Click play to see the whole presentation. Sorry I am a little sick during the presentation so I don’t sound so well.

I was a guest speaker together with Marina at Linux Week 2012 at PUCP Peru and held a presentation called “Promotion of Free Software in a local Community and importance of its educational use “. The translation was done by our lovely host, friend and fellow gnomer Julita.

Me and Julita arranged to have the presentation ready in front, so I had the text and I was reading, for the ease of translating. Because I believe in free as in freedom, here you go the text, someone might use it, or find it interesting.

Our community is evolving, emerging and growing, we have many new projects undergoing, so I will apply for a place at GUADEC to tell you all about it. If you have any questions, please ping me.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

“Promotion of Free Software in a local Community and importance of its educational use “

Free software – what is it’s status today?

The usage of Linux on servers is more than 60% of the market, and the usage on supercomputers is more than 94%. The power and functionality of Linux are undeniable, looking at that part of the market.
When we turn our head to the statistics about desktop and laptop computers, we face a great disproportion – Linux is used only about 1% – 3% .

So a question is asked, why since as we said Linux is powerful and functional (despite the great advantage of being free) it is not the most used in everyday usage?

I think that there are many factors, but one of the biggest is marketing and in our case the lack of it.

Reaching out

Free software and the importance of it’s use is a hard concept to explain to the general public and even to computer science students because it is not often discussed or presented. People don’t really understand the need for freedom in software and much impact it has on their lives.

The enthusiastic free software community spends a lot of time improving the existing software, pursuing new innovative ideas, and writing blogs and making conferences that are again aimed for the free software community.

To make real impact and and move that 1%-3% percentage up, we need to make events for the general public, go to schools and universities and make workshops that will make a lot of new contributors and mainly new users.

As a experienced political activist, I know from experience that a promotion of an idea is best done locally, in the environment around you where you can influence most. Same applies for free software.

Education

The education factor is very important in the whole story of promoting free software, but also the most tricky one. It is where the potential contributors are.
For example, the universities are very often bombarded with campaigns by companies like Microsoft, as I can see is the case with our universities here.
Companies can pay personnel and can be present all the time. They also can sponsor infrastructure. Not rarely, in my opinion the professors are involved too and an alternative is not presented to the students.
Here is Macedonia, we as a local free software community are trying to get a share of what is presented in universities. Right now, we are in the process of signing a memorandum for cooperation with the biggest university, of monthly free software lectures and workshops. We also present to the students every program there is offered like Google Summer of Code or GNOME Women outreach.

I think it is very important to give that alternative to the students. Try do this at your university! You don’t have to have a ravishing success from the beginning or mobilize a bunch of new users and contributors. Having just the alternative way of thinking sometimes can do a lot.

Internships

Internships are also an important part of promoting to students. Programs like Google summer of code contextualize free software and can be a great trigger to get involved at the community. I got involved by being a part of the that program for example.
Even if students enter just for the money, the atmosphere of free software community is so electric and comfy that they will be hooked forever .
Also, programs that are aimed for groups of users like high school children (Google Code-In), or to women that are interested but are not students, for example, like GNOME Women Outreach also broaden the range of potential contributors.
Promote all of those as much as you can!
I had a campaign for GWOP for the last round, giving interviews to local newspapers, sending it to all news portals and making a small event. It resulted with about 15 girls getting interested, many of them who haven’t used Linux before installed it, 5 girls made contributions or at least did some code, and one got in the program. That the campaign was a success, is the fact that this time again the same girls want to apply again.
Tip here: Don’t forget the traditional media! I know we are on the internet the most of the time, but many of the potential users might not be.

Also, last year as a local community we had a program called “One summer” that was our version of GsoC, anyone can enter and there were no conditions. You can do the same! Again, the local factor is a great one here, many potential contributors will feel more secure to come and work with you in person, than trough the depersonalized internet.

(Marina talks)

Back to the subject

If you are a professor, assistant, or work at an educational institution

Present the alternative! Also, one of the best ways to introduce students to free software and involve them in the community is to swap regular exercises and projects with free software bugs.
Try that if you can, or suggest the same at your university.

More about what you can do locally

Here in Macedonia, there is an organization “Free Software Macedonia” that this year is celebrating 10 years of existence. I just recently became a part of it.
“Free Software Macedonia” is actively working on promoting free software in Macedonia for the last 10 years, reaching in the political, educational and business factors in the country.
“Free Software Macedonia” has been involved in the project that upgraded all computers used in schools on free software, helped and created the National Politics for Free Software, helped the government create the E-citizens foundation from the National strategy for Informatics society, created a network of 200 involved across different cities.

There was an active campaign in the public about the negative consequences that the agreement for strategic partnership the government signed with Microsoft is going to have, and the campaign reached the parliament and their inside discussions.

Any country can benefit from an organization of this kind. As you can see, there is real impact in the manipulative politics that companies like Microsoft create and push free software alternatives aside.

The hacklab

“Free Software Macedonia” and few other enthusiasts created the local hacklab (hackerspace), 2 years ago. I’ve been a part of it a bit more than a year. It is the central place where the free software, and technology enthusiast community meets, exchanges knowledge on various subjects, offers help to those who need it, collaborates on projects and hangs out.

The hacklab is great because: As we said, we need to promote free software as much as we can, to different audiences on different media. The promotion has a deeper meaning and is more successful if you don’t just post stuff. Providing support all the way, for eligible interns for the programs, to new users that have troubles with their new free software distributions or a place to come anytime and ask something whether you have a problem with a code you are contributing somewhere or you just want to learn more. For example, this Monday we had a presentation at the University about the Google Summer of Code program, and this Saturday we organize a follow – up event at the hacklab, where the students that got interested at the presentation can come and learn how to become a free software contributor – learn the tools like Bugzilla, git etc.

The hacklab is also a great place where the free software community atmosphere can be felt, most of you are probably familiar, the same atmosphere that is felt at free software conferences.

Let’s make a point and finish

We need more desktop Linux users;
To achieve that we should turn more to marketing as companies do;
Try to hold lectures at universities, interact with students.
Promote internship programs, they can be a great trigger, make your own internship local program;
If you are an educational worker, swap regular tasks with free software bugs;
Don’t forget the traditional media, they can speak to a new audience;
Make a local “Free Software” organization that can influence the government politics and can work on promoting free software in all areas;
Make a hacklab! You need a place to provide support for free software users/contributors, and a place for the community to meet and grow.

Thank you for your attention, and I hope that if we all work locally and think globally we will give free software a great push forward.

The built was done on Ubuntu 11.10.

First get the source:

git clone git://git.gnome.org/anjuta

Than get the packages needed:

sudo apt-get install flex bison libgtk-3-dev libxml2-dev libgdl-3-dev libgda-4.0-dev libvte-2.90-dev libgtksourceview-3.0-dev libdevhelp-dev libvala-0.14-dev graphviz-dev gtk-doc-tools libgtk2.0-dev gobject-introspection

Go to subverion website and download the latest version. At this moment of writing it is subversion 1.7.4.

tar -xvzf subversion-1.4.7.tar.gz
cd subversion-1.4.7
./autogen.sh
./configure
make
sudo make install

Go to this site and download Glade source.

tar -xvzf glade-3.11.0.tar.xz
cd glade-3.11.0
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

You will also need the newest version of GTK+ 3.2.3. Go to this site and download source.

tar -xvzf gtk+-3.2.3.tar.xz
cd gtk+-3.2.3
./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

Enter the folder you cloned the Anjuta source into:

./autogen.sh
make
sudo make install

And you are done. Hope this helps and good luck with coding.

p.s If you get this error “anjuta: error while loading shared libraries: libanjuta-3.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory”

Run:

sudo ldconfig

Иако разговаравме за многу активности, оваа среда ја посветивме на додавање мала доза женственост во светот на интгралните кола, кондензаторите и сите тие жици – решивме од она кое е означено во кутија ѓубре да направиме нешто корисно, во случајов накит. Никој од нас не е професионалец, ако си имавме една креативна архитектка на гости, учиме низ импровизација. Илина не снабди со ченгелчиња за обетки и некако ни е driving force во однос на идеите, иако ни закасни малку .

Работата течеше некако вака:

Овој натпревар сигурно на повеќето од средношколците ќе им биде прва средба со светот на слободниот софтвер. Во натпреварот се вклучени организациите кои имаат искуство со менторирање студенти за Google Summer of Code програмата, кои за помалите имаат креирано специјални задачи кои се соодветни на можностите и знаењето на средношколците.

Задачите се групирани во следните категории:
1.Кодирање: Задачи поврзани со пишување или рефакторирање (преработување/подобрување) на код;
2.Документација: Задачи поврзани со креирањето/едитирањето на документи;
3.Outreach (маркетинг): Задачи поврзани со менаџирање на околината и ширење на пораката/маркетинг;
4.Quality assurance (утврдување/проверка на квалитет): Задачи поврзани со тестирање и утврдување на тоа кодот да е со висок квалитет;
5.Истражување: Задачи поврзани со проучувањето на проблем и понудување на можни решениа за истиот;
6.Тренирање: Помагање на другите да научат повеќе;
7.Превод: Задачи поврзани со локализација;
8.Кориснички интерфејс: Задачи поврзани со истражувањето на на корисничкото искуство или дизајнирање на корисничкиот интерфејс и интеракција.

Натпреварот е веќе почнат, затоа би било добро ако сте заинтересирани веднаш да се вклучите! Натреварот ќе трае до 16 јануари 2012 година.

Како да се вклучите?

За да се вклучите треба да ја посетите оваа страница, каде треба да се регистрирате. Организациите кои учествуваат во овој натпревар, имаат листи на задачи од кои вие можете да си одберете и да пробате да ја решите. Задачите имаат објаснување, време за кое е предвидено да ги решите, ниво на тежина за задачата и работи кои треба да ги извршите за да се смета задачата да решена. „Лесните“ задачи вредат 1 поен, „средните“ 2 поена, а „тешките“ 4 поена.

Задачата ја одбирате со едноставно кликање. Можете да работита на само една задача во дадено време. Не можете да одберете задача која некој друг веќе ја одбрал, освен ако ако не е повторно отворена.

Кога ќе ја решите задачата, ја предавате според тоа што се очекува од вас да завршите.

Комуникацијата се одвива на англиски јазик, па е потребно да го владеете доволно за да можете да ги извршите задачите.

Вреднување на извршените задачи и награди

Задачите ќе ги вреднуваат „судиите“ кои се назначени од организацијата која ја има зададено задачата која сте ја решавале. Параметри се: креативноста, темелноста, квалитетот на работата. Ако задачата која сте ја решиле ги исполни критериумите на „судиите“ вашата задача ќе биде прогласена за завршена (completed).
Ако решите една задачка ќе добиете само маичка, но ако решите 3 ќе добиете награда од 100$ до 500$ во зависнотост од тежината на задачите. Секој учесник може да добие максимум 500$ и маичка, колку задачи и да реши. Единствен исклучок на ова е ако е grande prize winner.

Grand prize winners се оние кои собрале најмногу бодови на натреварот. Овие учесници ќе добијат бесплатна посета на просториите на Google во Mountain View,California. Секој од овие учесници ќе добие авионски превоз за него и еден родител/старател, хотелско сместување за две ноќи и оброци. Звучи возбудливо, нели?

Секој ваков натпревар е уште една можност да научите повеќе, да соработувате со одлични тимови и да се забавувате додека работите.

Ви посакувам среќа!

So I did my best spreading the word. And I got many responses! I organised an event, did an interview for a local newspaper, had the news featured in many web sites. That resulted with a great amount of interest, and there are a few ladies currently just before filing applications.

We can always rely on numbers to tell the true story, so here are the sources.

Together with the hacklab in Skopje and the local FOSS community, we made an event, more of a presentation of the GWO program. We introduced GNOME to the one who attended, free software in general and explained what it takes to be in this program. You can see a post on the hacklab’s blog about it here. It says: “Tonight at Gallery 7, Intro to Gnome Women Outreach Program”. Unfortunately we didn’t take pictures. Quite a few ladies came.

I have circled the transcribed GNOME word in Macedonian

So now I am just going to paste all the links of the sites where the information appeared:

1. The first IT portal in Macedonia;
2. The most popular portal in Macedonia featuring all kinds of stuff;
3. A site dedicated to education;
4. Another site about education.

And probably some I don’t know about and also some that I forgot about

Also, a friend and a fellow coder Sandra posted it on the mailing list of the local IAESTE organisation, and also to the state university. She really helped. Thanks Sandra!

So the number: How was the turnout of all this?

I got about 12 mails or maybe a few more. Some of the girls just wanted some more information, some were ready to get on the subject, and others said they will wait till the summer because of school. Good choice, since they need to be free to code.

So from all the girls who sent mails of interest, 5 of them made the initial contact with the mentor and are currently working on their initial contribution. There are applying for different projects: Emapthy, Vinagre, Art and Design, GNOME-Shell, Anjuta. I wish them luck and I hope they prove what they know!

Me and the community from the local hacklab that has been a great support for me when I wanted to apply in March, are here as encouragement and support when needed.

So, as conclusion, having the amount of interest that this time was shown, I can promise you my GNOMErs that you will hear about Macedonian lady contributors a lot in the future! I will keep working on awareness about free software and what it offers, specially among my ladies

Have a nice weekend everybody!

Кликнете за поголем постер - и споделете!

Почнувајќи од денеска, можете да аплицирате за GWO програмата. Иако ќе ви објаснам како се тоа оди подетално, ѕирнете го и официјалниот пост овде.

Аплицирањето трае до 31 октомври. Ако вашата апликација биде прифатена пак, ќе бидете дел од програмата 3 месеци, почнувајќи од 12 декември а завршувајќи на 12 март. Три месеци можеби ви изгледаат малку, но за тие три месеци ќе научите многу. Јас бев дел од оваа програма ова лето, иако под закрилата на Google Summer of Code, и можам да ви кажам дека покрај тоа што ќе станете дел од одлична заедница, ќе работите со посветени ментори од кои ќе научите многу, а и ќе стекнете непроценливо работно искуство. И секако, ќе придонесувате за развојот на слободниот софтвер, што би требало да е и мотивација сама од себе

Ако сеуште читате, одлично затоа што ќе дознаете една доста примамлива вест. Покрај тоа што луѓето ќе работат да ве научат подобро да програмирате, а вие ќе придонесувате во светот на слободниот софтвер, важно е и дека оваа „пракса“ е платена од разните спонзори на GNOME фондацијата, и тоа 5000$!

Знам дека сега сте дефинитивно заинтересирани. За оние кои можеби првпат слушаат за GNOME и програмата, кратко воведче:

GNOME е иновативна и најпопуларна десктоп околина која се дистрибуира со слободните оперативни системи, а и самата нормално е слободен софтвер. GWO програмата има за цел да привлече повеќе жени да придонесуваат во слободниот софтвер, чија бројка во моментов е сеуште мала, иако постојано расте.

Учесниците во оваа програма работат од дома, со голема помош од менторот на соодветниот проект кој ќе го изберат и тимот кој веќе работи на проектот, но и од целата GNOME заедница која е секогаш спремна да помогне, на каков проблем и да наидете.

Покрај програмерки во програмата можат да се вклучат и девојки кои би сакале да пишуваат документација, дизајнерки, а и девојки кои би помогнале во маркетингот. Проектите за кои можат да аплицирате може да ги видите овде (скролнете надоле), и слободно контактирајте било кој од заедницата или пак пратете ми мене порака ако нешто не ви е јасно.

Поважни дати:

- 16 септември – програмата е објавена и можете да аплицирате преку страницата.

- 16 септември – 31 октомври – оние кои сакаат да учествуваат во овој период треба да стапат во контакт со барем еден од проектите и да ја направат својата „иницијална контрибуција“. За прогрмерките тоа би било решение на некој полесен баг кој вашиот mentor to be ќе ви го посочи, уште одма да си кажам, ништо страшно. За дизајнерките тоа може да е некој постер или пак редизајнирањето на некоја страница. Иницијалната контрибуција е симболична и има за задача да ве воведе во она кое ќе го работите понатаму. Менторите знаат дека повеќето за прв пат ќе се сретнат со GNOME API и нема да ви дадат нешто што не може да го решите.

- 31 октомври – краен рок за поднесување на апликацијата.

- 9 ноември – се објавуваат прифатените кандидати.

- 12 декември – 12 март – во овој период се прифатените кандидати ќе работат на своите проекти заедно со своите ментори.

Важно е и да се напомене дека за разлика од Google Summer of Code програмата, за да се учествува во оваа програма девојките не е задолжително да се студентки.

Има уште доста работи да се зборуваат за програмата. Јас ви стојам на располагање да ве запознаам со принципот како работи заедницата, помош околу кодирањето, и секако со аплицирањето. Ако не сте знаеле, Скопје има хаклаб каде може да дојдете и да се обратите за било каква помош, каде и јас ќе ве чекам .

пишете ми меил: tamara.atanasoska20@gmail.com
twitter: http://twitter.com/#!/tatanasoska

Ви посакувам многу среќа и се надевам ќе се пријават што поголем број македонски девојчиња! Се надевам ќе имате тотално позитивно искуство како и јас.

So what has been happening lately?

We also did our lightning talks both Google Summer of Code students and Gnome Women Outreach Program participants presenting our projects, what has been done and what we plan to do. I must say that we are very lucky to be a part of either of the programs and all of us made so many interesting contributions! So, I very much encourage everyone to apply for the next round of GNOME Women Outreach Program this winter, and if I can help in any way, please don’t hesitate to contact me. I could help you with getting to know the principles of work, the ladies who do this, and if you want to get involved in the project I am currently working on (Anjuta) even help you with understanding the code easier and making your initial contribution.

So these two months I’ve been working on GNOME’s IDE as you know. I was going pretty slow in the beginning because I haven’t coded in C before and also had no idea what GTK was But as time passed, I can say without a doubt, that those obstacles are not so hard to overcome if you really love coding and you love to learn more. My mentor helped me a lot all the time, and the people from the community. IRC channels are a place where you can find help always almost immediately if someone who is online knows the solution for your problems.

At the Desktop Summit, I was trying to solve a problem I had for a longer time with my features, a piece of code that was missing to make them active. I talked to more that 30 people about that, and finally managed to get it right. But that is not the main story. The main thing is, that while discussing with all those developers about my problem, we checked the software in general and got many new and really interesting ideas to implement. Denisius also mentioned the redesign of the program, in what I will be very happy to participate and would be absolutely great. So, designers out there, Anjuta needs you! If anyone wants to help with that, please do step up!

I did the “open include file” feature, now I am in the phase of getting the “open file at line” feature done, and the thing that would make me most happy is when I finish the “open function” feature that would grep the project for the mentions of the function and the usage of it. I like when software is easy to use, has many tricks that save you clicks and time, and when those tricks are actually useful and used a lot. So I am constantly looking for things like there. If you are an Anjuta user, or if you maybe use another IDE and you want something implemented in Anjuta, just say! I am not all-knowing and I am a little slow, but I am willing to code and try as much as it takes to make users happy. I know most of us are used to coding in emacs or vim, but an IDE makes things a bit more simple, and has sweet features like these that I am trying to implement that save you time from typing in the terminal. And the redesign would make Anjuta pretty

I also realised a lot of things about Free Software principles and why is it so important. There was at the summit a great panel about copyright that made me think more deeply into the free software politics question. Free software is more that just the freedom of code. Is about freedom in general and touches our fundamental rights as human beings.

When I start writing I always have so much to say Maybe I should do this more often. Anyway, till the next time could you answer a question for me: Why is free software important to you, and why do you contribute?

See you at some next event, and again, nice meeting you all!

This is how my laptop looks like now Thanks Google and GNOME!

It has been a great and a busy week! Beside coding I got to learn so many new things! Actually, when I come to think of it, I spent more time reading, planning and sketching on paper than coding. And that is absolutely satisfying.

Schedule

The timeline in my proposal says this:
From 23rd May to 11th June (official coding starts):

- Continuous communication with mentor about planned task; – Working on bugs: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=346574 and https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=591688; – Defining clear goals and tasks to fix concerning the keyboard shortcuts problem. Final preparations before coding.

And I am right on track! This features/bugs I have included in my timeline are connected to my goal, to make Anjuta more useful with either keyboard or mouse. The first feature is about making the included files in the editor clickable, so there is no need to search them manually in the project directories, and they will open in a new tab next to the file you are editing.
There has been some thought about where to search for the included files. As we all now, when the name of the file is enclosed by <> or “”, and I will base my search criteria there.

I am also totally new to GTK+ (not really, but still not a pro) so as I will need a lot of GTK+ in these three months I read trough the documentation GTK+ 3 and checked out GTK+ 2 but I lack in experience with using it, so further confusions are to be expected.

Working on some other things too..

This week I finished the patch I started for my initial contribution, making a cleaner code version. My previous solution was to refresh the whole tree after the pull command, but as my mentor suggested, I made changes to the code, and now only the vcs status of the files gets updated and not the whole tree gets refreshed. I also extended the same functionality for the commit and push commands.

I wasn’t really familiar with working with git before working on this project, so I had some minor problems with it (I messed up!). Now I learned a lot of git commands and how to deal with some everyday errors I can make.
Probably you all now this, but if there is a rookie like me reading this, I am sure they will find some info useful:
(* indicates filename)
git add * – to add new files if you introduced any;
git commit * -to commit changes you made;
git status – to see the status of your files;
git log – to see the changes committed;
git format-patch HEAD~1 – to make a patch file from the last commit;
git reset HEAD – to delete your last commit, but keep the code in your files;
git reset –hard HEAD~1 – delete the last commit and also wipe the changes in your files;

I am almost ready for making the same as for git plugin for the subversion plugin, so if I finish today I will upload the blog.

Help from the community

I need some ideas and suggestions from Anjuta users concerning keyboard shortcuts, or similar functionalities that you would like to see made or realised, that would you could you use. The only suggestion I got so far is the one suggested by my mentor about problems with Ctrl-C/Ctrl-V shortcuts in the glade plugin, so please if you have any, ping me or IRC (tamara) or just write me a comment.

Next week

By the end of the next week, I will have my subversion plugin patch finished, and also my first feature.
GSoC is a great way of learning new things, and in the same time enjoying it and seeing your work being useful.
Till next week, happy coding!

I am very excited to be a part of this program! It is such a wonderful chance to extend my programing skills and to gain some real world experience.

I initially applied for GNOME Women Outreach Program and my mentor, Johannes Schmid, encouraged me to apply for Google Summer of Code, so I did. My initial contribution was a patch that fixed the problem for the tree not updating after operations done trough the git plugin without the need to fold and unfold the tree. I solved the problem in the simplest way possible, so of course there is a better and a cleaner solution, so with the help of my mentor I am working towards it. Also, I am working at this moment on a similar solution for the subversion plug-in. This patch is for Anjuta which is an IDE which features you can explore here.

As my GSoC proposal says, I will be focusing during official coding time on making Anjuta faster to operate if keyboard is used. Because a lot of developers actually use the keyboard more than they use the mouse; also my research before taking this project returned positive results that they are bothered by this, I hope I make Anjuta more appealing and useful to developers.

As this is my first blog, I can promise many more which will follow my progress trough GSoC, and hopefully serve as reference to future contributors, and also maybe as a motivation to get involved in the community.