finished work for March

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+The Open Source Initiative, a non-profit that advocates for open source software -- and coined the term -- is celebrating its 20th anniversary this month. It's difficult to conceive of where the internet, indeed the world, would be today were it not for open source software, and perhaps more importantly, the free software movement that preceded it and continues to promote free software today.
+
+The difference between free and open source software is at this point largely moot, save for deep philosophical differences that don't currently matter to anyone outside a very small community of thinkers. 
+
+You can read an <a href="https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/02/03/open_source_turns_20/">entertaining history</a> of the Open Source Initiative here at The Reg. Here's my extremely foreshortened version: Open Source Software is of course what happened to the Free Software movement when, to borrow a phrase from 1980s punk rock, the suits showed up. 
+
+To businessmen who only ever thought of the word "free" as a term to describe not having to pay for something, free software was anathema. It probably didn't help that the most prominent free software advocates also looked the part of, and by all accounts were, counterculture fans. From the conservative world of business in the 1990s free software looked like a bunch of dirty hippies trying to destroy capitalism. 
+
+Enter the Open Source Initiative (OSI). The OSI wanted to make Free Software "more understandable to newcomers and to business". They felt the term 'free software,' with "its seeming focus on price" distracting. 
+
+The founders of the OSI felt they needed the business world on board if the idea was every going to catch on. As Open Source advocate Bruce Perens, who wrote the Open Source Definition, <a href="https://perens.com/2017/09/26/on-usage-of-the-phrase-open-source/">writes</a>, "Open Source was meant to be a way of promoting the concept of Free Software to business people, who I have always hoped would thus come to appreciate Richard [Stallman] and his Free Software campaign. And many have. Open Source licenses and Free Software licenses are effectively the same thing". 
+
+Effectively perhaps, but not actually. 
+
+Still, despite what Perens and other OSI backers believe there is a philosophical difference between Free Software and Open Source Software. It may not be important to most people taking advantage of Free Software, but it is there. As Richard Stallman <a href="https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html">put it</a>, "ideas of 'free software' made some people uneasy... raising ethical issues such as freedom, talking about responsibilities as well as convenience, is asking people to think about things they might prefer to ignore, such as whether their conduct is ethical."
+
+Perhaps the most ironic thing about the origins of open source today is that it too had become a watered-down term that is increasingly is danger of losing its meaning as well. On the web today Open Source is used to refer to plenty of projects that use Open Source approved licenses, but ship unmodifiable binaries, something Free Software explicitly forbids, but Open Source doesn't address. Open Source has also been broadened to apply to devices that aren't patented, even, in the case of the New York Times, to apply to beta testing in public, which has nothing at all to do with open source or free software.
+
+These days Stallman and other Free Software advocates tolerate open source. As Stallman himself points out, "different values can lead to similar conclusions." In the end most of the Free Software Foundation's approved licenses are also Open Source licenses, though the opposite is not 100% true. That is, Free Software is Open Source software, but Open Source Software is not necessarily Free Software. 
+
+And that philosophical divide remains there in the background and may come to a head one day. Unfortunately the age of the philosophical programmer is largely behind us, and, should things ever come to a head between Free Software and Open Source, it's not hard to imagine which one will come out on top. The Open Source world probably has the money, corporate backing and developer mindshare to weather any sort of conflict with Free Software.
+
+I consider that a shame. I see nothing wrong with open source -- that is, Open Source as defined by the OSI -- but I'm not sure why you'd be committed to Open Source. As they say in Hollywood, I'm not sure what my motivation is in this scene. 
+
+If you're going to bother stepping outside the norm, and, outside of the developer community open source is definitely still outside the norm, why not chose to do something for reasons that go a little deeper than "it works" or "it doesn't cost anything". Proprietary software often works just as well. It's often a practical choice, so what's the motivation for the open source user to go with open source over the same proprietary software? Because the source is available? If that's enough for you then carry on, me, not enough.
+
+Free Software has a much more defined purpose and clearer mission. The Free Software user always knows why she chooses free software, because it offers freedom. As Stallman writes, "if we value our freedom, we can act to maintain and defend it." 
+ 
diff --git a/open-source-insider-1803.txt b/open-source-insider-1803.txt
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+Where do we go from here? That's the question that's been on my mind lately, as I browse through Git repos looking for interesting projects, attempting to informally survey the state of open source and, closer to home, how open source might be able to fix the web. Because let's face it, the web today is about as interesting as the chatter of an encyclopedia salesman was a couple generations ago.
+
+But something I find that today's brightest seem to miss is that the web wasn't always this way and doesn't have to be this way today.
+
+The internet was once little more than some very strange, some might say primitive, pages connected together by links. In the very early days there was no searching, there was simply exploring. The further you went the more you found. Pages and sites spread by word of mouth. Eventually out of this beautiful primordial cesspool some structures began to emerge. There were things called "web rings" which were sites that had band ed together to help people find like minded pages, authors, enthusiasts, what have you.
+
+In these days the World Wide Web had yet to attract the attention of commerce. It was too unpredictable, scattered and lacking in any kind of discernible business model. This was the heyday of the independent creator. Suddenly mainstream media was unseated from its thrown by a thousand voices with a thousand different opinions. The notion of a shared cultural script was effectively chucked in the waste bin. Instead people were able to immerse themselves in millions of different streams of information, ideas, stories, and ways of living that had previously been difficult to discover or outright impossible.
+
+For a few years, the World Wide Web really was exactly what it was envisioned to be -- a world loosely linked and endlessly free. It was rare that you went looking for specific things, instead you browsed, you explored.
+
+This worked for a time, but the web kept growing. Web rings could be hard to find if you didn't stumble onto one of the sites on your own. Thus began the rise of the search engine. Lycos, Alta Vista and other early pioneers attempted to map the growing chaos of the internet. The early search engines did a pretty good job, good enough that they quickly became the first stop for newcomers.
+
+Then came the rise of Google, which ordered the web better than its predecessors, but also went beyond simple organizing into value judgements. In roughly February of 2011, Google launched a change to its algorithm the began to favor corporate sites over independent publishers. Independent publishers lost 50 percent, often more, of their traffic and for intents and purposes were destroyed. Before that Google had banned web rings, calling them "link exchanges" and with those two moves Google effectively divided and conquered the web, killing the independent publisher and paving the way of the corporate commodified web of today.
+
+These days search engines are largely gone. Google manages to cling to life, but its demise is all but fait accompli. Facebook and Twitter are the new starting points and if people search the web it's out of habit rather than because it gets them interesting results. What you get from Google these days is akin to what you got from mainstream media when independent publishing took off -- bland, boring content whose primary purpose to provide whitewashed, advertiser safe content against which ads can be sold. 
+
+What does all this have to with open source? Well web rings were effectively open source, search engines were not. All things move in cycles and I happen to believe that we're nearing the end of a closed source cycle. That doesn't mean that open source solutions will replace it, but certainly the opportunity for that to happen will come in the near future.
+
+I also don't mean to say that Google will disappear. It won't completely, Microsoft still exists though its influence has waned and no really cares what it does these days. Google is well on its way to the same. Already web developers have (finally) woken up to the <a href="http://ampletter.org/">dangers it poses</a> to what remains of the web. More than its hostile approach to the web though what really spells Google's end is very simple: can anyone remember the last time Google did anything innovative or even moderately interesting on the web?
+
+While I'll enjoy a good jig atop Google's grave, I'm far more interested in what comes next. 
+
+But what does come next? Crystal balls are notoriously murky, but I see two possible futures. The first and easiest prediction is that nothing happens next. The web becomes increasingly fragmented, corporatized and essentially turns to the digital equivalent of modern American cities: endless strip malls of the same ten stores repeated over and over again across the landscape. Depressing as it sounds, this is where my money would be if I were a betting man.
+
+But you don't want to hear that. I don't want to either. I'm not ready to give up. And I believe that enough of us got enough of a taste of what the internet could be -- nay was -- for those few short years in the early part of the 21st century that we'll try to recreate it. I don't know what it will look like, but I do know it will be open source in spirit, which is to say it will probably not have a business model, it will not cede its central functions -- browsing and discovery -- to outside influences and it will not use a server-client model. 
+
+There are already some efforts that vaguely look to be headed in this direction, like <a href="https://ipfs.io/">IPFS</a>, but IPFS has goals well outside creating a more experimental and creator-friendly web. It might be part of an answer, but not the whole thing. There is also the so-called dark web, that is all the onion sites out there that most people don't seem to know how to get to (hint: <a href="https://www.torproject.org/">install Tor</a>, and start looking for an onion site directory, which is similar to the web rings mentioned above), but at the moment the onion side of web has a reputation for being a haven of criminals, which it at least partly deserves. Again, this might be part of an answer, but not all of it.
+
+Most of the answer remains elusive. Indeed, as I said before, it may not happen. It may be that all we get is a sense of nostalgia for the golden days of an internet that will never return. 
diff --git a/ubuntu1804-flavors.txt b/ubuntu1804-flavors.txt
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+The first beta release of Ubuntu 18.04 is now available. Ubuntu 18.04, which will arrive in official form next month, will be a long term support release and will be, for those who stick with LTS releases, the first time many see the new GNOME-based Ubuntu.
+
+The first beta, however, does not include the main GNOME-based release. Instead this is more of a community release, with most of the various Ubuntu flavors participating. This particular beta is slightly more noteworthy than usual since, thanks to the havoc wreaked by Spectre and Meltdown, which limited the use of many distros' build systems, this first beta is really the first milestone release for most of the Ubuntu flavor releases.
+
+As the <a href="https://xubuntu.org/news/testing-for-xubuntu/">Xubuntu developers note</a>, "the ISO Tracker has seen little activity for the last few development cycles. We know we have some excited users already using and testing 18.04. But without testing results being recorded anywhere, we have to assume that nobody is testing the daily images and milestones. And this has major implications for both the 18.04 release and the project as a whole."
+
+In my testing, many of these releases feel much more like daily builds than a beta. Which is to say things are somewhat rougher around the edges than what you'd usually find in an Ubuntu beta release. It's still a good time to check out all the various flavors of Ubuntu, but my advice would be to stick with running these in a virtual machine.
+
+## Xubuntu
+
+Xubuntu 18.04 is looking like a very interesting release, for perhaps some unexpected reasons. Ostensibly based on Xfce, Xubuntu is nevertheless replacing quite a few stock Xfce/GNOME apps with equivalent MATE desktop apps. PDF reader Evince will be jettisoned in favor of Atril, GNOME Calculator has been replaced by MATE Calculator, and File Roller (the app that GNOME forgot) is out in favor of MATE's Engrampa.
+
+I haven't been able to find any details on why the change, but I'd be willing the bet it has to do with dependencies, dependencies the GNOME project might decide to get rid of tomorrow. Whatever the case it makes Xubuntu a little bit different than just Xfce atop an Ubuntu package base and goes a long way to making it feel like its own thing, much the way Ubuntu MATE feels very much like its own thing.
+
+Since last year's 17.04 saw a major Xfce update, there isn't too much new on the Xfce side. There's a new sound applet and status update plugin, but by and large the Xfce of 18.04 is pretty close to what you saw in 17.10. That's to be expected since this is an LTS release.
+
+## Kubuntu
+
+Kubuntu 18.04 sees a little life breathing into the Kubuntu project, particularly in the theme which is now considerably less blindingly white and feels more like, well, Kubuntu than just stock KDE. 
+
+Over the past year or so I've come around to KDE, particularly its development process and objectives, which feel much more transparent and sane compared to say, well, some other big, often capricious, desktop environment that seems to get the lion's share of attention. Of all the KDE-based desktops I've tested Kubuntu stands out as one of the best. The project is great about getting the latest version of KDE tested and shipped.
+
+This release is no different, featuring Plasma 5.12 LTS and KDE Applications 17.12.2. The former will be the most noticeable part of the upgrade, bringing considerable speed improvements and using quite a bit less RAM than previous releases. It's still KDE, which is to say it's not the lightest desktop around, but it's a bit more svelte than it used to be.
+
+Other new features include far too much to cover in detail here, but the highlights in my testing have been a better layout for Kickoff (KDE's app menu) and Night Color, which adjusts the screen color temperature to reduce eye strain at night. That's a Wayland-only feature, but a very welcome one since Wayland breaks most third-party apps that do this in Xorg. Plasma 5.12 also fixes one of my big problems with KDE on Wayland: there's now a fullscreen option for Wayland windows.
+
+It's not new, but KDE's Global Menu feature -- which reduces all of a window's menu clutter to a single button -- is well worth checking out, especially if you're missing the (albeit somewhat different) global menus of Ubuntu's Unity interface.
+
+## Ubuntu MATE
+
+Ubuntu MATE continues to turn out a really nice, feature-packed, but simple to figure out desktop, which, for my money, is better than what Ubuntu proper is doing right now.
+
+This release sees the new MATE 1.20 desktop, which is most notable for solving what has long been MATE's biggest failing -- the lack of HiDPI support. That's now largely a thing of the past. MATE Desktop 1.20 supports HiDPI displays with dynamic detection and scaling. HiDPI hints for Qt apps are also part of this release so if you use any Qt apps they won't look out of place (or they won't be blurry anyway).
+
+MATE's Marco window manager gets a few new tricks in this release, including the ability to do quadrant window tiling, and there's some new shortcut keys to navigate the Alt + Tab switcher. 
+
+Here's one to make Unity refugees happy: Ubuntu MATE's Global Menu integration has received a lot of polish and at this point works as well as Unity's ever did. When the Global Menu is added to a panel the application menus are automatically removed from the application window and only presented globally. Previously getting that working properly took some additional configuration work. Remove the Global Menu from the panel and MATE will automatically restore menus to their application windows. MATE's HUD, which mirrors the HUD of Unity, and, like the Unity version, holding Alt won’t trigger the HUD anymore. The HUD is also HiDPI aware now.
+
+Ubuntu MATE has also already adopted a feature coming to the mainline Ubuntu release, namely a Minimal Install option. Not to be confused with Ubuntu Minimal, which is an entirely separate download, the Minimal Install option in MATE and Ubuntu proper refers mainly to whether or not you want all the third-party bells and whistles. In the case of MATE you'll get the MATE Desktop, its utilities, its themes and Firefox. Everything else -- email client, video player, office suite, etc -- is left to the user. It's a handy option for those of us whose favorite default apps are different than the distro's defaults, but at the same time don't want to build their entire desktop from scratch as you'd have to do with the Minimal CD.
+
+## Ubuntu Budgie
+
+Ubuntu Budgie is the relative newcomer in the flavors family, but it's already turned out several very nice releases and 18.04 is no exception. Based on the Budgie desktop, which was created by the developers of Solus Linux, Budgie is a bit more lightweight than KDE or GNOME, but has a more "modern" design than say Xfce. It nicely straddles the middle ground between GNOME bloat and Xfce traditionalism. 
+
+At the moment Budgie is based on GTK3 and as such look somewhat like GNOME, but Budgie's roadmap calls for the project to drop GTK and move to Qt as some point. That's been my sticking point with Budgie up to this point, I just don't see a low-level toolkit change like that being smooth, but I must say, using this beta convinced me that I liked Budgie enough to overlook its potentially tumultuous future.
+
+Among the new features in 18.04 are a new GTK theme with about a dozen new desktop applets available, much improved keyboards shortcuts and MP3 support out-of-the-box. Like the rest of the Ubuntu family there's a new minimal install option in the installer, which in this case is a god-send since the default Budgie apps and I do not get along.
+
+This release is also notable for what I think is the best use of a Snap app I've seen yet. The Budgie Welcome app, the little window that launches when you first start the desktop, is a pre-installed Snap app. That way the developers can keep it up-to-date, change or add links within its interface and push those out over the course of the LTS release cycle.
+
+## Lubuntu/Lubuntu Next
+
+While Lubuntu generally participates in the first beta release, as of the time of writing they haven't released anything. The Lubuntu Next project has likewise not released anything for the beta. If you're curious you can head over to the daily builds page and try one of those, but the in case of Lubuntu Next, which is based on the very much work in progress LXQt desktop, those daily builds will likely be quite buggy.
+
+## Conclusion
+
+The Ubuntu flavors family continues to turn out very impressive releases and in most cases would be well repected full-fledged distros if they were their own thing. As it stands they're often overshadowed by the main release of Ubuntu, but if you're looking for a change -- without distro hopping -- any of these will give you a nice, stable desktop with all the underlying Ubuntu tools you already know.