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Matthew Garrett blog post
by Fraser Tweedale 29 Sep '14

29 Sep '14

Some of you may have seen this blog post from last week, entitled ``My free software will respect users or it will be bullshit''. http://mjg59.dreamwidth.org/32686.html I encourage you to read it, but the concluding paragraph summarises it well: The four freedoms are only meaningful if they result in real-world benefits to the entire population, not a privileged minority. If your approach to releasing free software is merely to ensure that it has an approved license and throw it over the wall, you're doing it wrong. We need to design software from the ground up in such a way that those freedoms provide immediate and real benefits to our users. Anything else is a failure. Let's have a discussion about this article at our meeting on Thursday. For what it's worth, I disagree with it (although I agree with pretty much all of the points in support of it). Come along Thursday if you want to find out why ;) Cheers, Fraser

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Thursday 2 October LibrePlanet Brisbane meetup
by Fraser Tweedale 19 Sep '14

19 Sep '14

Details for the LibrePlanet Brisbane October meetup: Time: Thursday 2 October, 6:00 pm Venue: The Edge, Window Bay 7 Andrew Roffey, a board member of the Australian Privacy Foundation (http://www.privacy.org.au/) will present on "Free Software and Privacy". His presentation will cover: - Introduction to privacy - Threats to privacy in the digital era - How free software is important for privacy - Brief introduction on some free software projects that aim to assist privacy online - Other groups in Australia that might be of interest As usual, we will have a discussion of the month's news relevant to the free software movement, globally and locally. Please reply with news items to be discussed. We will also discuss plans for the November meetup, which coincides with the Open Source Developers' Conference (OSDC) on the Gold Coast. We might change the meeting from the regular day, or hold it on the Gold Coast, or both. After the meeting we will head to the South Bank precinct and eat food. I hope to see you on Thursday 2 October. Fraser

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Hello
by Tony Morris 12 Sep '14

12 Sep '14

Hello FSB, I am a programmer working for NICTA at Spring Hill. I was directed to this mailing list by a friend who I meet at Brisbane Functional Programming Group (BFPG). I have been using functional programming in industry for about 13 years. I am a former lecturer at universities, however, I became somewhat disillusioned to the university agenda around 2007 (long rant omitted). I have been a relatively passive advocate for free software for approximately the same amount of time. I do not take a stance on the issue of free software as I see many others do. I have children, now aged 11 and 13 who are beginning their high school education. Both of my children have grown up using the linux operating system and related GNU software at home. Their school has proposed a "bring your own laptop for education" program. The proposal specifically mentions that Microsoft Windows or Apple OSX be used. I do not know if this proposal intends to insist on either of these, or if they are listed merely because parents may be wondering if perhaps their existing laptop meets the requirements. For example, the proposal may intend to be diverse, but inadvertently only lists Windows and Apple in an effort to convey that diversity. The proposal then goes on to talk about "meeting minimum requirements" and discusses anti-virus software and so on. Nevertheless, I have decided to take a stronger stance on this issue in that my children will not be using Microsoft nor Apple operating systems. I am looking for advice on how to approach this issue, because I have not taken a strong stance like this before. Whenever I worked in say, a corporate environment that "makes sure your windows updates are up to date" (for example), I have simply worked around whatever nonsense was put in front of me and with little protest. This is usually because I have some other orthogonal goal and so don't have the inclination to address the issue directly. In this case, I think the above proposal works directly against the goal (education) and so I am compelled to intervene. If anyone has tips on this matter or has addressed a similar issue before, I would greatly appreciate hearing about it. Thanks for listening.

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Catastrophic security issue in Enigmail v1.7
by Fraser Tweedale 09 Sep '14

09 Sep '14

Enigmail v1.7 does not encrypt outgoing email in several scenarios, despite explicit indications to the contrary. It is fixed in v1.7.2 - if you are using v1.7, *upgrade now*. Details: http://sourceforge.net/p/enigmail/forum/support/thread/3e7268a4/ Fraser

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minutes of September meeting
by Fraser Tweedale 07 Sep '14

07 Sep '14

Hi everyone, Minutes of Thursday 4 September 2014 meetup: <<EOF Administration -------------- - Name of group put to vote. We are now "LibrePlanet Brisbane"! - The LibrePlanet Code of Conduct was adopted. Please take a moment to read it. - Link: http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Code_of_Conduct News ---- - HACIENDA surveillance program. - Article: http://www.fsf.org/news/gnu-hackers-unmask-massive-hacienda-surveillance-pr… - Western countries port-scanning the Internet to discover hidden or vulnerable servers. - TCP Stealth countermeasures have been implemented in Linux kernel. Paper: https://gnunet.org/kirsch2014knock - Email self-defense guide was updated for Enigmail v1.7. - Link: https://emailselfdefense.fsf.org/en/ - Enigmail is a PGP plugin for Thunderbird. See https://enigmail.net/home/index.php - Australian Tax Office guidance on cryptocurrency (incl. Bitcoin) - Regarded as assets, *not currency*. - Various implications for individuals and businesses; read the guidance if you deal in cryptocurrency. - https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Gen/Tax-treatment-of-crypto-currencies-in-Au… - Software Freedom Day, Saturday 20th September - Registered events in Melbourne, Hobart and Launceston. - We should organise an event for next year! - ProtonMail beta - Request invite: https://protonmail.ch/invite - Encrypted email service incorporated and hosted in Switzerland - They *never* see email in the clear. - Interop with other email providers via symmetric encryption; passphrase must be shared with recipient out of band. - In related developments, GMail has some sort of PGP support now, and Darkmail initiative by Ladar Levinson (Lavabit) and Zimmerman (PGP) seems to be coming along. Survey of secure email services may a good topic for upcoming talk. Talk ---- Sean Chalmers entertained with a recounting of his journey from first discovering free software, then using it, to actively contributing back, and his parallel journey of gaining skills and knowledge in his field, and apply and sharing these. Slides: https://github.com/mankyKitty/fs-oss-journey. EOF Thanks to those who came along, and to Sean for speaking. We already have an interesting talk lined up for next month; if you have a topic you would like to present on please let me know. Also, please let the list (and/or me) know if there are items you would like to see covered in the news section. Cheers, Fraser

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Thursday 4 September meeting agenda
by Fraser Tweedale 25 Aug '14

25 Aug '14

Hi everyone, Details for next week's meetup: Time: Thursday 4 September, 6:00 pm Venue: The Edge, Window Bay 7 (pretty much straight ahead as you enter) Sean Chalmers will give a talk about how free software has helped him gain - and share - valuable skills and knowledge: From a Bash shell, to Drupal, then France, back to Drupal, and finally on to Haskell and the programming language research rabbit hole. This talk will be a look into the importance of access to the knowledge and research of others, and their willingness to share, and how this has helped me reach where I am today. I will also touch on the effect this has had on how I treat the knowledge that I have, and the knowledge that I gain. Other agenda items: - News. We will have a brief news segment - send me your news items to be discussed or just tell us about it on the night! - Choosing a name. We have received a few good suggestions so we will discuss and hopefully decide a name for our group. + Libris + LibrePlanet Brisbane + Software Libre Brisbane + ... others? Suggestions are still welcome! - Code of Conduct. We ought to have one and I will suggest we adopt the LibrePlanet Code of Conduct[1]. We will discuss this and hopefully come to an agreement. [1] http://libreplanet.org/wiki/LibrePlanet:Code_of_Conduct After the meeting: Food. Hopefully this month we can make it to Beastie Burgers before they close, but otherwise it will be eats somewhere else in the South Bank precinct.

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Richard Stallman's TEDx video
by Fraser Tweedale 20 Aug '14

20 Aug '14

rms gave a TEDx talk in Geneva entitled "Introduction to Free Software and the Liberation of Cyberspace." It's quite a good introduction; accessible to non-technical folk. The slides are particularly nice! https://www.fsf.org/blogs/rms/20140407-geneva-tedx-talk-free-software-free-… Share it with your friends and family! Fraser

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Have your say; naming the Brisbane free software group
by Fraser Tweedale 19 Aug '14

19 Aug '14

Hi folks, It's time we decided an official name of the Brisbane free software interest group. Those present at the inaugural meeting decided that the name shall *not* be "Free Software Brisbane" because that abbreviates to FSB[1], which is the thing that used to be the KGB, and we don't care for that ^_^ [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Security_Service Write in with your proposals and we will take a vote at the next meetup on Thursday 4 September. Suggestions from people not in Brisbane are welcome, too. My suggestion is "Software Libre Brisbane" but I'm sure you all can do a lot better than that! Cheers, Fraser

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nhs switch to free software
by Clinton Roy 13 Aug '14

13 Aug '14

This article is a little old, and before the event, but it brings up a few points of interest: http://theconversation.com/a-juggernaut-like-the-nhs-wont-find-it-easy-to-d… Probably the big one I think we missed was end-of-lifing a product, that's technically not possible with a free software product. In practice though, if the community around a project dies off, it's hard to maintain something. cheers, -- Clinton Roy Software Developer Netboxblue.com Total Internet Management Control Internet usage within and outside your organisation.

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recap of meeting 2014-08-07
by Fraser Tweedale 09 Aug '14

09 Aug '14

Thursday 7 August saw the inaugural meetup of the Brisbane free software group. I herein recap the events of the evening: - The meeting was held at The Edge, at 6pm; I'm was happy with the location and facilities so I think we'll keep holding it there. The timing of future meetings is up for discussion, if first-Thursday is problematic for people. I will check what other meetups are on at the same time, in case there are obvious clashes. - Attendance was quite low, but I'm encouraged that those who attended are likely to keep attending, and I'm also aware that some were unable to make it due to the short notice (that's my bad), and some who were coming took ill, so we should see better numbers at the next meeting. - I kicked the meeting off with a spiel about the purpose of the group, that is: free software advocacy and discussion, aiming to be accessible to the general tech-savvy crowd (i.e. not just developers and the like!), to equip attendees to embrace free software and empower them to advocate free software in their communities. We then all briefly introduced ourselves to the group. - George Wilson gave an "Introduction to Free Software" talk, which explained what free software is, why it is important, and tackled some of the common questions and misunderstandings, e.g. copyleft vs permissive licenses, gratis vs libre, etc. I'm not sure if the slides are online but if they are, I'm sure George will let us know where to find them :) - I also gave a talk: an overview of the current campaigns of the Free Software Foundation. The FSF is involved in a diverse array of campaigns for free softwarwe and freedom in computing and the digital world in general. You can see my slides at [1]. Have a look at the campaigns and see what you might be able to get involved in! [1] https://github.com/frasertweedale/talks/blob/master/20140807-fsb-fsf-campai… - We spent a few minutes discussing ideas for future meetings. At the conclusion of the meeting we wandered down to South Bank. Beastie Burgers had unfortunately just closed, but we satisfied our burger cravings at a certain other burger joint nearby. I hope those who were unable to make it on Thursday will be able to come to the next meeting. At this point, let's stick with the first-Thursday - so September 4th - but if anyone has opinions on this please let me know! Cheers, Fraser

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