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Hello again
More news :)
I'm just after starting a new series of talks. This time the subject is
security, though there is a Free Software spin to what I do (obviously).
Last night we had a security round-table at the University of
Birmingham. On the 26th I'll be addressing Birmingham PERL Mongers, and
on the 12th of August I'll be making the Great London LUG members suffer
from my chatter.
For more information about the Birmingham PERL Mongers talk:
http://birmingham.pm.org/cgi-bin/brum.pl?act=tech-next
- From more information about the GLLUG talk:
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/pipermail/gllug-announce/2006/000107.html
Regards
Shane
PS: I'll be at LUG Radio Live causing trouble as well. While Gareth
Bowker is speaking I'll be at the FSFE stall explaining to everyone why
*I* would actually win the death match and what *he* was lying on LUG
Radio. For more information about Gareth's misinformation:
http://www.lugradio.org/episodes/53
- --
Shane Martin Coughlan
e: shane(a)opendawn.com
m: +447773180107 (UK) +353862262570 (Ire)
w: www.opendawn.com
- ---
OpenPGP: http://www.opendawn.com/shane/publickey.asc
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Hi guys
I've agreed with the managing director of Dim Sum (www.dimsum.co.uk) to
produce a new series of articles about Europe, China and ICT. It'll be
an on-going thing with the relaunch of their revamped website
(http://joomla.dimsum.co.uk/).
This will provide another useful little outlet for the occasional Free
Software story.
Regards
Shane
- --
Shane Martin Coughlan
e: shane(a)opendawn.com
m: +447773180107 (UK) +353862262570 (Ire)
w: www.opendawn.com
- ---
OpenPGP: http://www.opendawn.com/shane/publickey.asc
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Hi guys
I've incorporated the latest suggestions and squeezed everything down by
about 200 words.
==
Q: How can I give a speech about Free Software?
A: Know your audience! If you are talking about Free Software, talk
about it in a way that will genuinely engage the target audience. Taylor
your delivery to suit the people, and that way you will get a positive
result. If you are speaking to media students, don't go into details
regarding engineering methodology. If you are speaking to computer
science students, don't do a statistical analysis to show a good TCO
(Total Cost of Operation).
Make the presentation fun. Don't look like a teacher, but more like a
student: don't stay behind a desk, walk around and involve the audience
by asking questions.
Q: What important aspects of Free Software should I highlight?
A: There are many things you can talk about to show the benefits of Free
Software. The four freedoms (free use, free modification, free sharing,
free improving) are important, but are not the only things you can bring
into a speech. If you are talking to political students, you might want
to highlight the empowerment aspects of Free Software for developing
nations. If you are talking to computer science students, you might
want to highlight the advantages of Free Software licenses and the
flexibility they bring to both community-driven and in-house development
models.
It's important to emphasise that Free doesn't mean price, it means Freedom.
Q: What about questions regarding the legality of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software has attracted virtually no
lawsuits. In the case of SCO the lawsuit is falling apart because SCO
actually have no evidence. Free Software is not illegal.
The GNU GPL went to court on three occasions, twice in Germany and once
in the USA. The license was considered valid in all cases. More
information about this is available on
http://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf,
http://www.netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-gpl.html and
http://www.ifross.de/ifross_html/home1_2006.html#ARTIKEL15.
Q: What about questions regarding quality control in Free Software?
A: The quality of software depends on many factors. If a project is
well managed it should have a very high standard of quality. This is
true for free and non-free software. The problem is that non-free
software precludes the possibility of peer-review. Proprietary software
is a black box. You have to trust the company that produced that box.
There is no way to verify your trust.
Free software is not always higher quality, but everyone has the right
to examine it and make improvements if desired.
Q: What about questions regarding sabotage of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software fosters open development.
Someone may try to introduce something bad, but the open review process
means this damage will be spotted and removed. It is far more likely
that a hostile force could slip something into a closed system.
Examples of Free Software community audits include the backdoors
discovered in Firebird when the sources where released the first time;
or the tentative move to include backdoors in the Linux kernel that
didn't last more than a few hours.
Q: What about questions about the difference between Free Software and
Open Source?
A: The Open Source Initiative proposed the term 'Open Source' as a
marketing term for Free Software. Their choice of terminology weakened
Free Software's unique selling point (freedom), and introduced confusion
through ambiguous terminology.
This is about choosing the most effective terminology to accomplish a
purpose. It is important to select a terminology that does not easily
yield to misappropriation. The problem with the term Open Source is
that it refers to having access to source code, but access to the source
code is only a precondition for two of the four freedoms that define
Free Software. The term Free Software avoids catering to this
relatively common misunderstanding.
If someone is interested in clarity of language then it's important to
talk about Free Software. Remember, we're talking free as in freedom.
We want to ensure that people are free to use, modify, share and improve
software.
Q: How should I characterise software companies like Microsoft?
A: Always be aware that there may be Microsoft people in the audience
that can stand up any time to correct you if you don't stick to the
truth! You should try to talk about non-free software companies in
general (avoid names) as bad examples of how they treat their customers,
forcing upgrades or taking away their data in unknown formats.
Microsoft is a natural product of a wrong approach. They are the worst
curtailer of freedom, but that's only because they've been the most
successful. Others are trying very hard to restrict the freedom of
users in the same way as Microsoft.
We need to fix the general approach.
Q: What should I say if people suggest Free Software is for tree-hugging
hippies?
A: We use the four freedoms of software to ensure that software users
have a certain standard of rights. Software development and usage is
still a new activity, and it's history and philosophical thinking is
still relatively shallow. People using software don't have many rights
and they are being exploited. Free Software is about setting a measure
for how people should be treated.
If you're talking to a business audience, you can describe this as a
procurement policy. Procurement policies usually spell out minimum
requirements for purchasing and usage:
"Software providers must not prevent the company from seeing what the
software does"
"Software providers must not prevent the company from making
improvements, customising, fixing bugs - or commissioning others to do
these things for the company"
"Software providers will not prevent the publication of any improvements
which the collective users of the software make or commission."
Q: Where should I point people to find out more?
A: The Free Software Foundation Europe website (www.fsfeurope.org), the
Free Software Foundation website (www.fsf.org). Perhaps you could point
people to FSF Latin America, FSF India and Groklaw.
You can obtain some information on presentations given by Ciaran
O'Riordan of the FSFE at http://ciaran.compsoc.com/#roadshow
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Dear Sir,
I am a student at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and I am currently writting
my thesis under the suppervision of prof. van Vliet and it is related to how
knowledge is stored in the open source communities and how it is exchanged
between the members and passed to the newcomers.
For this purpose we have created a questionnaire which we kindly ask you to
fill in adn it is availiable at www.few.vu.nl/~psalti/questionnaire.htm
Your contribution is really important to our research and we really thank you!
We kindly ask you also to forward this questionnaire to any other list or
anybody suitable who could fill it in.
Yours sincerely
Alexandra Psalti
Dear Sir,
I am a student at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and I am currently writting
my thesis under the suppervision of prof. van Vliet and it is related to how
knowledge is stored in the open source communities and how it is exchanged
between the members and passed to the newcomers.
For this purpose we have created a questionnaire which we kindly ask you to
fill in adn it is availiable at www.few.vu.nl/~psalti/questionnaire.htm
Your contribution is really important to our research and we really thank you!
We kindly ask you also to forward this questionnaire to any other list or
anybody suitable who could fill it in.
Yours sincerely
Alexandra Psalti
The audio, video, and some transcripts of the recent GPLv3 conference that
FSFE organised in Barcelona are now online:
http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference.en.html
I'm not finished putting all the materials online or getting the webpages
finished, but I wanted to ask three things. The materials are available in
Ogg Theora and Ogg Vorbis, and can be downloaded with BitTorrent.
(at 12:20 - in 2 hours time - that page should be complete enough to start
submitting it to slashdot etc.)
Are there any nice links which give people Free Software suggestions for how
to view/listen/download with those three technologies?
For the video and audio, I plan to recommende VLC since it's cross platform
and reportedly plays even Theora out of the box.
For BitTorrent, I could tell people to install bittornado and type:
btdownloadcurses http://example.com/filename.ext.torrent
But if there is a nice page with useful info - preferably for non-techs, I
would rather link to it.
One easy mistake I would like to avoid is linking to a page which suggests
that users of Microsoft platforms can install some proprietary
plug-in/software.
--
Ciarán O'Riordan __________________ \ http://fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3http://ciaran.compsoc.com/ _________ \ GPLv3 and other work supported by
http://fsfe.org/fellows/ciaran/weblog \ Fellowship: http://www.fsfe.org
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA256
What might just be the final draft...
==
Q: How can I give a speech about Free Software?
A: Know your audience! If you are talking about Free Software, talk
about it in a way that will genuinely engage the target audience. Tailor
your delivery to suit the people, and that way you will get a positive
result. If you are speaking to media students, don't go into details
regarding engineering methodology. If you are speaking to computer
science students, don't do a statistical analysis to show a good TCO
(Total Cost of Operation).
Make the presentation fun. Don't look like a teacher, but more like a
student: don't stay behind a desk, walk around and involve the audience
by asking questions.
Q: What important aspects of Free Software should I highlight?
A: There are many things you can talk about to show the benefits of Free
Software. The four freedoms (free use, free modification, free sharing,
free improving) are important, but are not the only things you can bring
into a speech. If you are talking to political students, you might want
to highlight the empowerment aspects of Free Software for developing
nations. If you are talking to computer science students, you might
want to highlight the advantages of Free Software licenses and the
flexibility they bring to both community-driven and in-house development
models.
It's important to emphasise that Free doesn't mean price, it means Freedom.
Q: What about questions regarding the legality of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software has attracted virtually no
lawsuits. In the case of SCO the lawsuit is falling apart because SCO
actually have no evidence. Free Software is not illegal.
The GNU GPL went to court on three occasions, twice in Germany and once
in the USA. The license was considered valid in all cases. More
information about this is available on
http://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf,
http://www.netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-gpl.html and
http://www.ifross.de/ifross_html/home1_2006.html#ARTIKEL15.
Q: What about questions regarding quality control in Free Software?
A: The quality of software depends on many factors. If a project is
well managed it should have a very high standard of quality. This is
true for free and non-free software. The problem is that non-free
software precludes the possibility of peer-review. Proprietary software
is a black box. You have to trust the company that produced that box.
There is no way to verify your trust.
Free software is not always higher quality, but everyone has the right
to examine it and make improvements if desired.
Q: What about questions regarding sabotage of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software fosters open development.
Someone may try to introduce something bad, but the open review process
means this damage will be spotted and removed. It is far more likely
that a hostile force could slip something into a closed system.
Examples of Free Software community audits include the backdoors
discovered in Firebird when the sources where released the first time;
or the tentative move to include backdoors in the Linux kernel that
didn't last more than a few hours.
Q: What about questions about the difference between Free Software and
Open Source?
A: The Open Source Initiative proposed the term 'Open Source' as a
marketing term for Free Software. Their choice of terminology weakened
Free Software's unique selling point (freedom), and introduced confusion
through ambiguous terminology.
This is about choosing the most effective terminology to accomplish a
purpose. It is important to select a terminology that does not easily
yield to misappropriation. The problem with the term Open Source is
that it refers to having access to source code, but access to the source
code is only a precondition for two of the four freedoms that define
Free Software. The term Free Software avoids catering to this
relatively common misunderstanding.
If someone is interested in clarity of language then it's important to
talk about Free Software. Remember, we're talking free as in freedom.
We want to ensure that people are free to use, modify, share and improve
software.
Q: How should I characterise software companies like Microsoft?
A: Always be aware that there may be Microsoft people in the audience
that can stand up any time to correct you if you don't stick to the
truth! You should try to talk about non-free software companies in
general (avoid names) as bad examples of how they treat their customers,
forcing upgrades or taking away their data in unknown formats.
Microsoft is a natural product of a wrong approach. They are the worst
curtailer of freedom, but that's only because they've been the most
successful. Others are trying very hard to restrict the freedom of
users in the same way as Microsoft.
We need to fix the general approach.
Q: What should I say if people suggest Free Software is for tree-hugging
hippies?
A: We use the four freedoms of software to ensure that software users
have a certain standard of rights. Software development and usage is
still a new activity, and it's history and philosophical thinking is
still relatively shallow. People using software don't have many rights
and they are being exploited. Free Software is about setting a measure
for how people should be treated.
If you're talking to a business audience, you can describe this as a
procurement policy. Procurement policies usually spell out minimum
requirements for purchasing and usage:
"Software providers must not prevent the company from seeing what the
software does"
"Software providers must not prevent the company from making
improvements, customising, fixing bugs - or commissioning others to do
these things for the company"
"Software providers will not prevent the publication of any improvements
which the collective users of the software make or commission."
Q: Where should I point people to find out more?
A: The Free Software Foundation Europe website (www.fsfeurope.org), the
Free Software Foundation website (www.fsf.org). Perhaps you could point
people to FSF Latin America, FSF India and Groklaw.
You can obtain some information on presentations given by Ciaran
O'Riordan of the FSFE at http://ciaran.compsoc.com/#roadshow
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I have added comments. You might notice that some points were not
included at this juncture. This is because some suggestions overlapped
with existing text in the Q&A.
Most of the discussion centred around the terms Free Software and Open
Source. While this is of interest to Free Software people, please do
remember that most people don't care very much about this. We should be
accurate but brief, ideally explaining the issue in as short a period as
possible in as reasonable a manner as possible.
There are currently three paragraphs of this issue. It'd be nice if
there were only two.
Another area I think could do with a chopping is "Q: What should I say
if people suggest Free Software is for tree-hugging hippies?" It's got
good content, but it'd be nice to see it becoming shorter. Less
defensive. I was thinking perhaps the entire first paragraph can go? I
like Ciaran's argument about ensuring rights, and I think it's quite
strong on its own.
==
Q: How can I give a speech about Free Software?
A: Know your audience! If you are talking about Free Software, talk
about it in a way that will genuinely engage the target audience. Taylor
your delivery to suit the people, and that way you will get a positive
result. If you are speaking to media students, don't go into details
regarding engineering methodology. If you are speaking to computer
science students, don't do a statistical analysis to show a good TCO
(Total Cost of Operation).
Make the presentation fun. Don't look like a teacher, but more like a
student: don't stay behind a desk, walk around and involve the audience
by asking questions.
Q: What important aspects of Free Software should I highlight?
A: There are many things you can talk about to show the benefits of Free
Software. The four freedoms (free use, free modification, free sharing,
free improving) are important, but are not the only things you can bring
into a speech. If you are talking to political students, you might want
to highlight the empowerment aspects of Free Software for developing
nations. If you are talking to computer science students, you might
want to highlight the advantages of Free Software licenses and the
flexibility they bring to both community-driven and in-house development
models.
It's important to emphasise that Free doesn't mean price, it means Freedom.
Q: What about questions regarding the legality of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software has attracted virtually no
lawsuits. In the case of SCO the lawsuit is falling apart because SCO
actually have no evidence. Free Software is not illegal.
The GNU GPL went to court twice, once in Germany and more recently in
USA. The license
was considered valid in both cases. More information about this is
available on http://www.fsf.org/news/wallace-vs-fsf and
http://www.netfilter.org/news/2004-04-15-sitecom-gpl.html
Q: What about questions regarding quality control in Free Software?
A: The quality of software depends on many factors. If a project is
well managed it should have a very high standard of quality. This is
true for free and non-free software. The problem is that non-free
software precludes the possibility of peer-review. Proprietary software
is a black box. You have to trust the company that produced that box.
There is no way to verify your trust.
Free software is not always higher quality, but everyone has the right
to examine it and make improvements if desired.
Q: What about questions regarding sabotage of Free Software?
A: You can point out that Free Software fosters open development.
Someone may try to introduce something bad, but the open review process
means this damage will be spotted and removed. It is far more likely
that a hostile force could slip something into a closed system.
Examples of Free Software community audits include the backdoors
discovered in Firebird when the sources where released the first time;
or the tentative move to include backdoors in the Linux kernel that
didn't last more than a few hours.
Q: What about questions about the difference between Free Software and
Open Source?
A: "The fundamental difference between the two movements is in their
values, their ways of looking at the world. For the Open Source
movement, the issue of whether software should be open source is a
practical question, not an ethical one. As one person put it, "Open
source is a development methodology; free software is a social
movement." For the Open Source movement, non-free software is a
suboptimal solution. For the Free Software movement, non-free software
is a social problem and free software is the solution."
(From http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-software-for-freedom.html)
It's good to point out that "Open Source" is a term created to
"re-label" (in the words of Eric Raymond) free software and to
facilitate "a marketing program for free software." The term Open
Source was coined because the term 'free' in English is ambiguous
(though this word is not ambiguous in other languages).
The problem with the term Open Source is that it refers to having access
to source code. But access to the source code is only a precondition for
two of the four freedoms that define Free Software. Many people do not
understand that access to the source code alone is not enough. The term
Free Software avoids catering to this relatively common misunderstanding.
Remember, we're talking free as in freedom. We want to ensure that
people are free to use, modify, share and improve software.
Q: How should I characterise software companies like Microsoft?
A: Always be aware that there may be Microsoft people in the audience
that can stand up any time to correct you if you don't stick to the
truth! You should try to talk about non-free software companies in
general (avoid names) as bad examples of how they treat their customers,
forcing upgrades or taking away their data in unknown formats.
Microsoft is a natural product of a wrong approach. They are the worst
freedom-restricter, but that's only because they've been the most
successful. Others are trying very hard to restrict the freedom of
users in the same way as MS currently does.
We need to fix the general approach.
Q: What should I say if people suggest Free Software is for tree-hugging
hippies?
A: Point out that IBM and Novell back GNU/Linux, an operating system
made from Free Software, for economic and engineering reasons. Free
Software is not about abstract thought, it is about better development,
distribution and evolutionary models. These models benefit companies,
consumers and society as a whole.
We are trying to ensure that all software users have a certain standard
of rights. Software development and usage is still a new activity, and
it's history and philosophical thinking is still relatively shallow.
People using software don't have many rights and those people are being
exploited.
You can point out that when mandatory labelling of ingredients was
suggested, the food companies were fiercely against it, but today we see
it as a basic right that you should be able to read the ingredients of
food which is sold publicly.
We hope one day these rights will be as standard as food labelling, but
today we can have those rights for ourselves by choosing free software.
So it's not about avoiding MS, it's about setting a standard for how
you should be treated.
If you're talking to a business audience, you can describe this as a
procurement policy. Procurement policies usually spell out minimum
requirements and we hope companies (and people) will start setting the
requirements:
"Software providers must not prevent the company from seeing what the
software does"
"Software providers must not prevent the company from making
improvements, customising, fixing bugs - or commissioning others to do
these things for the company"
"Software providers will not prevent the publication of any improvements
which the collective users of the software make or commission."
Q: Where should I point people to find out more?
A: The Free Software Foundation Europe website (www.fsfeurope.org), the
Free Software Foundation website (www.fsf.org). Perhaps you could point
people to FSF Latin America, FSF India and Groklaw.
You can obtain some information on presentations given by Ciaran
O'Riordan of the FSFE at http://ciaran.compsoc.com/#roadshow
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1. GPLv3 conference in Barcelona
2. FSFE at UN WIPO PCDA/2
3. Anja Vorspel hired part time to help in FSFE office
4. Georg Greve at dorkbot.swiss
5. Linuxwochen in Linz (Austria)
6. Stefano Maffulli at Java Conference Milano
1. GPLv3 conference in Barcelona
The Free Software Foundation Europe organised the third international
GPLv3 conference in Barcelona, Spain. The first day of the two day event
featured speeches from Georg Greve, Richard Stallman, Ciarán O'Riordan
and Eben Moglen about the changes in GPLv3 and the public consultation
process. The second day included four panel discussions, a talk by Pablo
Machón about software patents and a closing presentation by Stefano
Maffulli.
Hosting an official GPLv3 conference in Europe was very important, and
the FSFE was proud to be able to organise it. Financial contributions
from the Fellowship and the work of the Fellows and other volunteers
were essential to make this conference possible. Also, FSFE would like
to thank Stichting NLNet, whose donation supports a large part of the
GPLv3 activities.
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/gplv3/europe-gplv3-conference.en.html
2. FSFE at UN WIPO PCDA/2
The United Nations World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO)
held its second Provisional Committee on Proposals Related to a WIPO
Development Agenda meeting in Geneva, Switzerland. This meeting was
the last before the next WIPO general assembly, and was intended to
formalise the agenda items for a WIPO reform. After several days of
discussion, a proposal to drop all items except those immediately
acceptable to the United States and European Union led to escalation,
and a total disassembling of the meeting. FSFE's statements can be
found online at
http://www.fsfeurope.org/projects/wipo/
and FSFE's president Georg Greve also summarised much of what has
happened throughout these days in his blog:
http://www.fsfe.org/fellows/greve/freedom_bits/(tag)/WIPO
3. Anja Vorspel hired part time to help in FSFE office
Thanks to Rainer Kersten, FSFE's new office in Düsseldorf is up and
running. Rainer works in the office on part time basis and is joined by
Anja Vorspel as a complimentary part time officer. Anja has been
helping as a volunteer in the new office from the start.
4. Georg Greve at dorkbot.swiss
FSFE's president Georg Greve spoke at the dorkbot.swiss event in
Zürich, Switzerland. The dorkbot events are a global network of events
about "doing strange things with electricity", bringing together
artists from various fields and interested people. Georg Greve spoke
about Free Software, its social impact, and how Free Software is both
shaping art and offering new perspectives for artistic work.
5. Linuxwochen in Linz (Austria)
After the positive experience in Vienna, Karin Kosina also gave a
presentation about the FSFE at another event in the Linuxwochen series,
this time in Linz. Although this event was much smaller, her talk was
again well received.
6. Stefano Maffulli at Java Conference Milano
During the latest Java Conference in Milano on 27 June, the Italian
chancellor of FSFE presented the revision process of the GPLv3 to a
public of small and medium enterprises.
You can find a list of all FSFE newsletters on
http://www.fsfeurope.org/news/newsletter.en.html