Erstes Fellowship-Treffen in Stuttgart!

Am Freitag, den 22. August wird um 19:00 Uhr das erste Fellowship Treffen in Stuttgart stattfinden. Veranstaltungsort wird das Unithekle/Unitop an der Universität Stuttgart (Campus Vaihingen) sein. Einen genauen Lageplan findet ihr hier.

Das Fellowship-Treffen soll uns die Möglichkeit geben sich in gemütlicher Runde kennen zu lernen. Bei Interesse kann man sich dann überlegen, wie ein regelmäßiges Fellowship-Treffen aussehen könnte.

Eingeladen sind neben unseren Fellows alle, die sich für Freie Software und die Arbeit der FSFE interessieren.

Ich freue mich darauf möglichst viele Fellows und Freie Software Interessierte aus der Region nächsten Freitag kennen zu lernen!

Quick Guide to GPLv3

The FSF has released a Quick Guide to GPLv3. This article explains all major changes in an easy-to-understand overview. So it is a good staring point for everyone who wants to understand GPLv3.

It is also a good resource for developers who plan to release their software under the GPLv3.

Freie Software Nacht in Backnang

Der 15. September wird von verschiedenen Gruppierungen international als "Software Freedom Day" ausgerufen. Weltweit finden Veranstaltungen statt, um auf die Vorzüge Freier Software — welche von jedem Menschen uneingeschränkt benutzt, verändert und weitergegeben werden darf — aufmerksam zu machen.

Die Linux User Group Backnang beteiligt sich hieran mit einer "Freien Software Nacht" in der Bar "Das Wohnzimmer" in Backnang. An verschiedenen Tischen sollen Projekte vorgestellt werden, an denen sich die Linux User Group beteiligt. Kostenlose GNU/Linux-CDs werden ebenfalls verteilt.

Die Linux User Group wird den gesamten Abend vor Ort für Fragen und Gespräche zur Verfügung stehen.

 

 

Wenn Ihr also schon immer auf eine Möglichkeit gewartet habt, um mit anderen Freunden Freier Software und Fellows aus der Region in Kontakt zu kommen, dann könnte das die Gelegenheit sein!
Ich werde da sein und würde mich freuen, den einen oder anderen Fellow kennen zu lernen.

The Matrix Has You

While browsing the Web i have found the video presentation "Free Software and the Matrix" by Alexandre Oliva.

Just take some time, watch this presentation and you will see how much the movie "The Matrix" discusses the issues of the Free Software movement.

Back from Chemnitz

At this weekend Rainer and I were in Chemnitz at the "Chemnitzer Linux Tage" (CLT). It was the first time that FSFE had a booth at this event and for me it was the first time going to a fair especially to work at the FSFE booth.

The first day was really hard for us. Because of the late decision to go to Chemnitz we had a bad place for our booth and many visitors hadn’t seen us. But luckily we had found a much better place for the second day. This is a picture of our booth at the second day, it was in the central corridor in front of the entrance:

 

FSFE Booth at the CLT2007

 

I was surprised how many visitors come to our booth and asked who we are and what we are doing. After they had seen our GPLv3 stickers and pins the new version of the GPL and especially the DRM clause was a common topic, too. It was a lot of fun to talk about the FSFE, our work and other related topics to the visitors.

Now that I’m back from Chemnitz and after almost four days without internet connection i have checked my emails and some news sites. I was surprised to read on pro-linux (a German GNU/Linux news site) a comment from a visitor of the CLT that he has talked to us and he thinks that FSFE has a "very intelligent position on DRM". If others has become such a positive impression from FSFE too, i think it was a great success.

I had a lot of fun and the CLT was a great event. I hope we will have a booth again next year.

Test your knowledge of the GPL and LGPL

While reading some FSF Blogs i found a link to a license quiz where you can test your knowledge of the GPL and LGPL.. If you want to test your knowledge of the GPL and LGPL than try the license quiz.

I remember that i had found this test already some years ago but forgot about it. So i tried it again to see if my licensing knowledge has improved. The last time i did the test i remember that i answered a few questions wrongly but this time everything was correct. Too bad that in a few months we will have a new GPL and LGPL. 😉

a lot of impressions and news

I’m back from the SFSCon and the first international FSFE Fellowship Meeting in Bolzano (Italy). For me i can say that it was a great event and it gaves me the opportunity to meet a lot of great people from the Free Software Foundation Europe and around Free Software in general.

The Fellowship Meeting was also the place were a new project of the FSFE was launched, the Freedom Task Force (FTF). A project which works in partnership with gpl-violations.org and offers licensing education, fiduciary services and licence enforcement. For more information follow the link above.

But that’s not enough something more happens. Sun announced to release Java as Free Software under the GPL. Already many people have written about it and so i just want to refer to Georg Greve’s good analysis of the situation. Also Richard Stallman has already reacted really positive:

It will be very good that the Java trap won’t exist anymore, it will be a thing of the past. That kind of problem can still exist in other areas but it won’t exist for Java anymore. The GNU general public licence is the most popular and the most widely used software licence, used for some 70% of all free software packages. The special thing about this licence is that it’s a copyleft licence. That is to say, all versions of the program must carry this licence. So the freedoms that the GNU GPL gives to the users must reach all the users of the program, and that’s the purpose for which I wrote it. To ensure that all users of the software have the freedom that users should have.
I think Sun has, well, with this contribution, have contributed more than any other company to the free software community in the form of software. And it shows leadership. It’s an example that I hope others will follow.

And this is the response of Eben Moglen

As Java became one of the most important languages for the expression of ideas about technology of programming in the last decade the question of Java’s freedom, wether it could be use freely and made part of free software projects, has been a crucial question. Sun’s policy of GPL’ing Java, which we are celebrating now, is an extraordinary achievement in returning programming technology to that state of freely available knowledge. Sun has now GPL’ed hardware designs, Sun is GPL’ing Java: that’s an extraordinary vote of confidence in this way of sharing information. And we, in the free software world, are very pleased and very flattered to see Sun taking its own very valuable and very important product and agreeing with us that they will be more advantageous to Sun as well as to the rest of the community if they are shared under these rules.

So i just have to say thank you and congratulations to Sun for this step.

Fedora, the Cardman4040 surprise and the Fellowship meeting

I have tried Fedora Core 6 and was really impressed. After installation Fedora detected my PCMCIA Cardman4040 card reader. On Ubuntu and Debian i had to patch GnuPG to get support for this device. As far as i know this device is officially supported only in GnuPG 1.9.x, so probably the Fedora team has taken care about this driver in GnuPG 1.4.5.

But it still don’t run out of the box, because by default /dev/cmx0 is owned by root, is in the group root and has the permission 0600. I have tried the udev scripts provided by Georg Greve but after booting the system it doesn’t work. I always had to remove and insert the PCMCIA card after booting to get it work (strange!).
Than i have found the rules from Lukas Fittl. After creating a /etc/udev/rules.d/gnupg.rules with just this line everything works:

SUBSYSTEM=="cardman_4040", GROUP="scard", MODE="0660"

I think the scripts at https://www.fsfe.org/en/card/howto/card_reader_howto_udev should be updated. They not even have a rule for the Cardman4040.

Also the Fedora project validates all their software packages to be under a FSF approved license. Fedora was probably always a 100% Free Software Distribution but in the near future maybe it will also become a FSF approved and recommand GNU/Linux Distribution?

PS: Now it’s official, i have booked a hotel from 9. November to 12. November in Bolzano to visit the SFSCon on Friday and the Fellowship Meeting on Saturday. Looking forward to see you.

Login with GnuPG smartcard

Thanks to Stefan Grote who gets in touch with me as he had read my "cry for help" at the GnuPG mailinglist i have managed it to get libpam-poldi run with my Omnikey Cardman4040.
Libpam-poldi allows you to use your Fellowship crypto card to log in your GNU/Linux system.

Here a small guide how to set it up:

  1. Make sure that you have installed pcscd.
  2. Download the cardman4040 driver from omnikey.com (direct download link).
  3. Extract the file
    tar xzf ifdok_cm4040_lnx-1.1.0.tar.gz
  4. Copy the ifdok_cm4040_lnx-1.1.0.so file to /usr/lib
  5. Edit your /etc/reader.conf and insert this lines:
    FRIENDLYNAME "Omnikey Cardman 4040 Socket 0"
    DEVICENAME <devicename for your cardreader>
    LIBPATH /usr/lib/ifdok_cm4040_lnx-1.1.0.so
    CHANNELID 0

    It’s important that you use tabs between the options and the values. You can find the devicename with ‘dmesg | grep 4040’

  6. Restart pcscd: /etc/init.d/pcscd restart
  7. Now ‘poldi-ctrl -d’ should detect your cardreader.

Now you only have to configure poldi. Poldi has a pretty good documentation so i will keep my explanations rather short.

  1. Root has to register the new card for poldi:
    poldi-ctrl --register-card --account <your-user-account> --serialno <serialno of your card>

    You can also execute this command without ‘–account <your-user-account>’ but than the user will not be able to install or update his card’s keys.
    The serialno can be found by executing ‘gpg –card-status’ and looking for "Application ID".

  2. Now we have to establish a mapping between the user and the smartcard he owns:
    poldi-ctrl --associate --account <your-user-account> --serialno <serialno of your card>
  3. Now you have to write your public key into the appropriate key file (you have to do this within your user account)
     poldi-ctrl --set-key
  4. That’s it, now you can test it with ‘poldi-ctrl –test’
  5. Now you have to tell pam, that you want to use poldi.
    Therefore you have to edit the files in /etc/pam.d. If, for example, you want to login to kdm with your card, edit the file /etc/pam.d/kdm. Replace the line ‘@include common-auth’ with
    auth required pam_poldi.so

    If you want to login unattended, use

    auth required pam_poldi.so try-pin=123456 quiet

    And if you want to fallback to regular unix passwords, use

    auth sufficient pam_poldi.so try-pin=123456 quiet
    auth required pam_unix.so nullok_secure

Now you should be able to use your GnuPG smartcard to log in your GNU/Linux system.

You can find a more detailed howto on my personal homepage which will still be available if this blog entry is already forgotten.