rants

Hello world! After some (very good) time offline I’m back with good news.  As you can see from the big ‘beta’ on the  head of these pages, the site has been added an important feature. It is now possible to add content in languages that is not English and manage translations.  At the moment the languages enabled are Spanish (Castillan), German, Italian and English.  More can be added on request.

Most of the work to modify the standard eZ Publish features was done by Alejandro Serrano, who we can’t thank enough.  He didn’t know eZ Publish before but it took him very little time to master it. 

Would you like to help developing this site?  Get in touch with Fellowship-hackers at fsfeurope dot org.  For comments, bug reports and suggestions use the forum.

As some Fellows have noticed, FSFE has humbly published the new logo on its institutional web pages. This logo was discussed with the Fellows at the Meeting in Bolzano and picked between a few alternatives.  I’m glad most liked the same logo I liked. It is based on the concept of Osmosis and Metamorphosis and it connotates growth, development, evolution.  This new logo gives the right image not only for its simplicity and friendlyness but also because it pictures our movement perfectly.

Marco ‘mascotte’ aka Madero rocked presenting Advocacy. I’ll ask him to publish his slides because they were clear and straight to the point. His exposition of the project in front of the crowd was very good, too.  During the Q&A time we got many suggestions from other experiences advocating free software in Italian schools.  That’s the good part of having people in the same room listening: you get good suggestions and you exchange lots more information than using just mailing lists.

Overall, it was very positive event, until I had to take the plane.  Take off aborted for a technical problem. It wasn’t fun to feel the brakes at the last minute on the runway and it wasn’t fun to hear that by the time the problem was fixed (rapidly, in 30 minutes) the pilot would have finished his work hours.  So he just left and we had to wait 3 hours to get a new crew.  I made a mistake flying Alitalia again after 2 years boycott.  This company must happily die and make space for better enterprises.

With the final words from the representative of University, ConfSL 2007 has ended.  Shane’s speech was good and clear, I had the chance to introduce FSFE’s activities including SELF, STACS and the italian activities, like GNUvox.  I put the slides here.

Next year ConfSL probably will be in Trento, if there are no more candidates (said by the professor from stage).

Tomorrow will be total community day with the Italian LUGConf and the presentation of Advocacy by Fellow madero.

I’m getting ready to go to Cosenza to the ConfSL conference.  The good news is that Marco will come too: he has been developing Advocacy in Milano and I can’t wait to hear comments and suggestions from other members of the Italian community. 

Dido, president of Assoli, has also confirmed that he will travel to Cosenza. I can’t wait to talk to him too.  Assoli has been working very well in Italy and it has grabbed a huge success. I hope we’ll find projects we can do together.

PS a friend told me that these are my lucky numbers 🙂

09 F9 11 02
9D 74 E3 5B
D8 41 56 C5
63 56 88 C0

Roberto has noticed that within the long list of ribbon campaigns over the internet, there isn’t any promoting Free Software.

I agree with Roberto that there is a need for connectors, especially we need a way to expand the community beyond its current boundaries.  I’ve been humbly trying to do this in Italy launching GNUvox and also promoting the Fellowship. 

Regarding the color of the ribbon, green is my choice.
 And instead of a ribbon, I would chose ‘plussy’ as a connector. The Fellowship as a wider connector?

I thought it was hilarious: in the end we didn’t meet in SL, we chatted on IRC 🙂 Much better, because my little laptop is really not powerful enough to run the GNU/Linux client. I don’t know who’s to blame: the video card, the OpenGL drivers or the SL client, or all of them.

I met with long time friends Valerio, Paci and Xdatap1 on SLIRC to chat about Second Life.  All of them would like to do something in SL for and with Free Software. At the moment I don’t think that FSFE should invest time or energy in SL, for various reasons. But I can always change my mind. What do you think?

For those considering going to Fellowship meeting in Cosenza, the closest airport is Lamezia Terme.  From there we can arrange a pickup by car (it’s a 40 minutes ride to from the airport to Cosenza).  I’m thinking of renting a car at the airport and to arrive earlier to appreciate the seaside 🙂  Let me know if you want to meet me there.

PS: my left harm is starting to hurt when I type. I hope it’s not RSI.

Keeping it only black was not an option for me. I like green: it makes me happy 🙂  Here is my scooter, pimped simply with a plussy sticker. 

Do you want one of these stickers? Come to Cosenza and you’ll get one.

Tra l’11 e il 13 Maggio 2007 si terrà a Cosenza la Conferenza Italiana sul Software Libero, un evento che ospiterà l’edizione 2007 della LUGConf italiana e un incontro dei Fellow italiani (nella mattinata di domenica 13).

Come per l’incontro di Bolzano i temi sono liberi e i dibattiti possibili sono tanti, da GPLv3 all’evoluzione dei DRM, oppure progetti propri della Fellowship come Advocacy. Fate sapere la vostra opinione sul forum oppure via email al sottoscritto.

Un riassunto delle proposte verrà aggiornato periodicamente sulla pagina del meeting.