Ubunchu: Challanging Web Forums

22Feb/100

Ubunchu: Challanging Web Forums

It has been a while since I last mentioned Ubuntu fan-written comic Ubunchu. Since then there has been 2 additional releases focusing on 2 different topics that are relevant to the Ubuntu creed of community, sharing and generosity.

In the first, of the two, new episodes, entitled Time for the Forums to Debut!?, the story focuses around the System Admin Club members Risa, Akane and Masato troubleshooting an issue with their video card that they encounter as a result of upgrading their version of Ubuntu to a new release. In their efforts to find a solution to the problem they try to make use of the official Ubuntu web forums. What will they expect to encounter on the forums? Will they be seeing responses reprimanding them for not using the forum search engine, will they be laughed at or even worse told to go read the manual? It's fun to see that the forums they encounter aren't quite what they expected. What's interesting is that Club President, Akane, who is the local Unix specialist, seems to have a immense fear of of web forums.

The latest chapter, The Three Bunnies, focuses less on Linux and more on a crucial open source methodology, namely licenses. Although several different licenses are brought up in this episode, such as the GPL (GNU General Public License) and BSD (Berkley Software Distribution) licenses, the Creative Commons license, which is used primarily for artwork and the like on the web, is given the most attention. The dilemma of this chapter is Risa's uncertainty as to the means she will release a short illustrated story she wrote. On one hand she can release her work publicly under the Creative Commons license or she can submit the story to a contest and possibly earn some sort of prize. Although the story is brief regarding the license itself, upon reading it I got interested in reading up on not only the Creative Commons license, but others, such as fair use/dealing and the GPL, as well. It is quite interesting to learn the differences between these licenses and learning that even major websites like Wikipedia make use of the Creative Commons license. It is definitely at least worth a quick peek on Wikipedia’s entries to read up on this topic.

On a plus side there seems to be an official English version website that has been launched at Ubunchu.net that contains the different translations (English, French, Japanese, etc) for each of the four chapters released so far. There is also a link from the official English site to an Ubunchu fan group discussion board called Club Ubunchu, whose members not only discuss the comic but also actively collaborate in providing translations for each new chapter as they come out. What is equally as interesting is that the English version website bears no mention of the mysterious twin-tailed girl named Akiha that has appeared on the author's, Seotch, Japanese-language blog and been there for quite some time. It's not only surprising, but funny even, that earlier today, when I visited Seotch's English-language blog there happened to be a new chapter, currently titled The Big Sister Has Come!, introducing Akiha as the President of the I.T. Club and rival to Akane. The funny thing is that I had intended to post up this entry yesterday and lo and behold, a new chapter came out! I'm looking forward to seeing the fine work that the translators and Seotch have in store for us in the near future! Keep up the good work!