Torsten's FSFE blog

Google and Open Video Standards

torsten.grote — Tue, 26 Jan 2010 14:54:07 +0000

As some of you might have heard, Google released an experimental player for Youtube that works without Adobe Flash, last Wednesday. While they are “very excited about HTML5 as an open standard” (from the announcement), they surprisingly chose not to offer the content as such and instead serve videos in a patent-encumbered format. As Google has not yet stated whether it will add videos in an unencumbered format, this clearly strengthens the stand of proprietary solutions in the ongoing debate about the future of video in HTML and disappoints those of us who expected Google to live up to their policies, published just last month, where they say:

whenever possible, use existing open standards. If you are venturing into an area where open standards don’t exist, create them. If existing standards aren’t as good as they should be, work to improve them

So, while some people ponder if Google has not really understood what Open Standards are (I would recommend FSFE’s definition to remedy this), others suspect a strategic interest: promoting their new web-browser Google Chrome which can make use of this new feature in contrast to now-competitor Firefox. Mozilla Firefox is the most-used browser that implements HTML5. Its authors have repeatedly made clear that they will not support proprietary solutions and explained their reasons for that quite well.

I can only appeal to Google, to live up to their self-set standards and be the change for the “open internet” they are always talking about. Don’t be evil.

Linux Tag 2009

torsten.grote — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:35:44 +0000

Right after the GA there was no time for me to relax. The LinuxTag 2009 in Berlin started right after it. As every year FSFE was present with an own booth and answered many questions by interested visitors. Some people even became Fellows right at the booth and some that were already fellows expressed their desire to organize fellowship meetings in their home town. The LinuxTag lasted four days and after every day was over there were tons of social events. The picture on the right shows the BBQ of Linux Works that was quite some fun.

More LinuxTag coverage is available at Matthias’ and Edgar’s blog. Like any other event, the LinuxTag had to end as well. What was left for us was to pack our booth and carry it through Berlin. This was quite exhausting but also fun. See you next year!

Report from FSFE’s general assembly

torsten.grote — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:59:06 +0000

In May, I was elected the first Fellowship representative. In this
function I attended FSFE’s general assembly (GA) in Miraflores de la
Sierra and would now like to give you some insights in what happened
there.

The first and probably most important point is personnel changes. This
time there were unusually many. A whole new executive team was formed
that will give FSFE a new face.

After careful deliberations, the General Assembly has elected

Karsten Gerloff as President,
Fernanda Weiden as Vice-President,
Reinhard Müller as Financial Officer and
Christian Holz as Executive Director.

The former president and founder Georg Greve as well as the former
vice-president Pablo Machón will stay in FSFE as volunteers. Matthias
Kirschner, a long time volunteer will now be employed as Fellowship
coordinator. He will also work as the coordinator of the German team.

I would like to take the chance to congratulate the new team and to wish
them a lot of success in their new jobs. I am very confident that they
will master the challenges that lie ahead of them and that they will
bring FSFE and Free Software forward a great deal.

In my opinion, the entire GA weekend was awesome and a great experience.
I learned so much about FSFE and about how an NGO works. It was probably
better than every soft-skill seminar and it was free ;)

But on another note, I was surprised how much influence I had on the
decisions that were made. The GA is the highest decision making body of
FSFE and always aims to find a consensus. This sometimes makes the
decision making process difficult and discussion intensive, but also
ensures that all concerns and problems are addressed. There is also no
discrimination of GA members. My concerns and proposals were not treated
differently from the ones of any other member. This way I had
considerable influence on all the decisions made and was able to check
if the executive team does and will do its job properly.

I can only recommend to every Fellow to run for the second GA seat next
year. This is a great chance to directly influence the direction FSFE is
taking and to make sure that its resources are put to the best possible use.

There is also a press release introducing the new team.

Thanks a lot lot for reading all this ;)
Torsten

Traveling to the General Assembly in Madrid

torsten.grote — Mon, 15 Jun 2009 21:32:36 +0000

Tomorrow, I’ll leave for Madrid in order to attend FSFE’s general assembly as the first Fellowship representative. Unfortunately, there haven’t been much feedback from the fellows, so I’m not taking many questions or tasks with me to Madrid. The agenda of the GA will include many personnel changes, one small change of the constitution and a lot of discussion about FSFE’s direction. There will also be a social event where everybody is welcome to get to know the GA people. If you have last minute questions, don’t hesitate to ask. But since I don’t know when I will be online again, I also don’t know when I will be able to answer.

I won the GA election

torsten.grote — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 20:50:16 +0000

Today, I was notified that I won the general assembly elections. This came quite as a surprise, but I am glad the election worked out that well for me. I would like to thank everyone who voted for me or gave me a high ranking. I also would like to thank the other candidates for their candidacy and for their fair election campaign.

Right after I was declared winner, people from inside FSFE contacted me to make travel arrangements to the GA that already meets June 19th-21st. After this was dealt with, I was bombarded with new information. It was almost an information overload. The other candidates and several other people congratualted me. FSFE’s president Georg Greve welcomed me as well and send me many long Emails explaining me my new position, introducing me in the GA and FSFE’s European core team. He also gave me a lot of administrative explanations and bounced recent Emails that gave me some first information about what will actually happen in the GA meeting.

Now, I will have to catch up with all the information and follow Georg’s instructions for becoming a full GA and core team member. This is quite some work and will keep me busy for a while. Nontheless, I still encourage questions :P

Skype and Censorship

torsten.grote — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:21:24 +0000

On my other personal blog I wrote again about Skype and explained the arguments against it in more detail. German fellows might also be interested in my post about how to change to ISPs that don’t engange in censorship and data retention. Both articles show how I am thinking and expose my stance on freedom. Reading them might help you to judge if I would be the right fellow for the GA. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me. Also, there will be a Jabber chat meeting organized with all candidates where I will be available for questions as well. Voting is still possible the whole month of May.

Freedom Blog

torsten.grote — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 08:52:41 +0000

This is my first post on the FSFE’s fellowship blogging platform. I will use this blog to write about FSFE related matters such as the upcoming election. In the meantime, you are invited to check out my private Freedom Blog. There you will find some essays in English or German that reflect my ideas about software freedom and related topics.