On Friday, October 21, 2011 03:13:17 PM Sam Tuke wrote:
> The October Manchester FSFE Fellowship meeting will take this Thursday
> 27th at 19.00 in MadLab
Unfortunately three regular attendees cannot make it tomorrow, so I recommend
that we *postpone tomorrow's meeting until next month*. As we planned to
discuss the Freedombox community hosting project, it makes more sense to
ensure that everyone who wants to be involved is part of the discussion.
Making important decisions will be difficult if key people are missing.
I would have preferred to merely delay the meeting by a week, but Madlab's
calendar is fully booked until close to next month's scheduled Fellowship
meeting.
Please spread the word to others who may not see this message in time!
Thanks,
Sam (078680 77871)
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
The October Manchester FSFE Fellowship meeting will take this Thursday
27th at 19.00 in MadLab:
http://madlab.org.uk/content/fsfe-6/
After last month's national politics focused presentation and discussion
with the Open Source Consortium, this month's meeting will focus on
something practical and close at hand: freeing Mancunians from
centralised non-Free web services.
I shall briefly outline an idea for providing hosting of Free Software
web services by using a Freedom Box located at ArcSpace community
centre. This will be followed by a discussion on what could be achieved
by such a project, how it could be run, what services could be provided,
and who the services would target.
A broad range of views and experience are welcome and necessary, so
please come along and share your thoughts. This is a new project with
great potential; please help shape it in the early stages.
For more information see recent emails to the list. Last month's
Fellowship interview is also recommended reading as it covers the
experiences of a similar project in Sweden:
http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=422
See you there!
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
To extend the reach and effectiveness of the existing pdfreaders.org
website we would like to add a mobile site that will make suggestions
for Free Software PDF readers to use based on the detected mobile
browser and operating system. This will likely involve a new mobile PDF
Readers site that is optimised for viewing on mobile devices.
If you're able to help with this project, please let one of the
following mailing lists know:
web(a)fsfeurope.org
pdfreaders(a)lists.fsfe.org
The existing pdfreaders.org website has been hugely successful since
it's creation in 2009. It receives thousands of visits from the public,
is linked to by many Government websites around the world, and has for a
long time been one of the highest ranking websites in search engine
results for search terms relating to PDF.
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
A video of a talk about Freedomboxes focusing on the benefits to
privacy / user control, from 9th September in the European Parliament's
Free Software User Group:
http://epfsug.eu/blog-entry/freedombox-with-dr-jones
This parliamentary group was set up by FSFE Fellows and associates last
year.
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
FSFE is in contact with Green Party MEPs who are planning to raise
questions about the PDF Readers campaign in European Parliament.
If you have contact with UK based Green MEPs who may be interested in
supporting this, please let Eszter Bako <eszter(a)fsfe.org> know so that
we can increase the impact of thee issue when it is addressed in
parliament.
Thanks!
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
I'm having a meeting with Arcspace tomorrow about the possibility of locating
a server or two there to host decentralised services for people who want them
in Manchester.
I don't know whether this will be possible (Arcspace may not be suitable),
what the costs would be, or how much demand there is, but some people have
asked me about where to get email / IM / Diaspora hosting from and in the
Freedombox model having a local server connected to its users via a network of
trust could be interesting. Basically I'm trying to find ways to start
spreading the Freedombox concept *now*, and not waiting until we have a
perfect Grandad-friendly UI.
If anyone wants to come along, or has ideas or concerns that they'd like me to
raise (or just think about) let me know ASAP.
Meeting is at Kim By The Sea at 16.00 tomorrow (Tue 18th Oct).
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
Businesslink are working with brightTALK to promote non-standards compliant,
non-Free, inaccessible media (see attached email).
Does anyone feel like emailing them, asking them to demand a better service
from their partners?
You could ask them to request valid HTML and use of standards compliant tags
for dynamic content rather than using proprietary plugins like flash.
Additionally brightTALK are intending to patent their software; UK government
money is funding their software patent applications. See
http://www.brighttalk.com/pages/patents-pending.
This is especially relevant as the content in question relates to is web
technology (online social media etc.).
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
OwnCloud 2 was released today with a new web interface and many new features.
Freedombox lovers should check out:
http://owncloud.org/announcement/
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org
= Summary 3-9 October =
During three days this week I spent most of my time working on following
up the UK PDF Readers campaign, contributing to a paper on ebooks, and
implementing Piwik at fsfe.org.
= Detail =
== Policy ==
- Sent feedback to Diego (intern) on paper on current state of FS and
ebooks (formats, software, and servers)
== Fellowship ==
- Welcomed new UK Fellow
- Received YaCy presentation from Michael Christen for local delivery
== Web ==
- Discussed FSFE use of Piwik and, implemented JS tracking on fsfe.org
== PDF Readers ==
- Sent Agnus council in response to PDF Readers letter to mailing-lists
(scanned and OCRd)
- Continued discussion on PDFR lists about aim of campaign, replied to
questions
- Forwarded FSF news about GNUPDF being demoted from high-priority
project
== Other ==
- Gave feedback on Fellowship referrers statistics
- Continued to make FSCONS travel arrangements
= Preview =
- Process latest PDF Readers council responses
- Collaborate with Open Source Consortium on UEFI Secure Booting
- Work on YaCy 1.0 release announcement
- Send talk proposal to Scottish Cross Party meeting on Digital
Participation
- Edit "who owns Free Software article"
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Contact the British team: uk(a)fsfeurope.org
"Lennart Poettering, the Red Hat developer based out of Berlin who's
responsible for key open-source projects like PulseAudio and systemd,
has offered a presentation on key facts you need to know about becoming
a free software developer/hacker"
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTk3OA
Of course there are many other valuable ways to contribute to Free
Software; development is just one approach.
Thanks,
Sam.
--
Sam Tuke
British Team Coordinator
Free Software Foundation Europe
IM : samtuke(a)jabber.fsfe.org
Latest UK Free Software news: uk.fsfe.org
Is freedom important to you? Join the fellowship.fsfe.org