Dear all,
In the spirit of full disclosure, let me start by pointing out that I am CEO
and - along with other employees, some of whom you will also know -
shareholder of Kolab Systems AG (https://kolabsystems.com) and that Kolab
Systems has been the driving force behind Roundcube for the past years.
Kolab Systems has also agreed to help the Roundcube Next team in its aim to
refactor and build the next technology generation.
So I am not neutral.
That said, I genuinely believe it is extremely important for the Free Software
community to get behind Roundcube Next and help us push it forward, as
well as bring others on board with it.
The longer story is here: http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/?p=676
TL;DR, Part I: As a community we *require* technologies that compete with
Google Apps, Office 365 and the likes in features, convenience, UI/UX, yet
provide full control and freedom to users.
TL;DR, Part II: Application Service Providers should get on board with that
push *right now* because otherwise they will find themselves forced into
becoming re-sellers for Office 365 and Google Apps -- and increasingly
unable to compete with their features & networking effects.
Some already understood this, and have joined the Roundcube Next community,
such as cPanel (http://blog.cpanel.com/on-to-the-next/), Tucows, and now also
Fastmail (http://blog.fastmail.com/2015/06/05/fastmail-supports-roundcube-next-develo…).
But there are many more providers using Roundcube today who have not joined,
nor have they contributed in the past. For them it should be obvious to join.
And then there are those that have their own home-brew interfaces (such as
Fastmail) who get the unique opportunity to become part of a new, growing
community that will create a technology that will make them fully competitive
against the "big clouds" in 18 months from now.
Unfortunately, most of them have not realized this yet.
So unless your provider is cPanel, Tucows, Fastmail or Kolab Now, all of who
are part of this already, please encourage them to step up and join the
community to push for Roundcube Next.
Direct link for your convenience:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/roundcube-next--2/x/4658765#/story
Best regards,
Georg
--
Georg C. F. Greve <greve(a)fsfeurope.org>
Member of the General Assembly
http://fsfe.org/about/greve/http://blogs.fsfe.org/greve/http://identi.ca/greve
Hello,
I would like some advertisement for the FreeCalypso development board:
https://www.gofundme.com/fcdev3b-board-production-2umevjw
Michaela is maybe a "bad hacker", and uses illegal methods and non-free
software. But there is now a working open source GSM stack. Making voice
calls and sending SMS-es is working on some hardware with open source
firmware without blobs. Controlled using AT-commands.
https://www.freecalypso.org/
People who want to make FOSS firmware can learn from the code. Creating
a GSM stack without examples is very much work. The source code,
documentation and the design files for the hardware are published.
There is only 4500 USD needed for the production of 20 fully assembled
boards, 25% is funded at the moment. Anonymous funding is possible so
far I know.
With regards,
Paul van der Vlis.
--
Paul van der Vlis Linux systeembeheer Groningen
https://www.vandervlis.nl/
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All,
It has recently come to my attention that many in the free software
movement are unaware of a relatively new development on x86 platforms
that permanently removes the ability to use these platforms without also
continually executing signed, proprietary code at the highest possible
privilege level. All post-2013 (AMD) and virtually all post-2009
(Intel) systems contain this mandatory technology, and therefore, by
design, can never be converted to run using pure FOSS. Prior to these
changes projects such as coreboot could be used to replace the boot
firmware with a FOSS alternative.
The technologies in question are the Intel Management Engine (ME) and
the AMD Platform Security Processor (PSP). Both serve effectively the
same purpose; to ensure that the physical owner of the machine never has
full control of said machine. These technologies, in turn, are used to
implement various forms of remote control and Digital Rights Management
(DRM) technologies, including Secure Boot, which even now requires FOSS
users to purchase a license from Microsoft to boot FOSS on affected
machines that lack an appropriate Secure Boot override. This includes,
for example, many newer laptops. Major distributions have worked around
this issue by purchasing a signing key from Microsoft for their binary
packages, but the end user is unable to modify the signed software
without a license from Microsoft, even though they have the source code
available to them under the GPL.
Furthermore, these signed, proprietary, binary-only firmware blobs must
execute on the service processor(s) before the main x86 CPU cores are
even released from reset (AMD), or will hard reset the entire system
after around 30 minutes of non-operation (Intel). These blobs continue
to operate on the service processor(s) as long as the system is powered
on, and in the case of the Intel ME they also continue to operate while
the system is powered off but still has access to power (e.g. plugged in
or charged battery attached). These services processors have full
access to system memory and all system peripherals, effectively giving
the binary blobs executing on them a higher privilege level than even
the operating system kernel. Due to the ability to access system
peripherals, these proprietary blobs could easily contain code to
exfiltrate encryption keys, remotely activate microphones and cameras,
plant unwanted data, or simply remotely disable the ability of the
machine to boot FOSS operating systems entirely. Finally, the Intel ME
firmware can be forcibly updated by a remote entity; it is unknown
whether the AMD PSP contains similar functionality at this time.
So, what can an average user do? The obvious answer is to simply switch
away from using the x86 architecture entirely. As Intel owns all rights
to the x86 architecture, there will never be any new manufacturers
licensed to make x86 chips, and therefore there will never be any
competition to remove these DRM-laden antifeatures. There are numerous
alternative architectures available, especially for those already using
software with the source code available (i.e. FOSS), all of which can be
licensed by other manufacturers should the need arise.
************************************************************************
General Overview of Alternate Architectures
************************************************************************
=== ARM ===
While the ARM architecture may be more wildly known for locked-down
computing products, there are several ARM devices on the market that
allow full FOSS replacement of the boot firmware. Generally these are
laptops, tablets, and embedded systems, with one example laptop being
the ASUS C201 Chromebook:
https://libreboot.org/docs/install/c201.html
Using ARM in a mobile form factor also provides advantages of low cost
and long battery life, albeit at the expense of overall system performance.
=== POWER ===
IBM has recently released their high-performance POWER8 architecture for
third party licensing, and has also released a small treasure trove of
firmware and documentation for these devices. POWER is the only
architecture currently competitive with Intel in terms of raw
performance, and boots using a fully FOSS firmware with no DRM
antifeatures embedded. The primary disadvantage of power is cost, as it
is currently targeted at the server and datacenter markets. We are
attempting to bring POWER to the high-end workstation market in a
FOSS-friendly form via the Talos™ Secure Workstation, but need
additional interest to make this a reality:
https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php
=== MIPS ===
Less well known than ARM, and with less vendor choice, MIPS is often
overlooked. However, China has revived this architecture for general
purpose computing with the Loongson core, and several machines are
available using this processor. As a niche processor it has far worse
performance than even a low-end ARM processor, but marginally better
energy efficiency. Not recommended in light of ARM and POWER8:
http://www.lemote.com/html/product/atx/2015/1227/8.html
=== RISCV ===
While this architecture is extremely limited in performance, price, and
performance per watt compared to x86, ARM, or POWER, it is also one of
the only fully open source CPU architectures available outside of an
FPGA. and may eventually be competitive with MIPS in terms of raw
performance. Currently there are no RISCV SoCs in production, however
projects such as lowRISC aim to change that:
http://www.lowrisc.org/
************************************************************************
So, what are your thoughts on the current x86 proprietary software
situation? Are you willing to continue to use FOSS software inside the
ever-shrinking x86 "software jail", or are you possibly willing to give
up some cost or performance advantages in order to retain full control
of the software running on your hardware? This is a question that will
need to be answered soon; the long-term consequences of a fully
TiVo-ized computing world are not to be taken lightly, and thus far the
free software community has put up very little resistance to the
antifeatures being forced into modern x86 platforms. I hope to provoke
wider discussion on these topics via this message.
Thank you for your attention!
- --
Timothy Pearson
Raptor Engineering
+1 (415) 727-8645 (direct line)
+1 (512) 690-0200 (switchboard)
http://www.raptorengineeringinc.com
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Hi all.
as in previous years, the FSFE will organise an assembly during CCC including
self-organised sessions. If you plan to go to 33C3 and you like to host a
session, please read our call:
http://blog.3rik.cc/2016/10/call-for-sessions-at-the-fsfe-assembly-during-3…
Please also help spreading the call.
Best,
Erik
--
No one shall ever be forced to use non-free software
Erik Albers | Free Software Foundation Europe
OpenPGP Key-ID: 0x8639DC81 on keys.gnupg.net
Hi,
reading the "FSFE Newsletter - October 2016" [1]
We're still not over how cool it was to see so many from our community
join the FSFE Summit in September. It was a good experience and we're
keen to repeat it. [...]
I miss any mentioning of an (internal) discussion in the aftermath of a
very questionable talk[2] advertising proprietary software. The speaker
of that talk is head of a company selling non-free software but trying
to get associated with Free Software. In the F&Q after the talk the
speaker was asked about this (35'50'' into the video) and confirmed that
their software is and will not be published under a Free Software
license. He also said that he did not think cloud services should at
all require Free Software, be it GPL or BSD.
I am quite surprised to see such a talk at an FSFE conference. In
particular because the talk was not described as giving a counterpoint
to Free Software. It was a straight ad talk and that should have been
known to the program committee: For example, the FSFE president was
recently guest at one of their dinner events and before that he had
asked me about my opinion on that company (I once gave a keynote at one
of their events).
A newsletter should not be silent about topics which can at least be
called controversial and have been called in as an agenda topic for
tomorrow's FSFE general assembly.
Shalom-Salam,
Werner
[1] https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201610.en.html
[2] https://conf.qtcon.org/en/qtcon/public/events/581
--
Die Gedanken sind frei. Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.