April 2014 - Free-software-melb - lists.softwarefreedom.com.au

Nokia N900
by Sven＠GMX 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

Anyone interested in a N900 including charger and USB cable? Had been used for about 9 month (August 2013 - January 2014) and got my new Fairphone little while ago. Happy to give the N900 away for two six packs of good Cider or $35. Pick up would be Melbourne city. Cheers, Sven

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TPP
by Adam Bolte 22 Apr '14

22 Apr '14

Hi all, Some new TPP-related news hit my inbox today, from the guys running the http://StopTheSecrecy.net website. From the e-mail: ---- President Obama is holding secret meetings in Asia to ram through the TPP's Internet censorship plan, which would force ISPs to monitor our Internet use, censor content, and remove entire websites. To fight back we need your help to project an attention-grabbing message on key buildings in Washington D.C. Tell decision-makers to stop the secretive TPP now so we can deliver the message before it's too late. Here's the situation: Obama himself is in secretive meetings with key political figures and lobbyists in Asia to lock the Trans-Pacific Partnership's Internet censorship plan into place. We know from leaked documents that this secretive plan will censor your use of the Internet and strip away your rights.[1] If finalized, this plan would force ISPs to act as "Internet Police" monitoring our Internet use, censoring content, and removing whole websites.[2] It will give media conglomerates centralized control over what you can watch and share online. This is huge: covering 40% of the global economy, the TPP is being called a legal "blueprint" for the rest of the world.[3] Once key leaders finalize TPP Internet censorship plans today it will be used to globalize censorship across the world. You will be affected and this may be our only chance to stop it. *Footnotes* [1] "Secret Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP)." Source: WikiLeaks [ https://wikileaks.org/tpp ]. [2] TPP Creates Legal Incentives For ISPs To Police The Internet. What Is At Risk? Your Rights. Source: Electronic Frontier Foundation [ https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/tpp-creates-liabilities-isps-and-put-… ] [3] U.S. "Bullying" TPP Negotiators Amid Failure to Agree. Source: Inter Press Service News Agency [ http://www.ipsnews.net/2013/12/u-s-bullying-tpp-negotiators-amid-failure-ag… ]. *Note: The U.S. and the E.U. are already discussing a similar secretive agreement called "Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)". Once the TPP is finalized there will be pressure to harmonize and extend its provisions to TTIP -- meaning the E.U. There are also reports of several others countries being added to the TPP once it is finalized. ---- If this campaign is something you might be interested in, I would urge you to head on over to http://StopTheSecrecy.net as soon as you can, and make your opinion known by signing up. Cheers, Adam

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Gooseberry - the open animation film, why it matters
by Alex Fraser 15 Apr '14

15 Apr '14

Hi all, I'd like to bring some attention to a crowd funding campaign for Blender. They're pushing for a feature-length film this time - which will result in a lot of development of free software video production tools (especially Blender), and hopefully recognition from the industry that it's viable to use free software in production. Please check it out! Alex ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Ton Roosendaal <ton(a)blender.org> Date: Sat, Mar 29, 2014 at 12:39 AM Subject: [Bf-committers] Gooseberry - the open animation film, why it matters To: bf-blender developers <bf-committers(a)blender.org> Hi all, I can't express enough how important this Gooseberry project is, for me personally and for a lot of people out there. There are so many solutions for urgent issues coming together in Gooseberry - it is really mind-blowing sometimes. This is what Gooseberry is for me: - Open Movies as a Blender development model. Open Source software works very well as in-house software, as an ongoing flexible development process. This is opposite to commercial programs, these have a more distinct product life cycle. Imagine: Gooseberry is going to be an 18 month animation-studio simulation! With so many wonderful technical-creative challenges to solve, and we can all be part of it. - Raise the bar - make a feature animation film. Every animator or artist who has done a couple of shorts before, understands the excitement of the prospect doing a feature animation film once. It's really a different medium, it's a new technical and creative challenge - risky but rewarding. It's also a medium that brings you a new and massive audience. This would be the ultimate advertisement for Blender as well as for FOSS in general. - Investigate using Cloud services and features for open source projects Software is moving into the cloud, Adobe and Autodesk work hard on it. They present this as "benefit for the users" but they actually just pull up an Iron Curtain to safely hide their software behind. No more piracy, no reverse engineering... total control! I don't want to wait for us to lose this fight. We can find out ourselves what the real user benefits are, but in openness and by truly respecting user freedom. The Gooseberry teams will use Cloud, for sharing and collaboration. With you too! - Building the world's largest free/open 3d content & education repository We shouldn't underestimate how much importance the open movies and the open game had for education and training. Not only for its free data, but especially for the tutorials, the making-of videos, the training dvds we made with these teams. This massive dataset should be kept around, renewed but also be kept updated and working. - New business model for Blender Institute and Foundation We can't keep selling paper and plastic with open/free data forever... that did a lot for us, helped Blender to grow, hire developers and do big projects. But the revenues are going down. Having a pile of DVDs is nice on your bookshelf, but not to actually use. Online sharing - in the cloud - is a much better solution for the data. I believe in a future for subscription models for cool content/training/data/services. Especially if that enables us to become a media producer ourselves! - Occupy Bay Area, Occupy Hollywood? There's a real growing unrest out there about how a few greedy people control this business - making their billions - while others lose jobs in the same week their company has won an Oscar. Yep, Mark Z. buys another toy for billions, which he makes by selling our digital lives. And we nerds just line up for yet another Marvel super hero movie again. Meanwhile the powers that be prepare for a segregated internet - with fast and "free" commercial channels - and a slow, expensive one for the remains of the open internet we loved. I'm not fit for politics, nor do I feel much like protesting or mud slinging. I'm a maker - I'm interested in finding solutions together and doing experiments with taking back control over our digital lives, our media, and especially get back ownership as creative people again - and make a decent living with it. So that's Gooseberry for me. An experiment, but with potential impact! I know there's some skepticism out there, about the project concept and about the slow funding start. But well - we're learning, and we're developing well to get the message and the website to work optimally. It's also inventing something new, and that you can only do by trying it. Key is that I'm having a vision, and the guts to live by that vision. I'm not lead by polls, not by common opinions or what others think might be more successful. I'm also not a billionaire. Not a movie star. It's just me :) And one thing for sure, I cannot do this alone. http://cloud.blender.org/gooseberry/ Thanks, -Ton- -------------------------------------------------------- Ton Roosendaal - ton(a)blender.org - www.blender.org Chairman Blender Foundation - Producer Blender Institute Entrepotdok 57A - 1018AD Amsterdam - The Netherlands

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Free Culture awareness / education project, “Copy Me”
by Ben Finney 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

Howdy all, Would you like Free Software Melbourne to financially support a project making a series of well-produced video episodes, raising awareness of the role copying has in our society and culture? This project on Indiegogo is low on funds, but looks very important <URL:https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/copy-me-a-webseries-about-copying--3>. It's a Romanian team who plan to produce a series of videos that counter pervasive myths about copying, culture, and copyright. Here is a video (in Romanian, with subtitles – don't worry, they plan to make English episodes from the current project) that shows they're really in tune with the Free Software Melbourne position: “The Internet is Closing Down” <URL:https://vimeo.com/54802900>. I will happily collect funds and organise a collective donation on behalf of our group. Let's discuss this at the upcoming meeting (Thursday 2014-04-17). Regardless whether you intend to fund them, *please* spread this far and wide to anyone who is concerned about the grip of the intellectual property maximalists on our culture. The project need funding to make this happen, and that comes from spreading the knowledge they exist! -- \ “Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been.” —Mark | `\ Twain, _Following the Equator_ | _o__) | Ben Finney

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MS Windows alternative
by Sven＠GMX 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

Though in an early stage it's a great idea with huge potential. http://www.reactos.org/ Sven, VK3SIX

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Data freedom for everyone: the Document Liberation Project
by Ben Finney 08 Apr '14

08 Apr '14

Howdy all, Last week, the Document Liberation Project announced their existence. ===== The Document Liberation Project is a home for the growing community of developers united to free users from vendor lock-in of content. […] What happens when not just an individual, but an entire organization such as a government is unable to read or access digital data from past years? […] Going forward, the obvious solution to this problem is to use true open standards that are duly and fully documented. But as things stand today, we must face a daunting reality: a significant amount of our legacy digital content is encoded in proprietary, undocumented formats. The Document Liberation Project was created in the hope that it would empower individuals, organizations, and governments to recover their data from proprietary formats and provide a mechanism to transition that data into open file formats, returning effective control over the content from computer companies to the actual authors. ===== The project <URL:http://www.documentliberation.org/> builds on the great success of the Document Foundation in making Open Document Format, and the LibreOffice tools for converting from legacy to open formats. How should Free Software Melbourne respond? -- \ “If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of | `\ danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, | _o__) Mr. Brave man, I guess I'm a coward.” —Jack Handey | Ben Finney

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Embrace the Remix
by Alex Fraser 01 Apr '14

01 Apr '14

Hi all, This is a very interesting talk about how creativity builds on existing work. The speaker specifically calls out patents as a problem. And he gets a standing ovation at the end - so hopefully that means people who go to TED talks feel the same way :) http://www.ted.com/talks/kirby_ferguson_embrace_the_remix Cheers, Alex

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