Hi all, Here are the minutes from the last meeting. Sorry for the delay! On 13 May 2012 18:54, Alex Fraser wrote:

 - DRM in cinema [1]  - How can we be more involved with LibrePlanet [2]?  - FOSS-friendly employers, both in terms of IT companies and others (e.g. how do you get the print shop you work at to start using FOSS?)

[1] http://astortheatreblog.wordpress.com/2012/01/26/what-happened-last-night/ [2] http://libreplanet.org/

== 1. DRM in cinema == The Astor blog post on the topic was good, but it wasn't explicitly anti-DRM. That's probably because the audience of their blog is their customers, and it's no good complaining to them. We decided to contact The Astor to discuss their problems with DRM. Some ideas: - Invite them to one of our meetings - Invite them to an interview on Byte Into It with Ben Finney on RRR (Wed nights, 7:00-8:00pm). Note: RRR has 10k+ subscribers. Further discussion: - We could also contact politicians about this specific problem, e.g. the Greens may be sympathetic. - Archival problem example for movies: Doomsday Book: archived on Laserdisc; no players any more. - What does this mean for movies in general? Australian movies probably need to be stored at the National Film and Sound Archive; presumably they would require DRM-free copies. - Media lockdown opposed to culture; see questioncopyright.org (Nina Paley) - Money is being made even though media can be copied; see "The Sky is Rising" at TechDirt. == 2. LibrePlanet == The question was asked, what is our connection with LibrePlanet? - What can they do for us, or vice-versa? - Who is our contact there? - Can we participate in free software events that others host around the world (e.g. by video conference)? -> Maybe; e.g. VPAC has good facilities for this, but would need to check bandwidth use policy. == 3. Free software-friendly employers == Some people have good luck with this: - At Adam's work you can build your own system. Everyone else uses Apple computers, but it's not mandatory. ... however, there are compatibility problems when trying to connect to the company's AirPort device. Company is generally free software-friendly, and promotes anti-DRM stance. - David: Free OS on workstation, but Windows VM for MS Office. Produces free software with non-free plugins. - Chris: Supercomputers for life science run free OS, but have a non-free cluster filesystem. High-performance computing community generally supports software freedom. - Ben F: Asked for, and got, a licence under the GPL for software written for employer. - Alex: Contributing to GPL code (Blender) at work. Hurdle: Aust Govt. refuses free software on basis of lack of public liability insurance. However: - Aust Govt. policy on open source software effective Mar 2011 puts FOSS on equal footing with proprietary software. - OpenLogic (and maybe others) provide indemnity for use of FOSS in a corporate environment. Interesting development: Twitter has a draft employee patent agreement [1]: won't use patents except defensively; otherwise, employee may licence own patent to party being sued. Agreement appears to follow patents should they be sold, through an "encumberance". Further discussion: - How compromising one should be on FOSS and patent matters when negotiating an employment contract? - Analogies with GMO and gene patents: life is naturally easy to reproduce and propagate; aggressive litigation on assumption of illegitimate copies. == Action items == AF to contact Astor re: interview on RRR. Next meeting: 21 June. [1] http://blog.twitter.com/2012/04/introducing-innovators-patent-agreement.html