Discussion August 2015

discussion@lists.fsfe.org

23 participants
8 discussions

Please help us spread the word on Roundcube Next
by Georg C. F. Greve 29 May '17

29 May '17

Dear all, In the spirit of full disclosure, let me start by pointing out that I am CEO and - along with other employees, some of whom you will also know - shareholder of Kolab Systems AG (https://kolabsystems.com) and that Kolab Systems has been the driving force behind Roundcube for the past years. Kolab Systems has also agreed to help the Roundcube Next team in its aim to refactor and build the next technology generation. So I am not neutral. That said, I genuinely believe it is extremely important for the Free Software community to get behind Roundcube Next and help us push it forward, as well as bring others on board with it. The longer story is here: http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=676 TL;DR, Part I: As a community we *require* technologies that compete with Google Apps, Office 365 and the likes in features, convenience, UI/UX, yet provide full control and freedom to users. TL;DR, Part II: Application Service Providers should get on board with that push *right now* because otherwise they will find themselves forced into becoming re-sellers for Office 365 and Google Apps -- and increasingly unable to compete with their features & networking effects. Some already understood this, and have joined the Roundcube Next community, such as cPanel (http://blog.cpanel.com/on-to-the-next/), Tucows, and now also Fastmail (http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/06/05/fastmail-supports-roundcube-next-develo…). But there are many more providers using Roundcube today who have not joined, nor have they contributed in the past. For them it should be obvious to join. And then there are those that have their own home-brew interfaces (such as Fastmail) who get the unique opportunity to become part of a new, growing community that will create a technology that will make them fully competitive against the "big clouds" in 18 months from now. Unfortunately, most of them have not realized this yet. So unless your provider is cPanel, Tucows, Fastmail or Kolab Now, all of who are part of this already, please encourage them to step up and join the community to push for Roundcube Next. Direct link for your convenience: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2/x/4658765#/story Best regards, Georg -- Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org> Member of the General Assembly http://fsfe.org/about/greve/ http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/ http://identi.ca/greve

8 17

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/

3 3

LibreOffice hackfest in Aarhus (Denmark)
by Carsten Agger 27 Aug '15

27 Aug '15

In connection with this year's LibreOffice conference (see http://conference.libreoffice.org) in Aarhus, we'll be organizing what AFAIK is the first LibreOffice hackfest in Denmark in the local hackerspace: https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Hackfest/Aarhus2015 Do put your name on if you're planning to participate! Apologies if this is off-topic, but I think the conference & the hackfest might be interesting to many LibreOffice and other free software users/programmers out there. Best Carsten

1 0

Sharing free code in 2015 (and 2016, 2017, ...)
by Christian Kalkhoff 24 Aug '15

24 Aug '15

Hi, I'm currently in the early stages of starting a new Free Software initiative for knowledge workers. One thing that bothers me is where to host the development infrastructure. I would like to avoid self hosting at the moment for time reasons. Until a while ago there was Gitorious, which seemed to fulfill my requirements for a Free Software hosting site since it was built on Free Software. Since its acquisition through Gitlab, that just provides an open core model, I think of it no better than of Github. Github did a fine job in providing reliable hosting but its non-free from its base up. GNU and nonGNU could be an option yet I think that the TOS are too harsh in demanding the software not being linked against non-free libraries or (only) run on non-free operating systems, which AFAIK would e.g. forbid to integrate Software hosted there with proprietary software like MS Outlook or builds for Android/Linux or Sailfish OS (not to speak of iOS). I want to create 100% Free Software but not force its users to rely 100% on Free Software to run it (I would wish for that, but I also like freedom of choice for end users that are not yet ready to switch). The software will of course be full featured without any proprietary software, integration would just enhance the experience of the users already using non-free software. Only since i started to think about these issues e.g. bull.codes (and probably billions of other services I've never heard of) went into distinction. So where should I preferrable host a Free Software project in 2015 (and a forseeable future)? Christian -- Christian Kalkhoff - Softwarebefreier - software liberator Fellow of FSFE - Support FSFE! http://fsfe.org/support/?softmetz CAcert assurer http://softmetz.de/

6 6

Italian universities started to sell students' privacy to big corps through email accounts
by Valentino Santori 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi fellows, I would like to report a very bad situation for student's privacy in the public education system, here in Italy. Many universities, and as far as I know even high schools, are migrating from self-hosted mail servers to propietary, big-corp's owned email accounts. This without any chance to refuse the creation of this account, because this is created during the subscription to the faculty, and without any privacy agreement. I can report my personal experience and others I know: Università Politecnica delle Marche (located in Ancona) used to adopt a self-hosted Squirrelmail soultion, now It's migrating to Microsoft Hotmail; Università degli studi di Ferrara is using Gmail; Università degli studi di Parma is using Gmail; Università degli studi di Bologna is using Microsoft Hotmail. In Italy laws are very strict in terms on privacy and I think that since we are talking about a public service this issue It's even more serious. What's your opinion about? Can we move somehow? Valentino Santori -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1 iQIcBAEBAgAGBQJV2DQBAAoJELUulFofRUnO1k4QAMsvOc2TD2Ex7RkC+lKUEMRx QToeFLfQV+2t58zgOpWWRXI50hCz+HgmsYbfSS/DD9PWZhQ6ml/pJDGNKj4B5cTU /uVsMW2X8a7LcKxccssAhjGHNf8pWmN3BQZiBoZXJXvX11OR7NYDZS43kQTX0456 eOBKcWXLtzwZxL8GIIO72unnVBOj/+oEyj/WzLAxVLVFiGg9Gikk7tdhkokZY7PY JcmPSSpBb5nu52JJoHuI2/C/ADRKCURkq1nBFOaOGlZvcGaltaAj+jDuucr69LPF qVlny2KwsePuZzk62FWxoaWvjXftJ6SrJ7SsSgul2kmrstQZbc3WhoFf0rHDfBnl XDYBJ5f2H43rcqHgSawvPrh12Ooh3NZFfCs5m1L+zjjhwR+W0EwdmGb8uBLkeWKE WAZahByDd/WJ3REXskfde73+MwtzrHyj4EKWjbZcnOqXPwWOx2p0GHWKTfcuDLUI o+rtIyPnWfKP37Wc6Za59Aqb9IQHJG4np3qLSJ/FP0ZnbdvY9dvqIb3WnHpG8Pwf gYJ2XWpCq+jw8Mx2HgRcdrWxebrZHDx0nSkTRjRmtC6EyLSr3b2lk38vQLAAmkG9 Dx+vBJz5z+hmSw17Prf8wiY93+ulmDZnpv/C69OZhCy4EXONpNmxfYYSyJghvbx1 yh101tVeLGhJ3ix4z6VF =Ts2g -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

7 12

From Oracle's Chief Security Officer: one of the finest marketing posts for free software I've seen in 2015
by David Gerard 23 Aug '15

23 Aug '15

This is an ... amazing piece. This Oracle executive (read: someone who is high up enough that their words won't be edited) seriously thought this made Oracle look competent and trustworthy: https://blogs.oracle.com/maryanndavidson/entry/those_who_can_t_do It's one of the finest marketing posts for Postgres, and for free software in general, that I can recall this year. It really makes the point, and I suggest circulating it widely. (My day job is in the midst of an Oracle->Postgres migration. It's going *really well*. If you're stuck somewhere that's on Oracle, show them this post, explain the serious security and competence concerns it raises, and get moving to Postgres. One of the nicest things about it: we give every app its own cluster of two PG boxes, because you have the freedom to just do that instead of running a centralised monster box with an expensive license. It turns out that just everything not having to play nice with others makes stuff stupendously easier to manage. And that's entirely before the benefits of approachable developers and viewable code.) - d.

6 12

Two are more expensive more than one?
by Matthias Kirschner 21 Aug '15

21 Aug '15

You probably saw this article already http://www.zdnet.com/article/huge-savings-prompt-italian-city-to-dump-openo… First of all I think it makes no sense to talk about ownership when you talk about services. You can say total cost of operations. But that is different than when you own something. My second question (I hope some Italian speakers can clarify): Do they really compare the costs for running Microsoft Office and Apache OpenOffice in parallel with just running Microsoft Office?? Regards, Matthias -- Matthias Kirschner - Vice President FSFE Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany - t +49-30-27595290 Weblog (blogs.fsfe.org/mk) - Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) Receive monthly Free Software news (fsfe.org/news/newsletter.html) Your donation enables our work (fsfe.org/donate)

11 11

Fwd: Adober Reader 8 and the European Commission [didier.roche@lsce.ipsl.fr]
by Paul Hänsch 21 Aug '15

21 Aug '15

Came in via pdfreaders.

1 0

2024

2023

2022

2021

2020

2019

2018

2017

2016

2015

2014

2013

2012

2011

2010

2009

2008

2007

2006

2005

2004

2003

2002

2001

2000

Discussion August 2015