a fun and inspiring place to work, and it has a very distinctive atmosphere; an atmosphere that is driven by a workforce that has the bit between their teeth to get out there and really make a difference. With today marking my two year anniversary it has got my mind thinking about the incredibly smart people that I have the pleasure of working with each and every day. Firstly, this obviously includes Daniel Holbach and Jorge Castro – not only great staff, but my brothers in our Ubuntu journey, plus our close brothers in arms Graham Binns and Pedro Villavicencio Garrido. I also want to send props to the main man himself, Mark Shuttleworth, my immediate peers with Matt Zimmerman, Scott James Remnant, Colin Watson, Rick Clark, David Mandala, Pete Graner, Henrik Nilson Omma and the various people I have worked with closely at Canonical (including, but not limited to) – Malcolm Yates, Ben Collins, Steve George, Kat Kinnie, Michelle Surtees-Myers, Billy Cina, Cezzaine Haigh, Claire Newman, Gerry Carr, Jane Silber, James Westby, Matt Nuzum, Magdalena Lobodziec, Sebastien Bacher, Kenneth Wimer, James Troup, Chris Jones, Brian Murray, Claire Davis, Randy Linnell, Ted Gould, Mirco Muller, Chris Cheney, Alexander Sack and many more.
Of course, Canonical employees are only a fraction of my colleagues; they are augmented by our incredible community…a community that is brimming with the same kind of enthusiasm, excitement and commitment to the crusade, and our community is doing great. We are nailing bugs with 5-A-Day, getting more and more participants on Ubuntu Open Week and Ubuntu Develop Week, our LoCo teams are now 170+, MOTU is growing every month, and our UDSs are becoming breeding grounds for great contributors. I am also incredibly happy that Ubuntu is still *fun* – when producing an Operating System as large and well known as Ubuntu, there is a risk of us getting wrapped up in the less interesting side of popularity, but from what I can tell, we are all still having a blast. 🙂
I am hugely proud of our community, I am hugely proud of Canonical, and I am hugely proud to be both a member and employee. Here’s to another two years, and lets just see what is possible… 🙂

Denied By Reign Release Date Announced

Bingo!
Wow. Everyone loves Buzzword Bingo, but sometimes it gets a tad ridiculous. Back in July I got a gem via email. It started off with this zinger of an opener (*identities censored to protect the innocent*):
> Program Focuses On Helping The Open Source Ecosystem Grow Sustainable Businesses By Implementing A Community-Leveraged Model
It then went on to say:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on creating a rising tide for the broader open source ecosystem, and is focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem.
Shazzam!
It is interesting that when you remove the company and the specific announcement, the rest of the paragraph is completely meaningless. What exactly is *frictionless distribution*? Are the rest of us somehow lumbered with friction in our distribution? From what I can tell “*focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem*” is a lot of words for saying “*focused on Open Source development*”.
Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that language is a tool and a facility, and it needs to be carefully selected and worded for your target audience – the choice of language for an executive director varies from the choice of language for a member of the IT team, and that varies from the choice of language for a typical community member. It would be naive to suggest that everyone should consume the same words, but we have to draw a line somewhere between spiritless generic text and *meaningless bullshit*.
When I was a journo and I was learning how to write effectively, I became a big fan of William Zinsser, the author of *On Writing Well*. This, combined with Strunk and White’s *The Elements Of Style* and a few books on journalism provided me with the chops for a career in writing. One salient point that Zinsser says is *Don’t write like an institution*, and it is something I have always taken as a core element in how I approach writing myself. His point is essentially the meat behind the point I was making above – don’t write meaningless institutional nonsense for the sake of it *sounding professional* – sure, write professional text that is carefully worded for you target audience, but there needs to be some real, accessible, understandable content in there
Lets look at this in practise. Lets take the original paragraph and re-write it:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on creating a rising tide for the broader open source ecosystem, and is focused on leveraging community-driven development and frictionless distribution to extend the ecosystem.
My version:
> XXXXXXXXXX, a leading provider of commercial open source middleware solutions for database high availability, today announced XXXXXXXXXX. The program is focused on growing the Open Source ecosystem by being a strong participant in emerging Open Source technologies.
…notice how I left in *ecosystem* and threw in *emerging technologies* to still play to the right audience. 🙂
Ding!

Get Your Work Seen, Ubuntu Style
Just a quick reminder to all budding music and video artists that the [Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuFreeCultureShowcase) closes for submissions on Thursday 4th Sep – get your entries in there now to have your work seen by literally millions of Ubuntu users. 🙂

Crazy
Just wanted to provide a quick update on life – things have been absolutely *crazy* recently. Literally, a-grade *crazy*. There are some fairly hefty changes going on in my life right now, and this combined with nearly two months of solid travelling, finishing up LugRadio, an incredibly busy worklife and recording the debut Severed Fifth record has mean’t life has been hectic – its been tough to get all these things done when I have not been home a huge amount. All is good though, and although the Severed Fifth album has been delayed a little, it should be ready soon. 🙂

Arf. Arf.
[419 Eater](https://www.419eater.com/) always amuses me – it is a website scam-baiters follow through with those Nigerian scam emails. Today though I read a case where someone manages to persuade the scammer to tattoo *Baited By Shiver* on his leg.
[Read it here](https://www.419eater.com/html/ahmed_sadiq.htm).
Comedy. 🙂

Ubuntu Developer Week II: This Time Its Personal
[DIGG THIS!](https://digg.com/linux_unix/Second_Ubuntu_Developer_Week_announced)
I am really pleased to see that Horseman Holbach has [announced](https://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=189) [Ubuntu Developer Week](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuDeveloperWeek). 🙂
Ubuntu Developer Week is a more detailed continuation of [Ubuntu Open Week](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuOpenWeek) in which we have a week of IRC tuition sessions, but in this week very much focused on technical developer topics. The week runs from Mon Sep 1st to Fri Sep 5th and the fun happens in #ubuntu-classroom on irc.freenode.net.
The week is jammed with a range of incredible sessions, including *Packaging 101, Upstream Bug Linkages, Introduction to MOTU, Soyuz and all that Jazz, Working with Ubuntu<->GNOME QA (tips&tricks), How do I fix an Ubuntu bug, Introduction to BZR, Kernel module packaging with DKMS, Using the Launchpad Web Service API, Launchpad Hacks, bzr for packaging, How do I update a package properly, Introduction to PPA, Introduction to the Server Team, Various ways to patch a package, Automated Testing for the Desktop, A WebKit browser in PyKDE, Having fun with the Mozilla Team, How to avoid making Archive Admins unhappy, Ask Matt, Unit testing Python code, with code coverage measurement, Introduction to the Installer Team, Introduction to the Security Team, Kernel Discussion*…
Daniel provides [an overview of each session here](https://daniel.holba.ch/blog/?p=189).
Ubuntu Developer Week is just one of many initiatives that we have been working on to help the Ubuntu community grow and develop in the right direction. Others include Release Parties, Ubuntu Open Week, Global Bug Jam, Ubuntu Free Culture Showcase, 5-A-Day, Harvest, Brainstorm, Ubuntu Developer Summit and many more in the pipeline. I am really proud of the work the horsemen are doing, and I am looking forward to hiring [the fourth horseman/woman](https://archivedblog.jonobacon.com/?p=1230) – if you are excited at the prospect of working on my team and alongside Daniel and Jorge, do apply. 🙂
I look forward to seeing the new blood that comes into the project to join the existing, well-oiled, arse-kicking blood that we have right now. Rock and roll. 🙂

mdzlog
The unstoppable Matt ‘mdz’ Zimmerman has caved in and now has a [blog](https://mdzlog.wordpress.com/). He has posted some interesting stuff already, so go and check it out. He is also on [Planet Ubuntu](https://planet.ubuntu.com/).

Whoa Yeah-yeah! Oah!
Fellow horseman, Jorge, and I are both big [Metallica](https://www.metallica.com/) fans. Although we largely agree on what constitutes a great Metallica album (*Master Of Puppets* and *…And Justice For All*), Metallica have seen such a diverse change in their style, that fans have many different views on what makes the perfect ‘tallica album. Metallica really started off as a balls to the wall thrash band, back when *Kill ‘Em All* came out, which was reminiscent of other Bay Area thrash metal bands such as Exodus and Testament and other bands such as Slayer, Annihilator and Overkill. They then refined their art with *Ride The Lightning* and *Master Of Puppets*, stepped into thrash-by-very-detailed-numbers with the super-technical and rhythmic *…And Justice For All* before heading in a more commercial chunky style of radio metal with their self-titled album, known as *The Black Album* to fans.
Then, it went downhill. After the stunning Black album, they toured like crazy and years later released their next full original album with *Load* which was about as exciting and metal as a toy soldier, wrapped in a roll of bubble wrap at a plastics convention. It was just booooring. Stock, very stock, predictable, not-all-that-heavy rock tunes – Metallica seemed to have really lost their way. But wait…we then received the good news that *Load* was actually only half of the songs that they recorded, and we would be treated to yet another bucket-of-dull with the rather imaginatively titled…*Re-Load*. Woo. Hoo. Ahem.
Then the Metallica hype machine started to roll again and we heard they were working on a new, angrier album, and Hetfield (their singer) had been a little too frisky with the ‘ol sauce and was in rehab for alcohol addiction, but was out and raring to channel his new-founded life experience and world-view into their music, with an undertone of anger…which would naturally translate well to metal. What resulted was *St Anger*, a pretty desperate attempt at sounding modern and heavy, complete with a snare drum that is reminiscent of the sound of a nun riding into a steel bin on a push-bike. Although it was heavier in places, it felt unimaginative and a bit of a reach – not like their previous works in which they knew how to push every button in your brain that makes you move to their music. It was just unnatural and desperate, and once again Metallica felt like they were losing their way.
So, Metallica have not released a decent album since *The Black Album*, and they have not released a decent thrash album (the reason why most of us love Metallica), since *…And Justice For All* – that is *16 years* since a good album. Good grief.
Some of you may be wondering why on earth I have decided to blather on about Metallica today. Well, right now we Metallica fans, who have been treated to the audio equivalent of a train bacon sandwich for the last 16 years are once again getting our hopes up for the next Metallica album, named *Death Magnetic*, and due for release on the 12th September. Metallica have been treating the world to sneak peeks for the last few weeks and for the last half year or so we have heard the usual highly trumpeted reports that *Metallica are back to their roots* and once again the fans are hoping for a *Puppets* or at least a *Black Album*. So far, Metallica released a live recording of a song called *Cyanide* and their latest airing of a single called *The Day That Never Comes* as well as a bunch of 30 second or so snippets. So, are they any good?
So far it is a bit early to tell. I always like to let music sink in for a while before passing a firm opinion, but thus far I have to be honest that I am not exactly grabbed by the material. While I consider it a really great trait of a metal band to grab your attention within minutes (something which bands such as *Hatebreed*, *The Acacia Strain*, *Heaven Shall Burn*, *Slipknot* and *All Shall Perish* are great at), some bands need a good listening (such as *King Diamond*, *Blind Guardian*, *Cannibal Corpse* and *Anata*).
The main thing I am taking away from the situation with Metallica is that I am beginning to lose a little patience with them as a band. I totally agree that bands change styles, thats fine – I understand they don’t want to be playing speed metal any more, but I also listen to a bunch of bands that play the kind of music that Metallica seem to be going for (*Black Label Society*, *Megadeth*, *Blaze* etc), but I just don’t know if Metallica’s version of it is my cup of tea. Don’t get me wrong, they are a stunningly talented band, but I feel that the complexities in the band and the comfort they have carved out (as can be seen in *Some Kind Of Monster*) has mean’t that they have lost the hunger somewhat. It has long been known that more deprived surroundings have formed some of the greatest metal bands (as well as other artists such as Hip Hop and Rap). Of course, everyone wants to live a nice, lavishly comfortable lifestyle – I am no exception – but I get the impression that these comforts have overtaken their hunger for the music. This is not an endemic problem – there are plenty of bands who live great, comfortable lifestyles (just look at Iron Maiden for example) and still release rocking music, but Metallica feel distracted by it.
In my mind, Music is evolutionary, and we see different generations coming in, taking what went before and stepping up the plate. Metallica will always hold a place in my heart for releasing some of my most loved albums (in fact, I wore out my *Master Of Puppets* cassette from over-playing when I was a yoof), but I think these days I am more interested in checking out the amazing new talent with bands like *The Acacia Strain, Job For a Cowboy, All Shall Perish, Divine Heresy, The Red Chord, Blood Red Throne, Hatebreed, Arsis, Aborted, A Perfect Murder, Lamb Of God, Made Of Hate, Necrophagist, Nonpoint, Hatesphere etc.