January 2017 - Free-software-melb - lists.softwarefreedom.com.au

crowdsupply: a Proclamation of User Rights
by Ben Finney 26 Jan '17

26 Jan '17

Howdy all, Crowd Supply have been busy in the past twelve months <URL:https://blog.crowdsupply.com/2017/01/24/a-new-years-proclamation/>, organising the funding of many user-respecting hardware projects. They have also mooted a Proclamation of User Rights in hardware <URL:https://www.crowdsupply.com/about#user-rights>, asserting the rights of hardware users and the limitation of the power of creators to impose restrictions on users. What do you think? They're looking for feedback, so go ahead and let them know your thoughts on hardware user rights. -- \ “Repetition leads to boredom, boredom to horrifying mistakes, | `\ horrifying mistakes to God-I-wish-I-was-still-bored, and it | _o__) goes downhill from there.” —Will Larson, 2008-11-04 | Ben Finney

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FSM casual dinner with Deb Nicholson
by Ben M 19 Jan '17

19 Jan '17

Happy new year Free Software Melbourne, After a stellar talk titled "Handle Conflict, Like a Boss!" Deb Nicholson from the Open Invention Network and OpenHatch will be stopping by Melbourne for a few days on her way back to the US. https://linux.conf.au/schedule/presentation/37/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6x-HYunGtR0 We're organizing a casual dinner with Deb this Monday at 7pm at the Supper Inn Chinese Restauraunt, 15 Celestial Avenue, just off Little Bourke Street We'd love to see you all there but numbers are limited and so RSVPs are a must to either myself of Ben Sturmfields at the emails provided below: Ben S <ben(a)stumbles.id.au> Ben M <puzzleduck(a)gmail.com>

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Reclaiming unfiltered Internet access
by Gabor Szathmari 15 Jan '17

15 Jan '17

Hello Everybody, As you may already know, certain websites in Australia are unavailable from December because of various court orders forcing ISPs to block them. As a response to this, we have built a website for the general public which shows how ISP blocking can be circumvented. The site is called 'UnblockOz' and it is available on https://unblockoz.org This website demonstrates how one can change the DNS records, choose a reliable VPN provider or download the Tor browser to evade this ISP blocking. Please let us know what you think and pull requests are welcome on https://github.com/cryptoaustralia/unblockoz Regards, Gabor Szathmari gszathmari(a)gmail.com

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Re: [free-software-melb] [free-software-melb-announce] FSM Jan 13th - LCA preview: Planning Alerts, State Contracts then The World
by Riley Baird 12 Jan '17

12 Jan '17

> How does a council scraping initiative started in the UK evolve to > influence and inform how the Victorian Government manages its information? > Planning Alerts was originally a UK service to allow people to subscribe to > be notified when there was a planning application near them regardless of > council boundaries. It's success has also been replicated (and improved) in > Australia. It seems obvious to many of us that a significant factor is that > the initial project and those that followed it were Open Source and open to > the Communities they served. How can we better demonstrate to government > the value of Open Standards and Open Data than by making it happen? On the topic of open government, I just thought that I'd like to share a website that I've made. It's open source (AGPL-3.0+), and it tracks how every MP votes on every division in the Victorian Parliament. You can access it at http://vicvote.review

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