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
I just published a blog post about a topic we discussed at the FSFE's
last general assembly. Please let me know what you think about it.
Looking forward to your feedback.
(The text is also online available under
<http://k7r.eu/there-is-no-free-software-company-but/>. Feel free to
share it so we get a wide range of feedback.)
# There is no Free Software company - But!
Since the start of the FSFE 15 years ago, the people involved were certain that
companies are a crucial part to reach our goal of software freedom. For many
years we have explained to companies – IT as well as non-IT – what benefits
they have from Free Software. We encourage individuals and companies to pay for
Free Software, as much as we encourage companies to use Free Software in their
offers.
While more people demanded Free Software, we also saw more companies claiming
something is Free Software or Open Source Software although it is not. This
behaviour – also called *"openwashing"* is nothing special for Free Software,
some companies also claim something is "organic" or "fair-trade" although it is
not. As the attempts to get a trademark for "Open Source" failed, it is
difficult to legally prevent companies from calling something "Free Software"
or "Open Source Software" although it does neither comply with the Free
Software definition by the Free Software Foundation nor with the Open Source
definition by the Open Source Initiative.
When the FSFE was founded in 2001 there was already the idea to encourage and
support companies making money with Free Software by starting a "GNU business
network". One of the stumbling blocks for that was always the definition of a
Free Software company. It cannot just be the usage of Free Software or the
contribution to Free Software, but also needs to include what rights they are
offering their customers. Another factor was whether the revenue stream is tied
to proprietary licensing conditions. Would we also allow a small revenue from
proprietary software, and how high is that that you can still consider it a
Free Software company?
It turned out to be a very complicated issue, and although we were regularly
discussing it we did not have an idea how to approach the problems in defining
a Free Software company.
During our last meeting of the FSFE's General Assembly we came to the
conclusion that there was a flaw in our thinking and that it does not make
sense to think about "Free Software companies". In hindsight it might look
obvious, but for me the discussion was an eye opener, and I have the feeling
that was a huge step for software freedom.
As a side note: When we have the official general assembly of the FSFE we
always use this opportunity to have more discussions during the days before or
after. Sometimes they focus on internal topics, organisational changes, but
often there is brainstorming abut the "hot topics of software freedom" and
where the FSFE has to engage in the long run. At this year's meeting, from 7 to
9 October, inspired by Georg Greve's and Nicola Diedrich's input, we spent the
whole Saturday thinking about the long term challenges for software freedom
with the focus on the private sector.
We talked about the challenges of software freedom presented by economies of
scale, networking effects, investment preference, and users making convenience
and price based decisions over values – even when they declare themselves
value conscious.
One problem preventing a wider spread of software freedom identified there was
that Free Software is being undermined by companies that abuse the positive
brand recognition of Free Software / Open Source by "openwashing" themselves.
Sometimes they offer products that do not even have a Free Software version.
This penalises companies and groups that aim to work within the principles of
Free Software and damages the recognition of Free Software / Open Source in the
market. The consequence is reduced confidence in Free Software, fewer
developers working on it, fewer companies providing it, and less Free Software
being written in favour of proprietary models.
In the discussion, one question kept arising. Is an activity that is good for
Free Software which is done by one small company as their sole activity more
valuable than if the same thing were done as part of a larger enterprise? We
all agree that a small company which is using and distributing exclusively Free
Software, and has done so for many years, and no part of the software they
wrote or included was ever non-free software is good. But what happens if said
small, focused company got purchased by a larger entity? Does that invalidate
the benefit of what is being done?
We concluded that good action remains good action, and that the FSFE should
encourage good actions. *So instead of focusing on the company as such we
should focus on the activity itself*; we should think about ***"Free Software
business activities", "Free Software business offers"***, and such. My feeling
was that this was the moment the penny had dropped, while others and me
realised the flaw in our previous thinking. We need action oriented approaches
and we need to look at activities individually.
There was still the question where to draw the line between acceptable or
useful activities and harmful ones. This is not a black and white issue, and
when assessing the impact for software freedom there are different levels. For
example if you evaluate a sharing platform, you might find out that the core is
Free Software, but the sharing module itself is proprietary. This is a bad
offer if you want to run a competing sharing platform using Free Software.
The counter example of an acceptable offer was a collaboration software that
was useful and complete, but where connecting a proprietary client would itself
require a proprietary connector. It was also discussed that sometimes you need
to interface with proprietary systems through proprietary libraries that do not
allow connecting with Free Software unless one were to first replace the entire
API/library itself.
Ultimately a consensus emerged around a focus on the four freedoms of Free
Software in relation to the question of whether the software is sufficiently
complete and useful to run a competing business.
One thought was to run "test cases" to evaluate how good an offer is on the
Free Software scale. Something like a regular bulletin about best and worst
practice. We could look at a business activities and study it according to the
criteria below, evaluate it, making that evaluation and its conclusions public.
That way we can help to build customer awareness about software freedom. Here
is a first idea for a scale:
* EXCELLENT: Free Software only and on all levels, no exceptions.
* GOOD: Free Software as a complete, useful, and fully supportable product.
Support available for Free Software version.
* ACCEPTABLE: Proprietary interfaces to proprietary systems and applications,
especially complex systems that require complex APIs/libraries/SDKs, as long
as the above is still met.
* BAD: Essential / important functionality only available proprietary, critical
functionality missing from Free Software (one example for an essential
functionality was LDAP connector).
* EVIL: Fully proprietary, but claiming to be Free Software / Open Source
Software.
**Now I would like to know from you:** what is your first reaction on this?
Would you like to add something? Do you have ideas what should be included in a
checklist for such a test? Would you be interested to help us to evaluate how
good some offers are on such a scale?
To summarise, I believe it was a mistake to think about businesses as a whole
before and that if we want to take the next big steps we should think about
Free Software business offers / activities – at least until we have a better
name for what I described above. We should help companies that they are not
deluded by people just claiming something is Free Software, but give them the
tools to check themselves.
--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/donate)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)
I'd like to get some feedback about some ideas floating around my head
at the moment, and thought that some of you might be able to help here.
I was talking with some people who would like to fund some concrete Free
Software activities, focusing on research and education.
One idea which came up is to support pupils to learn more about how
computer work, and promote hacking by providing "science packs" with
small hackable computers, and some modules, sensors etc.
What do you think about making it easier for pupils to get access to
such tools. E.g. by having some packs in the libraries or for school
projects?
I would be interested what you think about that, as I am not yet sure
about it.
If you like it, do you have an idea how you could make sure that
children who are interested in that are connected around Europe? (E.g.
in Germany there is something called "Jugend hackt" -- youth is hacking
-- Is there something similar on a EU level? Or are there other ideas?)
Thanks for your feedback,
Matthias
--
Matthias Kirschner - President - Free Software Foundation Europe
Schönhauser Allee 6/7, 10119 Berlin, Germany | t +49-30-27595290
Registered at Amtsgericht Hamburg, VR 17030 | (fsfe.org/join)
Contact (fsfe.org/about/kirschner) - Weblog (k7r.eu/blog.html)
Dear List,
right now I am looking for pictures for our annual report and I would love to
see the pictures from and by you. Whoever made a booth or any other FSFE
activity this year is very welcome to send some pictures that we are allowed
to reuse (under CC or CC0) in our annual report.
You can send me the pictures directly, as link or attachment, or you can
upload them here:
https://web.3rik.cc/nextcloud9/index.php/s/AMRhCAwhzkHFsFk
In case you upload them, try to find a name that I can see what is on the
picture or who is the picture from so I can at least ask back in case it is
not obious what I see on the picture : )
Thank you,
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
Dear all,
we (the local coordinators, country coordinators, team coordinators, the GA
and the extended team including individual contributors) have been working on
a Code of Conduct for FSFE events and communication. The wish came up by
individual requests of people who felt attacked and by the fact that nowadays
some sponsors (e.g. Mozilla) do not sponsor anymore events that do not have a
clear Code of Conduct.
We now feel that we have a final version at hand and would like to establish
it soon:
https://wiki.fsfe.org/HowTos/Public/CodeOfConduct
On the German general discussion list however, there have been some voices
raised against having a Code of Conduct at all. Without repeating arguments
and without trying to influence you, I would like to ask about your opinion:
Are you in favor or against having a general Code of Conduct?
Are you in favor or against having this Code of Conduct?
We are happy about simple yes/no answers but feel free to also elaborate your
opinion.
Thank you very much,
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
Dear List,
tonight at 20:00 CEST there will be the first round of the ticket sell for the
33C3: https://events.ccc.de/2016/11/04/33c3-tickets-freier-verkauf-open-presale/
If it happens that you come to CCC and you get yourself a ticket and you are
interested in also using the chance of being there to give an interesting talk
about Free Software or a related topic, you could be interested in our Call
for Session for the FSFE assembly:
http://blog.3rik.cc/2016/10/call-for-sessions-at-the-fsfe-assembly-during-3…
Best regards,
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
Dear list,
Is there any FOSS PDF reader for Linux that supports XFA forms ?
(I already tried evince, okular and pdf.js without success.)
Thank you for your help,
Piotr Chmielnicki
@piotrcki
Hi,
The remaining QtCon videos have been uploaded by now, so I would like to boost
Paul Brown's talk for those who missed it:
https://conf.qtcon.org/en/qtcon/public/events/717
Unfortunately, there is no link to the slides that I could find :(
Cheers,
Johannes