FSFE-IE December 2003

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FOSDEM & other FS conferences for 2004
by Ciaran O'Riordan 04 Jan '04

04 Jan '04

Happy whatever-you-celebrate! For anyone interested in attending FS conferences in 2004, there are six good ones that I know of: FOSDEM - Belgium - 21 & 22 Feb Libre Software Meeting - France - July? FSF Associate Members Meeting - Boston - mid-march? AFFS Conference - UK - May? GNU/Linuxtag - Germany - July? IFSO Conference - Ireland - ??? FOSDEM : fosdem.org "Free and Open source Software Developers' European Meeting" This is mostly a developers meeting, but fsfeurope will have a booth and FSF have held their "Award for the Advancement of Free Software" ceremony at fosdem for the last three years, so it will probably be there again. Free addmission, donations requested. This trip can be done quite cheaply. I got my flights from ryanair yesterday for 70euros. The bus from the airport to the city centre is an additional 10euro each way, and accomadation is 25-65 euro depending on how posh you are. I think there was free accomadation last year in a nearby hall (bring your own sleeping bag), but this gets snapped up quickly. Libre Software Meeting (LSM/RMLL) For politically interested folks, this is probably the world #1 FS meeting. It's not yet decided what part of France it will be held in this year, or what date. Free addmission, I think. FSF Associate Member Meeting In 2003, this was held on the 15th of March, in MIT, Boston. It's a great way to find out who works for/with FSF. Everyone wears stickers with their name & email address, so you'll quickly recognise people you've only talked to by email & mailing lists. Membership required: member.fsf.org AFFS conference This was a one day event in 2003, held in May in Birmingham. By flying out in the morning and back the same night, this trip can easily be done for less than 100euro and is a good way to meet up with our nearest neighbours. Membership required: 10 pound sterling GNU/Linuxtag I don't know much about this one but the fsfeurope folks say it's great. Held in Germany, addmission unknown. IFSO Conference The cheapest trip of all. Details not decided. Possibly in Trinity, possibly in April/May. I don't know. Membership required: 20 euro. hmmm. that's all. Depending on cashflow, I hope to be at the FOSDEM, LSM, AFFS, and IFSO conferences. All the above conferences are community-run, or non-corporate, or whatever, except for [GNU/]Linuxtag which is a trade show. -- Ciaran O'Riordan - http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/

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A CRIStmas Carol
by Adam Moran 24 Dec '03

24 Dec '03

Hi Lists, As I sit here froze to the bone in my igloo home, I have hacked together a story about Software, Economics and Politics - topics which I know we all have in mind. Like the Dickens' story of the same name, this one is authored with the intention of keeping our spirits warm in these dark days; like his story the main character is haunted by ghosts. Modes of Production: Species and Genera ======================================= Species ======= Through out history people have created new and more efficient modes of producing the needs and wants of: 1. themselves, and 2. the particular society in which they are positioned. The different species of production used by societies may be identified by the artifact used to regulate production. Species: Capital M-C-M' ---------------------- The regulator of species capital is the money-system artifact, M-C-M', and is a recent invention of Homo sapiens. Money was authored long before the evolution of species capital and it's intended character was to facilitate exchange C-M-C. The money-system artifact is a sub-optimal regulator of production; it burns the vast majority of our labor in order to reproduce itself. Also, the money-system artifact is mathematically flawed; it presumes infinite growth (M->M') in our finite world. Species : CRIS -------------- The regulator of the species of production used to make FLOSS [1] is the Common Review In-value System. In this system we work together in open non-hierarchical groups (Common Review), and exchange information without price (In-value), in order to define and achieve common goals. Our words are our currency. The artifacts used to regulate production in Species CRIS are groupware technologies eg. email lists, GPL, CPAN, Wikis, Mir etc. These artifacts are designed to allow anybody with an internet connection, and time on their hands, to start up and take part in group work. This system enables us to author FLOSS, and other group learning artifacts, which are both more useful and less labor intensive than those produced by the money-system artifact. * More useful because the intended character of our products and services are defined and made by groups in open peer review. Many of us in the West have witnessed peer review in-value systems in families, schools, work place, group therapy sessions etc.; some of us have been both fortunate and privileged enough to participate in peer review from time to time; I guess this describes the vast majority of the people reading this so I'll rest this point for the moment. * Less labor intensive because we build things to last - we build libraries, we modularise; we build things for re-use; we don't build things to throw away and other wise pollute our planet. Further, we are not regulated in species CRIS by the money-system artifact which burns the vast majority of our labor in order to reproduce itself. Species and Politics -------------------- For a production species to become dominant it requires a State. A state is that group of people with the power to dictate which artifact is used to regulate production. How a state ( the structure, the 'We' ) treats its objects ( the atom, the 'I' ) defines the Politics of that state. States which use production-regulators to pump labor / wealth out of one group of people and in to the stomachs / minds of another have the politics of exploitation. Not all states that have existed in our history have had a politics of exploitation; Nor should any new state. When an exploited group of producers become aware of their exploitation they adopt the politics of antagonism. The politics of exploitation / antagonism are the politics of hierarchy ; they are the politics of the 'Them' and the 'Us'. Whether these states use the money-system artifact, brute-force or hypnotism to pump this labor matters little, at one abstraction, in that the particular regulator of labor extraction adopted by the state merely defines the different groups of this world and clarifies their position. The politics of these types of states are the politics of exploitation and consequently antagonism; these are the politics of hierarchy. Genera ====== Through out our history people have created new and more efficient modes of producing the needs and wants of: 1. themselves, and 2. the particular society to which they belong. The different genus of production modes used by societies may be identified by the artifact used to regulate reproduction. Genus : Zeus ------------ "I still dream of organon - I wake up crying" Kate Bush: Cloud Bursting Female reproductive and child-naturing labor underwrites the mathematics of species capitalism [2]; Labor / wealth is pumped out of women and in to the stomachs / minds of men in order to produce the *producers* required by the species. This is also the case in species real estate [3] and all other species of production using patriarchal-myth artifacts to regulate the production of the *producers*. "Since that stage in the evolution when man ceased to be an animal and became Homo sapiens, it has been inherent in his nature, on looking at the world about him with wondering and puzzelled eyes, to ask the questions 'Why?' and 'How?' It is the result of his groping attempts throughout the ages to find the answer to these questions which we call religion - or mythology: for we are inclined to consider our own beliefs - if we have any - as religion, and other people's beliefs as mythology. A myth then is firstly, man's attempts to explain the world and the things he sees in it, and to make intelligible to himself the natural phenomena which condition his way of life in that world." [4] One particular patriarchal-myth artifact which dominates western society is this: There exists a Natural Division of Labor, and that female reproductive and child rearing labor is 'naturally' the labor of women. This artifact was authored by the Greek philosophers Plato / Aristotle and propagated by many later day apostles such as Marx. What then was the 'natural phenomena' which conditioned Plato and Aristotle's lives ? It is that population multiplies faster than food [5 Malthus], and consequently populations compete to survive. [5 Wallace, Darwin] The Greek city states came in to being following a population growth and mass migration from the north; these migrations were of "experienced warriors rather than herdsman and peaceful settlement and intermarriage were less to their liking than conquest and appropriation of territory and the slaughter or enslavement of those whose lands they invaded.[4a]" This describes the first species of this genus of production - War. The progressive conquests of these migrating warrior tribes replaced and subsumed the existing communities where both reproduction and production was regulated by mother-goddess artifacts; "Those myths which tell of the too-frequent quarrels between Zeus and Hera, his sister and queen, may appear undignified to us at first sight, but are simply allegories of the old worship and the new - as indeed, are most myths which tell of divine revolts.[4]" The Greek philosophers were thinking in, and writing from, their privileged positions in the wealthy patriarchal states which crystallized from this genus of production; they authored patriarchal myth artifacts in effort to make sense of their own way of life. Their way of life was an existence in a state where the reproductive and child-naturing labor was undertaken by the women, and their myth was that this was a Natural Division of Labor. This patriarchal myth and its variants are the artifacts which regulate reproduction in genus zeus. Zeus artifact made flesh and propagated through the generations: The Masculine experience. -------------------------------------------------------------------- "The Division of labor in childrearing results in an objectification of women - a treating of women as others, or objects, rather than subjects, or selves - that extends to our culture as a whole. Infantile development of the self is explored in opposition to the mother, as primary caretaker, who becomes the other. Because boys are opposite gender from their mothers, they especially feel a need to differentiate and yet find differentiation problematic. The boy comes to define his self more in opposition than through a sense of his wholeness or community. He becomes the self and experiences his mother as the other. The process also extends to his trying to dominate the other in order to ensure his sense of self. Such domination begins with mother as the object, extends to women, and is generalized to include the experience of all others as objects rather than subjects. This stance in which people are treated and experienced as things, becomes basic male Western culture.[6]" "The literature on gender formation and acquisition suggests that there are ways in which masculine experience yields certain cognitive proclivities, tendencies which structure perception. Such Cognitive proclitives may comprise or contribute to intellectual frameworks implicitly organized around the ontological and epistemological primacy of the masculine subject, and include several among the following elements: a combative brand of dualistic thinking, a persistent and systematic amplification of the primal Self-Other oppositional dynamic; the creation of dichotomized polarities by which to describe and evaluate the events, objects, and processes of the natural and social worlds; the need for and privileging of singular identity and certainty with respect to one's "own" identity and that of other "objects" in the environment; the denial or refusal of relatedness, to fellow human beings and to nature; a fear and repudiation of natural contingency, including those limits imposed by the body and the natural surround; an identification of such contingency with the feminine; versions of a solitary subject immersed in an hostile and dangerous world; detailed expressions of radical or heroic individualism; preoccupation with themes of freedom, autonomy and transcendence; accounts of knowledge-as-opposition and knowledge-as-struggle, based on a distanced relation between the subject and object of knowledge; attitudes of fear, denigration and hostility towards whatever is identified as female of feminine; idealisation and glorification of the feminine. This last set of seemingly incompatible attitudes would recapitulate the effects of the differentiation from the material object, the (m)other.[2]" Genus and Politics ------------------- For a reproduction genus to become dominant it requires a State. A state is that group of people with the power to dictate which artifact is used to regulate reproduction. States which use reproduction-regulators to pump labor / wealth out of women and in to the stomachs / minds of men have the politics of patriarchy. Not all states that have existed in our history have had a politics of patriarchy; Nor should any new state. Genus : Athena -------------- "If the structure of my environment reflected the structure of my thinking, what information would that give me?" [7] Like the character Scrooge in the Dickens' story we are beginning to learn that our path to salvation is through sharing what we have. Many of us live and work in the spirit of species CRIS all year long. Through our practice of species CRIS we are becoming aware of how our new learning shapes our relationships with others, and how it shapes our physical environment. Unlike Scrooge, we are not at the end of our journey. We find that our newly acquired insights based on our ethics of sharing [8] are under threat of being swallowed by an older species of production. Take good cheer you merry folk to our kin in these dark days; we find ourselves bonded in the protection of common property with the potential to unfold a mode of live upon our world which to date has only been the substance of myth; tell them this is how states normally evolve; tell them to get involved. As we celebrate this solstice and the artifact television bombards our children with the patriarchal-life scripts of genus zeus, let us remember that species CRIS is now haunting the world, and let us contemplate more useful myths in these dark times. -- http://testers.mkdoc.com/pat-fury/ [1] Free Libre Open Sorce Software - http://www.flora.ca/floss.shtml [2] Christine Di Stefano - "Masculine Marx" : "Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory" Edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley & Carole Pateman [3] "Meaning of 'Real Property - Land. The natural division of physical property is into land (sometimes called 'immovables') and other objects known as chattels or 'movables.' This simple distintion is inadequate. In the first place chattels may become attached to land so as to lose their character of chattels and become part of the land itself. Second, a sophisticated legal system of property has to provide not simply for ownership of physical property, but also for the ownership of a wide variety of *interests* in such physical property, and also for the ownership of interests in non-physical property, and also for the ownership of interests in non-physical or intangible property such as shares in companies or copyright. Third, for historical reasons English law has developed a distinction between 'real property' and 'personal property' which only approximately corresponds to that between 'land' and other types of property." - Megarry's Manual of the LAw of Real Property - Seventh Edition - Sir Robert Megarry / M.P. Thompson [4] Barbara Leonie Picard - Introduction to the "All colour book of Greek Mythology" by Richard Patrick [4a] The Achean and Dorian invasions [5] "Alfred Wallace returned from the tropics, as Darwin had done, convinced that related species diverge from a common stock, and nonplussed as to why they diverged. What Wallace did not know was that Darwin had hit on the explanation two years after he returned to England from his voyage in the *Beagle*. Darwin recounts that in 1838 he was reading the *Essay on Population* by the Reverend Thomas Malthus ('for amusement', says Darwin, meaning that it was not part of his serious reading) and he was struck by the thought in Malthus. Malthus had said that population multiplies faster than food. If that is true of animals, then they must compete to survive: so that nature acts as a selective force, killing of the weak, and forming new species from the survivors who are fittted to their environment. 'Here then I had at last a theory by which to work,' says Darwin. And you would have think that a man who said that would set to work, write papers, go out and lecture. Nothing of the kind. For four years Darwin did not even commit the theory to paper. Only in 1842 he wrote a draft of thirty five pages, in pencil; and two years later expanded it to two hundred and thirty five pages, in ink. And the draft he deposited with a sum of money and instructives to his wife to publish if he died." J.Bronowski - The Ascent of Man [6] In Judith Lorber, Rose Laub Coser, Alice S. Rossi and Nancy Chodorow, "On the Reproduction of Mothering: A Methodological Debate," *Signs of Women in Culture and Society* - Quote reproduced in [2] above. [7] Penny Tompkins and James Lawley - http://www.devco.demon.co.uk/SRP.html [8] Five Freedoms of Knowledge * The freedom to study any problem (freedom -1) * The freedom to use the results of this study for any purpose (freedom 0) * The freedom to examine the raw materials and methods used in this study, and use them for your own needs (freedom 1). * The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbour (freedom 2). * The freedom to improve the results, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3).

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meeting: tomorrow 6o'clock, benshaws (Dec 23rd)
by Ciaran O'Riordan 23 Dec '03

23 Dec '03

Hi all, I previously mentioned a Dec 23rd (tuesday) mini-meeting, the time has been set for 1800h, venue is benshaws as always. It's an unofficial meeting, so just anyone that can turn up, whenever you can turn up. Topics: * Ian Clarke will be dropping in, so a rare face to face meeting will be possible. * IFSO needs to prepare a press release for January 5th. * The IFSO website is nearly ready, please send comments: http://ifso.cs.may.ie This is a temporarly URL, it will be ifso.ie when we get the domain (any day now) (the site has not "gone public", so please let me know about the mistakes. Also, check /people.html and send additions/corrections) * Free Software in education. Has been discussed recently on list, and at the last meeting. * Free Software in charities. I think Glenn expressed an interest in this, and Mel offered system setup/integration skills. * Logo, we still need one. The only suggestion so far is a gnu playing a gold harp. We need someone to draw this. * ILUG: I'll ask them if there is an artist that could draw a logo. What else do we need that we could ask them? * AFFS: I'll be talking to AFFS later today about working together or whatever * What else is there to work on? * I think a digital/information freedom organisation might be forming pretty soon in Ireland, I'll try get more info today See you tomorrow. -- Ciaran O'Riordan - http://www.compsoc.com/~coriordan/

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Dutch supreme court rules in favour of Kazaa
by teresahackett＠eircom.net 22 Dec '03

22 Dec '03

The Supreme Court in the Netherlands is the most senior court in Europe to rule on P2P networks to date. The court found in favour of the producers of Kazaa software. It did not rule on the actions of the users of the software. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/20/technology/20suit.html Teresa ---------- Teresa Hackett 114 Cedar House Mespil Estate Sussex Road Dublin 4, Ireland Email: teresahackett(a)eircom.net Mobile: +316 523 63486 NL (as before) NEW! Mobile +353 87 6253768 IRL ----------

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EUCD and the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union
by Ian Clarke 19 Dec '03

19 Dec '03

According to: http://www.europarl.eu.int/charter/pdf/text_en.pdf Article 11.1 states: "Everyone has the right to freedom of expression. This right shall include freedom to hold opinions and to receive and impart information and ideas without interference by public authority and regardless of frontiers" Article 13 states: "The arts and scientific research shall be free of constraint. Academic freedom shall be respected." Doesn't the EUCD infringe on both of these, particularly article 13 (what more graphic example of this could there be than the arrest of Dmitry Sklyarov under the EUCD's sister law, the DMCA)? Ian.

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Seanad debate on implementation of EUCD
by teresahackett＠eircom.net 17 Dec '03

17 Dec '03

To fsfe-ie friends, Senator Mary Henry raised the implementation of the EUCD in the Seanad on 11.12.2003 in a question to Minister Ahern. You can read the debate at: http://www.irlgov.ie/debates-03/s11Dec/Sect3.htm#11 Mary Henry was briefed by a "Working Group of Librarians", who also submitted a statement this week to Entemp. I suggest sending the IFSO statement to Mary Henry, as she seems like a good ally. If you need contact details, let me know. Best Teresa ---------- Teresa Hackett NEW! 114 Cedar House Mespil Estate Sussex Road Dublin 4, Ireland NEW! Email: teresahackett(a)eircom.net Mobile: +316 523 63486 (as before) ----------

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Possible contacts: software companies
by James Heald 16 Dec '03

16 Dec '03

Some directories of software companies in Ireland: http://www.enterprise-ireland.com/connect-supplier-search.asp with sector = software http://www.nsd.ie/htm/its/its_company.htm http://www.itdirectory.ie/ and foreign software companies who have invested in Ireland: http://www.ida.ie/industry/software_companies.asp?industry=software I was going to screen-scrape the data from the first two into a flat file, but I'm completely out of time now until after the weekend -- so if there's anybody who feels like making an extract of the information, that would be ++useful. It seemed to me that the best way to make contact on this front might be to try to run an authoritative email questionnaire early in January, perhaps in conjunction with a reputable academic for credibility, to find out just what Irish software companies think of software patents, and what effects they forsee them having. My idea would be to try to contact as many of the companies as possible by email, with a short introduction explaining the survey and motivating its timeliness, a link to a pro-swpat statement (eg the Intellect UK submission to the UK Patent Office consultation), and a link to an anti-swpat site. Then as a tear-off style reply section, four key questions to get a yes/no answer to: * Do your company own any software patents ? * Do you licence any software patents ? * Do you regularly check the patent databases for software patents ? * Would you prefer software patents to be generally available (eg CEC/JURI proposal), or tightly restricted to ... (EU Parliament proposal) ? In each case, we should give the comapny a chance to say why yes or why no -- but not push this /too/ strongly, if this might put anyone off replying at all. Finally we should probably have an optional section, to allow the company to tell us (if they want to about their size / number of employees / turnover / sphere of activities -- and whether any of these colour their answers to the 4 questions above. A useful forerunner to perhaps use as a template could be the Fraunhofer survey of the German software sector, see http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/bmwi-fhgmpi01/index.en.html and links. The survey itself, run by the Fraunhofer institute, was very revealing about the reasons for deep skepticism about swpats in much of the German software industry. Unfortunately in the final output, it was coupled to a report from a legal institute which couldn't see the problem with software patents, and a set of conclusions which didn't really seem to reflect either report. But the conclusions from the Fraunhofer report show how revealing an authoritative survey could be, particularly if done in conjunction with somebody with recognised academic credibility. I think it could also be quite a good way to get us in touch with new contacts and stories. All best, James.

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Mail sent!
by Malcolm Tyrrell 16 Dec '03

16 Dec '03

I couldn't get hold of Ciaran, so I've sent the mail myself. If you find a terrible error in the document, it's now too late to change. Thanks for the last few edits and names! Good luck, Malcohol.

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Mail Sent!
by John Evans 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Bravo to all who contributed to the construction of the letter! I'm afraid I missed the e-mail boat, but would be keen to sign up for the paper version (if there is one). Best Wishes John Evans

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Letter about EUCD implementation
by Malcolm Tyrrell 15 Dec '03

15 Dec '03

Hi there. At last night's meeting, Teresa Hackett gave us an overview of the situation with the EUCD. Some conclusions: * Although it could have been worse, the EUCD is very bad. * It is now law and there is nothing we can do about it. * The Irish Government is compelled to implement a compatible law and if it doesn't it will get into trouble. * The only thing we can do is try to influence the interpretation. Another issues was raised: * The "Enforcement Directive" is currently working its way through the system. This is concerned with the penalties for infringements under the EUCD, and whether they will be crimes or not. Joy! Anyway, I've started working on the letter which expresses our concerns about the draft of the Irish implementation. The material I've attached focuses exclusively on Section 374. I'd appreciate your opinions, changes, criticisms on any or all aspects of the document. Especially important is ensuring that my reading of the laws are correct. I will continue to work on that section and start working on the other aspects of the draft over the weekend. Good luck, Malcohol.

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FSFE-IE December 2003