[ad_1] In this week’s Top 5, we highlight tips for getting started with GitHub, alternatives to Adobe Acrobat for PDFs, how to secure your Linux system, thoughts on the Google v. Oracle case, and how to get started using IRC for chat. Top 5 articles of the week 5.An IRC quickstart guide VM Brasseur provides…

[ad_1] A recent article on Slashdot points out with some chagrin that the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Veterans Affairs in the United States still use COBOL, originally invented in 1959, based on work by the late Rear Admiral Grace Hopper. The implication is—and has been for some years in the IT community—that…

[ad_1] Open Source Bridge is coming up on June 21 in Portland, and you can catch the commotion ramping up on Twitter. In this interview I talk with Shauna Gordon-McKeon about her involvement in the free software and free culture communities, her day job, and her upcoming talk Free culture in an expensive world. Shauna is a programmer, researcher,…

[ad_1] Many of us aspire to contribute to open source projects, but only a few are able to actually do it. We’re all perennially short of time, and we’re always prioritizing. But how do the people who actually contribute to projects find time? What is it that they know and others don’t? We can learn…

[ad_1] Aren’t we supposed to be living in a paperless world by now? I can’t be the only person who imagined the office of the future, free from the confines of the eight and a half by eleven sheet (or A4, for my international friends), would have long since arrived. Instead, we’ve managed to land…

[ad_1] Being a 3D artist used to mean that you were exclusively a digital artist—you worked in a virtual environment with intangible materials. The result of your work was destined to be seen only in print or on screens. Even in a virtual reality (VR) environment, the result is, at best, an illusionary representation of…

[ad_1] Thanks to open source software, Powering Potential and the Raspberry Pi Foundation are able to bring computers and a library of digital education content to rural schools in the East African nation of Tanzania. Recently, the Foundation funded a project that is now distributing Raspberry Pi computers with uploaded educational content alongside portable projectors…

[ad_1] I’m a member of two non-profits in my city. One of them is a sporting league, the other a community initiative to save a bit of land from commercial development. Both organizations are member-run. No one is paid to participate and external funding is minimal; in fact volunteers pay membership dues each year. Neither…

[ad_1] Confession: I am a total book nerd! There are always a ton of book recommendations given while attending a conference, and this year at OSCON was no different. Instead of spreading my book recommendations out and including them in my OSCON event reports, I collected them all in here in one list. Enjoy and let me know if you have…

[ad_1] Open Source Bridge is an annual conference focused on building open source community and citizenship through four days of technical talks, hacking sessions, and collaboration opportunities. Prior to this year’s event, I caught up with one of the speakers, Lindsey Bieda, who will give a talk called Hardware, Hula Hoops, and Flow. Lindsey has…