July 2012 - Free-software-melb - lists.softwarefreedom.com.au

Free software discussion on Byte Into It, 2012-07-04
by Ben Finney 06 Jul '12

06 Jul '12

Howdy all, On 3RRR's Byte Into It this week, we discussed free-software related topics quite a bit. * The Declaration of Internet Freedom. * How is software freedom in conflict with Secure Boot? The FSF petitions hardware vendors to support users disabling the lock. * Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations need to be more transparent, US senators are beginning to come out and say. * The Twitter Transparency Report shines more light on who is asking for users's information and taking down users's content. * The 2012-06-30 leap second caused trouble for some Linux machines. <URL:http://rrrfm.libsyn.com/webpage/byte-into-it-4-july-2012> -- \ “Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free | `\ than Christianity has made them good.” —Henry L. Mencken | _o__) | Ben Finney

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Australia To Review Copyright Fair Use
by Brian May 04 Jul '12

04 Jul '12

I saw it on Slashdot, so it must be true! http://yro.slashdot.org/story/12/07/02/2332254/australia-to-review-copyrigh… -- Brian May <brian(a)microcomaustralia.com.au>

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Minutes from the last meeting
by Alex Fraser 03 Jul '12

03 Jul '12

Hi all, Well, I had lost the minutes. But they have been recovered! and they are: == Topics == 1. Picking your battles 2. Ben Sturmfels' talk on software patents at a recent IP Australia forum in Sydney 3. Buggy Browser Blackmail 4. Fedora and Secure Boot == Discussion == - Briefly discussed KL's project, Eaterprises [1]. Looking forward to more discussion on the topic next time she comes to the meeting. - AF didn't have time to contact the Astor re: DRM; BG agreed to do it instead. === 1. Picking your battles === - Eric S. Raymond wrote an interesting article on determining importance when pushing for open source products [3]. - Eric is from the "open source" camp -> emphasis on reliability. - The article generally blasted RMS. - The categories of harm given in the article are useful, as is the idea of "importance". - Specific examples were not so good. - Organisations already do this, e.g. Mozilla has all but given up on WebM === 2. Ben's talk === - BS approached IP Australia; offered to be involved in future. They contacted him and asked him to talk in Sydney to a room full of patent attorneys. - Title: "Software Patents: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly". - Ben spoke about "the bad". The talk went well (video [4]). After the talk, there were a lot of questions from the floor, and a good discussion. - "The good" was given by the guy who recently won a patent case against Microsoft for some DRM technology. The impression left for Ben was that he got a lot of money, but his quality of life suffered during the long legal battle (10 years, overseas?) - "The ugly" was a talk about stats, etc. given by a patent examiner. - It was a great learning experience for Ben, especially for how to respond to questions such as "how will the little innovators survive without patents". - The talk was shashdotted, and appeared on IT news web sites. The stories included decent quotes from Ben. - All in all, it was really good air time. - If anyone has ideas about action against patents, talk to Ben! === 3. Buggy Browser Blackmail === - The web used to suck. It's better now, but the journey has been horrible - largely due to IE. - Debugging web sites on IE is a huge time drain. - If it had been free software, perhaps the situation would have been better: people could have fixed the bugs (e.g. lack of compliance with standards). - We are now heading in an interesting direction, where the major browsers *are* free. But, if a monopoly is held by a free software browser, will there be problems similar to when IE dominated? - Kogan have an "IE tax": if you're using IE when you check out, you get charged extra! Some software developers at FSM also have an extra fee they charge if the customer wants IE to be supported. === 4. Fedora and Secure Boot === - If a computer manufacturer wants to display the Windows 8 logo (indicating compatibility), the computer must have a locked bootloader. This is supposed to combat malware, however it could stop a user from being able to install a free software operating system. - The user can disable it on Intel platforms, but not on ARM. - Fedora is buying a signing key from Verisign via Microsoft. - We discussed the implications of this for a while. - It seems that a key is not required for user space programs - only for kernel-space code and things that interact with hardware. Apparently, this will make it difficult to support features such as user-space video mode switching. - Some manufacturers may not pursue the Windows 8 logo. Vote with your money! == Action Items == - BG to contact the Astor about their recent problems with DRM [2]. Would they like to come and speak with us, or to BF on his radio show on RRR? == Next Meeting == Thu 19th of July. Topics: - Eaterprises - Free software business models, including the use of trademarks (e.g. restriction of the use of the word "Firefox"). See you there :) [1] http://www.eaterprises.com.au/ [2] http://astortheatreblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/what-happened-last-night/ [3] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=4371 [4] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzg-h9hXn_I

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secure boot discussion at last meeting
by Bianca Gibson 02 Jul '12

02 Jul '12

Hi all, Last meeting when we were talking about secure boot someone (I can't remember who) said that fedora would need to publicly release their signing key. I thought that was an incorrect interpretation of the GPLv3 at the time, and now the FSF whitepaper on the topic confirms what I was thinking. They talk about it in the context of the ubuntu plan. "...they are afraid of falling out of compliance with GPLv3, they plan to drop GRUB 2 on Secure Boot systems, in favor of another bootloader with a different license that lacks GPLv3’s protections for user freedom. Their stated concern is that someone might ship an Ubuntu Certified machine with Restricted Boot (where the user cannot disable it). In order to comply with GPLv3, Ubuntu thinks it would then have to divulge its private key so that users could sign and install modified software on the restricted system." "*This fear is unfounded and based on a misunderstanding of GPLv3*. We have not been able to come up with any scenario where Ubuntu would be forced to divulge a private signing key because a third-party computer manufacturer or distributor shipped Ubuntu on a Restricted Boot machine. In such situations, the computer distributor – not Canonical or Ubuntu – would be the one responsible for providing the information necessary for users to run modified versions of the software." The FSF are "the primary interpreter of the license in question, is the copyright holder of GRUB 2, the main piece of GPLv3-covered software at issue." All quotes from FSF white paper available at http://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-publishes-whitepaper-with-recommendations-for-f… . Bianca

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