Quick entry on end of April activity

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11 days since my last blog entry – I’ve just been busy.

I got back home to Brussels on the 27th of April after being at the 2nd GPLv3 conference in Brazil. I spent one day in Brussels and left again on the 28th for Ireland to co-organise an evening lecture by Federico Heinz, with IFSO. The evening was recorded and the files will be online in the next few days.

I think I was in Ireland when I heard that I will be giving a talk in Germany on May 6th about GPLv3. This conflicts with a friend visiting me in Brussels, so I am spending only the bare minimum time away in Germany. Last year I attended this same event in Germany for five hours. This year I will be there for two! The reason for my short visit last year was that I was overloaded by software patents work.

This week was partly spent preparing my GPLv3 presentation, organising the 3rd GPLv3 conference (which will happen in Europe), reading the new IPRED2 proposal published by the European Commission, and a number of other smaller things.

End of FISL 2006, two tech things, Irish accents

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Yesterday was the last day of FISL. After blogging in the morning, I participated in a panel discussion about adoption of GPLv3. I think this went better than my software patents presentation on Thursday – I’m happier and more suited to Q&A or small room discussions than giving non-interactive presentations. The GPLv3 panel discussions actually attracted a good crowd. Not as big as for Richard Stallman’s talk where people had to sit on the floor after the seats filled, but larger than for Richard Fontana’s presentation of GPLv3 from a legal perspective. Maybe this indicates that free software users and developers are more interested in the goals and motivations of the GPL than then legal implementation.

Two tech things for users of GNU/Linux or similar operating systems:

  1. If you ever need to download a torrent, install bittornado and the command line is: btdownloadcurses http://example.com/path/whatever.ext.torrent
  2. If you ever want to reduce the size of a movie, there’s simple, useful information for using mencoder at: http://web.njit.edu/all_topics/Prog_Lang_Docs/html/mplayer/encoding.html .

I get stressed when I can’t find simple information such as that quickly. Hope those help someone.

When I say "bag" here, Latin Americans hear "bike". When I moved to Brussels first, locals couldn’t understand me because of my Irish accent. It was strange because two second-language English speakers would be having a conversation in English, and when I’d join in they wouldn’t understand me!

After a year and a half, I’ve learned how to speak plain English. Plain English means removing cultural references, saying things in the simplist constructs, pronouncing all the letters in each word, and trying to use international vocabulary. I still speak my own normal English when I’m with Irish people, but my plain English obviously still has some Irish artifacts.

Five days to the Education, Government, and Free Software April 29th event in Dublin, some last minute promotion help would be welcome.

Last day of FISL in Brazil

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It’s the fourth and last day of FISL here in Brazil and I’ve had a great time. For me, the best part is the many people I’ve met and the discussions generated when more than four thousand free software supporters are in one city for four days. There are seven presentations happening simultaneously all day every day, but I’ve only attended four.

I gave a presentation on software patents. It went ok but a lot of people have told me they liked it. I guess software patents is an interesting subject here, which is good learn because there is very little discussion on the topic. In Europe, fighting software patents is a major topic, but in Latin America, many free software supporters are still wondering if they need to be fought and if they can be fought.

It’s good to meet the people behind FSF Latin America. I’d met half of them before, but this time we got to spend more time together.

IFSO is hosting two talks by Federico Heinz in Dublin on April 29th, so it was nice to meet with him for the first time. I asked IFSO to arrange the event based on a second hand recommendation that Federico is a great speaker. Now I can give a first hand recommendation.

The best of the presentations I attended was Richard Stallman’s presentation on the goals of GPLv3. I recorded most of that presentation and the Q&A with my digital camera, so I’ll go into detail on that in another entry when I get that online.

I’ve also gotten a rare opportunity to spend time with Georg Greve. He’s the president of FSFE, so it might seem strange that we use time in Brazil to talk to each other but we actually only see eachother maybe three times a year. FSFE is a very spread out group.

Federico Heinz double presentation in Dublin, April 29th

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Event: Saturday April 29th, Dublin, Federico Heinz on Education and Public Administration

People had told me that Federico Heinz was one of the free software movement’s best speakers, so when I heard he was visiting Europe, I found a gap in his schedule and arranged for IFSO to host two talks by him.

We have to publicise this event with just nine days notice, so help would be appreciated.

I’ve been spending some time here in Brazil with Federico, and I’m pleased to learn that he’s a nice guy and I expect he will indeed be a good speaker.

He’s almost completely unknown over here in Europe, but in Latin America, free software is BIG, and he’s a key figure in drafting and advocating laws which require the use of free software in government and public administration.

Hopefully this event will help spread awareness of the work going on in Latin America, and in FSFE’s new sister organisation, FSF Latin America.

Info about the event, and about Federico, is on the event’s homepage.

He got some of his own when he came over for FOSDEM anyway

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As a present, I brought a box of Marcolini chocolates on my trip to the first international GPLv3 conference. I had to get up at 04h30 to get the first bus of the morning to the airport.

I arrived at the hotel lobby at 20h00 local time and there was Georg Greve "Ah, you’re just in time. We’re going for a party in the FSF offices". I have a quick shower and we leave by foot. I met Stefano Maffulli for the first time (Stef is currently working full-time in FSFE), met some of FSFE’s spanish team, talked with some of the FSF staffers, and met various people etc.

After a while I was losing my concentration and was even feeling a bit light headed. Then I realised that although it was only 22h30 and I had only had one drink, I did get up very early, and my day was stretched by six hours due to crossing timezones. So I was 23 hours awake and had sustained myself with only airport and airplane food.

It was a shame to leave early, but I excused myself and decided it would be better to recover and be ready for the GPLv3 launch the next day.

In the hotel room, I was ready to sleep, but I realised that I should have eaten something. Going straight to sleep would add another 8 foodless hours to my condition, which wouldn’t be smart, but the hotel room had only a bottle of water and the restaurant was closed. And then, there sat the chocolates.

The intended recipient was Richard Stallman. He thinks these chocolates are fantastic, and they happen to sell them near where I live, so it was convenient for me to grab a box when coming over.

At the party in the FSF offices, Richard seemed happier than usual, and there were various foods there that he was enjoying. I was clearly the needier case 🙂 so, purely for their sugar value, I scoffed the lot before falling asleep.

Some of them were quite nice.

2 GPLv3 docs: DRM and Patents

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For anyone looking to understand the proposed changes to the GPL for addressing DRM or software patents, I’ve made two documents:

I just got the relevant proposed changes to the licence, and attached public comments made specifically about each proposed change by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. Simple? Hopefully.

I had the idea because I wanted to look at just the software patent parts while doing research for a presentation. I realised then that I’m surely not the only one that wants to look at specific parts, so the first doc I made was for DRM – since that seems to be the one with the most public interest – and then I made the software patent document I wanted.

I prioritised making these, and made nice printable version, because the 2nd international GPLv3 conference takes place on April 21st and 22nd. I’ll be going, and I thought it would be good to have some print outs to get informed discussion going.

The public comments came from the transcripts of Moglen’s GPLv3 launch presentation, Stallman’s GPLv3 presentation at FOSDEM, and Stallman’s recent GPLv3 presentation in Turin. There’s more information about GPLv3 on FSFE’s GPLv3 project page.

Europarl RFC: Consumer Confidence in the Digital Environment (April 14th deadline)

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UPDATE: I’ve sent to FSFE’s discussion@ list some very rough draft answers.

MEP Zuzana Roithova has sent out a letter asking for input for a report on "Consumer Confidence in the Digital Environment". Roithova was a strong anti-swpat MEP, and is the main drafting rapporteur, so there’s reason to believe this might actually come to something.

The deadline is April 14th, and there’re comments in a thread on FSFE’s discussion@ list (which I’m going to re-ignite now).

The letter is available at: http://mail.fsfeurope. . . .CCDE-letter-0001.pdf

The questions in the letter are as follows:

  1. What are the main problem areas, which you are confronted with generally, or in your field, regarding Consumer Confidence in the Digital Environment?
  2. What are the key challenges for the IT industry and its users, which can be foreseen for the near future generally or particularly in your field of competence (especially regarding the Consumer Confidence in the Digital Environment)?
  3. Could you present your opinion on legislative problems (Issues for which new legislation is needed or where, on the other hand, overregulation and some unnecessary rules should be abolished. Please address these questions concerning EU legislation or even those in which the national rules apply, and so only better coordination of the Member States can be supported)?
  4. Because the Internal Market cannot be isolated from the globalized market, do you see similar or different problems and challenges at international/global level?
  5. In regard to your previous answers, do you see possible legislative solutions?
  6. Moreover, could you please share any other ideas which have been raised in your mind on Consumer Confidence in the Digital Environment?

Brazil to host GPLv3, FISL, and me

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I just got my flight tickets for a 10 day trip to Brazil. The 2nd international GPLv3 conference is happening in Porto Alegre in the far south of Brazil – in conjunction with the 7th International Free Software Forum (FISL), which takes place from the 19th to the 22nd of April. The GPLv3 event is in the Babbage room, on the evenings of the 21st and 22nd (see the schedule).

I’ll be giving a talk as part of FISL about "Lessons learned in Europe for keeping Latin America Software Patent Free", and as part of the GPLv3 conference, I’ll moderate a panel discussion on ""Free Software Development and Adoption of GPLv3 in Latin America" on the 22nd.

I committed to these activities while under the wrong impression that speakers got their flights paid for. Financially, I shouldn’t be going, but it will be a valuable experience, so I got the tickets and I’ll make the most of it instead of breaking my agreements.

It’s amazing how much easier it is to communicate and work with someone when you’ve at least had some food or a pint together. The first international GPlv3 conference, last January, was very useful in this respect. FISL is one of the World’s largest free software events. Last year they reported having over 4.5k attendees, and like FOSDEM, it’s a real free software event, not a wishy-washy event. So I expect good things.

It will also be good to meet the people in FSF Latin America, which was formed recently.

Outside the MS anti-trust case, after a swpat morning

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From 17h20 until 19h00 I was standing outside the building of the EU vs. MS anti-trust case hearing, talking to Sean Daly. Sean was previously a journalist and recently moved to Brussels. He contacted me to lend a hand with the PR side of the MS anti-trust case. There were 15 or so other press people also hanging around.

Someone comes out. It’s Brad Smith, Microsoft’s lawyer. He’s smiling and talking about the great dialogue that was missing until now, and the great breakthrough that has happened, and how finally the requirements on them have been clarified.

What’s all that about? Well, Microsoft face fines of up to 2 million euro per day which can be back dated to last December. To avoid paying them, I guess they’ll argue that their non-compliance was all down to a little communication problem, and now that’s fixed. Water under the bridge. I don’t know if they’ll get away with that.

Myself and Sean were waiting for FSFE’s lawyer, Carlo Piana. When he came out, we helped put him talking to some journalists, then waited until that was finished and we took him aside to record an interview. That should appear on Groklaw.net soon. (update: it’s there now)

Before going to the anti-trust venue, I had been working on FSFE’s response to the European Commission’s questionnaire "On the patent system of Europe". It’s been approved, marked up, emailed, and hand-posted, and is now also online: fsfeurope.org/projects/swpat/fsfe-patstrat-response.pdf .

I went back to the office, updated FSFE’s GPLv3 webpages, contacted the FSF India main mailing list to pass on info about GPLv3, and discussed the GPLv3 consultation process with a lawyer in the Philippines, helped Sean with the transcript of the interview, informed Carlo, sent some emails about the GPLv3 process and the international GPLv3 conference to be held in Europe later this year.

People ask me what my average day is. It’s not always like this – there are days when I answer email all day long, but there’s no average day. It’s 08h40, I’ve been working for just over 23 hours. Saturday could be a day off 🙂

UPDATE: Groklaw now has the Carlo Piana interview.

Another fresh GPLv3 transcript, and why I bother

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I’ve made and put online a transcript of the recent presentation by RMS about GPLv3:

After making the previous one, I thought I wouldn’t do it again, but they seem more important now than I had realised.

Quite a number of people sent thanking emails, which is nice, particularly those who speak English as a second language seem to like the text transcripts.

Wason Liwlompaisan translated the last transcript into Thai!

A number of mainstream news sites picked it up, and maybe some offline ones did too.

The last one also made slashdot and other community sites.

So far this latest transcript has only been online for 4 hours and it’s already on LWN, and on Groklaw.

I was already aware that it would be useful because text can be indexed by websearch engines, and it can be grepped and searched by people, and read by people who can’t hear, but the interest from the news sites has been a surprise.

Twelve months is a long consultation process, but it’s important that everybody hears about it and therefore has a chance to take a look and make any comments they have. The changes being proposed are quite comprehensible, so spreading the information that makes the process accessible is an important thing to do. More texts are available on the GPLv3 wiki’s page for reusable texts.

Update: it’s also on Newsforge, and LXer, and the groklaw story drew 498 comments.