Hi all, Thanks for a great meeting last night! We started off the night with some amazing neenish tarts, made by Bianca. I think I'm still on a sugar high.
Below: the minutes! == Previous action items == - BG to contact The Astor re: DRM in cinema; she wrote to them, but they haven't responded. == SOPA == We started with the boring stuff first, to get it out of the way. Basically, SOPA was a scary proposed change to US law that was defeated by Internet activism, but now small bits of it are making a comeback. Unfortunately no one had read the article [1], so the discussion fell kind of flat. == Games == - An exciting, upcoming open video game console [2]. It's set to be very cheap, and the organisers have already raised over $5M. But, there are some big hurdles to get over, like the lack of big name games that the major consoles have. Still, the sheer number of backers shows that lots of people are wanting to see a change in the games industry. Hopefully it will be a success. It was suggested that we could buy one for the group to share, as a way of showing support. - STEAM is coming to GNU/Linux. It was suggested that this could be a part of a plan to transition to a Linux-based games console in the future, that Valve might manufacture. But anyway, the porting of STEAM to Linux was seen as a generally good thing, as it would ease the transition to GNU/Linux for a lot of people (not having to reboot to play games). == Social Events == As discussed on the mailing list, and at dinner last time, the group is interested in having some social meetings - not just discussion groups. Apart from being fun for current members, this could be a good way to attract more people. Suggestions: - Gaming sessions (e.g. LAN games) - Battle for Wesnoth (beware: highly addictive) - Alien Arena Reloaded - Open Arena - BZ Flag - Free software trivia night. Might be extended to "free culture", to allow more diverse teams. - Hacking sessions: code sprints, bug hunting, translation or documentation. Note: doesn't have to be about programming! Suggested venues: - LUV beginner workshops - VPAC training room (where we currently host our meetings; might not work for trivia) It was suggested that the social gatherings could replace some of our discussion groups. This could be done to a regular schedule, e.g. every third month. The plan is to do this in September and see how it goes. SO: come to the September meeting (on the 20th) for something fun! == Logistics == - Sometimes FSM hosts presentations; it was suggested that these could be recorded and posted online. Adam recently bought a camera, which we could put to good use. There are tripods available in the meeting room. More generally, we could record the discussions that we have - but it's not clear how interesting it would be to people who weren't at the meeting. I tried recording a couple of minutes on my phone, but it was (unsurprisingly) poor quality. There are other options, though: some members have good recording equipment, and there is some in the meeting room too. - It was suggested that FSM's wiki page be used for meeting announcements, to allow them to be updated more easily. == FSF: Secure boot vs restricted boot == The Free Software Foundation is hosting a petition to try to get manufacturers not to lock their computers to only run Windows [3]. We discussed whether it would be OK for FSM to sign it as an organisation. == Phones == - RedPhone is now free software (GPL3) [5]. It can be used to encrypt voice calls on Android devices. Pretty rad! - Openmoko is about to ship a hardware upgrade featuring a faster processor and 3G support. The company is providing bounties for bug fixes. Not sure what their business model is. == Action Items == * AF to talk to BF about contacting the Astor... * BS to write to mailing list about supporting OUYA. * BS to write to mailing list about holding a hacking session. * BS to bring up topic of FSM's secure boot petition on mailing list. == Topics for Next Month == - Eaterprises and the Open Food Web by Kirsten Larsen - Free software business models, including the use of trademarks (e.g. restriction of the use of the word "Firefox") (These topics may be subject to change :) [1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/house-quiety-reintroduces-piece-sopa [2] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ouya/ouya-a-new-kind-of-video-game-console/posts [3] http://www.fsf.org/campaigns/secure-boot-vs-restricted-boot/statement [4] http://blogs.valvesoftware.com/linux/steamd-penguins/ [5] http://www.whispersys.com/redphone-now-open-source.html _______________________________________________ Free-software-melb mailing list Free-software-melb@lists.softwarefreedom.com.au http://lists.softwarefreedom.com.au/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/free-software-melb
