tobias_platen's blog

I dont use Skype, because it requires the use of a client program that is not . Instead I use Pidgin and XMPP+Jingle. As XMPP has federation support, it can be used to talk to users that are on a differnt server. XMPP is an Open Standard, that can be implemented using free software. As a Fan of Free Culture Anime with Free Software, I do have an XMPP account at Animexx.de. By using an Open Standards Animexx contributes to distributed social networks. All Fellows can talk to all users of Animexx.de and vice versa, without needing any nonfree software.

But there are many other Open Standards such as OAuth. GNU MediaGoblin, a free software for building federated social networks, implements OAuth beginning in version 0.6. I’ve created my own instance for sharing music that is made with a free replacement for VOCALOID such as eCantorix or v.Connect-STAND. I have set up this instance of GNU MediaGoblin to avoid using centralized sites such as Youtube and Nico Nico Douga. MediaGoblin is also used by cosplayers that want to share their photos.

Eine deutsche Version des Posts findet sich auf meinem Animexx Weblog

As a fellow that lives inside the Rhein-Main* area I went to the first FUxCon* where I met Guido Arnold at the FSFE booth.
I don’t own an iPhone because it is Defective By Design. Instead I use a 3 years old Android phone that plays Ogg Vorbis out of the box. The device isn’t fully free but you can run many free software applications if you install F-Droid. If you buy a new smartphone than I can recommend the GTA04 or the Fairphone.

I found that the keynote by Cornelius Schumacher from KDE e.V about Open-Source-Communities [sic] was interesting. The people at KDE beginning with Matthias Ettrich do care about software freedom. Their aim is to make free software usable to the general public. I use LyX, because I think that it is easier to use than LibreOffice Writer. I don’t own a tablet computer, because most vendors ship with nonfree distributions of Android. The Flying Squirrel will run GNU/Linux, it’s WiFi chip is compatible with free software.

I also met the DARC* ham radio group. With ham radio you can fetch your email without using a commercial internet connection. People in China use this technology to break censorship. I do not use services that practice censorship such as Facebook and Google+/Youtube, instead I support PageKite and FreedomBox. With a free software defined radio such as GNU Radio it should be possible to connect freedomboxes together using a censorship ham radio channel. If you and your friends use GNUnet to encrypt your network traffic, nobody will be able to eavesdrop or censor your private communications.

People from CCC-FFM* showed me how to hack a chipcard* that is used in TAN generators. These devices might be useful for other puposes. As I prefer bitcoin over proprietery payment services, it might be possible to implement a bitcoin smartcard that people can use with such a device. The only think that you will need is an empty chipcard that you can fill with your own software. Most empty chipcards require the use of nonfree software, but there are chipcards that one can hack with the free avr-gcc compiler. You can get a the things need for smartcard hacking from here*. I try to avoid PayPal for micropayment, as they blocked wikileaks. For this reason I do not use flattr anymore.

At the end of the FUxCon there was an Audacity workshop. As I use GNU/Linux to make music, I often use Audacity. I learned how to use the labels feature of Audacity that allows one to export multiple files. The workshop was done by from AUGE e.V (Apple User Group Europe). I had to name a free programm called LMMS (Linux Multimedia Studio) when somebody recommended the nonfree software Cubase for multitrack recording. There are many other free programs that you can enjoy when you switch to GNU/Linux. Rosegarden is one of them.

Recently I started writing a free replacement for MBROLA. MBROLA is a diphone synthesizer that had been able to sing ten years before Crypton Future Media released KAITO. For diphone-segmentation I use Audacity. The first MBROLOID will be called Mikulas Lenzo. In 2010 copies of Ubuntu were be distributed at Anime Boston. This year I will distribute copies of a custom Trisquel GNU/Linux image that contains a lot of free programs that Anime fans and Cosplay Photographers will find useful, including my free SingerBot, at the CosDay convention. For most music that I listen to I know that the producers use nonfree software, so it is time to teach people who want to make music how to use a free program that does do the same thing.

* this link points to a German page, you can translate it into English using Google Translate. Apertium does not support German yet.

One month after Valentine’s Day the free software Otaku community celebrates White Day.
I take this as a chance to show my love for Free Culture made with Free Software.

When I was reading Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity I had found something about Japanese Manga and Doujinshi in the first chapter.

Here are just some ideas about how you can go public and proclaim your love to Free Culture. And remember that you must must make a
contribution to the art you copy.

Morevna is a Creative Commons licensed Anime that is made with free software only. It uses the software Synfig Studio as a repacement for Adobe Flash. Currently there is only a demo with nonfree music, but the final version will be fully free. Please read http://www.freesoftwaremagazine.com/articles/morevna_project_anime_synfig_and_blender for more details.

All major record labels have given up trying to enforce DRM schemes on music, but most DoujinOngakuka still do not have freedom and privacy until today:

– Miselu Neiro runs nonfree software such as VOCALOID and uses a proprietery YAMAHA DSP.
– Services like SoundCloud suggest Adobe Flash Player.
– Storing your data in centralized online services exposes you to surveillance.
– There is no portable, net-enabled social music device that Respects Your Freedom yet.

But Hackers and Makers are working on free alternatives:

– Arduino is a freedom-friendly platform that can be used to synthesize sounds.
– FreedomBox is a Debian based platform for distributed applications.
– OLinuXino is hackable hardware that runs FreedomBox.
– Fritzing and free FPGA-toolchains allow the community to build their own solutions.

Moe.fm is a streaming service for Japanese Indie Music (Doujin Ongaku). There are two free clients at GitHub. (https://github.com/shengxia/Moefou-FM-for-Linux.git and https://github.com/mariotaku/moe.fm) Unlike mobile Last.fm there is no DRM. (see http://www.defectivebydesign.org/screaming).

Works of authorship(such as music and software) should be free, and by freedom we mean:
the freedom to use the work and enjoy the benefits of using it
the freedom to study the work and to apply knowledge acquired from it
the freedom to make and redistribute copies, in whole or in part, of the information or expression
the freedom to make changes and improvements, and to distribute derivative works

Hatsune Miku is a proprietery soundfont for the proprietery VOCALOID software.
VOCALOID is a singing synthesizer based on sample concatenation.
Users of VOCALOID often share there their works with others, sometimes under Creative Commons licenses.
Because VOCALOID is so popular, Ameya/Ayame created UTAU that allows users to record their own samples.
Unlike VOCALOID, UTAU can be used with freely licenced samples and a free synthesizer backend.
But the frontend written in Microsoft Visual Basic is propriertery.

Richard Stallman, founder of the GNU Project and the Free Software Foundation believes that software should be free.
When he speaks of “free software”, he’s talking about freedom, not price.
He co-authored the GNU General Public Licenses that are intended to guarantee your freedom to share.
If one of the four freedoms is missing the program is nonfree. Copyleft guarantees that a free program remains free.
To understand how a program works you need more than just the compiled computer code; you also need access to the human-readable source code.
Some people call this “Open Source” but Open Source misses the point of Free Software.

Matt Lee, one of the authors of GNU FM, is the campaigns manager at the Free Software Foundation.
He also thinks that music should be free. The Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license is a copyleft license that can be used for music.
A recording of music made with physical instruments such as a human voice or an acoustic guitar can distributed music under a free license under a free format such as Ogg Vorbis. In this case there is no source code for the music. When using software for making music there is a source code that is part of that work. So it might be better to share your work under the GNU GPL. There should be no restrictions that prevent you from sharing soundfonts and using them with free software.

Recently I heard that an iTunes update breaks the Xiph QuickTime components that allow you to play Ogg Vorbis files with iTunes.
Apple decided to rewrite iTunes as a 64 bit Cocoa application that supports the full screen mode. This will break the 32 bit Vorbis plugin for iTunes.
So I wrote a python script that converts iTunes playlists to m3u playlists: http://platen-software.de/dl/plist2m3u.py

The Apple Lossless Audio Codec is now available as an open source project, but Apple does not sell any Music in this format.
Using this codec with your iPad does not give you freedom. The Free Lossless Audio Codec is free as in freedom.
Please read Richard Stallman’s article: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point

iCloud and the App Store pose the problem of Software as a Service.
Both depend on a server set up by Apple.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/who-does-that-server-really-serve.html

Recently I switched to Trisqel GNU/Linux which is fully free and decided to write a free replacement for Mac OS X, the GNUstep Libre system.
GNUstep Libre is based on GNUstep and GNU Linux-libre, but later versions might use the GNU HURD.
http://platen-software.de/dl/gnustep-libre.ova

Ten companies that do support free software, in some cases the hardware is free too:
1    Lemote sells netbooks with a free BIOS
2    ThinkPenguin sells Hardware with GNU Linux-libre support
3    Via makes Mainboards compatible with coreboot
4    Qi hardware makes  Copyleft hardware
5    XESS makes Hard and Software licensed under GPL and Creative Commons licenses
6    Fritzing Fab allows you to create your own hardware
7    Golden Delicious Computers is not Defective by Design
8    OLIMEX makes Arduino Clones and embedded GNU/Linux hardware
9    Make Play Live makes GNU/Linux based tablets
10   Archos sells Android and GNU/Linux tablets

No free Software (except some HID devices)
1   Apple iPad is Defective By Design
2   Nintendo DSi is Defective by DESiGN
3   Microsoft has it’s Windows 7 Sins
4   Sony PlayStation 3 is incompatible with free software and ran Open Source Linux
5   OpenPandora is incompatible with free software and runs Open Source Linux

Instead of using Open Source Software with Open Hardware, it is better to use copylefted free hard and software.

On April 30th, 2012 the analogue transmission of TV and radio programs via satellite reached its end.
With digital TV it is now possible to watch HDTV, but most products support Digital Restrictions Management

To watch private TV programs in HDTV an HD+ enabled receiver and a smartcard is needed. Your TV set must support HDCP to be able to watch DRMed HD content. The smartcard will cost you 50 Euros per year. The DRM is used to prevent users from skipping advertisings.

Because DRM-free Blu-ray movies do not exist, you should not buy a Blu-ray player such as the PlayStation 3.
TV sets that are HD ready do support DRMed HDTV, and some have a build-in HD+ receiver. Be carefull when buying a new TV set.

But DRM-free HDTV also exists. In Germany the public legal TV programs (such as ARTE and 3SAT) decided not to use DRM.
You can watch them with free software such as mplayer without using proprietery plugins. Without DRM you can skip advertisings, but there are no advertisings in ARTE and 3SAT.