Works fine on Gentoo, Wouter.

supernova ~ # ls audio*
ls: audio*: No such file or directory
supernova ~ # MAKEDEV audio
supernova ~ # ls audio*
audio audio1 audio2 audio3 audioctl
supernova ~ # uname -r
2.6.11-gentoo-r9

From KDE dev Aaron Seigo’s blog:

switching gears a bit more, a couple of GNOME hackers started hanging out in #kde-devel on the freenode.net IRC network. it’s been enjoyable to discuss topics ranging from packaging, build systems, system trays, cairo and gstreamer with them and to have them join in on our conversations as well. it’s been a nice insight into their perspectives on things and the good natured quality of the discussion even when we see differently on matters has been refreshing.

Now one wonders, did freedesktop.org play any role in encouraging this? Would this have happened if it didn’t exist?

I’m sorry if you have one. See the NYT article (registration required). Yet more evidence that the patent system sucks — the existence of companies that exist solely to exploit it.

You knew it couldn’t take long, given the penchant of numerous open-source folks for good beer. Read the NY Times article (registration required).

Have you been mooching off the free wireless in your local stores? This NY Times article (registration required) suggests rethinking your actions before you lose the privilege.

Benjamin Mako Hill just posted an essay called “Problems and Strategies in Financing Voluntary Free Software Projects.” It’s worth reading for anyone interested in how Gentoo might spend any donated money.

An excerpt:

While it is unclear why paid labor crowds out the work of volunteers, Enjolra hypothesizes that volunteers are less motivated to work for free when they know that others are being paid to do the same work or will be paid to do the work if they do not. Faced with paid workers in their organization, volunteers wonder why they are not getting paid for their work and feel more motivated to volunteer somewhere else. In this way, a small amount of paid labor in an organization or project highly dependent on the work of volunteers can do more harm than good.

Instead, he suggests spending money on:

• Hardware
• “Capacity” — things that aren’t part of the project’s core goal
• Conferences and meetings, including travel aid if funding is sufficient
• “Code sprints” — roughly week-long hack sessions

He emphasizes the need to maintain transparency throughout the process, quoting examples such as the X Consortium for opaque development. But I didn’t catch any examples of opaque (seeming unfair or with unclear rules from the outside) funding.

Nice post in William Patry’s blog on this. It might be helpful in thinking about our copyright transfer and any further issues related to copyrighting Gentoo code.

Mine’s a tad messier than most, but it’s still cleaner than usual.

Of particular note are:

• The Sparc Ultra5 and Genesi Pegasos PPC stacked under the WRT54GS behind my monitor
• The Palm Tungsten C, crucial for its 802.11b and cheesy yet useful IrDA keyboard
• The can of Miller High Life, the quintessential cheap but still-drinkable beer (unlike The Beast, a.k.a. Milwaukee’s Best)
• The books: K&R and Peopleware — Both worth reading
• The left-handed mouse configuration

This article from O’Reilly’s Python DevCenter just came down my RSS reader. It’s a quite cool article on how to use Python’s new (as of 2.3) standard logging module. We’ve got a custom logger, albeit a short one, in the Gentoo installer now, so replacing it with Someone Else’s Problem (TM) might be a fun project.