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FSM Nov 18th - Favorite Free Software for 2021
by FSM Committee 14 Nov '21

14 Nov '21

Hi all, Last month videos night was fun and great to see some highlights from Software Freedom Day. As this month is our last regular meeting for the year it would be great to look back at the year and what Free and Open Source Software we found useful and helpful over the last year. We will go around the group and everyone will have a chance to talk about their favourite Free and Open Source Software. It can be anything from a short shout out or personal recommendation, a quick demonstration of how you use the software or a full run down of the features and benefits of your tool of choice. At the moment our committee numbers are currently lower than we like so we are looking for anyone interested to join the committee. In addition to our regular meetings the committee also meets up for an hour or two every month and beyond that you can contribute as much or as little time as you have to share. We could use people with all sorts of skill sets. Come along and celebrate 2021 and all the great Free and Open Source Software it has brought us. Details Thursday, 18th November 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm Join us at: https://venue.electronworkshop.com.au/b/fsm-7fm-etn-vj8 Join the FSM mailing list to be notified of events: https://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software… Meeting Tips: Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct

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FSM Oct 21st - SFD Video Previews and Free Software Video Night
by FSM Committee 18 Oct '21

18 Oct '21

Hey everyone, Thanks to everyone who logged in to another awesome Software Freedom Day last month. If you weren't able to make it to the event live then hold tight because we are working on creating videos for each of the presentations. One exception to that is Noémi's final talk about Searx. Unfortunately the audio was not recorded, so unless someone from the audience recorded the audio and is happy to share it with us we unfortunately won't be able to put together a video for that one. This month we're having a Free Software Video Night. We thought it would be fun to have a sneak peak at the "Best of SFD 2021" where we preview and discuss a few minutes of each of the speaker's talks. Keeping with the Video Night theme we'll finish off the evening with a Blender movie or two from the many available. We'll have a vote on the night and the top movies will win. Just to refresh your memory: the Blender movies we'll be picking from are Coffee Run, Spring, Hero, Daily Dweebs, Agent 327: Operation Barbershop, Caminandes 3: Llamigos, Glass Half, Cosmos Laundromat, Caminandes 2: Gran Dillama, Caminandes 1: Llama Drama, Tears of Steel, Sintel, Big Buck Bunny, Elephants Dream. Details Thursday, 21st October 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm Join us at: https://venue.electronworkshop.com.au/b/fsm-7fm-etn-vj8 Join the FSM mailing list to be notified of events: https://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software… Meeting Tips: Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct

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Licence controversies: Elastic Search and Audacity, Thursday, 19th August 2021
by FSM Committee 19 Aug '21

19 Aug '21

Licence controversies: Elastic Search and Audacity While we might have spent a lot of 2021 not doing much it's certainly been an exciting time for software licensing. Recently some big Free and Open Source projects have made licensing and related changes that could affect their communities for a long time to come and we're going to be talking about them this month at Free Software Melbourne. After being acquired by Muse Group the GPL2-licensed Audacity has added a controversial Contributor License Agreement, introduced controversial features and made controversial changes to their privacy agreement. There is also some uncertainty about whether GPLv3 will be the next licence for Audacity. Another well known (formerly Free and Open Source) project Elastic Search has recently adopted the SSPL which, while based on the GPLv3, is not recognised by the OSI or the FSF as a Free and Open licence. Would the AGPL have been a better solution, or is this an indicator of SSPLs success? We'll present the news and reports about these issues, explore what impact this might have on us and look at alternatives and forks that are currently available. We will also have a discussion about what this means for these projects and their communities. This will be a non technical event and all are welcome to join in the conversation or just listen in. We look forward to seeing you all online! Details Thursday, 19th August 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm Join us at: https://meet.glasswings.com.au/b/fsm-iv6-tce-vpu Meeting Tips * Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. * Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct

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FSM Jul 15th - User Freedom on the Web
by FSM Committee 05 Jul '21

05 Jul '21

Hi everyone, Free Software Melbourne July 15th - User Freedom on the Web Free software is defined by the four user freedoms and for a long time these freedoms have been ensured by Free Software licenses like the GPL. While not perfect these licenses help preserve the four freedoms for the kinds of applications we use on our desktop computers that do not involve other computers. Things start to get a bit more complicated when we start making software available over a network and using such software. Mix in the popularity of the World Wide Web and it makes it tricky to preserve these freedoms. In this talk I will give an introduction to the topic of user freedom on the Web. I will talk about the issues on server-side (that is the ASP loophole and SaaSS) and also from the client-side (i.e. the javascript trap). I will also cover some of today's popular solutions and mitigations to these problems like the AGPL, self-hosted services and the LibreJS browser extension. We look forward to seeing you at the online meeting! P.S. meetup.com is not required for following FSM updates. If you are reading this announcement through meetup.com, the speaker advises that you reduce your dependency on proprietary software required for using meetup.com, by signing up to the FSM mailing list at https://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software… for all FSM announcements. Details - Thursday, 15th July 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm - Join us at: https://meet.glasswings.com.au/b/fsm-iv6-tce-vpu - Short video intro to Big Blue Button (BBB): https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw - Meeting Tips: - Be sure to test your audio on the way in. - Your mic will be muted when you join the room. - Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. - Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct ~~ Ben

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FSM Jun 17th - Everyday Hardware for Free Software: Mobile Phones, Laptops, and more
by FSM Committee 12 Jun '21

12 Jun '21

Free Software is owned by its community of users and creators, for the benefit of that community, and of human society in general. Free Software respects the autonomy and privacy of its users — especially important in this age when so many companies base their business on control and surveillance of their customers. But all software runs on hardware, and similar considerations apply. In order to maintain control over our software we also need hardware devices that respect the autonomy and privacy of their users. This is a vast topic. My goal for this talk is more modest: A tour of some hardware that's friendly to Free Software, in the hope that you might learn about something you can use. My main focus will be on devices for everyday use: mobile phones, laptops, and single-board computers usable as desktop computers or as home servers, some of which I own and can therefore demonstrate live in the talk, and can speak of from my own experience. Devices I plan to talk about: Pinephone, Pinebook Pro, SOPINE A64 (from Pine64); Librem5 phone and Librem laptops (from Purism); Odroid-XU4, Odroid-H2+, Odroid Home Cloud devices (from HardKernel); Raspberry Pi 4; and possibly the MNT Reform laptop and GNUBee PC-1. Also, if you have some favorite privacy respecting or open hardware you would like to demonstrate or show off, you're welcome to join in at the meeting and do a brief lightning talk about it, especially if you have it at hand for show'n'tell. We look forward to seeing you at the online meeting! Details - Thursday,17th June 2021, 7:30pm-9:00pm - Join us at: https://meet.glasswings.com.au/b/fsm-iv6-tce-vpu - Short video intro to Big Blue Button (BBB): [https://www.y](https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw)[ewtu.be](https://w… - Meeting Tips: - Be sure to test your audio on the way in. - Your mic will be muted when you join the room. - Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. - Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct

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FSM May 20th - FSM Wiki Working Bee
by committee＠freesoftware.org.au 11 May '21

11 May '21

Hi Folks, Sorry if we've seemed a bit quiet, it appears that recently the committee email address was accidentally removed from the mailing list causing our messages to go un-posted. I think we've managed to fix the issue, so hopefully all is well and you'll be reading this announcement. Thanks to everyone who managed to find us last month and participate in the discussion around Privacy and Free Software. I have attached the updated slides incorporating every ones feedback to this announcement we're really grateful for the feedback and input. This month we're going to be trying something different with our first (maybe annual) FSM Wiki Working Bee. First up we'll be having a review of the wiki and some discussion around what we want to keep, what we want to improve and what we can archive or remove. After that discussion we'll work on some of the items we think we can tackle in small groups or collaborative sessions. We'll try to finish off the night with a show and tell of what we've been able to complete (or what we hope to have finished soon). So come along and have a your say about what happens to our wiki. We’ll be meeting virtually via Big Blue Button at 7:30pm. This will be a non technical event so feel free to join the initial discussion and find out how easy it can be to contribute to a wiki. Details Thursday 20th May, 7:30pm-9:00pm Join us at: https://meet.glasswings.com.au/b/fsm-iv6-tce-vpu Short video intro to Big Blue Button (BBB): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw Meeting Tips: Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback. Code of Conduct: https://freesoftware.org.au/code-of-conduct

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FSM Aug 20 - FLOSS and The Commons
by PuZZleDucK 15 Aug '20

15 Aug '20

Hey all, The concept of the Commons has been coming up at a few meetups recently and we thought it might be interesting to explore the topic during this months meetup. The Commons is a broad and diverse topic so we'll just be looking at a small slice of it and discuss how it might relate to Free and Open Source Software. We'll have a few short prepared talks about the history and philosophy of the commons, how this concept has been interpreted in the context of software licensing and then we'll probably have some time for more general discussion around the topic. Please note the later than usual starting time, we're experimenting around the new online experience so please give feedback on what you think in the meetup chat. As usual we'll be meeting up on Big Blue Meeting, so all you need is your browser, and all are welcome. Details: Thursday 20th August, 7:30-8:30pm BBB Room: https://freesoftwareau.bigbluemeeting.com/pau-9ti-iea Short video intro to BBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw Meeting Tips: Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback.

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FSM Jul 16 - Free and Open Source Software Show and Tell
by PuZZleDucK 11 Jul '20

11 Jul '20

Hi everyone, With the dramatic changes to how we go about our day-to-day business over the past months there have also been dramatic changes to the software we use and rely upon every day. So this month we are going to catch up for a 'Free Software Show and Tell' event where we all take a turn talking about our favourite Free or Open Source project at the moment and discuss your favourite features or why it’s so useful. >From your favourite audio player right up to your favourite new distros or even mobile software from F-Droid and friends, we want to know what Free Software is doing for you. There is always something new and exciting in Free and Open Source Software that can help us all to keep excited and optimistic for the future. We will talk about some of the great free software helping us through this pandemic and hope that you will join in and talk about what software has been helping you. This event is open to all and no technical expertise is required. Details: Thursday 16th July, 6:30-8:00pm BBB Room: https://freesoftwareau.bigbluemeeting.com/pau-9ti-iea Short video intro to BBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw Meeting Tips: Be sure to test your audio on the way in. Your mic will be muted when you join the room. Headsets are recommended to reduce any feedback.

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Meetup update
by PuZZleDucK 16 Jun '20

16 Jun '20

Hi all, Just a quick update with the link to this weeks meetup and a short video about the BBB interface, see you all there: Update: Thursday 18th June, 6:30-8:00pm BBB Room: https://freesoftwareau.bigbluemeeting.com/pau-9ti-iea Short video intro to BBB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYYnryIM0Uw ~~ Ben

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FSM Jun 18 - Running a small business on Free Software — The Sandstorm Platform
by PuZZleDucK 13 Jun '20

13 Jun '20

As Australia starts to ease restrictions and some businesses are opening up again while many continue to operate online we thought it might be a good time to look at what Free and Open Source Software is available for running a small business or personal productivity. Luckily for us there is the all-in-one solution that is Sandstorm. Sandstorm describes itself as a self-hostable web productivity suite.It is an easy to install and maintain server-side platform that provides seamless access to dozens of productivity and office applications. Sandstorm provides a secure platform and takes care of authentication, authorization, installation and space management so you can start being productive from the moment you get it set up. It does require you to have existing hosting or to run it locally using something like Docker, but it allows for simple authentication and installation of many applications once it's setup. There is also a rich ecosystem of applications supported which we'll talk about including EtherPad for collaborative editing, Draw.io for graphics, HackerSlides for presentations, Wekan for project tracking, FileDrop for secure file sharing and Collections for tying it all together... and that's just scratching the surface of applications and alternatives available! We’ll be meeting virtually via Big Blue Button (an open source video conferencing system we'll probably cover in the near future) at 6:30pm on Thursday the 18th of June. We'll update you with the URL as soon as we can. Details: Thursday 18th June, 6:30-8:00pm BBB Room: To Be Announced Meeting Tips: Mute your mic when joining or not talking and headsets are recommended to reduce feedback.

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