Hi,
Otto: many thanks for the memo!
During our meeting with the Finnish country team, the idea below came up. It's about rating devices, web services etc. for their degree of freedom / openness in a crowdsourced way.
We would establish a list of criteria and set up a rating platform. People could then rate a given device or service according to those criteria.
This initiative would provide people with practical orientation about the freedoms (or lack thereof) that devices and services give them. It would be a good way to involve large numbers of people by having them do small tasks. It would also serve to establish FSFE as a knowledge centre, and it would do all these things with a reasonable effort.
IIRC, Henri Bergius already volunteered to build the necessary platform using Midgard.
I think this is a very good idea. FSFE's past attempts at rating anything in a similar way have always suffered from the fact that we didn't have the necessary resources. By letting Fellows (and others) do the rating in a transparent way, we solve that problem.
Best regards, Karsten
----- Forwarded message from Otto Kekäläinen otto@fsfe.org -----
From: Otto Kekäläinen otto@fsfe.org To: finland@fsfeurope.org, Karsten Gerloff gerloff@fsfeurope.org Subject: CertifiedOpen Date: Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:30:03 +0200 X-Mailer: Evolution 2.28.1
Hello,
Here is the memo I wrote about CertifiedOpen. Feel free to continue on it. I am unlikely to do anything about it now, since I have so many other priorities at the moment...
-- Otto Kekäläinen [] otto@fsfe.org Finnish Team Coordinator [][][] GPG/PGP 0xB7F7E4E1 Free Software Foundation Europe || +358 44 566 2204 http://www.fsfe.org/ finland@fsfe.org
Certified Open - the crow sourced way
= Check list =
== User experience ==
- Are you allowed to use the product to any purpose, even things that the vendor didn't intend it for?
- Can you install any software you which on it?
- Can you get root access?
- Does it depend on something external to work (cloud service)?
- Does it continue to function even after the vendor has stopped supporting the product?
- Can you buy services to the device from more than one vendor?
- Are you allowed to sell forward the product if you don't want to use it yourself anymore?
- Are you allowed to copy and redistribute the product?
== Data management ==
- Can you get your data in?
- Can you export your data out?
- Does it relay on and external service that contains the data?
== Development ==
- Are you allowed to study how the product works and poke around in it?
- Is the source code available and usable with an free license?
- Is the code documented and available directly from a repository?
- Are the specifications available? Can you read about the design?
- Can you follow up the development in real time?
- Can you participate in the development?
- Is there a public bug database?
- Are you allowed to distribute improved versions?
----- End forwarded message -----
Am Montag, den 16.11.2009, 12:56 +0100 schrieb Karsten Gerloff:
I think this is a very good idea. FSFE's past attempts at rating anything in a similar way have always suffered from the fact that we didn't have the necessary resources. By letting Fellows (and others) do the rating in a transparent way, we solve that problem.
I believe that this will be a significant project for FSFE nevertheless: While the Fellows might do the rating, we still need to do the technical infrastructure, the communication, the coordination, the publicity work, and possibly some quality control of the input, and we need to do that in a long time frame.
I would recommend to check whether we have the free resources available before we start this.
Thanks, Reinhard
Hi,
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Reinhard Mueller mueller@fsfeurope.org wrote:
I believe that this will be a significant project for FSFE nevertheless: While the Fellows might do the rating, we still need to do the technical infrastructure, the communication, the coordination, the publicity work, and possibly some quality control of the input, and we need to do that in a long time frame.
I would recommend to check whether we have the free resources available before we start this.
Most definitely. The crowdsourced CertifiedOpen database could have a huge impact on the business around free software (including all the Linux-based phones, TVs, whatever), but only if it contains accurate and relevant information. This will at least require some systems administration and content moderation.
Reinhard
/Henri
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 06:01:19PM +0200, Henri Bergius wrote:
On Mon, Nov 16, 2009 at 5:39 PM, Reinhard Mueller mueller@fsfeurope.org wrote:
I believe that this will be a significant project for FSFE nevertheless: While the Fellows might do the rating, we still need to do the technical infrastructure, the communication, the coordination, the publicity work, and possibly some quality control of the input, and we need to do that in a long time frame.
I would recommend to check whether we have the free resources available before we start this.
Most definitely. The crowdsourced CertifiedOpen database could have a huge impact on the business around free software (including all the Linux-based phones, TVs, whatever), but only if it contains accurate and relevant information. This will at least require some systems administration and content moderation.
I agree that the project will require effort to pull off, if we decide to do it. We will need to keep pushing it continuously, put in effort to moderate and motivate, and check the quality. Checking whether we have to the necessary resources is of course an important step in the decision process.
That's the cost side.
The benefit side is that FSFE will stand out as a knowledge center. The project would also increase our interaction with technology companies, and would provide some real value to the community.
I know that we've discussed similar projects before on a number of occasions. What's different this time is that thanks to the crowdsourcing approach, the project looks ambitious but possible.
I suggest that when Christian is back from his honeymoon, I will ask him to come up with a basic plan (including resource considerations) that we can use as a basis for discussion on whether we want to go ahead with this or not.
Best regards, Karsten