Get these boys some sun…

Sorry if someone has already mentioned this, but I don’t think it hurts to repeat it.

If you are heading to Debconf and are traveling through Heathrow, and I reckon any UK airport, keep all your stuff to 1 bag total. Or make sure one piece can fit in the second so you can more easily pass through security.

Recently a Debian user left a really nice note letting me know “It makes
me happy and proud to learn that boricuas are Debian developers! (Hopefully you are not the only one). This is for me the best Debian News since Etch released. Proud and happy for you.”

Here I have to confess, however that I am neither a DD nor really a true Boriqua. I have studied Debian for many years, but have never officially joined. In terms of PR, none of my family is originally from there as my father is Jewish American and my mom was born in Russian, wandered as war refugee for many years in Europe and eventually landed in Venezuela, where I was born. But I have made my home in PR for many years and do consider it one of my many homes.

Speaking of many homes, I also feel, even though I am not a DD, that Debian is an important touchstone in my life. It reminded me of a conversation I had with Manoj recently related to this topic, who almost mistook me for a DD:

[biella] who is that DD that wrote an anthro thesis on debian? [08:55]
[biella] he is brazilian

[manoj] I was gonna say that the dd who did an anthro thesis on debian
was you, then it struck me that you are not a dd, but I still
think of you as one now, and then it struck me further that
making you a dd might compromise your postiion as an observer

After many years following the project, I have grown quite attached to it, and every year, a few months before Debconf I am reminded of this attachment. I have managed to make Debconf only every other year, and usually when I face this fact, a sense of melancholia and slight sadness sets in, especially when I hear of everyone making plans to go. I always start to question my decision to stay back, then hit all sorts of websites for cheap tickets, and start to wonder if I can perhaps manage to complete some work there, which is the main reason this year I am staying away.

I then make myself confront REALITY and remind myself that the whole reason I love attending Debconf is because of its extreme vitality, which after a week, leaves you wrung out and tired, because you put so much of your attention and mind, soul and heart in the events. So even if I go for a week, or longer, you usually need a week ore more to recover. I am not sure I can spare such time this year, especially since less than a month after Debconf, I am packing my bags and moving back to the east coast of the United States. And as I learned last year and the year before and two years before, these sorts of long-distance moves take a lot of your time.

My longing reminds me of how important it is to celebrate those things in life you love. And while there is more to Debconf than a celebration, much of it is just that, a chance, a space, a place by which and where you celebrate. And since I sit only in the shadows of Debian, I imagine the pleasure and joy runs deeper and wider for those who sit at its heart. So if you are on the fence on whether to go, this is your friendly public service announcement that it is, indeed, so worth your while.

My Ubuntu-counterpart, Andreas Lloyd, has written a nice response to Lars Risan’s interesting discussion of tensions between Ubuntu and Debian and in it, he visits, with great detail (or as much as a blog post will allow), the limits of launchpad. It is exciting to see more anthropologists conducting in-depth research on F/OSS projects with a keen awareness of the ways technology mediate or make possible certain social relationships. . .

So it is hard to believe that in less than a month I will be somewhere, to be exact, Puerto Rico, that will be 80 degrees warmer than it is right now. And after weekend, it will be 100-105 degrees warmer. Yep, the cold (frikken) snap has arrived to Edmonton and it is preety intimidating. So long as there is no wind, it is tolerable but so long as there is some wind, it is unbearable. And I will park myself at home if that is the case. We were going to make a big trip to the mountains this weekend but with that type of weather, that may have been the end of me. And being that I think I am the only person in Edmonton from Puerto Rico…. that would be a shame.

And speaking of the RICO… WikiTravel has chosen La Isla del Encanto as the spot for the Wiki Travel Get-Together.

HAY Mamita y Papito, que HOT, as one would say… Evan Prodromou a.ka. MrBad, also a Debian developer, kick started the travelpedia and is going to be lucky enough to go.

I am not sure if I can make it but I hearby promise to provide a detailed “map” of where the travelpedias should venture as I know the really good goods.. And they range from the Nuyorican cafe in El Viejo San Juan to hitting a couple of beaches on the amazing island of Culebra, going to Pinones Sunday night to listen to Rumba and anyway the list goes ON AND ON… I will be inspired while baking in 86 degrees (as opposed to freezing in-20 of Edmonton) and will provide le map.

GNU bars. Maybe they help you code better if you are coding free software.

Since Debconf Mexico, parts of my blog have been published on planet debian. To be exact, only the categories, Debian, Academic and (I think) Tech are included while a plethora of other ones, such as Canada are not. At times I feel pangs of guilt or discomfort because a number of my academic posts have, on the surface at least, little to do with Debian, F/OSS, tech or law. But many do have either to do with law or science more generally, so I hope they are of some interest to a group of folks who seem pretty keen on these topics.

Soon though, I am going to be in monk-mode, working like a hard working ox on my manuscript, full-time (now I am sharing my mindspace with an article on survivors and one that I have to present in January on the battles between hackers and scientologist, which I am pretty excited about too). I have just finished reading about 15 articles related to my book that have help to reignite the fire of interst, after burning out after years and years and can I add a few more years, on the same topic.

So bear with me as soon there will either be many posts related to just F/OSS or at least none at all as I will be so overtaken by the work!

One of my fondest Debconf conferences was Debconf4 held in Porto Alegre. While the temperature was cool, the atmosphere was vibrant.

One of my favorite parts was meeting the various women involved in Debian and free software more generally (aparently known there as TINC) and one in general was especially vivacious, Pia Waugh. She was recently featured in an interview in computerworld magazine. Either Australians inherently have a lot of energy or they put something in the water “down” yonder, because she sure has her hands in a lot of interesting projects.

So check out the interview to get a sense of one of the leading ladies of open source.

It is a little weird to read Planet Debian and find a post about a place, adventure, ship that was also once my reality and home. This is the 2nd free software-head I know to have lived on that ship (I don’t count myself as I was pretty oblivious to the world of computing back then). It definitely fuels my desire to sail away again, and even try to do so with all geek-crew. Just need to find a ship and quite a bit of funding.

Trust is on the top on my list of topics of inquiry and I have made it one of my main themes in my writings on Debian. Forbes recently published a small piece on the The Economics of Trust, using trust as an example to explain why Somalias economy barely exists while many in the west, notably the US, are thriving. A little reductive but he has something there because indeed, the level of trust that consumers, investors, and everyone else in the chain has to have to make “it” happen is enormous. However, I am surprised he never mentiones the law in name, and contract law to be specific. He sort of subsumes things under formal mechanisms of trust, but it seems like without the law, there would be no trust… in which case, do we still call it trust? or trust in the law that is the condition of possibility for other mechanisms, which do exist. This topic of trust and accountability in capitalism is something that Weber actually spent a fair bit of time in General Economic History for those interested in such topics.