Hello all,
I came across an offline dictionary application for Android that uses
Wiktionary as it's source. The name of the application is "English
Dictionary - Offline". The developer provides dictionaries in other
languages too. Unfortunately it is not a free software as the source of
the application is not available and it's not licensed under a free
software license.
I thought it would be nice to try to liberate the application as it
would be easy to port it to other languages and further it would give
it's users, freedom! As I'm not experienced with this, I would like to
hear suggestion about how to contact the developer about liberating the
application. A rough draft of the mail I could think of (with the help
of template to convince your friend) for liberating the application
could be found below,
======
Dear developer,
The "English Dictionary - Offline" is a great application and is doing
a great job in helping users to search meanings of words easily. It's
good to see the application available in multiple languages. It would
have been better if it were "Free software" [1]. That would help others
to easily port the application to other languages and might also help
in increasing your dictionary's popularity.
As you may already be aware, releasing your program as Free Software
doesn't mean you won't make money on it. You are free to charge
whatever you want for Free Software as long as you provide users with
access to the application's source code so that they may improve and
share "English Dictionary - Offline" with their friends. Thank you for
your time and effort. I look forward to hearing back from you :) and to
see "English Dictionary - Offline" and it's counterparts in other
languages in F-droid [2] soon.
Links
=====
[1] : https://www.fsf.org/about/what-is-free-software
[2] : https://f-droid.org/
Sincerely,
Kaartic Sivaraam
======
Please send in your valuable thoughts and suggestions about liberating
the application. Thanks in advance.
--
Regards,
Kaartic
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
Hi all,
There is speculation in the UK press that the government there will take
further steps[1] against encryption, using the Manchester bombing as an
excuse.
"Government officials appear to have briefed newspapers that they will
put many of the most invasive parts of the relatively new Investigatory
Powers Act into effect after the bombing at Manchester Arena."
I wonder what this will mean for developers of free software who pass
through British airports with software like Tor on their devices?
Regards,
Daniel
1.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/manchester-at…
Hi,
Which accounting software is currently used by FSFE?
Which solutions are other free software organizations using?
There is currently some discussion about choosing something for the Open
Labs hackerspace in Tirana[1]
Regards,
Daniel
1. https://forum.openlabs.cc/t/open-labs-hackerspace-accounting-software/341
***
My preface to this wonderful announcement...
The Replicant Project would be very grateful if you could donate these
devices to us so we can also port them to 6.0:
Optimus Black (P970)
Galaxy Note 8.0 (GT-N5100, GT-N5110, GT-N5120)
Nexus 10 (Mantaray)
Information about how to send these devices, or money/bitcoin for us to
purchase these devices, to our lead developer in Germany can be found
here: https://blog.fossencdi.org/donations.html
Phones with Replicant pre-installed can be purchased from these ethical
tech shops: https://www.replicant.us/supported-devices.php#stores
-kurtis
***
You can read this content as a blog post here: [1]
Over the last one and a half years, a lot of work has been done to move
Replicant to a new version and to add new features. Everything started
with a (now archived) forum post[2] in January 2016 that documented the
initial efforts to get Replicant 6.0 somehow working on a Galaxy S3.
Development continued through the first half of 2016, however by far
most of the work was done from September 2016 onwards.
Replicant 4.2, the last release, was based on CyanogenMod 10.1 and
Android 4.2 respectively. Replicant 6.0 is based on LineageOS 13.0 which
is based on Android 6.0. Replicant 6.0 includes all the improvements
that were made since CyanogenMod 10.1. Have a look at the changelog
[3] for an overview of the new features and changes that were
additionally made on our side.
This initial release supports the Galaxy S2[4], Galaxy S3[5] and Galaxy
Note 2[6]. The Galaxy S3 4G[7] was added as an incomplete device for now
as support for telephony and mobile data is missing. The status page[8]
shows which functionalities are supported on the individual devices. The
previous blog post[9] details the reasons why no SDK is provided as part
of the release.
Unfortunately, this release only supports a subset of the devices that
were previously supported by Replicant 4.2. So adding support for more
devices has the highest priority for the next update. Thanks to device
donations from the community, it will be possible to get Replicant 6.0
working on the GTA04, Galaxy Nexus, Galaxy Tab 2 7.0, Galaxy Tab 2 10.1
and Galaxy Note.
As an additional release goal, a complete wiki overhaul was completed
over the last two months. Besides updating outdated pages and a general
cleanup, a lot of new documentation is now available for users and
developers alike. We hope the new release will attract more developers,
so that we can tackle some of the tasks[10] we have been facing for a
long time.
[1] https://blog.replicant.us/2017/05/replicant-6-0-released/
[2] https://redmine.replicant.us/boards/21/topics/13985
[3]
https://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/replicant/images/replicant-6.0/0001/metadata/cha…
[4] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS2I9100
[5] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS3I9300
[6] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyNote2N7100
[7] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS3I9305
[8]
https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/ReplicantStatus#Replic…
[9]
https://blog.replicant.us/2017/04/there-wont-be-a-replicant-6-0-sdk-because…
[10] https://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/Tasks
Posted on 13 May 2017 by Wolfgang Wiedmeyer
Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
If you are not comfortable putting non-free software in your computer,
have you ever thought about the non-free nature of the food you put in
your body?
A group at MIT's Media Lab have started the Open Agriculture (OpenAg)
initiative and there was a TED talk (video[1]) about it in Geneva that
makes it really clear what they are doing and why.
The documentary Food, Inc[2] also helps understand what is at stake.
Has anybody else looked at this or any similar projects already?
A group has been formed[3] in Zurich to try and build one or more of the
food computers collaboratively. A venue is to be announced shortly. I
already raised this on the Zurich mailing list, but would anybody else
want to come to Zurich to participate, be part of this remotely or
replicate the idea in their own location?
One challenge for us in Zurich is to try and find an efficient way of
ordering all the parts, the list[4] includes over 100 items from about
various suppliers. Making up orders would be rather tedious, so
grouping the orders together could help lower the hurdle for people to
get started.
One significant opportunity with this initiative is the outreach to
other groups with environment, sustainability, urban agriculture and
culinary interests. OpenAg provides a way to developed a shared
philosophy about what free really means and how free software is part of
the solution to social problems like food security.
Regards,
Daniel
1.
https://www.ted.com/talks/caleb_harper_this_computer_will_grow_your_food_in…
2. http://www.takepart.com/foodinc/
3. https://www.meetup.com/openag-zh/events/239207170/
4. https://github.com/OpenAgInitiative/openag_pfc2/tree/master/BOM
On Tuesday 2. May 2017 15.45.38 Evaggelos Balaskas wrote:
> Here is my suggestion: pinebook
>
> https://www.pine64.org/?page_id=3707
Does that use the same Allwinner SoC as the Olimex laptop...?
https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/07/fosdem-and-teres-i-update/https://olimex.wordpress.com/2017/02/01/teres-i-do-it-yourself-open-source-
hardware-and-software-hackers-friendly-laptop-is-complete/
The situation was apparently changing when I posted a comment on the second
article, but mainline, blob-free kernel support was not yet there. Or maybe it
was, but the documentation doesn't get updated to reflect the current status:
http://linux-sunxi.org/A64
I guess the software is just one thing holding up the Olimex laptop,
particularly since they might be a bit more wary of bad publicity around
binary blobs and Allwinner's tendency to produce copyright-infringing software
to demonstrate their products. So the software has to be done properly and to
a standard that most people will accept, which means that the Pine64 software
should be closely inspected for licence compliance.
Paul
P.S. There are hardware pages on the FSFE Wiki that should be documenting
these things.