FMB, speech synthesis, eler, explaining freedom

Posted by ciaran on 0

The audience responses to FOSS Means Business were really positive. Perens’ delivery was as good as I expected, and the content of his talk was better than I expected. I think everyone liked him. To me, Stallman’s talk did not seem well adapted to the business audience, but all the comments I got afterward were positive. There were a lot of "he actually had good points", and many other comments with the word "actually" in them.

Recordings of both should appear online, but it will be a slow process unfortunately.

Organising FOSS Means Business, I hit a lot of situations where free software had to be explained to someone who didn’t care too much. I got more practice this evening when my uncle asked me what I do. So I’ve started a new rewording of the intro of my homepage, using a new approach which talks about "a minimum standard for rights for software users" – instead of mentioning "free".

I met someone who hadn’t heard of the Everyone Loves Eric Raymond web comic, so I thought I should pass that link on.

Myself and others from IFSO had Sunday lunch with Fernanda Weiden of FSFLA. We discussed organising some future events in Ireland.

Last thing: I didn’t know there was free software speech synthesis programs but today I found Festival and Flite.

T-2 days: FOSS Means Business (and fighting SWPAT Still Means Work)

Posted by ciaran on 0

We’ve got 210 people on the (non-mandatory) Attendees registration page, and we’re expecting far more when we open on Thursday.

"All-island" is one of the buzzwords, so it’s fitting that this looks to be the biggest free software event ever organised anywhere on the island. How will be follow up after this? How do you beat Stallman and Perens for keynoters? It probably can’t be done. This is a once off opportunity, so we’ll just have to make as much of it as we can. …but there will be a follow up.

Right now I’m juggling time between contacting press and replying to the European Commission’s patent consultation. I’ll post my draft to FSFE’s general discussion@ mailing list when it’s ready. For anyone else replying to this, FFII have posted their suggestions at http://consultation.ffii.org/, Florian Mueller has posted his at his position paper blog entry, and IFSO have begun some work on their questionnair response wiki page.

…but I don’t want a weekend off!

Posted by ciaran on 0

I work at least 70 hours per week and weekends are an important time for getting stuff done without the usual amount of phone calls and emails, so I felt pretty inconvenienced when someone locked the office door on Friday evening and forgot to leave the key in the agreed place.

I was returning from my second food break and I found that I could not get to the office where I have Internet access, and my laptop and all my notes and todo lists were imprisoned until Monday.

On Friday night I started reading Tariq Ali’s Rough Music, and caught up on some sleep. It’s a short book and I I finished it on Saturday. It was mostly about the bias of the mass media. Noam Chomsky’s Imperial Ambitions was better, but Rough Music used the UK as it’s example, which is a bit closer to home for me than Chomsky’s book. I also studied a bit of Brazilian Portuguese over the weekend.

I spent Saturday evening finally fixing the door frame and putting a lock on my appartment. I had to get the door burst in with a crowbar about a year ago when I lost the only key.

Saturday night was spent in Celtica – an Irish bar in Brussels city centre where pints are 2 euro until midnight. Some friends were over visiting Brussels and Pete O’Malley was doing the music. I left there some time after 5am.

I got up at 11h30 on Sunday to get a potted plant at the huge market which is at South Station on Sunday mornings and then went hunting for an appartment. My current place is cheap, bright, is only a 35 minute walk from the city centre, and is well-located for public transport but there’s no Internet access and it’s so small that I can’t even offer visitors some floor space to sleep on.

On Sunday night I made my next day’s todo list and wrote this blog entry on paper. The 2-day typing break was surely good for my fingers, and my girlfriend certainly didn’t mind me being locked out of the office. I have one appointment to see a new appartment, and one place that I have to phone, but I’m glad I got that job started at least. But now, time to catch up on all the non-home stuff I didn’t get done…

Why “FOSS Means Business” is important (for sustainability of free software)

Posted by ciaran on 0

Next Thursday, March 16th, in Belfast is the "FOSS Means Business" conference.

The desire for a free software event came from industry associations in Northern Ireland. Their secondary focus is to encourage "all-island" commercial iniatives. That secondary focus is of great interest to the public sector in Northern Ireland.

This event struck me as a good use of my time for three reasons:

  1. Interest from both the commercial/private and government/public sector meant that this event was going to be high-profile
  2. Specifically it would reach out to a lot of people that I can’t easily reach on my own
  3. I could contribute something that the event was lacking: the sustainability angle

Sustainability is about raising awareness about what made all this free software come into existence and what must be done to make sure it continues to flourish. This aspect of the free software message can easily be left out when event organisers are accustomed to taking a view which narrowly focusses on supporting an existing business model, or an existing technology.

As well as telling a big audience about something of value, I wanted the event to tell them about how to hang onto that value. This is why Richard Stallman is giving the closing keynote. He’ll be adapting his speech to suit the business audience, and he’ll be incorporating a dicussion about the GPLv3, but at the core he’ll be talking about the struggle that made this software exist, and the current and near-future threats that have to be guarded against. These include software patents, and DRM.

I’ll have a quick speaking slot myself, in which I’ll explain how FSFE’s Fellowship program contributes to the sustainability I’m talking about – and I’ll ask people to join.

Free software was not initially political, but it has been made political by those whose business models are threatened by the shift from user-dependency and disablement to user-freedom. …and as Stallman says: you can leave politics alone, but politics won’t leave you alone.

(If you’re coming to FOSS Means Business, there is no charge, and registration is not mandatory, but to give the organisers a rough idea of how many chairs and coffees and how much food is needed, it would be useful if you added your name to the Attendees wiki page.)

Slashdotting two GPLv3 transcripts now

Posted by ciaran on 0

There’s a slashdot story on the two transcripts I made on GPLv3 presentations by Richard Stallman and Eben Moglen. It’s there at the top of the front page right now.

The discussion about the changes is still waiting to gather pace, and I think it’s important to make the information flow as much as possible so that at the end of the public consultation there will be a licence that everyone is reasonably happy with – and which they understand the meaning of and the reasons for the changes.

This is great to see, after the hours and nights of work those transcriptions took.

FOSDEM(2), a GPLv3 transcript, and a panel with Francisco Mingorance

Posted by ciaran on 0

After day one of FOSDEM, I went for a drink with the FSFE team and headed to the office to make a transcript of RMS’s GPLv3 presentation from a video I had recorded on my digital camera earlier that day.

That took me until 5am, so day two of FOSDEM (Sunday) was a short day because I didn’t get up early. I mostly hung around the FSFE booth and got to know my co-workers and chatted with other FOSDEMmers about GPLv3 and other things.

On Monday morning I sat on a panel organised by FSFE’s media relation’s guy, Joachim Jakobs, and made the case against software patents in a roundtable discussion for a press audience alongside Pieter Hintjens (President of FFII) and Francisco Mingorance (of the Business Software Alliance) who made the counter-case. This went well.

After that I raced for my flight to Ireland for the AGM of Irish Free Software Organisation where we did the required stuff and then discussed a possible event for May which would include the GPLv3. Maybe a general free software licensing event. It’s just in the discussion phase. We also discussed FOSS Means Business, which is now just two and a half weeks away.

Then I blogged and went to bed 🙂

FOSDEM 2006, day 1 with FSFE

Posted by ciaran on 0

The first talk I went to was Richard Stallman, talking about software patents. I’ve heard that talk before, but there were some improvements and updates, and the Q&A was very interesting. There was a camera team recording the whole thing, but I think they do that every year and no recordings have appeared online after any of the previous FOSDEMs. Pity. (If you like recordings, FSF have their own page of audio/video recordings from other events.)

After him, Pieter Hintjens, current President of FFII, had a 10 minute slot. Unfortunately, I think many people thought that Pieter was going to talk for an hour, so some people left at the start of his slot to go to other talks. He gave a concise explanation of FFII’s work and the direction they’re moving in.

After a break, Richard came back to give a presentation on GPLv3. This was interesting and I think it was his first. It was short and I recorded it on my digital camera. I’ll try to get that online quickly.

I then met with others from FSFE to plan our [GNU/]LinuxTag activities. There will a lot of discussion about GPLv3 there, which is something that we want to encourage and assist.

After this, I learned that FSFE had a 30 minute slot at the end of the day – but it was a surprise and we hadn’t planned anything. Our quick improvisation was that Georg Greve (Germany), myself (Ireland), Henrik Sandklef (Sweden), Pablo Machón (Spain), and Reinhard Mueller (Austria) would each talk for 5 minutes about the work that we do.

We had 90 minutes to prepare for this together, and then it was onto the stage. I spoke about my work on EU legislation, assisting the free software community and movement in the UK & Ireland, and on my work on GPLv3.

That slot closed the event and so it was time to pack up the stall materials and arrange dinner plans. We’ll all be back in the morning.

FOSDEM is coming: Brussels, February 25th and 26th

Posted by ciaran on 0

FOSDEM is Europe’s best free software event. In the whole World, I’d guess it’s in the top 5. It’s happening next weekend, here in Brussels, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Most events which attract members of our community have a load of proprietary software vendors and advocates who have businesses or technologies which simply co-exist with free software and even compete against free software. FOSDEM is one of the best because it focusses solely on free software.

Richard Stallman is among the speakers, as usual, and FSF Europe will have a big stall and will be talking with people and selling t-shirts and other free software things. It would also be a good place to sign up to the Fellowship of FSFE (which is a good idea for a load of reasons).

It is pretty rare for me to meet face to face with the people I work with. Some months, I have zero face to face contact with anyone from the free software community. Such contact is part of everyday life for members of some projects, but many free software developers, advocates, and campaigners work together for years while communicating mostly in writing across networks and sometimes by telephone.

Most of the talks are technical, but these are also interesting for non-technical audiences since they showcase the recent technical developments of free software. There are also some talks with a community, ethical, or legal focus and there are plenty of opportunities to eat and drink together.

Publicising “FOSS Means Business”, 27 days left to Belfast

Posted by ciaran on 0

(FOSS Means Business) March 16th is only 27 days away. For this daytime event, many people who want to come will have to book time out of the office – and that can be difficult on short notice. So the work to publicise this has to be intense right now. I’ve made a page on the event wiki for promotion:

The Event homepage is complete, and the Agenda is mostly there. I’ve made:

What else do people need? A press release? I’m busy writing one at the moment. Anything else, or any other ideas, email me or note them on the wiki. The room we have can hold 750 people or more, so any and all help with publicising this event, by blogging, posting, emailing, and telling friends and co-workers, would be useful.

FOSS Means Business: March 16th, Belfast

Posted by ciaran on 0

I think this is going to be big. Richard Stallman and Bruce Perens are confirmed speakers, and Spires in Belfast is confirmed as the venue. "FOSS Means Business" is the title and it’s a whole-day event. It’s tailored to particularly attract to IT decision makers in medium-sized businesses and in public administration – but the content will be of very wide interest.

Google are also sending a speaker, and there are other speakers from public administration from the UK and maybe from Ireland to be announced.

Stallman is going to give his rarely-given business speech: "Free Software in Ethics and Practice", and he’ll include a substantial section on GPLv3. Bruce Perens will deliver a CEO/CIO targetted speech, and we hope this will help fuel IT department transitions to Free Software.

Promotional help would be appreciated. March 16th isn’t too far away, and because it’s a daytime event, many people need to book time out of the office (and get their boss to book time out as well, and come along). So bloggers, mailing list posters, forum users, event guide writers, people with contact lists for the public and the private sector, etc. Please help spread the word about this FOSS Means Business event.

A website has been set up and the the details are going up there right now:

(Think of "Belfast", said with a Belfast accent)