Discussion December 2014

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30 participants
14 discussions

Announcing the LibreOffice Conference for 2015 in Aarhus, Denmark
by Carsten Agger 29 Sep '15

29 Sep '15

[1]The LibreOffice Conference for 2015 will take place in Aarhus, Denmark, as a collaboration between the Document Foundation, the Danish LibreOffice community, the FSFE local group and the municipality of Aarhus. Also involved are the local hacker space and (hopefully) other local free software groups. I personally will be involved as a community contact, i.e. as the person with feet on the ground in Aarhus. The event will be hosted by the municipality. As the Document Foundation writes on its blog[2]: Aarhus WaterfrontBerlin, October 17, 2014 – The Document Foundation (TDF) announces that the LibreOffice Conference 2015 will be jointly organized by the Danish LibreOffice community in collaboration with local F/OSS groups and the Aarhus municipality, and hosted at the brand new Urban Media Space, from September 23 to September 25, 2015. In addition, on September 22 the LibreOffice community will gather for several face-to-face meetings: Board of Directors, Advisory Board, Engineering Steering Committee, and Certification Committee. Aarhus is a city of education, knowledge and research. Its university is internationally recognized for its contributions within, among other fields, social sciences, technology and science. Aarhus is known to attract talented students from around the world which also provides the city with a great diversity. “Hosting the LibreOffice Conference will be an exciting opportunity for the entire Danish free software community”, says Leif Lodahl, a long time leader of the Danish LibreOffice community, a founder of The Document Foundation, and the architect of several large migration projects to LibreOffice. “We are looking forward to welcoming LibreOffice volunteers and advocates from every corner of the world”. As the day comes nearer, I may well want to reach out to the wider FSFE community to ask for assistance and support. I’m certainly excited to see how it will work out. [1] Originally posted on my blog, http://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/2014/10/22/announcing-the-libreoffice-conferenc… [2] http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2014/10/17/libreoffice-conference-2015-i… -- http://www.modspil.dk https://blogs.fsfe.org/agger/

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Advocacy material for "going open source"?
by Torsten Bronger 27 Jan '15

27 Jan '15

Hi! I work in a government-funded research facility. Over the past 6 years, we created in-house software for managing our research data. I was the primary responsible person for this project. Now, I'd like to see it being converted into an open-source project. GPL, GitHub, etc. My boss does not rule it out straight away. But he likes to be convinced that it is a good move. He has only little idea about open-source software, licences and the like. By the way, we have no other "business plan" with this software. My question is: Is there any material (slides, web pages, books, case studies, peer-reviewed articles) that help with promoting converting to an open-source model? Could you point me to it? (I raised this question on a German FSF mailing list a couple of months ago but the responses did only contain personal opinions. While I agree with all of it, it does not help me.) Regards, Torsten Bronger. -- Torsten Bronger Jabber ID: torsten.bronger(a)jabber.rwth-aachen.de or http://bronger-jmp.appspot.com

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Free 500 USD laptop proposal
by Paul van der Vlis 24 Dec '14

24 Dec '14

Hello, I saw this propposal, could be interesting: https://bryanquigley.com/uncategorized/would-you-crowdfund-a-500-ubuntu-ope… But I think I would like an laptop without an OS more. With regards, Paul van der Vlis -- Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer, Groningen http://www.vandervlis.nl

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Smart Home - Lacking standards and lock-in
by Nico Rikken 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

Hello everyone, A topic I'm interested in is the field of home automation and home energy management, which are highly related. I'm curious how you conceive the developments in this field, in your country and for your use-case. The availability and quality of hardware and software in this field has increased rapidly in the last couple of years and I can only assume adoption is increasing likewise. With smart-home targeted interfaces being included in an increasing number of appliances, and with gateways being offered as a gift, the barrier to home automation is being lowered for the general consumer. I'm however concerned about the lack of open standards and the related purposeful creation of a lock-in. In the Netherlands there are about a dozen companies developing gateways and some home automation components, often times with a cloud-based back-end. Some are developing in accordance to standards like Z-Wave, Zigbee and OpenTherm, whilst others have defined their own Application Profiles on top of the Zigbee communication stack (Plugwise) or have developed RF-based communication (FifthPlay). Not using proper standards is becoming more of an issue now that in NL energy companies are offering gateways as part of the contract, both as a nice-to have device and as a way to help save energy. People are however coming to find that some of these systems sold by their energy company become pretty much useless when they cancel their contract, since a large part of the added value is in the data-services by the energy company. They end up with a stand-alone device which was never intended to be used stand-alone. This practice of lock-in also comes into play with custom communication standards, such that replacing the gateway would require you to ditch the additional devices as well. Whilst being proper standards, the specifications of Z-Wave and Zigbee (Application Profiles) aren't as open as some other available protocols [1]. Likewise there is a lack of standardisation in gateway interfaces for third-party applications to tie into these systems. How do you conceive these developments, and is there a FSFE-angle to this story? Kind regards, Nico [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZigBee#License

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Re: Smart Home - Lacking standards and lock-in
by Nico Rikken 21 Dec '14

21 Dec '14

Dear Jann, Considering anyone to be able to, and actually make a conscious decision indeed seems to be a wrong assumption, as has been proven in society and technology many times over. Systems should default to be secure and respect your freedom. This is however a goal that is not yet achieved. Kind regards, Nico

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Re: Smart Home - Lacking standards and lock-in
by Diderik van Wingerden 20 Dec '14

20 Dec '14

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi, for your information: we are currently working on the vendor lock-in "problem" for Dutch Smart Home Energy Monitoring (connecting to P1 port of Dutch Smart Meters) by developing on "open"-based product (Open Hardware, FOSS), where the user is in full control of his data and is responsible for deciding where his data goes. We have a working prototype and are currently doing B2B pre-sales. When reaching our pre-sales target we can produce, undercutting the competition's price by 50% or more. If we can reach critical mass, this will result in "data freedom" for Dutch smart meter data and an open market for innovative energy data solutions (apps, websites). On 19-12-14 12:00, discussion-request(a)fsfeurope.org wrote: > Re: Smart Home - Lacking standards and lock-in - -- Warm regards, hartelijke groet, Diderik van Wingerden +31621639148 http://www.think-innovation.com/ "There is no cloud, just other people's computers." -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJUlC8lAAoJEDiSfCO5DiADMk8QAMIIBSI1AjmSCkVwTWAA4Ci4 a9rYxrDoUvQfIOKVDrvvxFK/XaME0dqzhL4VfKYoEGK/0VTN5W5VAI/D+PUBk2mN gjFW0xUQBrCd8Fl8jSKA0ROwwe62Q2I+71pwYTA6o7nktPr4RO53R3yM7q0QzW3Z jkuWd25oCWdR36LPC4x5kwZJCdT04BX3lRbPKGKyxgecc0Ay8yoZfDEVlnTiLDH4 EwqXcZ53F1YQQPSTXJgOhXmJ/LOdAiVotbkFmUjSu/zgI4xjpOwuNqAZps4CtSqN lg/CSGMFIe7JK1t0lQDo35/b3ViSufJHEO+s3V2hN/4ZXBYgd2YOUGfXD+3hw/2S phhLwWEpadjJPGytrkwc4Dr+8XiFjEw8gohmylMMU15CsSUWq8BGw0ha0xuj4Jw/ 8S0lb+xvAOcvpcoBw5Pmd8zvtYTkjmU0IeuoD+rQYKKdolYHipK7WCWQbjYLqwTE zkpy1roiLMj6GF1TDTrBTWhIXsbgd2qikYwnTDA++ITFspC75uYMMC1AWiOkkb9m KslounlSfVLyz6Nj7F/2swPaYqOUfjbtkqQzglCV3YhhcjNJCn1Jw7vrSmt4T9Xu iLRQlA7j+54F5OchTF9KXcAXXZiTjuNAN6BzinqhpfRuQ/uGIDMwYegFguXvfonb wKFD2tbPRan+hYlnq5Yv =PGca -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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Re: Smart Home - Lacking standards and lock-in
by David Gerard 18 Dec '14

18 Dec '14

h On 18 December 2014 at 00:10, Jann Eike Kruse <mail(a)jannkruse.de> wrote: > I don't think we can stop that train. People love convenience, they love gadgets, they like to show off and they are rarely concerned about privacy or security in such contexts...until it's too late. (I'm trying to change that...with only little success.) Just asking myself: How many of you friends use facebook or cracked software? (Both are not very secure, not very privacy-respecting.) Many...most...all? http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/17/changetip-must-die/t "... we all know how lazy people are from the way they install flappy bird apps on their phone with enough privileges to launch nukes." http://hackingdistributed.com/2014/12/17/changetip-must-die/ > So I say, we can not stop it but only try to take part in the 'evolution' and try to push towards solutions that are (nearly) equally fancy but (much) safer, i.e. open standards, open source. Nobody cares about freedom 0 (use for any purpose) until the lack of it bites them in the backside. Even then, they will ask around friends for workarounds rather than assert that they have a right. So my first thought is to get people to think about how to demand freedom ... that they literally don't understand. We, as technologists, have a responsibility to people who, in any practical sense that will ever happen, will never understand what we do. I hope that scares you as much as it does me. - d.

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Re: A question about open databases license
by David Boddie 15 Dec '14

15 Dec '14

[Resent from the correct address.] On Thu Dec 11 19:37:36 CET 2014, Michel Roche wrote: > My final advice to the organization has finally been to use a Public > Domain licence or an Attribution one when it was relevant. > And for opening the data that rise problems, the answer will be in their > "political" decision, where they'll have to decide between a small > income for them and the wealth of society. there's even an intermediate > choice that is to publish subsets of data that do not rise the said risk. I suppose they could perform an experiment by publishing a subset of data and see what happens. Then they would have evidence to support any decision they make later. > I like very much the text of the talk abstract you cited and will > forward it to the organization. If I find other presentations, I'll let you know. Regards, David

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A question about open databases license
by Michel Roche 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

Hello, I'm currently doing some research about the best way(s) to publish open data for a local administration. For many of the data they wish/can publish the license question is quite straightforward, but there's one database which raises much questions. I try to expose the problem as simply as possible: 1-the database : shape files with routes and POI about a region. 2-the context : the administration makes some money selling a walking guide using those informations 3-the aim : opening those data so that eventual reuses will publish correct information about pathes, dangers, etc. 4-the dilemma : open publishing those information may serve any competitor editor to build a competiting guide upon those data 5-the question : how licensing could help preventing such an usage while welcoming more friendly reuses such as : a promotional guide for hiking in the area that would reuse some of the data for the sake of promotion. *4b : let's assume that the dilemma is real. I mean : the risk may not ba as big as their fears, but this is not my point here. Licences evaluated, and the point where I am : - Open Licence (https://wiki.data.gouv.fr/images/0/05/Open_Licence.pdf), or CC-BY : welcomes *every* reuse, so won't solve the dilemma. - CC-BY-NC : may sound appropriate, but : non free (I'd dislike very much ending up in recommending a non-free license), would prevent some legitime reuses (let's imagine that the promotional guide has anything to do with a commercial use) - CC-BY-SA : this is the way I'd choose for : - it's free - the constraint introduced is only reclaiming openness - it may solve the dilemma, but can you help me answer following questions ? Let's assume the competitor wants to use the shape files under CC-BY-SA along with a closed base map bought from a vendor to have a nice looking printed guide. => publishing such a reuse of the data seems to lead to a licences conflict : the closed license would say something like "all rights reserved, reproduction forbidden", where the CC-BY-SA part would claim "any reuse of this data will be under this same license" => How to solve that ? If it' not solvable, this means that the commercial reuse cases of the data opened under CC-BY-SA are quite a complicated way, which I find a reasonable manner to solve the original dilemma Am I on the right way with my assumptions and questions ? Michel Roche

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Re: [Translators] [off-topic] The Pirate Bay is closed
by Nico Rikken 11 Dec '14

11 Dec '14

I guess this is better suited for the discussion mailinglist. Thanks for mentioning, especially since the Pirate Bay is real landmark. There are more sides to this story. Just take the view of Peter Sunde [1]. Not to dramatize the issue, but would this not be more similar to Silk Road having been shut down? Copyright laws are quite clear, you might like them to be different, but that is another debate. Then again the Pirate Bay also offered non-copyrighted material, and taking down is quite a severe measure. It's not my call to make, but such a statement might lead to the wrong conclusions about the FSFE for the casual reader. [1] http://blog.brokep.com/2014/12/09/the-pirate-bay-down-forever/ Kind regards, Nico

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Discussion December 2014