rants
Random rants and thoughts about my activities in and for the Free Software community.
Is OGG/Theora a standard?
November 30th, 2006
Roberto is asking a very difficult question: is OGG/Theora a standard, after all? Since it is not documented in anything else but the source code, and the code is distributed under BSD license, what will make sure that nobody will start predatory practices on the format?
I understand Richard’s request though, based on practical terms as usual: there are no other formats for audio/video that aren’t encumbered by nasty patents.
Is OGG a standard? Probably not. Is it an open unencumbered format? I think so. Will my data be safe for future use? This is the most difficult question to answer: one can say that since the code is out there you can always write the decoder. But real life is more complex than that.
Tell Mapuche Indians to use Free Software
November 27th, 2006
A very interesting story from CNN:
Chile’s Mapuche Indians allege that Microsoft translated Windows software into their native language without getting tribal leaders’ permission. The tribe went so far as going to court accusing Microsoft of ‘intellectual piracy’.
Somebody should tell them that it would be simpler and easier not to buy Microsoft products and promote Free Software since it can come in their language with all freedoms attached.
ZIP or CAP and DRM … too many TLAs
November 22nd, 2006
Things are going wild these days and it seems that there is never enough time to blog.
Yesterday I met with Simon Phipps in Milano at a Sun event here: charming chat, as usual, but this time with more spin because the Java-trap is finally disarmed and we had only to talk about positive things to do together. He was happy to hear about the Freedom Task Force, for example.
Besides that, this morning it was special also because FSF and FSFE are both on boingboing: FSFE for its Italian activity to free the postcodes and FSF for being quoted on Newsweek with DefectiveByDesign. It’s a sign that today will be a good day 🙂
An extraordinary experience
November 13th, 2006
Back from Bolzano, back from the First International Meeting of the Fellows, lots of important news in my (and yours) mailbox. First of all: thank you to all participants, it was a wonderful experience. There were at least 40 Fellows from all over Europe in the same room for the first time, and that only was worth the efforts. But that all of them were so interested in the Advocacy project and willing to participate in it was probably the best part of the day… at least for me.
In the next days we will put together a page with pictures and recordings of the event, but for now let me just announce that Alejandro and Ekke added the planet aggregator during the eZ Publish workshop: you find the rss feed here and the page will be ported in production in the next days. Thank you again everybody, stay in touch for more news.
Few hours to the Fellowship Meeting
November 10th, 2006
Here we are in Bolzano. I’m excited: there are many Fellows here. We have also new Fellows to welcome. There will be soon pictures and recordings of the SFSCon, too.
The presentation of the Fellowship was appreciated: the advocacy project has attracted the interest of the audience. Tomorrow it will be a very interesting day: we will get ready to shape the future of our community.
First draft of Advocacy Project is online
October 31st, 2006
The first draft of the Advocacy Project has been published . Comment the draft, shape the project as you wish. It will be further discussed at the upcoming First International Fellowship Meeting.
See you in Bolzano 🙂
Banner for the Meeting
October 26th, 2006
We are getting close to our important appointment. I was playing with GIMP and I have modified one of the banners in Fun: spread it around if you can so that more people can join the Meeting.
You can use this code:
<a href="http://www.fsfe.org/en/events/first_international_annual_meeting_of_the_fellows_of_fsfe">
<img src="http://fsfe.org/var/fsfe/storage/images/fun/artwork/banners/fellow_me_go_to_fellow_s_meeting/195117-1-eng-GB/fellow_me_go_to_fellow_s_meeting.png" />
</a>
Agenda for the Meeting finalised
October 18th, 2006
There was a positive reaction on the Fellow’s discussion list about the eZ workshop, so probably it is time to close the agenda and start getting ready to travel to Bolzano for the first international meeting of Fellows. We will take the whole day to get together, learn eZ Publish, listen to Werner teach uses of the Fellowship cryptocard, hear the big surprise announcement, play with advocacy. And don’t forget that there will be the night too, with dinner and good beer and chats.
It’s exciting! I can’t wait to meet you there. Spread the word: the more, the merrier.
How about a workshop on eZ Publish?
October 17th, 2006
During the past days I have been more busy than usual with the Fellows volunteering to maintain and enhance the Fellowship portal. I realized that eZ is probably not so difficult to play with, once you get the basics.
Thinking about the upcoming meeting I thought: why not try inviting a eZ expert to Bolzano to give us a brief introduction to eZ Publish? I have asked some people around and after a first round of email exchange I can say that a brief workshop on eZ is doable.
I think it would be great to have more people involved in shaping the portal. Would you be interested in a couple of hours hacking php code with eZ while in Bolzano? Shall we add a topic to the agenda and start finalising it?
Catching up with the blog
October 12th, 2006
I have been offline for the past days, after the crisis with the server that powers this site. Basically, what happened is related to the Fellowship’s success: the traffic on the site grew faster than we planned, which makes everybody happy except our server that is under stress.
Working on eZ to repair and optimize the site made me think that it would be nice to have a eZ workshop at the coming Fellowship Meeting in Bolzano. What do you think? We can invite eZ publish experts to hack on fsfe.org site, if somebody is interested.