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

Fwd: Flounder startup 5th Feb 1PM Melbourne time
by Russell Coker 30 Jan '22

30 Jan '22

https://flounder.coker.com.au/2022/01/30/flounder-overview/ The FLOSS Down Under group (Flounder) group is starting next Saturday 1PM Melbourne time (the above page summarises it). https://b.coker.com.au/ The above URL will redirect to the meeting URL, it's deliberately short so if your primary device has an issue you can quickly type it into another device. We haven't entirely decided on the main feature, but thinking of having it be hands on training on BTRFS and ZFS while at the same time discussing new advances (both new technology and older technology that has become cheaper and thus more usable) in storage for FOSS systems. If there's someone who has experience with Optane on Linux who could give a 10+ minute talk about it then please contact me off list. The meetings will include a summary and discussion of new free software that is noteworthy (with input welcome from anyone who thinks we missed something noteworthy). We will also have some mention of recent security issues and other changes to the environment that we operate in. Anyone who wants to contribute to a meeting can contact me in advance to have some time reserved for a lightning talk or a feature talk at a future meeting. Please forward this message to all free software users groups in Australia and NZ. Note that this is not designed to compete with existing LUGs, but to offer something different. -- My Main Blog http://etbe.coker.com.au/ My Documents Blog http://doc.coker.com.au/

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FSM Jan 20th - AGM and Committee Elections
by FSM Committee 15 Jan '22

15 Jan '22

Welcome to a brand new year Free Software friends, Along with a new year we also thought it's a good time for us to refresh the committee and get back into the habit of having an Annual General Meeting. Currently we have three people standing for committee positions but traditionally we have had four committee members. So we would love to hear from anyone in the community interested in stepping forward and joining the committee. Committee members are expected to attend an additional committee meeting once a month, but beyond that you can contribute at your own pace and we will be renewing the committee annually during our January meeting so it's only a one year commitment. During the meeting we'll go over the job description for a committee member in a bit more detail. Then we will nominate the running committee members and hear a few words from each of the running members. We will then officially dissolve the existing committee and vote in the new committee. We will then have our first AGM in a while and discuss some of the current issues we face as Free Software Melbourne. Of particular note we are considering amalgamating all of the (mostly dormant) groups around Australia under the Free Software Australia banner. This will be a non technical event and all are welcome. Come along and have your say on Free Software Melbourne in 2022 Details Thursday, 20th January 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 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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Selling a Lenovo X200 with Coreboot $20 plus postage
by Ben Sturmfels 24 Oct '21

24 Oct '21

Hi Folks, I'm tidying up here and have a Lenovo X200 with Coreboot I'm looking to sell for $20 plus postage (likely less than $15). - well used, but in good working order - 4GB RAM - Coreboot installed - free software-compatible Atheros mini-pci wifi card installed - includes power adaptor - BYO hard drive - needs new battery (~$35 on eBay) - fan runs a little rough at full speed though works ok (~$15 on eBay) Here's a picture: https://shop.libiquity.com/product/taurinus-x200 I have a bit of a soft spot for these machines. They're tough, have a good screen, great hinges, screwdriver friendly and are trivial to swap in/out hard drives. Regards, Ben

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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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Introductions
by Rik Tindall 21 Sep '21

21 Sep '21

Kia ora, hello, greetings from Ootautahi / Christchurch, Aotearoa-NZ, across the ditch! I am with the Sydenham GNU/Linux Users / Free Software Group here and have just realised you're our nearest relatives, literally :) While my grandfather's line migrated here from near Launceston TAS 100-odd years ago, it is Software Freedom Day that unites us today. Which is why I write. You are https://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2021/Australia/Victoria/Melbourne/Free%… We are https://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2021/NewZealand/Christchurch/FreeNix SFD21 went ok for us, we had very modest engagement under covid lockdown conditions. But the parallel with how FSM-LA has run SFD21 now stands out to us. To summarise: FSM-LA used BigBlueButton and we used Jitsi; FSM-LA had rich content (well-organised speakers) and we had prepared none (while we tested the venue / hardware / software / people mix for teleconferencing). In hindsight, we could/should have dialed in to FSM-LA to observe / participate. Our belated apologies, thus. The experience is spawning a vision for how to improve SFD year on year. We now have conversation started with Fred Muller of DFF/SFD along these lines. The emphasis - as for everyone suffering covid lockdowns lately - is optimised teleconferencing to achieve quality collective outcomes. So I'm writing to request/invite more online conversation please and offer this test link for anyone keen to meet and share notes so far please: https://meet.jit.si/SFD2021 Excellent to be back in touch with Melbourne again, a place I have spent several happy weeks and months in the past decade, Epping area. Kia kaha - keep up the great work! Kind regards Rik Tindall +64 03-332-1069 / 027-406-0077

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Re: [free-software-melb] Reminder, FSM Software Freedom Day event, online tomorrow Saturday 18 September, 10.30am
by Les Kitchen 21 Sep '21

21 Sep '21

Hey Fraser! On Tue, Sep 21, 2021, at 09:16, Fraser Tweedale wrote: > What a great line-up. Unfortunately I was unable to attend. > Were the presentations recorded? Yeah. Even as one of the organizers, like a proud parent, I was quite impressed too with the line-up. Recording: Basically yes. There's still quite a bit of editing work to do, and some glitches to overcome. But we hope to make the videos available as soon as we can, likely in the next few weeks. — Smiles, Les.

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Reminder, FSM Software Freedom Day event, online tomorrow Saturday 18 September, 10.30am
by Les Kitchen 17 Sep '21

17 Sep '21

Dear FSM members: Just a reminder that our online celebration of Software Freedom Day is on tomorrow, Saturday 18 September, 10.30am to 5.30pm (AEST). We have an impressive line-up of talks and speakers. For the full program, meeting URL, and any updates, take a look at: https://freesoftware.org.au/blog/software-freedom-day/ We hope to see you there! — Les Kitchen (on behalf of FSM committee)

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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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EmacsConf APAC version
by Yuchen Pei 09 Aug '21

09 Aug '21

Hello everyone, EmacsConf is the conference about the joy of Emacs, Emacs Lisp, and memorising key bindings. The 2021 Edition will take place 27th-28th November online, and the CFP is open until 30th September (<https://emacsconf.org/2021/cfp/>). If you have never heard of Emacs, it is an extensible self-documenting Lisp environment disguised as a text editor. You can use it as vi (<https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/Evil>), to take notes and plan your days (<https://orgmode.org/>), send emails (like this one), browse the web (<https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/eww>), as a window manager (<https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EXWM>), or even unleash the power of butterflies (<https://xkcd.com/378/>). EmacsConf is a conference for people of all levels and backgrounds. In my view the 2020 Edition was one of the best organised online conferences. You can find more about the conference by checking out artefacts from the 2019 (<https://emacsconf.org/2019/schedule/>) and 2020 (<https://emacsconf.org/2020/schedule/>) editions. As is often the case, the timing of the 2021 conference is unfavourable to us poor Antipodeans (9am-5pm American Eastern Standard time on either day, which translates to 1am-9am Australian Eastern Daylight Saving Time), and to a lesser extent the rest of the APAC region. But worry not, as the timing also provides a perfect opportunity for us to take over once they are done, at least on Sunday 28th November. The EmacsConf organisers are indeed considering an "off-hour" session taking place during Australian day time on 28th November, and I am working with them on this. To that end, I would like to understand the level of interest. Are you interested in giving a talk at EmacsConf? Would you like the Saturday talks restreamed during day time on Sunday? If there's restreaming, would you like the possibility of speakers being present for live Q&As? Please let me know (hi(a)ypei.me) If you would like to give a talk, feel free to also submit your propsal directly (<https://emacsconf.org/2021/submit/>). Best, Yuchen -- PGP Key: 47F9 D050 1E11 8879 9040 4941 2126 7E93 EF86 DFD0

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