>From: Florian Weimer <Weimer(a)CERT.Uni-Stuttgart.DE>
>> From lwn.net/daily today:
>>
>> | Linus, meanwhile, is moving on with 2.5.4-pre1. This is the first
>> | patch that Linus has produced with Bitkeeper,
>>
>> It somehow worries me, that non-free software now is at the core
>> of the prominent Free Software kernel linux.
>Personally, I do not care much about the software Mr. Torvalds uses.
>But I wonder if this choice forces (or persuades) other developers to
>use proprietary software, too.
>Is the format of BitKeeper changesets defined somewhere, except in the
>sources?
Well the sccs format if well documented. It I call "man 5 cvs" I cannot
find any documentation of the used file format.
Many developers currently don't care to use the undocumented proproetary
format used by CVS, so what is your peroblem?
Jörg
EMail:joerg@schily.isdn.cs.tu-berlin.de (home) Jörg Schilling D-13353 Berlin
js(a)cs.tu-berlin.de (uni) If you don't have iso-8859-1
schilling(a)fokus.gmd.de (work) chars I am J"org Schilling
URL: http://www.fokus.gmd.de/usr/schilling ftp://ftp.fokus.gmd.de/pub/unix
> Please see the questionnaire on the web site at
> http://floss1.infonomics.nl/ and fill it out!
Is it just me, or is the second question (difference between Free Software
and OS) missing the "correct" answer? Hopefully they've fixed the HTML.
I've sent them a list of minor grumbles, including a statistician's disquiet
on the design, questioning an apparent misconception in the questions about
what Free Software is and, once more, the use of EU money to fund US
English. I've suggested that they contact FSFE for clarification, but
unfortunately it seems that they forgot the translation budget.
Generally, this could be a good thing, but the survey as it stands seems
rather imperfect. My Opinion Only.
--
MJR
JFYI:
http://www.freehackers.org/fosdem2002/guido.html
Philippe: Have you met interesting people?
Guido: Oh definitely, yeah. Actually I had dinner with people from
FSF Europe and they told me about their political lobbying activites
in Germany and some other groups in France that are really helping
governements understand what Open Source and Free Software is and
helping them understand how they must make sure that they don't kill
these activities.
Hi,
I was browsing
http://www.fsfeurope.org/documents/whyfs.fr.html
and followed the link to
http://www.icube.it/
I saw more Open Source than Software Libero on the front page alone.
Regardless of the reasons why that happened, it certainly does not give
a good impression.
I'm quite confident that they will fix it but it means that we
should be more carefull about this.
Cheers,
--
Loic Dachary http://www.dachary.org/ loic(a)dachary.org
12 bd Magenta http://www.senga.org/ loic(a)senga.org
75010 Paris T: 33 1 42 45 07 97 loic(a)gnu.org
GPG Public Key: http://www.dachary.org/loic/gpg.txt
Source: http://www.advogato.org/article/438.html
European Commission launches developer survey
Posted 26 Feb 2002 by grex
FLOSS is a study currently under way at the Institute of Infonomics,
University of Maastricht and Berlecon Research, Berlin, and includes an
automated analysis of source code as well as a survey of developers.
This survey is part of a significant study sponsored by the European
Commission that includes policy recommendations and will be a source of
valuable information for the Free/Open Source community, businesses and
policy makers.
Why a survey? To get developers' own opinions on a range of issues
related to Free Software / Open Source. The online questionnaire is
specifically intended to provide a mirror to the Free Software / Open
Source community.
The survey results will be updated and publicly available in real time
even during the data collection period. Final results and analysis will
also be freely published. At the time we are posting this news, over 650
developers have entered the questionnaire!
What do you think about
* Technology: referred programming languages, operating systems
* Law: licensing issues, copyright and intellectual property, authorship
* Organisation: efficiency, quality, comparison of commercial software
* Motivation: monetary / non-monetary, reputation, pleasure, creativity,
jobs
* Expectations: what do you expect of others? What do they expect of you?
* Larger role: will Free Software/Open Source change the
economy/society, or even just the commercial information technology
industry?
Please see the questionnaire on the web site at
http://floss1.infonomics.nl/ and fill it out!
For more information on the FLOSS study and contact details see
http://www.infonomics.nl/FLOSS/
--
Vereinte Dienstleistungsgewerkschaft ver.di
Internetredaktion
Potsdamer Platz 10, 10785 Berlin
--
mailto:stefan.meretz@verdi.de
maintaining: http://www.verdi.de
private stuff: http://www.meretz.de
--
Alex wrote:
> As for the JVM - Kaffe is free, as is Japhar. In terms of plug-ins though,
> I'm as sure as you are :/ I would hope that the Moz plug-in - for example
> - just acts as glue, and that it is able to use any installed JVM, but who
> knows..
>
> I can't connect to kaffe.org from here atm, but maybe they have this problem
> solved already - might be worth checking.
I couldn't see it there, but maybe I'm being dense. I'll widen this
discussion to the main fsfeurope list (*waves*) and see if anyone on there
knows of a free Java plugin for Mozilla. It certainly is annoying for the
few things that use it if there isn't one.
FUs set.
--
MJR
Dear friends,
the madness incarnate of September 11th, 2001 is one which will never
be
forgotten. How could it be?
This shook the entire world, and my heart was broken along with all of
yours.
I have created a slide show in respectful tribute to all who passed, as
well as the heroics of the people. I know that America...the world... will
not allow this attack to ruffle it's feathers, and I stand and applaude
for
the strength and resolve of it's people.
God bless America...God bless the world.
Do sign my 'Response to this Tribute' if compelled and please pass this
on to at least one friend.
http://www.aurumxxl.com/ny/ny.htm
Irmingard Anna Kotelev
Photographer
21th of September 2001
If you have received this email by error, please excuse it, and me for
sending it. Thank you. IAK
First sorry for any english mistakes I'd make ;)
A somehow late report about the Paris LinuxExpo & LinuxWorld trade show.
We must first thank all volunteers of APRIL, ANFA, local LUGs and
other friends of the FSFE and the GNU projects, who helped us on the
joint FSFE France, APRIL and ANFA booths.
I'm writing down things I recall from the show, and thus this
report is not really a complete detailed report of everything which
happend. I was very busy on the booth and had no time to visit the
rest of the expo. I spent much of my time on the "non-profit" part of
the show.
First, some pictures taken by Rodolphe Quiedeville:
http://rodolphe.quiedeville.org/photos/linuxexpo2002 (as you can see,
we enjoyed a lot ;)
The mood was, at least on the non-profit booths, as every year, very
festive. We had a very strong presence with a lot of associations (a
whole row of booths occupying the back of the expo)... all
non-commercial, and that's nice sometimes ;)
One couldn't miss our presence and I admit it was quite impressive, to
see this row: people must have felt the weight of the community (more
than 50 volunteers at least). I listed the different booths (I may
forget some still) : Videolan, APRIL + FSFE France + ANFA +
Sherpath.org (1/2 day), KDE, AFUL, ObjetWeb, Technop�le Logiciels
Libres Soissons, Debian, TuxFamily, Parinux, Speka, Easter-Eggs.org,
OpenBSD, ABUL+Abuledu, Linux-Arverne, Linux-Nantes.
The APRIL + FSFE France + ANFA booth was big enough to hold us all,
and also to store stuff, and clothes of friends passing by.
I should point out that it was so nice to have the Lolix booth in
front of ours, which allowed us some nice activities (lunch with pat�
and vin rouge, chairs, music, etc. ;).
About the contacts, as always, a bunch of interesting people that we
met (software authors, managers of companies or organisations, end
users, ...). In my mind, we had less need for describing what
free software is to complete newbies... Either everybody now is quite
aware of free software, or we didn't let enough room for
questions... but I tend to think it's the first option.
People are much more and better informed on the subject of free
software.
Some were coming to have an update on the software patents issue, or
to know exactly what we exactly do at APRIL (were they looking for a
LUG, or to have more indepth on APRIL). Many people coming were not
computer professionals.
Many people there came since they were trying to launch free projects,
but didn't really know how to do so...
A lot of the people we met were very interested by the ANFA project,
from what I noticed. Cooperation with the southern countries with free
software seems to attract interesting of a lot of people.
The various items did sell quite well (TShirts, pin's, FSF books,
etc.), which helps to reduce the stored materials since last years.
We registered a lot of membership renewals, and contacts with new
members.
We were also happy to see people living far from Paris, or abroad, who
had come for the occasion. That was really nice too.
We hosted Sherpath.org who did a demo for the first time to
the public of their new free groupware tool... Unfortunately I had no
time to see the details :(
RMS' conference : it was free (as beer) and a big success: more than
a thousand people I think... but I couldn't listen to the entire
speach... He ended it singing the Free Software Song ;)
Stallman then came on the booth (and Lolix's too), to have a break and
chat with some more people... The guru did not attract crowds like two
years ago... but maybe because he cut his hair, and few recognised him
? ;)
The companies present at the expo seemed very busy (including those
selling non-free stuff)... is this a good sign from the market ?
Anyway, the developers and friends of APRIL who were on their
companies booths were sometimes very much unavailable, and sometimes
people kept looking for them even though they had taken days off ;)...
We should note also that many companies booths were much smaller than
those of the non-profit associations or groups ;)
The promotional stuff was very rare on the booths (times are harsh! one
would say).
We perpetuated the activist tradition of people preventing suits to
make business calmly with our small demonstration on the subject of
software patents. It was a good success, even if only few companies
managers joined in leaving their booth. Some of them may recognize
themselves on the pictures. Thanks to them for their courage. We
distributed some 500 leaflets to visitors
(see www.april.org/~mad/systems01fr.pdf).
Transfert.net reported the event on their news site... Maybe other
news reports?
A small regret: no Gimp or Gnome booths, for instance... Those
interested might contact us for next year's edition.
There was a huge diner organized by LinuxFr... but can't give details
since I wasn't there :(
We should also note a simulation of the french presidential elections
that was run by easter-eggs.org. The winner was Noël Mamére (green
party), whichever scrutiny method was used (details on
http://www.entrouvert.org/presilections.py). This might be linked to
the candidate's positions about Free Software or software patents (my
personal addition: although he didn't respect his promise to ask the
government to change its policy about software patents, although he
announced it when he met RMS).
It should be noticed that next edition of Paris Linux Expo is not
guaranteed yet... but we'll be there if it happens.
And, finally a big thanx to the team who organized the whole thing and
notably Loïc Bernable who synchronized everything with the people of
Sky Events.
Best regards,
--
Olivier BERGER (OpenPGP: 1024D/B4C5F37F) - Secrétaire de l'association APRIL
APRIL (http://www.april.org) - Vive python (http://www.python.org)
Pétition contre les brevets logiciels : http://petition.eurolinux.org