December 2019 - Free-software-melb - lists.softwarefreedom.com.au

Mastodon
by Ben Sturmfels 13 Mar '22

13 Mar '22

Hi Folks, I'm getting into this Mastodon thing, but it'd be much more interesting if I could follow a few more people I know. Anyone care to reply with their Mastodon address? I'm @bensturmfels@mastodon.social. Cheers! Ben

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Update on browser standards
by Michael Verrenkamp 07 Sep '20

07 Sep '20

https://freesoftware.org.au/blog/update-on-browser-standards/ Update on browser standards An update on Googles browser standards About a year ago we warned about the issues of the Chromium/Blink web rendering engine and how Google is essentially dictating the direction of web technology to their advantage. https://freesoftware.org.au/blog/on-microsoft-edge-and-the-chromium-engine/ It now appears via multiple sources that this is becoming that case at least for their direct web services. https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/google/google-now-bans-some-linux-web… The short take on the story is that a lot of free software browsers, some of which happen to have provided the technology base of Chrome, are now being denied access under the guise of 'security'. While these browsers combined usage makes up less than 0.1% of Internet traffic, that Google has gone out of the way to deny the users access is a dangerous precident. To make matters worse, if you make these browsers report to Google that they are 'Google Chrome' - Googles own proprietary browser, then these sites work as intended making the whole idea look more preposterous. While this warning has not been seen universally by users and it appears to be in the trail stage, this is a very worrying for the free and open internet and the software that we use on it. Essentially the software maker, being Google, is able to dictate what people can use online using their software platform and online websites. Google has now made a few actions that are determined to control how the internet is used for their own gain. Chrome is designed to dictate the technology base that people have to use, by having technology that can only be rendered properly by their browser, this sets the standards by which most web developers will aim to hit. This is to the detriment of anyone using non-google technology. It may be small user base browsers today, in future it might be things like Firefox and eventually all non-Chrome browsers - even ones that use the same 'open-source' code base. This is the situation we found the internet in at the end of the last decade with Microsoft's Internet Explorer dominating how internet technology would be shaped. It took the efforts of Mozilla and the Firefox project to finally break free from this situation. Google is also directly dictating to web content providers to use their systems such as AMP technology so that run websites on their servers, making them load faster than they typically would and this is enhanced when using their browsers so that any competition looks bad by comparison. Google uses many other techniques but these main ones are used to direct you into Googles profit machine at the expense of your choice of software and thus your privacy. Over the last few years it has become apparent that more web browser technology is being dictated down from Google and less about letting technology find its own place via dis-census. That is, it is being designed rather than evolving. Technology is being used to squeeze out competition and free software based browsers are clearly being targeted. Google has misused API's to make performance run slowly on other browsers, dictated how DRM should be implemented online so that others cannot support the same standards and in general just made a technology target that favors it over other agreed standards. The best solution to a problem is to prevent the problem in the first place. That means having to avoid using these controlling technologies and to support those that have your back covered. By supporting free software and open standards that is what you are doing. Every time you use a Free-software browser and a website doesn't work properly, let the sites admin know about it. If they don't want to fix it - don't use it. You are better off not being forced into a compromised position. In the coming decade this will only get worse. With the increasing profit needs of Google, increasing operations costs, decline in return on computer hardware improvements, ever increasing demand so of users and the apathy of those same users that makes them accept these changes with little questioning, we are slowly walking down a road that is very difficult to recover from. It took almost a decade to turn it around last time with Firefox and that was through the arrogance of Microsoft not keeping their eye on the ball and assuming that they could never fall. This time it may not be possible as it is a very deliberate and targeted attack on users choices. If we don't try to fight this then we have lost already. If we wait until it is unbearable, it will be near impossible to overcome in any meaningful way. Michael Verrenkamp -- Committee Member Free Software Australia/Melbourne Advocating for freedom in computer software. www.freesoftware.org.au

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End of Year update
by Michael Verrenkamp 17 Dec '19

17 Dec '19

And so another year of Free Software Melbourne comes to an end. This year has been an interesting one. Firstly for Free software at a glance. Most Distros have kept on improving in their quality and stability as they are deep into their maturity nowadays, and that is only a good thing. In one of our meetups mid-year someone came along (I'm sorry I forgot their name!) and asked "So I'm running Linux Mint, how do I get to experience the 'real linux?'". It is a funny question as from the outside GNU/Linux has the appearance of being this huge technical challenge that gets you closer to your machine. Yes, you do get closer to your machine but it isn't a large technical challenge any more and for that we should be grateful. To borrow the cliche of Apple - for the most part "it just works!". Now stop mentioning the terminal unless you really need it. ;) I will mention three packages that have had a particularly good year, all of them in the arts side of things. Blender, Krita and Godot. In the last decade Blender has gone from an interesting little 3D packaging to experiment with to a world leader in 3D rendering technology. The community kept it alive and now it is thriving. There have now been feature films made using this technology and the number of studios and users is exploding. This is a true testament to what free software can do and how it can help people a long way outside of the technical side. Krita which started out as a one programmer project for digital painting is now getting major funding for additional features plus an entire community surround it. You can now easily find tutorials, lessons and even printed books on how to use this package. I think the folks over at Adobe are starting to worry about this contender and there is no way they can counter it... well unless they liberate the code to Photoshop under the GPL. Godot is a video games engine/platform for 2D and 3D games and it has started to get a lot of traction, unfortunately in proprietary games but at least the technology base under it is free software. It has gone from a clunky little experiment to the darling of the indie games world with complex 3D shaders and ever increasing performance gains. I guess the price of $0 upfront and a Free code base does encourage people to gravitate to it over the other proprietary solutions. On the hardware front, we are seeing the first steps back into the world of Free software phones. After the dream of the Ubuntu phone faded, the whole idea has been on the back burner for a few years now. Hardware costs have fallen dramatically and processor speeds/memory are now more than enough to all a free software OS to have a chance again. The PinePhone64 and the Librem 5 are two that are looking to bring the dream back to life. Hardware is starting to appear in users/developers hands and it will be a while until we can consider these things ready as daily runners but these things looks like they will go the long yards. The big news this year however was not in software but the departure of Richard Stallman from the Free Software Foundation and his position at MIT. The situation was complicated and filled with all sorts of emotional issues that sit far outside of the Free software. It came as an unexpected blow to the community but we are resilient, we are more than just a fan club for one guy, we are a movement. I will not comment any further on this but I will take the sentiment of Stallman himself - even without him there, support the FSF and make it clear that they need to defend the rights of users. Freedom is important. Now onto Free Software Melbourne. This year we had a little experiment, instead of monthly meetings, we went for every second month for meetings. It was a bit more relaxing but the committee has decided it was maybe a little too relaxed. Next year we will be moving back to a monthly meetup schedule. This is every 3rd Thursday of every month excluding September in which we will have the 16th - Software Freedom Day. So put the following dates in your calendar. We will still make announcements for this and do check on our email list as these are subject to change. Thursday 16th January Thursday 20th February Thursday 19th March Thursday 16th April Thursday 21st May Thursday 17th June Thursday 16th July Thursday 20th August Saturday 19th September Thursday 15th October Thursday 19th November December Dinner to be decided The March meetup is a very important date. That will be the 10th anniversary of Free Software Melbourne. From two people meeting in a library, we have had a long and exciting history and we are only going to keep going from here. There are plans in the pipeline for a couple of advocacy/activist campaigns over the next year, we won't so much be boycotting things - don't want to step on the Liberal parties toes - but we will be very informative to people. These won't just impact Australia but they will be things that are relevant globally. Stay Tuned. There is a lot of work to be done but there is a lot of fun along the way, please join us in this journey. Michael Verrenkamp -- Committee Member Free Software Australia/Melbourne Advocating for freedom in computer software. www.freesoftware.org.au

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