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
I have received a letter from the Chief Executive of Angus Council (Scotland)
in response to our request that they remove advertising for Adobe Reader.
It would be great if someone on the list would give a nice response. The email
address to use is chiefexec(a)angus.gov.uk. If in doubt about what to say, send
a draft for comments before sending the final copy to the Council. Let others
know when you _begin_ drafting so that there is no duplication of effort.
Here is the full text of the email, painlessly scanned using gimagereader.
----
Dear Mr Tuke
Advertising for Proprietary Software
Thank you for your recent letter concerning the placement of Adobe Acrobat
Reader download links on our Council website. By adding these links, the
Council is simply providing access to a single free product to facilitate
proper viewing of the website without any expectation of commitment to any
further product or services. However, I can see why it might appear that we
are promoting Adobe’s product above others.
The Council generally uses Adobe Acrobat to create and optimise its PDFs and
therefore is confident that the Adobe Reader will render these adequately.
Output is actively tested using this and it would be unfeasible for the
Council to test all our output documents with numerous different products.
While I understand the freedom that completely free software provides, we do
not feel that the vast majority of site visitors are interested in access to
source code and the rights to adapt it. As such, the Adobe product provides a
number of other important features, such as:-
» Plug-ins for all major browsers.
» Compatibility with all major operating systems.
» Easy installation through OS and browser detection.
» Regular security updates.
» Accessibility features.
It would be time consuming for the Council to investigate numerous other
products for their suitability simply to recommend them as alternatives so we
utilise what we know provides an acceptable level of functionality for site
visitors.
Having said all that, the Council will act on your suggestion and add text to
clarify that other PDF readers are available. However, we will not be linking
to the PDFreaders.org site that you provided as we do not consider that it
offers the genuine range of options that most site visitors would be interested
in.
Yours sincerely
Richard Stiff
*Chief Executive*
--
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
This is a reminder that this evening at 19.00 is the September
Manchester Fellowship Meeting of the Free Software Foundation Europe.
We have a special speaker, the Chairman of the Open Source Consortium,
as well as our usual discussion topics, and there also a planned
demonstration of Free Software applications for new GNU/Linux users at
the end of the meeting.
So if you would like to hear about the battle to convince our Government
to use more Free Software, or if you are curious about some of the
powerful things that you can do with Free Software, then please come
along to MadLab this evening.
Kind regards,
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 19-25 September =
During three days this week I spent most of my time preparing for my
talks at Manchester Free Software Society and PyCon UK, arranging travel
for PyCon, and editing the September Fellowship interview.
= Detail =
== PyCon UK 2011 ==
- Confirmed with John Pinner FSFE's booth and talk at PyCon
- Coordinated with local volunteers who helped out as booths staff
- Attended PyCon at Coventry Uni, ran FSFE booth with volunteer Yu-Wei
Lin, gave lightning talk about FSFE to ~80 people, signed up 1 new
Fellow, sold 3 tshirts
== Editorial ==
- Edited, formatted and oversaw publication of September Fellowship
interview (especially good, well done Chris!)
(http://blogs.fsfe.org/fellowship-interviews/?p=422)
== Policy ==
- Dented and forwarded to mailing lists news of "Peer to Patent" UK
website; opportunity to contribute to fight against S/W patents
- Forwarded request for help from Fife Council to UK Team list
== Fellowship ==
- Received delivery of FSF stock from Richard Stallman for use at UK
FSFE Booths
- Proposed investigation into better methods of remote participation in
FSFE meetings
- Sent reminder email to mailing lists about September Manchester
Fellowship meeting
== Web ==
- Added Piwik <img> tracking code to fsfe.org for analytics
== Community ==
- Was the September speaker at the Manchester Free Software society,
gave talk on Freedom Boxes (presentation at
http://wiki.fsfe.org/CloudComputing/)
- Sent follow up email to my FB talk with links to betas and news of FB
related projects
- Forwarded "is Android really Free Software" article to discussion ML
- Forwarded news of Gnome Women internships to mailing lists
- Referred 'Flossie' UK Women's FS group details of potential London
venue
== Other ==
- Reported to Richard Stallman the publication of his interview in Wired
UK: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2011-09/06/richard-stallman
- Thanked all those responded to call for venues for Richard Stallman
talks in UK in November
- Agreed use of storage space for FSFE merchandise in my office's shared
secure storage area
- Provided Co-operatives UK (national trade body for coops) with
information about FS and how to engage with FS developers and companies
who may wish to become Cooperatives
= Preview =
- Send talk proposal to Scottish Cross Party meeting on Digital
Participation
- Coordinate Sept. Manchester Fellowship meeting
- Prepare for FLOSSUK Unconference
- Push back date of Free Software Assembly
- Try and catch up with blog posts and weekly reports
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
*DIY Follow up: Using Free Software one-oh-one - mini session THIS THURSDAY
at madlab
*Hi all,
If you are new to free software and want to learn more, there is a great
opportunity, at the FSFE meeting, *this Thursday* to meet people and have a
look at what software they use.
If you are looking for a "way in" to switching to freedom, it would be an
easy-peasy place to start : )
At the meeting, we sit round and discuss plans and problems, following an
agenda formulates over the month before (not always very closely!). There is
usualy cake, always tea and coffee, and this week there is an interesting
talk too!
It's a good time to get to know people and we also tend to go out for a bit
afterwards too.
The meeting is at MadLab <http://madlab.org.uk/content/fsfe/> which is in
the Northern Quarter of Manchester, and an all round awesome place.
Don't hesitate to email!
Hope to see you there
Best
Anna M (the one with the huge day glow skirt)