rants


Archive for July, 2006

Jabbin looking for beta testers and packagers

Monday, July 31st, 2006

I have been asked to relay this information and I happily do so:

The Jabbin project is looking for packagers and testers.  Jabbin is a multi-platform Jabber free software client, adding VoIP feature (it is possible to speak with GTalk users) and a new friendly UI .

They have released a new version and would like to focus more on GNU/Linux adding more support and documentation for it.

At the moment they have only the rpm package for SuSE, but more packages are necessary: Debian, Fedora and Ubuntu, at least.

To collaborate please contact the developer Stefano Grini via jabber JID stefanogrini@jabber.org

Beyond ‘open standards’

Wednesday, July 19th, 2006

I am dealing with a paper about standards and Free Software and I’ve found out that the term ‘open standard’ is a very common term in literature (and commercial advertising).  According to most of the definitions I found, an ‘open standard’ can be patented and, at best, subject to RAND licensing policies.  This translate into ‘open standard _can_ be impossible to implement in Free Software’.

Now, since I am summarizing in this paper what defines a standard that is implementable in Free Software, it would be nice to propose also a term that is non controversial like ‘open standard’. 

Free standard is not good: I don’t think it’s savvy to replicate the fight between ‘open’ and ‘free’.  A friend whispered ‘non discriminatory standard’ but he agrees that the negation at the beginning is less than optimal.  I couldn’t think of any more solutions, so I ask here two questions: 

1) does it make sense to introduce in the Free Software community a new term that is non-controversial and more precise than the generic ‘open standard’?

2) if yes, what would that term be?

Any suggestion appreciated. Please comment here or on the list Discussion where I posted this same message and I will summarize any useful result.

Explaining how DRM works

Wednesday, July 12th, 2006

 There are many descriptions online of how DRM (digital restrictions management) work, but few images actually try to picture a real life scenario. These images have been modeled after a simple scenario described in the Digital Media Project, the people that is trying to develop an interoperable DRM. I have used the use case n. 8 (Personal Photo) from the Approved Document No. 4 – Technical Specification: Use Cases and Value Chains to help Fellows explain why Free Software is incompatible with DRM, no matter what others say.

Get the file from here and let me know what you think, if it is correct and how to improve it.

Cursing in Italian

Tuesday, July 11th, 2006

After Zidane trying to stop Materazzi’s heart, Liberation tries to suggest some ‘bad words’ in Italian in this mp3 file…  How disappointing, it is repetitive and boring.  I can do better as Georg and kyrah know 😉

Video su GPLv3 e TC/DRM

Friday, July 7th, 2006

Sono stati pubblicati i video della giornata di studi sul "trusted computing" (ma a noi piace chiamarlo Treacherous Computing ovvero Computer Truffaldino).