[Linux-aus] Candidacy support statement - President

[Hugh Blemings]

Hi Aj, All,

Firstly my apologies for the delay in replying, I'm travelling on 
holidays at present and have limited access to email.

On 10/01/2016 17:29, Anthony Towns wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 10, 2016 at 03:48:43PM +1100, Hugh Blemings wrote:
>> By way of background, in addition to having long been involved in Free
>> and Open Source Software and Hardware (..., Ubuntu, ...)
>
>> Further in the interests of openness and transparency, I will note that
>> while I am no longer a full time desktop Linux user [...]
>
> So, what do you use instead, and why? (You didn't mention if you run
> Linux on your "smart devices"?) [0]

A fair question and an interesting and timely opportunity for some 
reflection as I write this.

The TL;DR here is probably "The choice of FOSS vs proprietary 
applications and underlying OS largely made on the basis of case by case 
pragmatism."

A full catalogue of what I have and what it runs what and why is 
probably not very relevant, so a few examples in no particular order;

* My work laptop is a Mac which runs OSX natively and a mixture of FOSS 
and proprietary software to do various day to day duties on top
** VMs of Ubuntu for desktop Linux needs and devstack tweaking
** A company preferred non-free videoconferencing suite
** Thunderbird for personal email
** A proprietary email/calendaring client for for most work related 
email - while I could probably get a FOSS offering into working shape, 
I'd rather spend my limited cycles elsewhere
** In downtime - various music applications, mostly non-free

* My home server (NAS, DNS, Media playback and other odds and ends)
** Ubuntu 14.04.3 LTS

* Some of my (music) keyboards run Linux kernels as it happens - they 
came that way from Korg and Yamaha.  Others either run an embedded OS or 
don't require one such as my much loved Beale Piano and loaner Hammond 
L122 Organ :)

* Have been tinkering with ESP8266 hardware running esp-open-rtos 
https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open-rtos
** Haven't got much further than blinking a LED yet, but am duly scheming

The main change then was moving from native Ubuntu on a Thinkpad to OSX 
on a Mac a few years back.

Macs can of course run Linux natively, something I did initially but as 
I spent more and more non-work time running music applications natively 
under OSX it made more sense to shift to FOSS applications (Thunderbird 
for example) under OSX as well.

Music applications, particularly virtual instruments are very compute 
and memory intensive so virtualisation (OSX under Linux as it would have 
been) is a non-starter.

I think then for better or worse, it was the (non-work related) use of 
music software that drove the change for the most part.  I actually have 
a half written blog post on this (my choice of music software and 
hardware) which I'll dust off sometime soon.  TL;DR - there are some 
important components to a working virtual instrument based keyboard rig 
for which no adequate FOSS equivalent exists.

Hope the above makes some sense :)

>> In the interests of transparency I note that prior commitments will see
>> me with limited availability for voluntary activities until late March
>> 2016 after which time I can direct my attention more fully to LA
>> matters.
>
> Will "limited availability" be enough to address any issues that the
> LCA or PyCon (etc) teams might have prior to or during March, or will
> you be relying on your VP to deal with some/all of these (by chairing
> meetings, following up on emails, handling votes, harrassing people to
> do things, etc)?

I see Josh has kindly (and accurately) commented here - I will be 
available enough to be at least tacitly involved in these conversations 
as they occur.  Up until mid/late March I will as you suggest be relying 
on the newly elected Council and past members to do some of the chasing 
here - something I have already discussed with the latter group.

Thank you again for the constructive and pleasantly thought provoking 
questions AJ :)

Cheers,
Hugh