Ben Cotton

5063 points

Lafayette, Indiana

Ben Cotton is a meteorologist by training, but weather makes a great hobby. Ben works as the Fedora Program Manager at Red Hat. He is the author of Program Management for Open Source Projects. Find him on Twitter (@FunnelFiasco) or at FunnelFiasco.com.

Open Sourcerer People's Choice Award Moderator's Choice Award 2017 Comment Gardener Cloud Linux Open science Python SysAdmin Community Manager Creative Commons Developer Fedora Contributor Club Author Open Organization Ambassador

Authored Content

Top 5: Get started with bash scripting, tips for JSON in MySQL, and more

In this week's Top 5, we highlight text editor tips, managing macOS, and several takes on programming. Top 5 articles of the week 5. 3 types of useful Atom text editor…

Creative Commons: 1.2 billion strong and growing

Creative Commons shares 2016 State of the Commons report, and here are a few highlights.

Top 5: Raspberry Pi and Arduino projects, JavaScript editors, and more

In this week's Top 5, we highlight terminal multiplexers, gardening, JavaScript editors, and a couple of Raspberry Pi projects.

How to make release notes count

Congratulations! You're ready to ship the latest release of your software package. Now you need to make sure your release notes are in order. Sure, you could just slap "bug…

Top 5 articles of the week on Opensource.com

Top 5: New Raspberry Pi Zero, MySQL 8 preview, and more

In this week's Top 5, we highlight new Raspberry Pi hardware, programming languages for beginners, MySQL 8, and machine learning. Top 5 articles of the week 5. Pi Zero…

Free as in puppy: The hidden costs of free software

We're used to hearing of software being described as "free as in freedom" and "free as in beer." But there's another kind of "free" that doesn't get talked about as much:…

Authored Comments

bcotton

28 Nov 2018

Calling for some compassion with our transparency

Thanks, Michael, I'm glad you like it. You're right about how this touches on other Open Org values. I hadn't even considered some of those angles.

bcotton

27 Nov 2018

Calling for some compassion with our transparency

Thanks, Greg. You're right that having a politician explain their change is a benefit with a caveat. If it's "you previously thought X and now your position is Y. Why did you change?" that's clearly a good thing. If the approach is "you previously thought X and now your position is Y so clearly you don't believe Y and you're just pandering" is a weaponized form of transparency that doesn't help anyone. Transparency is a tool, and like any tool it's how we use it that matters.