rants
Random rants and thoughts about my activities in and for the Free Software community.
Living a Second Life?
January 18th, 2007
Few days ago I posted about Second Life client being released as Free Software. I have a dual opinion on SL. On one hand I am amazed by a completely digital world, it’s fascinating for me to think that I’m living something that historians of the future will mark as a ‘first’.
On the other hand I’m not so amazed to actually jump in SL to ‘play’. The more I read about it the less it is appealing to me… But then again, probably I’m missing something.
Look at Bob Sutor’s series on SL: why is a important IBM guy spending time and money to buy land on SL to host virtual meetings of his staff? What am I missing? Should I just try? Is any Fellow already a SL citizen? Let me know, I’m very curious.
Moving on advocacy
January 17th, 2007
Some Fellows in Italy have been silently working to move the Advocacy project on next steps. Madero, for example, has prepared and run a poll between his colleagues high-school students asking what kind of topics they would be interested in.
The results are not surprising me but they are worth spending some thoughts on (even without considering statistics, for a moment). Students seem to be interested in peer-to-peer technology and ‘hacker’ stories, more than definitions of licenses or copyright. It’s something all Free Software advocates should keep in mind: students go to school to learn, while extra-curricular activities should be classifiable as fun, not study. Another important consideration: students want to know about practical things that affect their life, like p2p. Only few are fascinated with programming or knowing computers. A good Free Sw advocate should be able to translate Free Sw concepts immediately into real life practical considerations, without using technical terms.
Do you have a reference to a speech that can be taken as reference to talk to students? An audio or video recording or a transcript would be very nice to start a debate.
Hiser analizes OOXML license
January 16th, 2007
Sam Hiser has started giving a look at Microsoft’s Office Open XML License. His first reading classify this license as
a promise that, in practice, is not a promise.
PlexNex: Analyzing the Microsoft Office Open XML License
What do you think of it?
Second Life embraces the Inevitable
January 8th, 2007
Oh, no! Tell me this is not for real… what day is it today? April 1st? No, January 8th… Goodbye productivity, farewell real life: Second Life client is Free Software and I foresee a 2007 rich of sleepless nights 🙂
I am proud to announce the availability of the Second Life client source code for you to download, inspect, compile, modify, and use within the guidelines of the GNU GPL version 2.
Claim your fsfe.org blog on Technorati
January 4th, 2007
Happy 2007, Fellows: this is my first post in this new year, so I use it to wish you all a wonderful time.
One Fellow asked me recently: how do you claim your fsfe.org blog on Technorati? It’s fairly simple, once you know which buttons to click. You need to create a weblog in your home folder on fsfe.org, first. Then go to your profile on Technorati and click on Claim your blog. Enter the url of your blog (in my case it is http://fsfe.org/fellows/maffulli/rants) and use the Embedded claim. Copy the html code provided by Technorati (it’s a script code) and go back to your weblog folder on fsfe.org. Click on Edit to modify your weblog and paste the html code in the ‘Technorati Blog Claim‘ field. Click on Send for publishing and get back to Technorati to complete the process. You’re done. Happy blogging.
It’s snow time in Plussy-land
December 22nd, 2006
A few days ago I decided I wanted to play with Plussy and the GIMP. Inspired by the lack of snow in Milano, Italy, where I live, I thought of experimenting with the GAP aka GIMP Animation Package to make snow flakes fall on a Plussy with santa-hat. You can admire the result here. I also want to thank fence-post for his tutorial and Shoofly for the background.
Remember that the sections Fun/ Meetings/ News/ /Events and /Advocacy are writable to all Fellows: you can add your own material, play with it as you wish. You can make the Fellowship.
Happy holidays 🙂
Accepting comments from non-Fellows
December 11th, 2006
Florian has commented on my previous entry saying that this site misses an important feature: allowing comments from non-fellows.
He is not only right, but damn right: allowing comments from anonymous is definitely important and we want to implement this feature. But there is a but: allowing anonymous comments translates into the need to implement something to prevent spam comments to appear on the site. On fellowship-hackers’ issue tracker you can follow the evolution of the bug: we are only missing a plugin to akismet service. Does anybody want to help?
The beauty of the Fellows
December 8th, 2006
Since we started the Planet aggregator for fsfe.org it became clear to me how exceptionally good bloggers Fellows are. Take these last three posts from AlexRamon, Karsten, and Robert: it’s news that is entertaining and of high reporting value.
This planet is definetely a must-have in everybody’s blogroll: tell your friends to add it too, they’ll see wonderful things.
How to name the truly open standards
December 5th, 2006
Roberto is asking the same question I am asking:
There are many proposal definitions of Open Format,[…]So, what about a “Free Format” definition?
I have explored new terms with the list discussion in July and came up with the term I used on the brief paper I wrote on the topic: Open Unencumbered Standard. It’s ugly, though. I personally don’t like the term Free Standard because I really don’t want to start again the ‘open is not free’ debate: it has bored me to death already for software and I wish we could get over it.
Who was at the First Fellowship Meeting?
December 1st, 2006
Don’t you want to be able to say I was there at the First international meeting of the Fellowship? In case you want to leave your mark in digital-stone, there is a page ready. Go here and put your name, link it to your home page if you like. And in the future you will be able to say been there, done that 🙂