rants
Random rants and thoughts about my activities in and for the Free Software community.
Preinstalled GNU/Linux
March 16th, 2007
I’ve always thought that pre-installing GNU/Linux was a difficult business choice for hardware vendors simply. Mark Shuttleworth explained in a few words what I considered the most important reason why we can’t easily buy computers with GNU/Linux preinstalled:
we free software fans are a fussy crowd, and very hard to please. […] we are not “Linux” users,[…] We want a specific distro, and in many cases also a specific VERSION of that distro.
I think he is totally right, even if we know there are hardware vendors that do offer GNU/Linux.
Problems with YouTube are close to be removed
February 23rd, 2007
This is something worth announcing during FOSDEM 🙂 In a chat with Gnash maintainer, Rob Savoye, Peter Brown discovered that YouTube videos will soon be available for Free Software users and all free digital citizens.
It works in CVS as a "hack job" […] I expect, that with community help for Gnash and support from the ffmpeg and Gstreamer folks, the next release will enable us to put an end to the number one bug report we receive – Gnash won’t play YouTube videos.
This is good news. Gnash is one of FSF’s high priority projects. If you wish to contribute go to http://www.gnu.org/software/gnash/.
How do you hit people in SL?
February 22nd, 2007
Karsten sent me this link today of a newbie trying to get some action in Second Life. I was wondering too, like him, if you could kill or wound a SL character. A short googling and I found out that fighting is allowed only in selected areas. Boy, this is a strange game. But can we call it a game or is this something else?
Conversations about Second Life
February 14th, 2007
I have kept my eyes open on Second Life since Linden Lab announced the intention to release as Free Software the server too, after releasing the client. I am fascinated by virtual worlds and SL in particular because even if there are no dragons to kill or magics to spell, it seems to be amusing to many. Even IBM is investing millions to develop activities on SL: it’s building virtual-offices and moving employees to work there. It seems an interesting experiment for widely diffuse organizations, like IBM. But also FSFs are widely diffused 🙂
IBM’s manager, Irving Wladawsky-Berger, has published a contribution to the debate on virtual worlds. His point is that computer-aided visualization allows people to communicate visually, therefore SL facilitates communication. This vision is coherent with IBM’s investement, as one would notice.
Three professors have contributed some good fuel to the debate around SL. Prof. Henry Jenkins in his blog suggests that SL is interesting for participatory culture:
What’s striking to me is not that so many people still prefer to consume professionally generated content (it has always been thus) but what a growing percent of people are willing to consume amateur content and what a smaller but still significant percentage of people are willing to generate and share content they produced themselves. Second Life interests me as a particular model of participatory culture.
Assistant professor of Writing and New Media at MIT Beth Coleman thinks that SL should have a standard for measuring it (see Standard Metrics of Use by statician Dmitri Williams). Coleman thinks that SL helps communicating:
[…]many of the current platforms from text message to instant messaging to virtual worlds are designs for simultaneous connectivity. Putting a human face to things is a lot of what this is about, even if that human face is a codebot.
The fourth blog entry is from Clay Shirky, a consultant, writer and teacher who is Adjunct Professor at NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He is the most skeptical of the group, and expecially regarding demographics he says:
Linden’s Residents figures are methodologically worthless. Any claim about Second Life derived from a count of Residents is not to be taken seriously
With this in mind, Shirky goes into predictions:
I predict that Second Life will remain a niche application, which is to say an application that will be of considerable interest to a small percentage of the people who try it. […]The logic behind this belief is simple: most people who try Second Life don’t like it.
I found this last post the most challenging. I definitely agree with him that the promises of virtual reality have yet to be kept, avatars still don’t have body language. But still, I am a believer 🙂 What do you think? Are you a skeptical or a believer?
Conferenza italiana del Software Libero
February 8th, 2007
FSFE è tra gli organizzatori della conferenza italiana sul Software Libero. Si terrà a Cosenza durante i giorni 11-12-13 Maggio 2007. È stato pubblicato il bando per sottoporre articoli al comitato scientifico.
Il 13 Maggio ci sarà anche un meeting dei Fellow italiani: segnate la data nell’agenda, preparate il viaggio 🙂
Going to etch and eZ Publish 3.8.6
February 7th, 2007
I and Georg have spent most of the day upgrading the server that runs fsfe.org. The Fellowship needed to upgrade eZ Publish to use the better language management of new version, but to do so we needed to install also php4.4, that is not available for sarge. After testing on a test machine we decided to go on the real one this morning. The server seems to be doing well for now, there are only some minor glitches still to solve.
As for eZ, I and Alejandro will be working on setting up the new language stuff in the next days. If you want to join hacking on eZ Publish let us know.
Printing still a nightmare
February 1st, 2007
It’s been a while since I posted a real rant here. Well, this morning I had a good (well … bad) inspiration. I had a meeting with a long time partner of FSFE to discuss new projects to finance and I wanted to present them the SELF Project. I thought that printing the slides and carrying them with me would help me make the point: SELF is a very cool project and it is important to contribute to it also in Italy and in Italian.
The printer refused to cooperate. HP PSC1210, fully free drivers, supported by CUPS. I open the presentation on OO.org and try to print the outline but either OO.org sucks or something else sucks: I could only print the first page. OO.org help system was of no help.
I thought of exporting to pdf the presentation and print that instead of using OO.org. Opened the pdf in Evince, print… guess what? GNOME printing sucks too: no matter if I tell the printing panel to print two pages on one sheet of paper, the setting is ignored. Also there seemed to be no way to set the orientation of the paper. I seldom use the printer, but WTH! Things should just work, man. I’m using latest Ubuntu right now, and I am not sure they are the ones to blame.
Why eZ Publish?
January 30th, 2007
A new fellow asked on the forum why we picked eZ Publish. I have answered there, but I think it’s better to repeat it also here for all the Planet readers.
FSFE chose eZ Publish because we needed a system that was not only flexible and easy to deploy but that was fully supported. We ran tests with other CMS, but none convinced us fully until we were offered by eZ Systems not only the software eZ Publish but also one of their programmer to assist us in all customizations. eZ Systems also added on top of that a support contract. So, the software fit our needs, eZ Publish is Free Software released under the GNU GPL and we had a developer available for customization plus a support contract. It was the best offer we received 
.
As a good side effect, since FSFE and eZ Systems started this collaboration, eZ released almost all of their software under the GNU GPL, and we are very happy about this. Some of their software is still under non-free licenses and we are not so happy. But the cooperation proved to be good for Free Software and we will keep helping them do the right thing and become a fully free business.
Let me add that paying for free software is not a sin, but until today FSFE didn’t pay a dime. We will probably decide to invest into the development of the portal during 2007 to add the collaboration features we need for the Advocacy groups that are starting to form. But we haven’t taken any decision yet.
Advocacy groups are starting to form
January 29th, 2007
I have good news today: there are two Fellows that are activating Advocacy in Italy and Austria. Madero has been working to adapt the Advocacy Project document in Italian and to the school he knows best. Cristian is doing pretty much the same thing in Austria, although he didn’t use the name ‘advocacy’ (Disclaimer: I don’t read German very well).
I am going to help Madero setup the Italian advocacy group because he lives in the same city where I live. I would also like to help Cristian, but my German is not up to the task. We can all discuss on the mailing list discussions at lists.fsfe.org or on the forum, whatever you prefer.
Plussy walks the walk
January 19th, 2007
During the holidays people usually play cards and eat a lot. I did that too, but I also wanted to play with GIMP and Blender. I guess you saw the results of me playing with GIMP already.
I have just published the results of my experiments with Blender bones and animation. Here you can find a fully digital 3D puppet of good old Plussy. If you want to see its walk try downloading this ogg file.
Feel free to experiment further and add more features to the scene, like background or other objects. Blender is fun 🙂