Re: Openwashing: Please share your views and experiences!

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Ursin,

thanks for the https://auterion.com/ 
  "We’ve been leaders in an open source movement for more than a decade."
example.

Am Samstag 01 Juni 2024 09:06:28 schrieb Dr. Trigon:
> >* What would you suggest to face openwashing?
>
> Make it public.

A first would be to document the false claims or the bad behaviour.

> May be consitute an nonprofit organization containing lawers and try to
> enforce the open-source licences/"contracts".

You may already know it:
Enforcing licenses (or copyright/European replication rights) legally
usually can only be done by someone who holds rights on a significant
part of the software.

Most of the time it makes sense to bring organisations into compliance
as intermediate step.

The FSFE (and also our independent sister FSF based in the USA) have enforced
licenses in the past or helped to do this. (This is one of the reasons the FSF 
has demanded copyright assignments for contributions to some GNU software.)
Other Free Software organisations have done so as well. 

Best,
Bernhard

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Re: Openwashing: Please share your views and experiences!

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Harald,

Am Donnerstag 06 Juni 2024 12:12:00 schrieb Harald Welte:
> The most annyoing and persistent example in my personal / professional
> spehre is the https://openairinterface.org/ who use a custom licens that
> all experts I have asked persistently call not compatible with either OSI
> nor DFSG.

thanks for the example!

> I would suggest to have stewards like FSF, Debian, OSI and others to
> have some kind of process by which a given software project can be
> audited with a resulting "authoritative" statement that what they do is
> neither Free Software nor Open Source Software.

At least with FSFE you can ask us in public (like here)
or via the contact point for licence-questi...@fsfe.org
(see https://fsfe.org/about/contact.en.html)

That is not an "authoritative" statement of course,
but just calling out may not be enough and might even
be advertisment for a missbehaving company.
In my personal experience distributing the information
is another thing, like adding it to the Wikipedia page
if the software has one or bringing it to the attention of distributions
or other users.

Best Regards,
Bernhard


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"Digitalzwang" with German Bahncard (Re: eIDAS 2.0 directive and free Android variants)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Thomas,

Am Dienstag 12 Dezember 2023 17:43:57 schrieb Thomas Doczkal:
> On 12/12/23 11:56, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> > Just read today that German's railway company will move
> > from a plastic card to their app for their requent rider card. 

> can you please share the source of information.

there was plenty of reporting (in German):

https://www.heise.de/news/Digitalisierung-Bahncards-der-Deutschen-Bahn-zukuenftig-nur-noch-in-der-DB-App-9569817.html
https://netzpolitik.org/2023/deutsche-bahn-schritt-fuer-schritt-gegen-das-recht-auf-analoges-leben/
https://taz.de/App-Pflicht-bei-der-Bahncard/!5975936/

"Digitalzwang" is a term describing that people are forced to go digital.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Council of Europe's IT is on Microsoft

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,
looking through some public tenders, I found one [1]
from the Council of Europe and their "development kit" says:

  The application back-end is built in .NET Core 

  SQL Server 2019 must be used for development purposes.

from  DGA/DIT/DTK(2023)07 [2]

which states

  This document presents the Developer's Toolkit, which defines the technical
  requirements for application development at the Council of Europe's
  Directorate of Information Technology (DiT).

so we get some insights in the IT environment in this institution (which is 
seperate from the EU). They use Microsoft's products and the desktop, the 
servers and the cloud, and applications can only be developed using those 
tools.

While .NET Core and its compiler and VSCodium ware meanwhile Free Software,
the database is proprietary.

Bernhard

[1]
https://www.coe.int/en/web/portal/-/31-january-2024-2023/ao/93-development-of-the-new-online-system-for-the-management-of-the-grants-of-the-european-youth-foundation-of-the-council-of-europe
[2] COE_DEVELOPER_TOOLKIT.pdf
https://rm.coe.int/8-coe-developer-toolkit/native/1680ada90e

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Re: eIDAS 2.0 directive and free Android variants

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Mateusz,

Am Montag 20 November 2023 19:35:32 schrieb Mateusz Jończyk:
> I would like to point to a particular problem with using free software
> variants of the Android operating system (LineageOS, etc.): namely
> proprietary apps that detect if the phone's software is modified (by
> rooting or installing custom ROMs) and then refuse to run if it is so.

yes, this is a huge problem. Thanks for pointing it out.
I already heard and read about this in a few FSFE contexts. I think there are 
quite a few people who want to get active on this. Help with that is welcome 
of course.

> Google makes this easy with its DRM mechanism called Google Play Integrity.
>
> This is particularly problematic with software that is important in daily
> life, for example banking [1] and government-provided apps.

Banking is a sore spot as almost all people will need banking.
It seem that using a seperate hardware device still works with some banks.

But the general trend to only offer some services with proprietary apps is 
worrysome. Not just for software freedom, but also for people without a 
smartphone at all. (Just read today that German's railway company will move 
from a plastic card to their app for their requent rider card. :( )

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Cloud Storage service provider with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Lionel, Joseph, Matthias,

thanks for your additional hints towards Nextcloud service providers. :)

I'm still not decided because Nextcloud is way too much software
for just needing a "network drive" with a bit of storage.
And the extra software parts needs to be maintained somehow.
If I'd be going for nextcould I would try to find a service provider
that pays a bit to nextcloud.

As for the pure remote filesystem clouds my list is
  * https://internxt.com/drive 
(claims to have published Free Software https://github.com/internxt )

(not known if they run Free Software on the backend and frontend (if neeeded)) 
for the next three:

  * hetzner.com/storage/storage-box
  * Strato Hidrive 
  * Dt. Telekom Magenta Cloud 

Suggestions for pure remote file storage (without Nextcloud or similiar larger 
software packages) are still very welcome.
(As always in Europe and Free Software friendly.)

Regards,
Bernhard

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Nextcloud payable providers that a partners (was: Cloud Storage service provider with Free Software?))

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Sonntag, 29. Oktober 2023, 20:24:35 CET schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> Again interesting why https://nextcloud.com/partners/ does not list them.

And https://nextcloud.com/sign-up/ lists different ones than the partners,
but maybe because the offer gratis accounts and they are just "certified 
providers". 

So it seems harder than necesary to find a Nextcloud partner that offers a 
paid offers for home use.

Anyway if I would recommend going with Nextcloud (which seems a bit overkill 
for a bit of cloud storage) I would want to pay a reasonable free for it and 
that the company participates in and funds Nextcloud development. ;)

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Cloud Storage service provider with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Herbert,

Am Sonntag, 29. Oktober 2023, 20:11:31 CET schrieb Herbert Thielen:
> what about https://murena.com/cloud/ ?

ah, good idea I had forgotten that they also had a cloud storage option
(using Nextcloud on Hetzner) and are based in Paris.
I wonder why the Nextcloud partner recommendation did not show them.
 
> Or https://www.hostsharing.net/loesungen/datencloud/ ?

Seems a bit more expensive at first look, also Nextcloud,
but it is a cooperative based in Hamburg.
Again interesting why https://nextcloud.com/partners/ does not list them.

Thanks for both ideas, Herbert!
Bernhard

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Re: Will CRA further encourage subscription models?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Nico,

Am Dienstag, 24. Oktober 2023, 08:28:26 CET schrieb Nico Rikken:
> What do you think? Is there are a trend towards subscription models?

yes there is. :)
Of course software vendors will have to maintain the software and a 
subscription model could match that cost curve.
However with proprietary software, the problem is that your data is kept 
captive and if you had just wanted to use the software for a year (let us say 
for your studies) and then you need to subscribe forever just to fully access 
your thesis documents.

> How does that affect user freedom?

A bit. Like you I believe it is a bad development if used for proprietary 
software. I can be a good one, if used for Free Software.

Like even if you have a long enduring licence for a proprietary product, you 
probably need to buy a new one if they move to a new major version or you to a 
new operating system or device.

So the key is using an open standard dataformat, for where there will be 
several applications that could handle your data in the future.

> Does the planned CRA encourage the trend towards subscription models?

No, it will have other chilling effects on Free Software development and 
software development in general, I think, because the responsibility can still 
be shifted to the producer of components too easily (which usually is not the 
big comany that policy makers wanted to get to take responsibility).

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Cloud Storage service provider with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,

is there a cloud storage provider for private people that offers
a few GiByte for a reasonable fee, is a European company that hosts in Europe 
and is very Free Software friendly?

Got asked that by someone and did not find many provider easily.

Found https://cloud.tab.digital/ from Latvia that offers Nextcloud
for one user starting with 128 GByte at 60€/year
or 72€/year 80 Gbyte for more users.

Found https://internxt.com/drive from Spain with 200 GB for 42€/year
claiming that stuff is Free Software https://internxt.com/de/open-source
They look less serious with a currently large introductory deal and a lifetime 
option (which cannot really work as costs will occur forever).
Does anyone have experiences with this company, it software and services?

In Germany there is also Magenta Cloud and Strato which do not seem to be
very Free Software friendly though. And 
https://mailbox.org/en/services#cloud-storage which does not seem to be 
available separately.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Request for help making https://pkg.go.dev/ REUSE compatible

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 14 Juli 2023 15:47:10 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> This is a point where help is needed, to spread the use of Free Software
> by the REUSE standard, is any of you into Go?

If you want to spread the request for help, I've made a fedivers version:

  https://social.tchncs.de/@ber/111052089129903610

> Here is the technical issue that I've found:
>   https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40586

If you happen to have a gihub account (and not using https://heptapod.net/
or https://codeberg.org/ exclusively) you could like the request
so that Go devs note that people find it important.

Note that the example I've added last to the issue is one repos that we from 
my company Intevation have mainly contributed to, because I know that we do 
not have plans to just change the status regarding the markings. Others just 
fell back to use the non-REUSE compliant way of marking the license. So if 
you could add more good examples to that issue, that would be cool as well.

Thanks,
Bernhard

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Request for help making https://pkg.go.dev/ REUSE compatible

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi eyerybody,

when marking your files nicely with REUSE 3.0
so automatic parsing of licenses and copyright holders is possible

The official Go package directory put you on a disadvantage:
Your documentation will not be shown for "licensing reasons".

Of course, it is not a problem of the license, but that their parser
does not seem to process the REUSE headers and the LICENSES/ directory.

This is a point where help is needed, to spread the use of Free Software
by the REUSE standard, is any of you into Go?

Here is the technical issue that I've found:
  https://github.com/golang/go/issues/40586

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: [Ebook] Contribute to open source: the right way 3rd edition

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Daniele,

Am Montag 05 September 2022 10:56:22 schrieb Daniele "Mte90" Scasciafratte:
> I am just writing there, hoping that is not spam, that I published the
> third edition of my free and open source book "Contribute to open source:
> the right way 3rd edition".

it is cool that you put in the effort to share your insights and to help 
to teach more people doing software engineering in the Free Software world!

> 
https://daniele.tech/2022/09/contribute-to-open-source-the-right-way-3rd-edition/
>
> I am open to feedback of course :-)

Thus I flipped the pages to give you some feedback.

a) Found a reference to producingoss by Karl Fogel.
   Expected that, good!
   "Other Resources" would deserve its own section
   not in "Conclusion" I'd suggest.

b) The starting chapter "How to read this book" did not answer
   what it promissed. It it about "What you will find in this book"
   and "The motivation to write the book". Maybe rename it.

c) The next chapter is more like a personal story. Is it really
   necessary to understand the right way to contribute to 
   Free Software Initiatives? My suggestion: give a clear
   hint to skip that section, unless being interested in a 
   personal story.

d) Note that from looking at a certain piece of software
   its status of being "Open Source" or "Free Software" is the same.
   It is the motivation why use one of the two terms that differs.
   (Free Software is older and stressed the political and ethical aspects.
   Open Source is younger and stresses the "practical" aspects more.
   Actually from your chapter about your philosphy I'd say using
   "Free Software" as term would be closer to your personal take. ;)
   
Hope that feedback is somewhat useful!

Regards
Bernhard

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Re: Criticisms and choices

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

to me your statements are too general to lead to more insights.
You draw specific conclusions from observations made on a much larger scale,
so I cannot see a valid chain of arguments.
The follow paragraph is an example, but others display the same problem.

Am Mittwoch 16 März 2022 16:33:05 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> There's a pervasive attitude in Free Software thanks to the influence of
> broader commercial and social culture, particularly American-style
> capitalism,

A lot of Free Software initiatives are located around the world, 
e.g. KDE is very strong in Europe. 

Here are some numbers on geographic distribution of Free Software contributers
and it shows that the US is contributing less then a fourth (<25%)
so it is 75% from the rest of the world. 
(See table 1 of Wachs, et. al 2020 [1])

To me it is unlikely and unplausible that "American-style capitalism"
is the decisive influence of a "pervasive attitude" in the Free Software 
movement and leads to

> where there apparently has to be a winner and, therefore, losers. 

For communication software like instant messangers (and chat rooms)
this can also be explained by the
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
and it is not limited to Free Software or software.

And it is very natural. Your personal choice is under pressure if many of your 
peers or people you want to communicate with are on a certain platform.
So even without any suggested special attitude there is a competition.
And competition can be a good thing as it creates choice.
(It can also be a bad thing, this depends on more factors, I won't expand on 
this here and yet, just explain why your argument is not conclusive.)

Hope it is helpful to see why most of your writings do not convince me and 
they are often not specific enough to be able to answer them without a lot of 
time and research. 
 
I'd profit from shorter contribution that cover more specific details
or arguments drawn on your knowledge.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

[1] Johannes Wachs, Mariusz Nitecki, William Schueller, Axel Polleres,
The Geography of Open Source Software: Evidence from GitHub,
Technological Forecasting and Social Change,
Volume 176,
2022,
121478,
ISSN 0040-1625,
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121478.

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Re: Help with gathering resources for how to learn programming for children book

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Michael,
thanks for sharing your experiences.

Am Dienstag 26 Oktober 2021 18:38:20 schrieb Michael McMahon:
> Around the age of 10, I would switch them away from drag and drop
> languages to Python or Lua if they were inclined through modifying
> simple games and modifying Minetest mods.

Reading and writing is an important precondition of course.
So is logical thinking and having fun with puzzles.

Do you have experience with
  https://github.com/codecombat/codecombat
and the service based on it?
What I found good is that they were available in German.

So the local language matters a lot, because most children cannot do enough 
English at 10 years.

Anyone experiences or even research about board games that should prepare for 
coding, like
  https://www.thinkfun.com/type/coding-games/

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Youth Hacking 4 Freedom

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Montag 11 Oktober 2021 16:36:56 schrieb Daniele "Mte90" Scasciafratte:
> they need mentors maybe the new generations need more mentors compared to
> before as the technology is more complex then before?

Yes.

Also when I've started early, there were less deep story computer games
and online social media. Those are very attractive and I see many young people
liking computer and technology, but on the contents level (like competitive 
gaming or influencing). So believe there is a difference of mainstream 
context. Being nerdy and geeky is something different today then in was for 
ten, twenty, thirty or forty years ago.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Guides/Howtos about how to upstream a feature?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi friends of Free Software,

just did a small search to see if there are guides out there that explain how 
to give a change to a Free Software product. Do you know good ones?

This would be about
 * Open a issue or discussion about the feature or fix.
 * Write up arguments (technical details, what users are interested in)
 * How to contribute code

It should be general (so not specific to a code hosting platform or a Free 
Software product or community) and if possible from a credible source (one 
where the potential conflicts of interest are known and one that works mainly 
by journalistic or scientific standards).

Here are few that were _not_ a good match for me:
  * 
https://stackoverflow.blog/2020/08/03/getting-started-with-contributing-to-open-source/
  ( too mich on how to find anything to contribute to, no a specific one.)
  * 
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/resources/open-source-guides/participating-in-open-source-communities/
  (too little on how to actually do it.)

 * https://opensource.guide/how-to-contribute
   (comes from one platform github)

 * https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/bugs.html
   (About writing defect reports.)
 
 * https://producingoss.com/en/index.html
   (From the perspective of producing an FS product and building up a
development community.)


Ideas, anybody?
(Links in German also welcome.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Hosting REUSE tools on Github (Re: Constitution violation with the use of GitHub)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

another comment:

Am Montag 09 August 2021 12:39:37 schrieb André Ockers:
> Taking FSFE's mission seriously, a migration to a platform in the Free
> Software-friendly ecosystem would indeed look to be an appropriate step
> to me.

Our mission with FSFE is to further Free Software, spread knowledge about it 
and its usage. When hosting the REUSE tools there is a conflict between

 * We want contributions wide and spread of the tool to be very easy.
   Thus more people use it to mark their FS source code better.
   Github is (unfortunately) a leading place for people that need
   knowledge about how to mark Free Software files well.
   And who get into contributing to other people's code bases and software
   development at all.

 * We want to promote Free Software tools (and fair platforms).
   Where Github is bad (Grade F in the 2015 FSF evaluation) 
   https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html
   
So going to https://foss.heptapod.net/public would be good for the tool 
promotion goal, but suboptimal for the spread of REUSE. One of the goals has 
to give.

On a higher level: As the reuse tools mainly target people that do not know
about Free Software licensing that well and its use will promote more Free 
Software usage (because licensing and rights ownership becomes easier),
the wider spread would probably have the higher effect on the whole Free 
Software ecosystem than one more repository on a fair platform does for this 
platform. At least this is what I believe the FSFE group doing this, was 
considering, and it is a reasonable choice within the constitution of the 
FSFE in my view.

Today, using https://foss.heptapod.net/ or gitlab maybe be compromises
with a different balance and maybe better. Selbsthosting maybe another,
if we have enough help it maintaining the software and platform to keep it 
uptodate. (Savannah for instance could not keep up over the years.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: RCS a standard to supercede SMS and Threema?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 30 März 2021 08:34:37 schrieb Matthias Kirschner:
> Harald, Thank you for all your insights you shared with us. That was, as
> always, very helpful.

Same from me.

> - if it is operated within a network operators network it is subject to
> lawful interception in every country of the world; so there canˋt be
> E2E-encryption by design

Still it is claimed, this is why it would be interesting to know
if in how far this claim is true or not.

RCS is the most advanced "protocol" that I've heard of, to becoming a standard 
with end-to-end encryption for messenging, despite email. If it isn't RCS,
we are in search what could be (or how it could be conceived as society).

Best,
Bernhard

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Re: RCS a standard to supercede SMS and Threema?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Harald,

Am Freitag, 26. März 2021, 20:38:59 CEST schrieb Harald Welte:
> This means unless you know how to access this separate
> IP tunnel used for IMS from the application processor, you would not be able
> to write a FOSS or 3rd party RCS client.

okay, that is a downside. And also that you cannot use it anonymously
without mobile phone number, I guess.

But having any standard for encrypted messenging seems better than having many 
proprietary walled gardens. So I wonder if we should advertise it more, 
despite the drawbacks.

Am Freitag, 26. März 2021, 20:43:28 CEST schrieb Harald Welte:
> Don't expect to be able to digest all of that very quickly.  Cellular
> Networks are known for their mind-boggling complexity.

8)

thanks for your info!

Bernhard

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#reclaimyourface citizen pedition against mass surveillance

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,
personally I've signed the EU pedition 
  https://reclaimyourface.eu/

to prevent allowing computers to automatically identify
use everywhere. I believe such systems would have a bad effect
on our democratic society here in Europe.

No, it won't be enough to make the software running facial recognition 
software Free Software. (It is good to do so, because it helps researching 
the abilities) Just like it is forbidden by law to read other peoples mail
or listen to their conversations, we probably need a law to rule out
mass surveillance by software.

I hope you'll sign and spread the word, too. 


Best Regards,
Bernhard
ps.: Die privacy laws about conversations and email could also be better.

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Re: Is there a bank that is usable with a Google-free phone?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 19 März 2021 21:01:13 schrieb Jure Varlec:
> A dedicated device is a good option, IMO. 

Yes, this works fine.

> But I find it most interesting 
> that you still have SMS as an option. My bank (and others) used to offer
> the same service, SMS-based second factor. But now, representatives of
> every bank I talked to claim that the EU directive and/or the protocol
> used by credit card companies (3-D Secure, if I'm not mistaken; there
> are several marketing terms for the same thing) require use of something
> stronger, i.e. an app.

We could try to check:
Does the directive forbid SMS as second factor?

Some of the credit cards seem to go to the bank for an additional verification
and some banks seem to be able to use what they always use.

> I'm from Slovenia. I should have noted that fact,
> given that my question is tied to it, I just forgot.

No problem. I just think it may allow some people to comment
on the local conditions in your country (like having a recommendation).

> > Some general advise (which you probably have tried as well):
> >  * Some banks do not know which standard they are actually using,
> >maybe some offer something a general app from f-droid.org can do.
>
> Which standard are you referring to? I know of no bank that would offer
> an open API to access their services. Spurred by your suggestion, I
> searched f-droid once more, and I do see Bankdroid there. Apparently,
> Swedish banks do offer some limited API, but it doesn't seem to go
> beyond showing the balance of your account. Am I missing something that
> will work with 3-D Secure?

I was thinking that for a second factor banks could potentially use
the standards for one time passwords, like HTOP or TOTP
for a random example app see
  https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.cry.otp/
However I don't know if there is any bank offering this.
(If not, I'd be interested to know why.)

[Using the Aurora store on a non-google phone]
(Thanks for correcting my typo, Andrea. :) )

> If my information is current, Magisk and microG don't give you a working
> SafetyNet at this time. And I wouldn't want to rely on it for banking
> anyway because SafetyNet is an arms race so it's bound to break every
> once in a while. There's also the little issue that DroidGuard needs
> some proprietary software; it probably pales in comparison to a bank's
> app itself and the drivers needed to make a phone work, but still ...

True, it is an arms race, but hey, an emulated computer is also a computer
and if this it is mine, I should be able to run the software on it which 
pleases me. So the whole "tamper" protection is a two edged sword at least.

Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: RCS a standard to supercede SMS and Threema?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 18 März 2021 14:54:13 schrieb Giel van Schijndel:
> But until finding a relatively cheap
> way to access the specification's text at least your crypto question
> isn't answerable.

https://www.gsma.com/futurenetworks/universal-profile-thank-you/
seems to have at least the 260 pages
  Official Document RCC.71 - RCS Universal Profile Service Definition Document
but it needs a corresponding
  technical specification
and a search on the website brings up a number of document, e.g.
https://www.gsma.com/newsroom/resources/rcc-20-enriched-calling-technical-specification-v7-0/

It could just be there on the website. :)
Bernhard

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Re: Is there a bank that is usable with a Google-free phone?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Jure,

Am Donnerstag 18 März 2021 20:37:23 schrieb Jure Varlec:
> First, am I the only one who was caught unawares by this situation? 

at least it did not hit me, as my bank can do business without app,
they offered a small photoTAN device and still allow mobileTAN
via SMS as second factor.

> Second, does anyone know a bank that is usable with Free Software only
> and will serve international customers?

It would be good to know in which country of residence you are.

Some general advise (which you probably have tried as well):
 * Some banks do not know which standard they are actually using,
   maybe some offer something a general app from f-droid.org can do.
 * The Auora Store app from f-droid.org can help to download
   apks from the play-store without account. This can be helpful
   in some cases.
 * Safety net maybe required by some apps (thought this does not
   make that much sense, https://www.xda-developers.com/how-to-use-magisk/
   can hide that a phone is rooted to try to get make that check
   (However that did not work last time I've tried.)

Regards,
Bernhard

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RCS a standard to supercede SMS and Threema?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello friends of open standards,

did you know that 
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rich_Communication_Services
is a standard that aims at replacing SMS,
now even with end-to-end encryption upcoming,
where quite a few carriers are supportive?

Open standards are good for Free Software and all users,
because it means there can be independent, interoperable implementations.
This is what many people would want, something that works with almost anyone.

After discovering this yesterday, I wondered, why didn't I hear about this 
before? It seems like a better technical approach, but all I read about 
mostly are proprietary messengers (and a few progessive ones with Free 
Software clients like Threema).

Does somebody know more?
  * Is this really an open standard (like we define it [1])
  * How good is the end-to-end crypto?
  * Why isn't Apple participating yet?
  * Can non-Google phones run it (Like /e/, LineageOS-MicroG or SailfishOS,
iOS)

Best,
Bernhard
ps.: Does someone remember "co -l" "ci" with real rcs? >;)

[1] https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/standards/def.en.html

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Re: FSFE and promoting software quality

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

Am Donnerstag, 18. Februar 2021, 09:26:26 CET schrieb Vitaly Repin:
[GNU coding standards]

> Why not to promote them instead of inventing the wheel with FSFE
> standards? 

As just I did, the GNU coding standards are still a good read for Free 
Software initiatives developing in C and C++. And even for other languages
to see the conventions as inspiration.

This discussion is just about a suggestion and it makes sense to discuss if 
other coding guidelines could be useful. Of course if we were to promote
coding standards, I'd say we would only try to supplement those which are well 
done already, like the GNU coding standards. 

> (And without having any "GNU"-like project being run by FSFE?).

In my opinion - in a strict sense - the GNU project is successfully concluded,
as the original project goals have been reaching in major points.
And then it can be replaced with specific technological initiatives.
FSFE had some smaller technical initiatives in the past (like the technical 
part on the freepdfreader and free your android campaigns) and we'd probably 
start and follow technical initiatives in the future.

> > Again our sister has some nice awards: https://www.fsf.org/awards
> 
> Yep. Why not to have European awards also?

The FSF awards are global, they even were presented in Europe a few times.
We had a document freedom award for many years, to go in the direction of open 
standards. Again, we should see what fits Europe and where is something 
missing in the world of Free Software (and of course, do we have the 
volunteers and the interests to keep this alive for many years, not just 
once.)

> Yep. I think that we can contribute by cooperation with established
> educational organisations and by organizing event with focus on 
> free software in general and software quality dimension in particular.

There has been some cooperation in the past (I'll have to look it up),
this is why I know that it is not easy and a wide field. For most people, the 
quality aspect of software development is not what they are interested in 
initially. And in general higher quality means defining it, measuring it and 
funding it and overal in IT this is often not happening. It feels like in this 
field we are trying to get the basics right. My idea is more along the lines 
to teach and enlight people about the specific quality aspects that a nice 
Free Software and community development can contribute to IT.

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: (F)LOSS stock trading?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

Am Donnerstag 04 Februar 2021 03:25:22 schrieb Jacob Hrbek:
> Looking for a (F)LOSS alternative to Robinhood
> []

a software product could be the app, but for real transactions to work, 
you'd need a broker (some sort of banking service).

It would be quite cool, if there were more  Free Software apps for banking 
services that work with several banking providers and services.
This would need an open standard that those apps and banks provide.
(Maybe there is one already?)

A search on fdroid at least find one Free Software client:
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.liato.bankdroid/

Hmm overall it seems a long way to get applications in source code
that do stock trading like email application can connect to many email
providers.

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: FSFE and promoting software quality

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Vitaly,

Am Mittwoch 17 Februar 2021 09:25:29 schrieb Vitaly Repin:
> I think that FSFE can focus on promoting open source as a way to improve
> software quality.

this is one of the aspects FSFE promotes for the reasons you have outlined.

If we come up with other practical guidelines, even for code, why not?
I considered the GNU coding standards as maintained by FSFE's US based sister
organisation useful https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/index.html
and a capture of conventions that are still helpful today.

(Of course, they had a focus, to build the GNU system consistently. Still they 
are useful beyond this.)

AS FSFE lives a lot from volunteer work, if a group of volunteers would make 
the case for practical guides for creating good Free Software, I guess that 
FSFE would most likely support it.

But back to "promoting software quality":

> What practically can be done?
>
> Couple of ideas:
>
> - FSFE quality award to the open source software projects (based on the
> objective metrics - lint, coverity, relative defects amount etc)

The includes the challenge to get meatures for quality first. In the 
definitions I ran across lint and code coverage are not a good measure.
Again our sister has some nice awards: https://www.fsf.org/awards

> - Educational track. Promote open source as a way to create quality
> software. Online courses, hackatons with quality as one of the focuses etc.

Open to be used as educational example of real code is a quality that we could 
promote more and get more into education. This is a huge task because there 
are many established educational organisations. Anyway a path we should 
pursue.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Antivirus for Android?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello Lucas,

Am Freitag 18 Dezember 2020 11:29:08 schrieb Lucas Lasota:
> a friend has asked me if there would be an "antivirus" or at least an
> app against malware in Android.

there are apps out there that shall help to secure an Android device.
Some help to analyse apps, others try to offer something 
like "antivirus"-functionality. I don't know how effective these apps are.

> What do you think - there are some FOSS alternatives out there or such
> app would not make sense?

App helping mobile device security can be a good idea, I believe, if the apps 
themselfs are good (and do not introduce other problems by themselves which 
has happend in the past with antivirus software.).
However Android security seems to be a complicated topic, as the company doing 
most work on Android earns most of their money by advertising and so they 
want to sell many apps through their play store. This is partly a conflict of 
interest between protecting users and letting app developers do business.

Still overall the main security comes from the installer Android "variant" and 
core components. So you need to at least make sure that you have current 
software for the operating system, including the media stack and browser 
component.

That is hard enough, because most mobile device hardware vendors to not give 
you updates for long. Using third-party rebuilds like LineageOS or 
LineageOS-MicroG can be a way to get updated software again.
So first think about current software, before you think about additional 
security apps.

Some security apps are Free Software (others are not).

Here is one that is Free Software aims for disabling loggers and trackers:
  https://gitlab.com/AuroraOSS/AppWarden/

Here is an Artikel in German by Heise(1) (2020-03-14)
https://www.heise.de/tipps-tricks/Virenscanner-fuer-Android-brauche-ich-das-3872867.html
 
(paywall)

They say (rough summary):
  * Make sure to activate the Google Play Protect 
(the integrated virus scanner) is installed and running.
It shall come and is activated by default. 
Play Store -> Play Protect, check if both is activated.
Since Android 8 also in systems settings.
  * (take the usual precautions)
  * There is no clear answer if antivirus apps are useful or not.
Some security suites offer additional features.

[1] Heise-Verlag is one of the more serious technology publishers in Germany 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_Heise

Another expert publication (in German) by Mike Kuketz writes a lot about
security, privacy and Android:
  
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/android-5-tipps-fuer-mehr-online-privatsphaere-und-sicherheit/
  writes (rough translation):
  It is superfluous to install additional AV-scanner apps.
  Even further, they come with uncalculable risks.

See more about Android from Mike Kuketz, with lots of Free Software Apps to 
increase security:
  https://www.kuketz-blog.de/?s=Android (in German)

So you have two credible sources of advise that come to different conclusions,
with a tendency of not going for antivirus apps on Android, unless you need
something specific. Other security apps, like AFwall or the mentioned above 
are recommened by Kuketz, most of them Free Software, but many only for 
experts.

Personally I'd say: Put energy into getting updates first.
Then into identifying software vendors you really trust and you can pay for.
Next replace proprietary apps with apps from fdroid.org, where you can.
And you've done a lot.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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youtube-dl dev repo barred because of DMCA takedown notice by RIAA

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

youtube-dl is a Free Software command-line program to download videos from 
YouTube and hundereds of other platforms.

The development repository of github has not been barred because
of an DMCA takedown notice by RIAA

The software itself can still be downloaded from its homepage:
   https://yt-dl.org/

What I wonder is, any smartphone or foto-camera could be used to record 
youtube videos and sound which would make them a dual use tools.
And assuming that some platforms and some videos are okay to download, 
this should make youtube-dl a dual use tools as well.

So from my point of view either the development of smartphone and youtube-dl
should be barred or neither of them. 

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Games for online-meetings?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

for groups that now meet online more often, it would be cool to have a few 
games that can be used to just play together and spend time to foster
informal conversations. Mostly be causal games to get a group into it,
without much preparations.

https://skribbl.io/ is an online game, which is proprietary, works nicely
for a group up to 12 people. (Careful: advertisment on the page).

Are there Free Software offerings?
Either Browser based or with installation of clients?
(Even cooler would be if someone could pay for these Free Software games, like 
for "online" "escape" games for which there are some service providers.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Universities and schools with free software

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Tales,

Am Donnerstag 30 Juli 2020 11:22:46 schrieb Tales Tomaz:
> do you know of universities and schools that adopted non-commercial or
> free software solutions during this pandemic? 

there were a couple of examples in Germany.
E.g. the University of Osnabrück adopted BigBlueButton
https://www.rz.uni-osnabrueck.de/homeoffice/bigbluebutton.html (in German)

There were others mentions on fsfe-de (I believe) and on Germany
news portals and magazines.

There were more example. But note that in Germany the education
is in responsibility of the states (not federal government).
And schools themselfs can often chose their own solutions.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Best video conferencing/distance learning tools?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 30 April 2020 20:39:01 schrieb Carsten Agger:
> I'm tempted to go with BigBlueButton - it seems to have everything and
> promises to be easy to install.

You'll be interested in LWN's 
Video conferencing with BigBlueButton
By Jonathan Corbet
April 10, 2020
https://lwn.net/Articles/817146/
(and the companion article about Jitsi, linked there)

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Smartphone as Webcam with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 30 April 2020 22:53:41 schrieb Dmitry Alexandrov:
> Hold on, we are not finished yet. :-)

(-:


[Step: setup USB network connection GNU-System <-> *droid device.]

> > Am Mittwoch 29 April 2020 18:10:22 schrieb Dmitry Alexandrov:
> There is a dozen ways to configure networking in GNU.  Until I know which
> you are using, I canʼt tell you anything but the obvious thing, that youʼll
> have to make sure that _default route_ is bound for wherever you are want
> to.

If this is going to be a general guide, I'll guess that it'll have to support 
network manager and a root command line. What wever Ubuntu does, when you 
plug-in an Android usb device.

> >> Why do you need encryption if you are going to use USB connection?
> >
> > Good point, for USB this is not needed.
>
> Itʼs actually hardly needed for wireless LAN either.

In many situations, traffic on the WLAN is not secure from eavesdropping,
so at least I would feel better with an encrypted default.
(Example situations: WLAN at a drink chocolade shop; still using WPA2 with 
a "weak" password; one of many devices in the local WLAN is rogue.)


[Step: making incoming video/audio stream a device for other apps]

> Have you googled it?  Making RTSP stream into virtual video device is a
> rather common task.  Keywords are ‘v4l2loopback’ and ‘GStreamer’.

Not yet https://metager.de/ ed it, as I was stuck earlier. Short search
did not reveal a howto that was usable right away. (But lots of details, which 
I personally could potentially use, so thanks for the right keywords.)

> Sure, it would be very apt to make whatever youʼll achieve into a
> comprehensive guide. ;-)

I fear I personally won't have the time for this.
(This is why I did ask initially: I had hoped there were guides around 
already.)


[Securing the phones listening network device.]

> In my experience, *droid (LineageOS if distro matters) does not flush
> ‘filter’ table, so it would be fine to just add them at startup.

A search seems to reveal that most *droid devices will not have an iptables
command ready to be used. (old infos from 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/4577268/iptables-in-android )

> But dealing with so complicated and unfriendly system as *droid you never
> can be sure.  I would ask this again at some *droid-related m/l.

:D

Best,
Bernhard

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Re: Smartphone as Webcam with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Dmitry,

thanks for your helpful response!

Am Mittwoch 29 April 2020 18:10:22 schrieb Dmitry Alexandrov:
> "Bernhard E. Reiter"  wrote:

> > https://f-droid.org/de/packages/pl.hypeapp.endoscope/
> > https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.majorkernelpanic.spydroid/
> > they are all a few years old
>
> So what?

this indicates: the chance of this being a less common use case is higher.
Of course there are very good old and stable pieces of software,
so this is just an heuristic.

> > and all offer wifi
> > And no USB solution on sight?
>
> Both of them stream video over RTSP, i. e. over TCP/IP which which is
> medium-agnostic.  So feel free to use USB.

This is a good idea. I lack experience how easy it is to set up
an IP connection between a regular Android phone and a GNU/Linux system.
Do you have good pointers for documentation?
(I wildly guess it is using USB tethering, though I do not want
to use the internet connection of the phone. )


> > but non of them an encrypted stream.
>
> Why do you need encryption if you are going to use USB connection?

Good point, for USB this is not needed.

> > Has somebody seen better instructions for making this work?
>
> I have not tried pl.hypeapp.endoscope but net.majorkernelpanic.spydroid
> have worked out of a box for me.  No instructions needed.

What about connecting this incoming stream to your application, e.g. firefox, 
if you are going to join a jitsi meet or bigbluebutton video conference?
(Just installing jitsi meet app on the phone is often a bad option as elder 
phones will not be able to cope with the several incoming streams from the 
CPU side.)

For me personally, I'll probably get it sorted out at some point.
It would be cool if we had instructions that can be used by more people.

So steps are
 a) make an network connection via USB cable between phone and GNU desktop
 b) run an app like endoscope or spydroid (recommended from fdroid)
 c) protect your network (what needs to be done on the phone? desktop?)
 d) connect incoming stream to application


Am Mittwoch 29 April 2020 19:44:09 schrieb Dmitry Alexandrov:
> Yet, there is thing to be concerned about in your use-case — it is missing
> _authorization_.  And itʼs much more serious issue, since
> net.majorkernelpanic.spydroid listens on _any_ interface — even global if
> your little machine has one.  And it does not provide a user interface to
> configure it the other way.
>
> So youʼd better command a machine, where ‘Spydroid’ will be running, to
> accept connections to its port only from USB (‘rndis’ in *droid lingo). 
> Something like that, if I am not mistaken:
>
>   # iptables -I INPUT ! -i rndis+ -p tcp --dport 8086 -j REJECT
>   # ip6tables -I INPUT ! -i rndis+ -p tcp --dport 8086 -j REJECT

As spydroid will run on the android device, this would probably need another 
application to manipulate the firewall rules?

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Smartphone as Webcam with Free Software?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,
with webcams being hard to come by right now,
and many people having smartphone or even lying around old one.
Does somebody know how to use an android smartphone as webcam
with Free Software?

On F-droid I've found
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/pl.hypeapp.endoscope/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.majorkernelpanic.spydroid/
https://f-droid.org/de/packages/com.dngames.mobilewebcam/

they are all a few years old and all offer wifi,
but non of them an encrypted stream.
And I don't know how to couple something that I can receive
with vlc or so from those app, to the incomung video system
my a GNU/Linux system.

And no USB solution on sight?

Has somebody seen better instructions for making this work?

Best Regards,
Bernhard


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Re: COVID19-Tracing/-Tracking App in Singapore under GPL-3.0

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 10 April 2020 12:00:34 schrieb Jan Wey.:
> Singapore decided to release their Tracing-App under GPL-3.0 [0], which
> obviously would establish better trust and would benefit other countries
> and regions as well, as the software (or parts of it) could be re-used,
> being in line with PMPC[1] as well as the FSFE's call to release any
> COVID19 Tracking App under a Free Software License.

https://github.com/opentrace-community

Am Samstag 11 April 2020 05:09:06 schrieb Sebastian Silva:
> I did a quick search and found an article by the Singaporean government
> explaining their logic, which I shared also.
>
> https://www.tech.gov.sg/media/technews/six-things-about-opentrace

Yes, I think it helps to share more infos.

Note that in Germany is a large debate about a possible app ongoing,
with news almost daily. If you want a good coverage by folks you know what 
Free Software and privacy is, I can recomment netzpolitik.org.

E.g.
https://netzpolitik.org/2020/faq-corona-apps-die-wichtigsten-fragen-und-antworten-zur-digitalen-kontaktverfolgung-contact-tracing-covid19-pepppt-dp3t/
an FAQ where it say under 10.:

"Singapur, Österreich und Island haben dabei gute Erfahrungen mit quelloffener 
Software, dezentraler Speicherung und der Beschränkung auf die 
Bluetooth-Funktion gemacht"

rough translation
"Singapore, Austria and Island have made good experiences with Free Software,
decentral storage and limitation on bluetooth functionality."

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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FS tools for hackathons? (Re: COVID-19 Hackathons: Only Free Software creates global solutions)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 10 April 2020 08:59:55 schrieb Jens Lechtenboerger:
> I wonder about running a hackathon with free software.  Lots seem to
> rely on Devpost, whose piracy policy I find unacceptable (see “Other
> Information” and “Information Collected by or Through Third-Party
> Advertisers/Remarketers”):
> https://info.devpost.com/privacy

What does devpost do?

> Any free alternatives?

Any sort of wiki, plus email, etherpads would be enough to organise
a hackathon, wouldn't it?

Or maybe just hack or try many Free Software tool, e.g. with
hosting a https://sandstorm.io/ instance?

Best,
Bernhard



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rich services dominating in media (Re: Wiki page about Free Software for remote working)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 31 März 2020 21:29:12 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> the media narrative seems to be dominated by technologies like
> videoconferencing, "feature-rich" real-time chat, 

To understand why people long for those features, we have to look at the 
people and their ideas of workflow.
If you want to do your meeting online now, you are accustomed
towards seeing and hearing your communicatio partners, reading their 
communication on all levels. You also see the shared boards, printout,
scribbles, looking at screens and projections and more. It is quite 
understandable for people to want much of these channels as possible
as they are an important factor to raise the chance of successful meetings.
(There used to be a research field called "computer supported cooperative 
work" (CSCW) where those basic needs had be examined starting a few decades 
earlier.)

> and other things that happen to have prominent and opportunistic 
> proprietary vendors looking for new customers.

Yes, proprietary vendors jump a lot and people are lacking time to consider 
the choices. And  providiers often have more capacity.
There are Free Software solutions as well, though.


> Yet successful distributed work can take place without these proprietary
> products. Indeed, some of the currently-hyped solutions are possibly some
> of the least efficient ways of getting work done, as some people are
> finding out.

And some solutions are actually delivering more than what people had before.

> Meanwhile, asynchronous communications like e-mail keep 
> getting the job done for many, despite continuing threats from the forces
> of consolidation and monopolisation towards independent mail (and Web)
> service providers.

It would be very cool to have an article to show how other collboration 
methods like wikis, fileshareing and email can help remote working.
However it must be non-lecturing in tone to be useful in my view.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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IRC ? Re: Wiki page about Free Software for remote working

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 31 März 2020 17:30:12 schrieb Sandro Santilli:
> > https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/FreeSoftware4RemoteWorking
>
> Under the Chat/InstantMessaging app IRC is completely missing, while
> still being the most stable and ubiquitous system for instant
> messaging ?

Can you back that statement up?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Relay_Chat
has 
  IRC usage has been declining steadily since 2003, losing 60% of its users 
  (from 1 million to about 400,000 in 2012) and half of its channels (from 
  half a million in 2003).

the technical standards and usual deployed privacy support seem
to be of less quality than XMPP. Again from the wikipedia entry above:

  As of 2016, a new standardization effort is under way under a working group
  called IRCv3, which focuses on more advanced client features like instant 
  notifications, better history support and improved security. As of 2019, 
  no major IRC networks have fully adopted the proposed standard.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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sandstorm.io easier hosting of Free Software collaboration tools?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,
just discovered https://sandstorm.io/

Self description:
  Sandstorm is an open source project built by a community of volunteers with 
the goal of making it really easy to run open source web applications -- 
either on your own private server, or on our community-run servers.

Does anybody has experienes with it?
How helpful is it? What are the alternatives? 
Should we promote it more?

Best,
Bernhard

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Re: Anonymous Voting System

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Montag 30 März 2020 16:28:48 schrieb Michael McMahon:
> With free software, you can fork a project if you can find the code.

True enough, "Free Software products never die, they only sleep". :)

Could you find the code?

> It still seems like a valid concept as long as it does not scale to
> politics.

Personally I guess that there were new scientific research in the last
20 years.

Bernhard

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Re: Anonymous Voting System

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Jan,

Am Montag 23 März 2020 22:01:53 schrieb Jan Wey.:
> - Let a moderator give it a list of pseudonyms via some admin-interface
> - print one of the 25 names, when opening a second URL. This should
> consider, that some names may be taken by others already.
>
> Does anyone here know of such tool OR has a better idea to organize an
> anonymous online vote/poll?

it is possible to do this kind of pseudo-anonymous (aka nameless) voting with

  https://github.com/OpenSlides/OpenSlides

(Disclosure: My company Intevation is the main driver of the Free Software 
product OpenSlides and also offers commercial hosting and support for it.)

Check out the https://demo.openslides.org (will be in Englisch if your Browser 
is set to English, except for a few texts). If  - for instance - you go to 
the "Motions", select a motion until you are in the details view for it.
You can "+ New Vote". In the upcoming dialog, you can select the voting type
and the group that is elegible to vote. Delegates have their personal account
with their name to follow the assembly. Now you have two possibilities:

a) just use the "non-nominal" vote and trust the security of the system.
(you'll get a warning that this cannot fully guarantee that this is anonymous, 
we'll still work on the best phrasings for this.)

b) You hand out an number of pseudo accounts per random selection as a second 
account to all of your delegates. Assign it to a new group, call it something 
like "delegates-for-voting". Then you do a "nominal" vote with the new group,
publish it, so that all can check. And if the vote is accepted, you can make
a printout and later delete the votes with the list of pseudonyms from the 
online system.

Okay, this was the quick run-through.
If you have questions, we've also send you a personal mail in German. :)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Voting and Free Software

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,

Am Freitag 15 November 2019 12:24:49 schrieb Harald Welte:
> I wholeheartedly agree with any criticism of so-called electronic (in
> fact rather: software defined) voting.

meanwhile there was another LWN article:

Cryptography and elections
https://lwn.net/Articles/810465/
By Jake Edge, January 28, 2020 

covering an LCA talk by Vanessa Teague with the take-away:

"Transparent and verifiable electronic elections are technically feasible, but 
for a variety of reasons, the techniques used are not actually viable for 
running most elections—and definitely not for remote voting." 

> In fact, I find it highly problematic not only in public elections, but
> I also find it very problematic for any kind of democratic voting even
> within "private" entities.

There is a company in Germany (sorry seems to be German only)
  https://www.polyas.de/online-wahlen/sicherheit
they claim to have a Common-Criteria certification from the German
Federal Office for Information Security, number BSI-CC-PP-0037-2008

From my experience the crypto expertise by the BSI is often
fine and transparent. (Disclosure: my company has won several public tenders 
from the BSI in the last years - only doing work on Free Software). 
I've never looked into this certification.

Did some independent researchers take a look at Polyas' approaches
already?

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Experiences with BigBlueButton or CodeMD?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Christian,

Am Sonntag 22 März 2020 02:25:23 schrieb Christian Busse:
> Yes, I'm using CodiMD quite frequently, but don't have a definite opinion
> on it yet. It is great for its core functions, but I am missing
> functionalities that would allow long-term management of individual notes.
> Whether the pros and cons are relevant for you will depend quite a bit on
> your use case:

thanks, it helps me, so I believe it will also help others.
(Usually I would just send this email to you personally, but in this case I 
want to encourage others to also help each others.)

Getting credible experience reports from people that know about Free Software
is important to me, because most other experience reports lack this angle
or look outright like marketing.

Regards,
Bernhard
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Experiences with BigBlueButton or CodeMD?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi again,

about remote working tools with Free Software,
just recently saw

* https://github.com/bigbluebutton/bigbluebutton
  (web conferencing system for online learning) 
* https://github.com/codimd/server
  (Realtime collaborative markdown notes on all platforms.)

Does anybody has experiences with those tools?

Regards,
Bernhard

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List of payable jitsi hosters?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello friends of Free Software,

do you know a good list of jitsi hosters
that people can just book accounts or a server for their organisation?

Similiar to https://wiki.mumble.info/wiki/Hosters ?

=== already found
  the official way -> FAQ -> Where can I get commercial support?
  -> https://community.jitsi.org/c/users/paid-work Forum
  ist just a forum for asking. Could be browsed for answers.

  https://github.com/jitsi/jitsi-meet/wiki/Jitsi-Meet-Instances
  is a list of public instances, but no info about if they are
  offering payable accounts/servers?

  Search engines find a few offers, some companies offer
  individual services and some couple it with proprietary
  elements. It would be cool to have a list for ready-bookable
  offers. :)


== Remote working with Free Software

Given that more people are looking into remote working,
there is a need for good Free Software solutions.
Quite a few organisations already start to collect link lists,
though it is not easy as just a list is not enough in many cases.
(FSFE started something at 
https://wiki.fsfe.org/Activities/FreeSoftware4RemoteWorking
but it needs more work.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Supporting more PDF forms in Free Software products (Re: Going beyond advocacy)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,

to focus on the PDF form handling:

Am Freitag 31 Januar 2020 17:29:18 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> Having been sent a PDF form that needed completing, I rediscovered the
> apparent lack of support in Free Software applications for performing this
> task.

> I ended up with the feeling that it would not be possible to perform
> an important task using Free Software. 
> No amount of advocacy would remedy this situation. 

An example to the contrary:
The tax authority of the German state "Lower Saxony" (almost 8 Million 
inhabitants) is using GNU/Linux desktops in about 12,000 workplaces.
Now the current government coalition plans to switch to Windows, this is 
political and can be influenced by advocay. As documented on our public 
German speaking FSFE list, it is unclear how this change came to be, probably 
advocay from the different direction, see the threat (in German):
https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/fsfe-de/2018-August/010390.html
 
This public tax authority contracted my company Intevation a few years ago 
to improve form handling in a few aspects in okular (and the libraries it is 
using), which we did.
The connection is: If they were planning to use okular even longer, they would 
contract more improvements to PDF handling. They don't because of the 
political process of being forced to go to Windows.


Am Dienstag 11 Februar 2020 23:22:59 schrieb Paul Boddie:
>  For all I know, my experience was based on a misunderstanding

PDF is not a good format, in my view. There are several different ways of 
handling form elements and the ability to embed some active javascript 
elements is not a good choice for an open standard for simple forms.
PDF also does not adhere to the "minimal principle" 
(https://fsfe.org/activities/os/minimalisticstandards.en.html).

So "misunderstandings" are likely, computer usage is complicated and just 
getting to understand what would be a good next step for which user group 
requires a lot of effort to begin with.

It is hard work to "track" what the proprietary developers of the PDF format 
do and it needs people that do this for years, which means they need to be 
financed. We at Intevation were toying with how this can be done a few time, 
but haven't found something promissing yet.
Maybe a crowd-funding for some features? But the work can probably not be 
estimated well enough. A pay-as-you-want windows build of okular? Maybe, but 
it needs serious time invest and expertise.

The problem is: Getting somewhere with better form handling in PDF, we are not 
looking at a 20 k€ project, but it would need years with funding around 200 
k€ per year or more to get somewhere.

Best Regards,
Bernhard
Disclaimer: As co-owner of Intevation I have a "commercial" interest to help 
making more Free Software (that is the only software we make) and earn a 
living and pay my employees as fair as I can. (It should be obvious from this 
post, but just in case. ;) )

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Re: suggestions/request for fsfe

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Veronica,

Am Freitag 10 Januar 2020 15:50:47 schrieb V F:
> Of course, ideally, a company should do so that it lasts
> longer - but then profit motives come along and ruin any
> honesty/transparency.

any organisation has to be run economically in the sense
that the incoming money must be enough to cover the costs.
It's the same principal situation for profits and for non-profits.

A company can be kept honest in many ways, one is governmental
checking by laws, directivies and public servants.
Another possibility is scrutiny by the public or journalists.

As most people are not willing to let the state run everything
and they also do not want to rely on volunteer work, we need more
company- or non-profit-backed offerings with Free Software.

> Sure you can teach or bring awareness. 

Being able to decide which offering is better or worse, -
for example towards personal privacy of data or public effect -
is a necessary precondition. 

One of FSFE's main efforts therefore goes into increasingly enable others to 
evaluate if a software solution is Free Software or not and how it will 
affect them or their group. In best tradition of  "Enlightenment is man's 
emergence from his self-incurred immaturity (Unmündigkeit)." [1]

> Having 'actionable' solutions is paramount if one needs to provide it
> for 'end-user'. 

There are already offerings that are better than others, and if you know how 
to decide between them, there is much which can be done right away.

An example https://posteo.de has won the German Test.de's test for privacy 
aware mail, contact and calender providers (together with mailbox.org).
Their offering is 12 €/year and can replace less privacy-including offerings.
(Both Posteo and Mailbox.org use a lot of Free Software, but their offering is 
of course not perfect.)

Using LineageOS on your Android Phone or (LineageOS-MicroG) is a way to get 
longer lasting security updates without a need to have a user-account with a 
big player. You can use DavX5 from the fdroid.org store and have a lot of 
Free Software and more independence this way.

> Honestly, the pages of 'print' material that every 
> time I find our chapter distributes and later I find 'most' of them
> going to 'bin' in the corner of the street 

If you see this happen, please report back on the specific
circumstances and what can be improved. Maybe it is not the right flyer
for the occasion or a different approach towards people is useful.
Many of our local groups are successful by using the FSFE internal channels
to exchange experiences.

Chosing the fitting one from our our campaigns is helpful  
  https://fsfe.org/campaigns/campaigns.en.html
Currently a lot of people are interested in our public money, public code
information.

Our PDFReaders campaign and the Free your Android flyers were also popular
a few years before and more possibilities did arise as a result.

> Instead, build a virtual server may be more eco-friendly.

If this would be clear cut case. We could do so with FSFE.
And we've run services from FSFE a couple of times before.
Often we were in the way of something better. So the idea is to increase the 
chances that something better comes up, make sure people recognise it so they 
will finance it sufficiently to enjoy a Free Software and privacy aware 
service for a long time.

Regards,
Bernhard

[1] 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Answering_the_Question%3A_What_Is_Enlightenment%3F

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Re: Podcast about mobile phone communication with Harald Welte

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 20 Dezember 2019 19:35:55 schrieb Matthias Kirschner:
> about mobile phone communication and the general
> status of Free Software in this area:
> https://fsfe.org/news/podcast/episode-3.en.html

Is there a chance to get transcripts?

Best,
Bernhard

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Old process (Re: FSFE-in-2020: Who are we?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 09 Oktober 2019 10:02:16 schrieb Mirko Boehm:
> So let me rephrase this in
> simple speech: The FSFE-in-2020 ground to a halt because the decision
> makers (our GA and the president) did not prioritise it 

They did indeed not, but for good reasons (which you don't seem to agree to,
which is fine, though calling an explanation attempt bullshitting is something 
I don't get.).

> and have no interest in the increased accountability and transparency
> that would inevitably follow from any sort of modernisation of FSFE.

In my point of view it wouldn't follow automatically from modernisation.
Also the FSFE-in-2020 process was not aiming for increased accountability and 
transparency.  If a process is taking a path that is not bound to get to the 
results, I think it is important to modify or stop it.

Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: How FSFE is organised

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 09 Oktober 2019 15:16:23 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> I am sorry for the confusion here. In fact, I wasn't referring to the FSFE
> with my remark

Thanks for clarifying. I think it is clear that FSFE volunteers have other
professional lives and need to earn their living. Many of them are still 
related to Free Software and thus FSFE may report on their activities
and these lists can be used to chat and talk about all Free Software 
activities. If someone mails here, it can be completely unrelated to FSFE 
itself.

> Although I wasn't referring to the FSFE, I do wonder whether anyone else
> feels that there are certain common themes involved. For instance, a lack
> of transparency and a lack of responsiveness to genuine concerns.

In my observation the FSFE tries to address all genuine concerns and
does get a grade B ("good" over the average) on transparency compared
to a large group of organisation and charities. We can and should improve.
In addition our balances are checked by the tax office, we must use the money
for our constitution.

What we do *not have to do* is: 
 * Bring in specific decision processes (e.g. ones that are too heavy)
 * Let everbody join
 * Record and publish everything that is said or written
  for our decision processes.

Coming to opinions need protected spaces (even in governments), not everybody 
likes this, but the majority in FSFE and democracies in Europe do.

Most of our supported - as I take it - do not want the FSFE to become
an organisation that has elaborate public decision processes, they want us to
to campaigns like "public money public code", support that Free Software can 
be written, used and people, organisations and government are educated about 
it. We also are a counter weight to commercial interest lobbying that serves 
interest of single individuals.

> > The conference is mainly a meeting of the legal network, see
> > https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ln.en.html
> > and we report on it each year.

> The problem when reconciling this activity with an organisation seeking to
> cultivate some kind of membership, community or broad support is in
> convincing this latter group that such an activity, from which they are
> largely excluded, is working in their interests and deserves to be part of
> the same organisation.

The people participating in the legal network are not necessarily members
of FSFE (association and social group). FSFE provides a space for them to 
exchange, while at the same time FSFE can participate, which is a bit of 
influence. So we get a bit of influence without costs about what legal 
experts that have an interested in Free Software are talking about and what 
their organisations (if they represent them) are taking a focus in.
To me this sounds like a good thing.

> In other words, when told that the organisation has "got this" (meaning
> that it is providing some kind of solution), the supporters can only assume
> and trust that the outcomes will be beneficial to them. 

Or read the reports and look at other actions of FSFE close the the legal 
field, like:
Router Freedom https://fsfe.org/activities/routers/ Rooting keeps your 
warranty https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/legal/flashingdevices.en.html

> Meanwhile, other organisations with arguably less "democracy"
> pursue such activities transparently and let their supporters know 
> what they have been saying and doing.

Please make an example here.
FSFE publishes more and more stuff over the years as far as I observe.
(Because this is also a matter of bandwidth.)

> The impression this leaves is that there is the VIP track, with all the
> benefits and a degree of opacity within which conflicts of interest could
> easily develop, and then there is the ordinary supporter track. 

The "VIP track" is called "volunteer". :)
Go to one of the local meetings, help with a booth,
join the social group FSFE and you see that you'll learn much more details
about the many things that we do.  

https://fsfe.org/events/events.en.html

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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How FSFE is organised (was: Organisation democracy)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

Am Freitag 27 September 2019 18:00:28 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> It seemed to me when I last looked at any minutes from FSFE meetings that a
> lot of people eligible to vote were either delegating their votes to the
> leadership or just not voting at all. 

those formal meetings of the association are best done briefly.
This keeps the minutes small and makes it easy for the tax and courts
to verify that it is formally fine. This is good as it is a formal framework.
The actually work is not in different times and places.

> Admittedly,
> the rest of us don't tend to do things like park $10 destined for
> improving Free Software in a bank account for four years 

This is book-keeping, the association is the formal employer of people
and because some incomes and costs for FSFE's mission come unplanned, 
we want to make sure there is a reserve so we can be a proper employer.
Because FSFE is a public charity we must give a reason for the reserve.

> and not communicate with the people whose money that was,
> but apart from small things like that.

People trust us to treat other people fine, this includes being a good 
employers, paying all releveant social security taxes and a lot more.
I don't believe we should communicate all those details which are "normal" for 
an organisation that has a few employees.

On the scale of what FSFE does, we write, microblog and even video a lot,
this increases over time. For this year I've quick-counted 26 entries on 
https://fsfe.org/news/news.en.html so far. 

> I think that after a while it becomes tiresome to play the games of
> convincing people supposedly working towards the same goals to step outside
> their comfort zone and to pay attention to matters of genuine concern
> amongst those who support and fund the organisation. 

The main concern of FSFE is furthering Free Software, empower people
and society in the area of software technology. As there are many volunteers 
within FSFE and we are all humans, there are different ideas how to pursue 
this goal. And from them there are directions formed (and asked and 
communicated about). This also means that no all ideas can be followup on 
equally. Still what we as social group FSFE know is evolving, this process is 
never to end for the good, because the world keeps turning.

> Democratic mechanisms  are meant to provide ways of informing
> the leadership and direction of organisations; removing them puts an
> obligation on the organisation to discover whether it is still doing the
> right thing by its supporters. 

FSFE has this obligation anyway, which is good.
Also if our supporters were in the majority going to support non-free 
software, FSFE cannot follow suit because this is outside the limits of our 
constitution.

There are many way how supporters, (previously) external people and folks can 
influence what we (as FSFE) do and where we go. One is to bring up a good 
idea here on the public discussion list or voice it in one of the meetings.

> Now, there was that FSFE-in-2020 survey done a while back. I asked about it
> again in February, but no response was forthcoming. 

Answered now, sorry for the late response, thanks for the reminder.

> (Which brings me to the matter of FSFE's opaque legal conference that may
> or may not be funded by the supporters, out of which they get a list of
> vague topic headings and reassurances that it was a worthwhile exercise.)

The conference is mainly a meeting of the legal network, see
https://fsfe.org/activities/ftf/ln.en.html
and we report on it each year.

The main advantage of the meeting that people can exchange themselves,
so there is no direct aim for a result. (FSFE was criticised before for not 
forcing the agenda, but most people in FSFE believe that we cannot force
people's opinion, while it is good at the same time to bring people together 
that are genuinely interested in Free Software licensing together.)

https://fsfe.org/news/nl/nl-201907.en.html only has a short report
and it could be longer. The one from 2018 almost seems too long for most 
readers https://fsfe.org/news/2018/news-20180530-02.de.html
Some donors of FSFE specifically sponsor the Legal conference,
so I'd personally expect this actually to be something that financially 
supports other activies of FSFE. However this probably varies from year to 
year. 

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: FSFE-in-2020: Who are we?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

Am Freitag 08 Februar 2019 01:40:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> On Friday 11. August 2017 12.54.53 Jonas Oberg wrote:
> >   https://fsfe.org/news/2017/news-20170811-01.en.html
> >
> > As you know, when the FSFE was founded, we put together a document
> > describing our self conception. That was 16 years ago, and while I
> > believe it to still be relevant, we'll be looking at making a new
> > committment towards a revised organisational identity later this year.
>
> Did I miss the accompanying report about this activity? In the archives of
> this list (that I have), I only see a couple of messages later in the same
> year, one mentioning a survey and another asking a question about
> responding to it.
>
> The team page on the FSFE Wiki seems to date from 2017:
>
> https://wiki.fsfe.org/Teams/FSFE-in-2020
>
> I also didn't find anything on the main FSFE Web site, either.
>
> Did the whole process grind to a halt, perhaps due to broader collaboration
> issues?

in short: Yes.

Though maybe "broader collaboration" is a bit coarse.
My personal take: the process was too heavy and it turned out it could not 
deliver what was expected from it. We've also had less time of the people 
available who were the ones driving it. Then other other distractions came
to be and the most important goal of FSFE is to help people learn about Free 
Software, so we kept doing more for Free Software and less internal 
organisational questions. (Again I believe all this to be normal for an 
organisation, though we should aim for writing more about this. Sorry for not 
doing so earlier and thanks for the question and reminder in the other 
thread.)

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Fairphone 3

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 01 Oktober 2019 11:35:40 schrieb Carsten Agger:
> I got this response from Fairphone:

> *We are currently investigating the possibility of bringing back FP Open
> on Fairphone 3.*

Cool, thanks for having asked this.
(The more people are seriously interested and let them know,
the higher the chances.)

> It is still possible to install alternative operating systems on our
> Fairphone 3 (advanced users can unlock the bootloader - but this voids
> the warranty
> !)

> the thing about voiding the warranty if you unlock the bootloader is
> /not good enough/. 

And the short statement is missleading, as I wrote on the 26th
  https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/discussion/2019-September/012907.html
the warranty for the hardware must still be there.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Organisation democracy (was: Balance relationships with companies)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Mirko,

Am Donnerstag 26 September 2019 22:27:17 schrieb Mirko Boehm:
> repeating an argument does not make it tru-er.

that is correct, but the same holds for critical arguments:
Just repeating them, does not convince more people.

Still to know the arguments and positions
is the basis for a constructive discussion.

> This issue does not go away because it remains the essential weakness 
> of FSFE in its current form. 

Or it is a strength, depending on the viewpoint.
FSFE could avoid a number of drawback of other organisations.

> Sure, "FSFE was founded to rely on a number of trusted individuals”, but
> that was 20 years ago. Outside of this echo chamber, 3/4 of them today are
> invisible or inactive. This hurts FSFEs reputation and impact.

Depends on the task, if the idea is to support the social group,
I'd rather have people that do not want to be in public light
and work constructively in the background.

> To speak in Albert Hirschman’s terms, everybody faces the choice to raise
> their voice to influence an organisation their care about or to exit. 
> If people’s voices are made irrelevant, they will eventually stop trying to
> change things and looks for better ways to invest their energy.

Like everywhere people will have to convince others that their proposed change
is for the better. Same with FSFE and a lot of change done over the years.
If you propose something and cannot convice enough others, you can leave but 
you can also stay in the organisation sharing the same values, as you never 
get all proposal implemented.

> I am contributing my time at OSI now. They do have elections.

If OSI with their less political position is a better fit for you,
I'd say this is natural. And FSFE and OSI can cooperate on good occasions. 

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Organisation democracy (was: Balance relationships with companies)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Paul,

Am Montag 01 Juli 2019 12:12:58 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> This reminds me of the still-unresolved matter of
> organisational democracy that was helpfully shunted over to the rogue
> mailing list only to disappear.

the question of "organisation democracy" in the FSFE has been discussed many 
times (over the ~18 years of FSFE's existence).

(From my perspective it has been answered so many times that it 
 is getting boring because arguments repeat themselfs,
 new arguments are rare. And without arguments people won't change
 their position.)

So a short summary from my personal perspective:
 * Democracy is "a system of government where the citizens
   exercise power by voting." The question is: who are the citizens?
 * FSFE is a social group (which "can be defined as two or more people who
   interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively 
   have a sense of unity." backed up by a Germany registered association
   ("eingetragener Verein") and recognised tax charity to hold assets.
 * The association itself internally is governed by a membership
   assembly where votes are used according to the German association law
   https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vereinsrecht_(Deutschland)
   You could call this "democratic" if you accept the members of the
   association to be the "citizens". If so we are fully "democratic"
   as the German courts and tax office monitor this.
 * It is normal to only accept members in a social group, if they share
   similiar goals (and matching personal behaviourial standards). 
   It is similiar normal for an association to only accept
   members if they share the constitutional goals. There is and cannot
   be a rule to accept everybody that is citizen in a country, aka real
   democracy, in an associations as this does not make sense for a social
   group holding on belive that wants to convice others. (As if the majority
   joins, it is the same representation that in the overal society, which
   already is reflected by the democratic government.)
 * To be able to hold and steer Free Software values for many years,
   FSFE was founded to rely on a number of trusted individuals (that
   originally FSF and Richard Stallmann approved of, and then let act in
   independency as a backup if they get in trouble somehow) in order to have
   long term stability. This was the reason the FSF* name could be used.
 * While everyone can easily join FSFE (as social group), the association
   is kept small, so that people individually know each other and can find
   a way to talk and come to an opinion over long term matters. But the
   association only facilities the work in many way. So the social group
   has a huge impact. But of course all social groups have power structures,
   so some people have more influence than others (just like everywhere).
   Introducing voting or more governance wouldn't change this.
 * There have been changes over the years in how many people join FSFE 
   and its associations, so it is discussed, things are tried. A long term
   trend ended as we found that people were not really interested in holding
   temporary seats in the association. So we are doing something else, to make
   it easier to join FSFE (both) and to promote and help Free Software.
 * FSFE (in both senses) has been growing (most time of its existance),
   more people, more diversity, more employees, more topic, contacts
   and obligations. Which is a challenge as personal contact between people
   is becoming more difficult and there is so much going on. 
 * This all is an ongoing challenge for 18 years and we are facing it.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Balance relationships with companies

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Christian, Carsten, Paul,

thanks for your thoughs on this thread!
My response is coming late because school holidays were in between.


Am Dienstag 02 Juli 2019 15:36:10 schrieb Christian Imhorst:
> Am 28.06.2019 14:55 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> > (Facebook, just like the companies IBM, Microsoft and Google contribute
> > quite  significant amount code as Free Software and interact with the
> > communities. Applaudable even if they do bad things in other areas.)
>
> nope, they didn't. 
[..]

> It's really important to remind us of the moral dimension of software
> freedom and to link this to human freedom: Free Software is primarily
> for people and not to create freedom for companies. We've got to keep
> the social dimension of Free Software in perspective. Like free speech,
> Free Software should be a fundamental right and we should fight the
> proprietary vendor lock-in of cloud providers.

In my view a society can only prosper and give human freedom if we have 
companies, because currently a "social, ecological market economy"
(as it is called in Germany, see 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_market_economy) 
is wordwide the socioeconomic model which is perceived as most successful.
(Even needing adjustment and balancing.)

If there are companies, we can see that they'll produce something within the 
laws of a democratic system which people have demand for and they are more or 
less progressive towards Free Software. For larger companies are so big, that 
they are like a hydra (the classic "monster") with many heads and some heads 
can be "good" and others can be "bad". Those companies evolve due to law, 
democratic trends, customer demands. 

If we want Free Software to succeed we must transform companies towards being 
more compliant with the social values of Free Software, like being able to 
help your neighbour. So we want their "better" heads to grow in power. We 
want more customers demanding more products with more freedom for them and we 
want more services offered where this is a key selling point. 

To do this we need to applaude steps that are in the right direction.
It is good that Android and Chromium is Free Software, it raised the chances
over Windows CE and Internet Explorer of people running this on other hardware
and studying and rebuilding it for their needs (LineageOSMicroG, 
Iridiumbrowser).

On a more philosophical note:
Altruism and self-interest can be align.
(Here is a German campaign https://www.unperfekthaus.de/altruismus/
You'll also find this in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_Grant 's 
Give or Take as "otherish". )

Regards,
Bernhard
 
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Re: Fairphone 3

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 25 September 2019 16:07:36 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> On Wednesday 25. September 2019 15.17.24 Carsten Agger wrote:
> > I send the following question to Fairphone support:
> > "I'm interested in buying a Fairphone 3, but I'm not interested in

Thanks for requesting this,
I think it is helpful if potential customers voice their preferences
for Free Software.

> Certainly, Fairphone are improving on multiple fronts, 

Yes, they do. And they make a real-world usable phone with as much ethics
as they can to stay in a price that people would like to pay for it.

One drawback:
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360032971751-Operating-systems-OS-for-the-Fairphone-3
* "rooting the Fairphone 3 will void the warranty" linking to
https://www.fairphone.com/en/legal/fairphone-3-warranty/#4warrantyexclusions
"4.2 The Fairphone Warranty does not cover damage resulting from:"
" i. The Product has been rooted or unlocked."

so their brief version is wrong, as their warranty does only not cover damage 
from rooting und unlocking, but does not make it void against other damage.
It would probably be illegal to exclude a warranty, see
https://fsfe.org/freesoftware/legal/flashingdevices.en.html
FSFE works with consumer protection agencies to increase their understanding 
of Free Software, which is good in the long term.

> so it isn't quite like the completely narrow focus one tends
> to see in activism (the FSFE included) where you get to uphold
> some of your ethical concerns and compromise on everything else.

FSFE's actions are mid and long term. The main task is to make people
understand Free Software and the relation of software to society and their 
life so they can make better choices. FSFE's doings proof that wide, long 
term vision and actions that are in line with it.

https://fsfe.org/campaigns/pdfreaders/pdfreaders.en.html <- FS PDF readers
https://fsfe.org/campaigns/android/  <- Free Your Android


> A few days ago, I wrote about sustainable phones and mentioned the
> Fairphone 3 because it appeared in a mainstream review:
>
> http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-September/002034.html

Cool to see a favourable mainstream review
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/sep/18/fairphone-3-review-ethical-phone

"What if you could buy a phone that will last five years, can be easily 
repaired and is made as ethically as possible? That’s the aim of the latest 
Fairphone 3 – and on many counts it succeeds."

> Personally, I feel that if people cooperated more, we wouldn't have to
> compromise on our ethics at all, 

This means convincing more people, for which they first must know the 
arguments and alternatives. This is why promoting open standards is so 
important, because they allow people to judge faster how interoperable
their device/software combination is and it allows smaller vendors
to make better offers.

https://fsfe.org/activities/os/def.en.html

> the German banking sector and restrictive practices
> on hardware that can be used to access banking services:
>
> http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-September/002035.html
>
> I wonder if there has been any concern expressed in FSFE circles
> about that.

Yes, for example see 
https://lists.fsfe.org/pipermail/fsfe-de/2019-September/010893.html

Note that all banks I know also allow independent devices for a second factor,
so there is no de-facto dependency on a modern "smartphone". The device is
more secure, too.

And it is a European thing with the psd2 requirements, banks are conservative 
and they want to keep their unique position in business life,
so they are only reluctantly implementing improvements and struggle with it: 
https://www.deutschlandfunk.de/zahlungsverkehr-neues-psd2-verfahren-verwirrt-bankkunden.684.de.html?dram:article_id=459340

Overall it is progress and chance for Free Software as more software has to 
get access to the banking data of customers. And standards will emerge over 
time, because of customers demands (from their fintec startups promisses. 
>;))

Regards,
Bernhard

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SailfishOS Re: Fairphone 3

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Michael,

Am Mittwoch 25 September 2019 10:04:38 schrieb Michael Kesper:
> On 23.09.19 10:05, Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:
> > That is also a mobile phone operating system which (limited) success is
> > based on Free Software a lot.
>
> Sailfish is not completely Free Software:

yes, just like 99.9% of real-world Android running devices.
Some parts like the oFono Sailfish seems to be more Free Software
than what Android does, but I am not sure.

> I know purism pays some developers to integrate a full
> Gnome platform with a custom shell (phosh).
> To my humble knowledge this seems to be the most active
> fully free software stack right now (other than AOSP)
> which can be implemented on real hardware phones.

But there are no real world phones (so far)
and Purism seems to re-implement a lot of components,
which is a risk. I hope they succeed (and participated
in their fundraiser), but it is not a real life option yet.

Regards,
Bernhard

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IT customers (Re: recommendations for a mini laptop)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 07 August 2019 16:20:32 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> Sadly, "more is better" continues to be the dominant theme of the
> technology industry: power consumption benefits (due to more efficient
> circuitry) are typically overturned by vastly increased consumption.

It is a main theme of the vast majority of customers.
Most selling points that convince people are related to "more"
(power, cpu cores, speed).

So this become a topic of educating more people about long lasting
IT hardware (and thus Free Software, which is a good fit.)
As https://dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#tco writes for years:

"4. FLOSS can often use older hardware more efficiently than proprietary 
systems, yielding smaller hardware costs and sometimes eliminating the need 
for new hardware."

This is one of FSFE's message that we repeat wherever we can.
One recent example is our booth and participation Bits & Bäume conference 
   https://bits-und-baeume.org/rueckblick/en

> So, my solution to this is to open the network monitoring development tool
> in Firefox, load a page with a lot of surveillance scripts, save the log as
> a "HAR" format file, and then I have a script which dumps the hosts from
> the log. With that output, after editing to preserve the sites providing
> genuine content, I have another script which assigns the hosts with
> unrouteable IP addresses, and this then gets deployed in /etc/hosts.

> It is remarkable how much difference this makes and how many
> script/image/tracking hosts are involved in serving even those sites that
> have something to say about the ethics of surveillance. 

What you describe is a lot of work that most people cannot or are not willing 
to put up. uBlock origin is a good match for those people (if they know about 
it). Again a majority of people seem to like that they get news and some 
services offered for the attention. They are not willing to pay basic 
services, they'd rather be influenced. Also they like the comfort of online 
storages, suggestions based on statistical data and many buy the promise
of better services if their data is analysed.

As all those advantages exists in small quantities here and there,
this is a gray world. In my view we as FSFE are working for a better 
understanding of what is going on and on the basic ability to inspect code
and change it. LineagesOSMicroG and https://iridiumbrowser.de/ are examples
where these freedoms have been used to make the situation (a little bit) 
better.

> I guess it is easy to criticise a habit but harder to actually break it.

It is not our habit, it the habit of many people - most of them non-techies.

> Again, leadership from organisations like the FSFE on such matters
> is rather lacking, but that is another topic.

We cannot save the world alone and in all aspects, but at least we can try. :)
(Being bitter and cynical does not help us, as alternatively
 others will shape the future for us.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Fairphone 3

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,
got caught by surprise by the launch of the Fairphone 3.
It is clear that their success of pushing the state of the art in the area of 
consumer mobile phones is based on Free Software (like Android).

The details are interesting, as there can always be something improved.
Does somebody have alreadys looked at the new model from the Free Software 
side?

Having 10 out of 10 repairability score from iFixit is very good,
they are keeping their high standards from FP2.
https://www.fairphone.com/en/2019/09/17/ifixit-repairability/

My experiences:
* I know a few persons owning and running FP1 for years, very reliably,
  almost 6 years. When the battery could not officially produced anymore
  (understandable), the community found a replacement. Some still run the FP1.
  Problem: the chipset choice made it hard to have a better software support
  and Android 4.4 is dropping out of support by important apps. 
* The two FP2 models I saw in vicinity had small hardware issues with touch
  an rebooting, it was less a workable "mainstream" phone than others.
  The modular approach was cool, though. I read that root and other "ROM"s
  were possible.
* The FP3 announcement policy did not work for me. On of the persons with the 
  FP1 needed a replacement (because of software and battery life) and a used
  phone with lineagesOSmicrog was bought, because the state of the FP3 was
  unclear in the first half of this year. 

I've heard that a sailfish OS port to FP3 is likely. :)
That is also a mobile phone operating system which (limited) success is based 
on Free Software a lot. 

What are your experiences?
What is the best argument you could make for something if you wanted to raise 
the chance of this person buying an FP3?

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Strategy and serendipity

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 14 Juni 2019 17:39:18 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> In the end, even dedicated Free Software advocates are likely to just give
> up, buy something, and use the device subject to whatever terms and
> conditions are imposed on them just by powering it on. 

It makes sense to have a device that can just be turned on.
And it makes sense for it to use as much Free Software as possible.
More companies will provide this, if more people would buy it.
So each decision which is taken in the direction of software freedom
get us one step further. And each additional choice is helpful, too.

> If all of this isn't some kind of defeat for Free Software, then I don't
> know what is. 

To me this means new challenger, with more IT solutions permeating life
and younger people that still have to make their experiences on grander 
things. (In Germany and some parts of Europe, many childrens and teenagers 
have just discovered that they can actually make a political difference by 
going to a demonstrations in the Friday4Future topic.)

Android success was only possible with Free Software. Personally I consider 
this progress, though of course we want more.


> "For Android, the FSFE helps users to regain more control
> with its Free Your Android initiative."

> Well, good luck with that, FSFE! Free Your Android is largely a matter of
> closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. Regaining more control,
> as opposed to actually having control, is as good as it gets.

Personally I've met non-IT-people considering other software on their phone
and seen articles in special topic magazines and general publications
that were picking this up. FSFE has helped to create another choice.
Maybe that is just a small step that some people are taking, but even a 
demonstration that it is possible was valuable.

> Even better would be the possibility of getting a phone with completely
> Free Software on it, but those old/refurbished Samsung models seem to be
> the only option. 

The discussion already mentioned real live options like the Shiftphone and 
upcoming ones like the Cosmo and the libre purism. Yes, this coming with an 
extra price tag, but this is understandable as long as they are produced in 
smaller numbers. I am grateful for each additional choice people get to have 
more Free Software on their phone. F-droid for apps is getting better and 
offering more. I've hard of people that do LineageMicro-G and F-Droid only
(Here is a popular blog article series (in German) to explain how to take back 
control on your phone, I've learned quite a lot from this which made it much 
easier for me to run Free Software on mobile devices:
https://www.kuketz-blog.de/f-droid-freie-und-quelloffene-apps-take-back-control-teil5/
 )

> Maybe the role of the FSFE is to go beyond advocacy

In my view FSFE is doing a lot: We bring people together, we educate,
we influence public policies, we help commercial and non-commercial parties
to make offers with Free Software. We stay critically alert on public 
procurements to ensure that Free Software is getting the priority it 
should... Directly becoming a software or hardware-vendor would be less 
effective as far as I have experienced. (And we used to even be a small 
vendor for hardware crypto tokens, so we do have a little, little bit of 
experience. ;) )

Remember our router activities, now people can get the passwords for the 
internet connection to buy their own routers, so Free Software friendly 
router vendors stay in business there.

Seriously there are many more tasks ahead, and we can only do what the 
contributions of volunteers and supporters allow. This means looking for 
opportunities as well where a little action can make a large difference.
Look at our Public Money Public Code campain, when its positive reception 
leads to ore purchases with Free Software as a strong plus for vendors
we will get more vendors with Free Software friendly products.
I hope we can do more of this.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Balance relationships with companies (Re: Who talks at conference for Free Software?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 14 Juni 2019 16:50:05 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> It can be tempting to collaborate with companies in order to
> advance a common agenda, not least because those companies will have people
> on staff who can do some of the tedious work that volunteers might
> otherwise have to do. But then you have to make sure that it isn't the FSFE
> who ends up advancing a particular company's agenda.

This is one of the important aspects of FSFE's work:
We need to keep the the different interests in mind
and make sure they are balanced. It is a challenge.

Companies and other organisations are taking part in Free Software 
communities, other may oppose them. Many companies consists of different 
branches. Some are more inclined towards Free Software others are not. 
Same with people working there.

In order to spread knowledge about Free Software and to convince people,
it makes sense to be positive towards actions, departments, business decisions 
and people that display openess towards Free Software and to applaud good
steps, while still criticising bad one. This is a stance FSFE is taking in 
general: We believe that voicing criticism is necessary sometimes, while
we probably reach better results if we reward steps in the right direction.

> It may indeed be wonderful that those companies support Free Software, but
> when one of them is Facebook, it is a reasonable question to ask whether
> the brochure legitimises Facebook by giving the company a favourable,
> progressive portrayal more than it helps Free Software or reflects the
> ethics of much of the Free Software community. 

When searching for Facebook on our Public Money? Public Code! Brochure
https://download.fsfe.org/campaigns/pmpc/PMPC-Modernising-with-Free-Software.pdf
I'll only find "Facebook" being mentioned in Fernanda Weiden's short biography 
as her current workplace. Fernanda has done a lot for Free Software and FSFE
even before she had worked for Facebook, so this is about a person foremost.
(Facebook, just like the companies IBM, Microsoft and Google contribute quite 
significant amount code as Free Software and interact with the communities. 
Applaudable even if they do bad things in other areas.)

Seriously, I think that if we did not include who people are working for, 
someone would criticise us for not "disclosing" this potential conflict of 
interest. >:) Now readers can make up their minds from the article.
This is good practice with the more serious scientific journals as well.

> I decided not to continue supporting the FSFE financially.

Sad to see you stop donating. 
Thanks for the support to far!
We hope to win you back some day!

(Our supporters and donors allow us to do more work and stay independent
of single company donors!)

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: recommendations for a mini laptop

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 21 Juni 2019 17:17:38 schrieb Erik Albers:
> I am looking for a tiny laptop in a size of 9 or 10 inch that runs
> GNU/Linux 

What about
* https://www.pine64.org/pinebook/
  maybe to large, it is 11.6" :)
* https://store.planetcom.co.uk/collections/gemini-pda/products/gemini-pda-1
  probably too small 6" ;)
  and https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cosmo-communicator#/
  needs a few more month and is still too small >;)

Best,
Bernhard

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Re: Mobile phone details: Sailfish

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 16 Mai 2019 13:38:20 schrieb Joe Awni:
> Would love to hear more details about the early-days. What
> Free Software projects where you following in 1989?

My main computer these days were an Amiga 500
and the main source of Free Software the Fred Fish disks.
There were Matt Dillons editor DME and various small
tools, hack, a vi clone (which I did't like), terminal software and so on. I 
don't remember precisely in which year gnuplot was included first, but it was 
on there as well. (gnuplot is not related to GNU, but Free Software.)

Matt later wrote his own compiler DICE. My understanding of Free Software 
concepts was not very explicit, this changed in the early nineties.

Cheers,
Bernhard


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Re: Mobile phone details: Sailfish

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:37:19 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> Maybe the FSFE Wiki could host such information, particularly if
> the adminstrators reinstalled a half-decent way of formatting tables.

Personally I think that the main work is in keeping the info maintained.
(Independently from the technology.)

> I didn't even think there were very many available Sailfish devices these
> days, 

The've changed strategy to port to devices from other hardware vendors.
In my view for the better.

So currently available are
  The Sony Xperia™ XA2 product range and Sony Xperia™ X
  Gemini PDA.
and upcoming is Cosmo.
See https://jolla.com/sailfishx/ (except for infos about Cosmo)
  
> > Most of them work well and the main point is diversity. Apart from
> > Google's GNU/Linux distribution called "Android", there is almost no
> > other one people could by if they wanted to. Actually "Android" is a big
> > success for Free Software as most consumer devices now come with a Free
> > Software operating system by default. :)
>
> I don't share your enthusiasm, really. If people give me Free Software and
> yet deny me the benefits that it should bring, they might as well not be
> giving me Free Software to begin with.

Here I disagree, I think each step forward is good.
While of course it maybe two steps forward and one back, including new 
challenges. And I do remember other times, so I know the progress regarding 
Free Software in the last 30 years.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Fairphone lessons (Re: Shiftphones details)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Freitag 10 Mai 2019 17:06:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> it surprises me that they have not managed to
> attract broader publicity.

Shiftphones seem to focus on Germany (or German speaking companies).
It is a significant invest to create text and give support in a second 
language.

> My understanding (and recollection) is that Fairphone fell into the same
> "original design manufacturer" trap that lots of people do. Now, most
> vendors do not care about the lack of longevity of the thing that they have
> procured: they can always sell or give an unhappy customer the next thing
> coming out of the factory.

In my perception Fairphone aimed for an improvement in longevity of their 
product and were successful. The Fairphone 2 was produced and on sale for 
about 30 something month.

> a Free Software initiative would
> have encountered software sustainability issues at the first hurdle, giving
> them the opportunity to back up and choose a different approach.

When trying to get a product out of the doors, you face a large number of 
small and larger decisions. First of all, the product has to "work" for the 
expected usage. Fairphone 1 was good in this regard, but Fairphone 2 a bit 
less so. Backing up and taking more time may have not been possible, without 
risking to not have a product at all. Which would have been the worst result.
So to me your criticism is too harsh. After all they produced two phones that 
were significant steps forward.

If we had more manufactures trying to go in the Fairphone direction, it would 
foster much more Free Software usages on mobile devices. It is fine to point 
out how they could do better, but I think we should even more applaude them 
for the advances.


> Naturally, the whole mobile industry suffers from these issues, too: it is
> like the Wintel upgrade treadmill turbo-upgraded for the 21st century. As
> software practitioners, we should be looking to offer real solutions for
> this. 

I agree, thought we first must understand the real reasons behind fast 
upgrades. Some customers are very happy about a new model each year and 
they'll buy it.

> Why shouldn't my next phone be usable, even in a modest sense, for as 
> long as my current one, which is actually fifteen years old?

One thing is technical progress, there is 5G coming and at some point you'll 
may need a phone that uses the standard. Another example there are websites 
or services that you would want to use, that only run with hardware and 
software that is newer. 

> where the people trying to make
> such phones are outsiders and are not part of the manufacturer ecosystem,
> with its convenient and cheap access to knowledge and technical resources,
> and so on. And getting access to the right people to solve problems is
> difficult given the low volumes and outsider status of such initiatives.

What I've heard from the OpenMoko project and others is that you cannot get 
the top line of SOCs from manufactures in small numbers. Something like 
you'll have to buy 10.000 at least and then put the money down up-front.
Knownn the right people won't help with that.


> I was actually surprised in my review of available phones that Fairphone 2
> is now no longer available, although factory-refurbished ones can be
> obtained for a discount.

This is a recent development (in the last weeks).
Probably a good one, a Fairphone 3 is needed for a while now.

> What might have been interesting is if the modular 
> technology had been popularised, shared, standardised, and so on, so that
> others could have made upgrades and continued the general availability of
> the product.

You know that all this would have meant significant efforts and Fairphone is a 
small company (in a growth phase, with all the pain coming with it).
At least they have shown that it works and there is a market for it (even when 
small). This is a large archievement.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Strategy and serendipity

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 14:41:59 schrieb Carsten Agger:
> I'd say a reasonable goal would be that it should be
> realistically feasible for *everybody* to choose to use only free
> software, on all kinds of software-equipped devices that people normally
> use.

The challenge is that "realistically feasible" is different for everyone
and each situation. This is why FSFE's approach is to make sure that people 
and organisation can take the next step from where they are.

So we cannot label a certain solution as 100% or bad as this is never the 
case, there is almost always a next step. And for some the next step is too 
hard for others it is feasible. Our practical advise to people should take 
this into account. This is why we produce informantion on many levels and 
help people to educate themselfs and see the possibilities.

> Which would mean at least computers and mobile devices. If we look at
> computers, we're not quite there - people can, most of the time, opt to
> use free software in their private lives, but will often be forced to
> use proprietary software at work.

Even with the private life it can be very difficult (think official government 
interfaces or apps that have a huge advantage like flea markets or 
communication facilities).

For the work place: You could change the job where you do not need to work 
with computer or are allowed to only use Free Software.

> As for mobile devices, we're not there *at all*. It's definitely not
> realistically feasible for everybody to acquire devices with a free OS
> and run only free apps. 

Sure everybody could (in principle). It could be easier, but where to start?
You can buy mobile phones, desktop and notebook computers that only come with 
Free Software (maybe make a concession for drivers).

> That's part of the point Paul raised: We don't just need awareness about
> software freedom, we need actual software for people to use.

Agreed, the question is: How to get there?
Just starting a development of a component won't help.
We had to know: Which component? And then: what is it what people want?
(As people cannot say, unless they have experiened the solution.)

I am open for ideas how to get there, and the current strategy of FSFE
is to enable developments that are necessary for this to happen. This can be 
adapted and discussed, but it is a strategy and it works for the resources we 
have (and grows them). 

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Shiftphones details

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 15:05:53 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> >  * https://www.shiftphones.com/en/
>
> You may have to provide a little more context about this for those of us
> who do not readily read German and who are unfamiliar with this initiative.

It got on my radar when I was looking for an environment friendly and fairly 
traded phone as a replacement for an FP1 (Fairphone 1, first generation, 
2013) FP1 that is showing its age for someone.

> (Since various correspondents of mine who are native German speakers never
> mentioned this initiative, I feel that the origins of the initiative are
> not the principal obstacle hindering any wider awareness of it.)

My information come from reading their pages and some reports in German press.
They do have Enligsh pages, but I don't know which information is missing from 
them. If you'll find something in German that you would want to be translated 
or summarized, let us know (I think there are many German speakers on this 
list.)

https://de.shiftphones.com/wiki/SHIFT_Story says it started as a crowdfunding 
project in April 2014 and delivered first phones in February 2015.
It seems to be a small family owned and run business near Kassel in Germany,
about 7 employees. Their idea is to be fair and environmental friendly.

A first report about their "fairness" was published 2016-11
https://www.shiftphones.com/downloads/SHIFT-report-v9.pdf
They claim:
 * Production in China in small companies (>300 people)
 * Employees in China get a good/ very good salary (double or triple
   of what is custom). Have limited working hours. Have health care, food
   and more. They visited them and work with NGO "TAOS".
 * They use ceramic micro-capacitors without Tantalum (from "conflict 
material" Coltan)
 * They plan to get "fair gold, though just 100g has been used in 30k phones
produces until 2016-11.
 * Thy use fair tin for soldering from (https://fairloetet.de/)
 * They cooperate with a a number of partners, e.g. https://www.nager-it.de/en
 * They want recycle and have deposit for all phones, which you get back
   when you send it back (no matter in what state) for recycling.

> For instance, with an emphasis on conflict mineral avoidance, how does it
> differ from Fairphone? 

Firt note that they are much smaller than the Fairphone org, they have a 
section about their view on them in the above report.

I think their approach is almost the same, in some regards they are not as 
good, like in the transparency for the delivery chain, in others they are 
better like the cooperation with well though out initiative for the 
soldering-tin and NagerIT. Their deposit idea in my opinion is a step forward 
toward more recycling.

> And has the initiative learned the lessons that Fairphone needed to learn?

Seems they were starting almost at the same time (2013/2014). As someone who 
supported fairphone 1 and fairphone 2 users, I know a lot about the good and 
bad decisions from Fairphone first hand. I don't about Shiftphone so I don't 
know. In some things they seem to have been better than Fairphone from the 
beginning for use cases I was looking for.

I'm slightly sensitive about how you have phrased the question, though, as I 
believe any organisation has to learn and I consider Fairphone a huge success 
that has advanced the state of the art significantly.

But back to Shiftphones:
Because they are around for a number of years, with a production >30.000 (as 
claimed in 2016-11) they seem to actually produce working phones.

To the question of how friendly they are towards running your own software:
There seem to be a light version that you can get (if you sign up for beta)
without Google apps. And recently there is an experimental LineagesOS port
for their 5me and 6m models with Mediatek SOCs.) So they are not much better 
than Fairphone in this regard. A little bit, because their upcoming models 
will be based on Snapdragon SOCs from Qualcomm which are traditionally more 
friendly towards Free Software drivers.

My botton line is: With Fairphone currently not having a current model on 
sale, Shiftphones has interesting offers and certainly helps to push forward
ethical phones (environment, fairness, freedom).

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Strategy and serendipity

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 08 Mai 2019 09:03:48 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> my point is that I do not want a list where a constructive, respectful
> discussion is possible.

.. that I want a list where constructive and respectul discussion is possible.

[This is what I've meant to write, but managed to change part of the phrasing 
into being positive without updating the other part. Sorry for the noise.]

Bernhard


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Re: Strategy and serendipity

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Montag 06 Mai 2019 21:18:44 schrieb Carsten Agger:
> But maybe the FSFE should, if it were possible, consider producing and
> funding free software itself, the way the FSF has been funding and
> spearheading the GNU project.

The GNU project was started in different times. To me it has reached its goals 
and should have been called concluded for good. (See comments to my article 
[1]).

FSFE did consider doing software development or running infrastructure, we 
even did something like this on a small scale in the past.
However each times the limits were visible.
It just does not work, as software development and innovation is not an 
expertise you can just buy. In addition FSFE would get into competition with 
many other good organisations (companies and others). That would not be a 
healthy separation of work.

This probably means more explanations, I am sure I've written a lot of stuff 
about this on mailinglists in the recent 18 years. Overall this is not just 
the FSFE: Centralized software development has a number of hard drawbacks.

Best Regards,
Bernhard


[1] 
https://blogs.fsfe.org/bernhard/2012/03/lets-end-all-free-software-projects-quickly/
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Technical: about false unsubscribe attempts (Re: Unsubscription amusement)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

Am Montag 06 Mai 2019 10:00:06 schrieb Paul Sutton:
> Now I am getting unauthorized attempts to remove me from the fsfe.org list
> What exactly is going on here please.

technically: Anyone can use the mailman interface to request
an unsubscribe event for a specific mail address. Mailman then sends a 
confirmation email which can be ignored. This is a quite common mechanism,
to make it easy for people that want to unsubscribe. It works with many
internet offerings.

If it wasn't you that initiated the unsubscription event, it was somebody 
else. The mailman system can only record the IP address of the requesting 
server, and thus include it in the confirmation email. From the reports here 
and my own experience, we have a number of people being affected. So this 
likely is a scripted attempt to impersonate people by their email address.

For normal internet providers, this is against their terms of service. 
Therefor a friendly abuse complaint to the service provider of the IP 
originating false request maybe a next step if the person behind the script 
does not reconsider. 

Another step is to try to block temporarily from our server side if many 
unsubscribe events originate from the same IP, as this is a sign of malice.
As far as I know this is already being done, but the script seems to get 
started from several different IP addresses.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: free software promotion and local status

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,
thanks for sharing your experiences!

Helping others to understand Free Software is an ongoing task
and it needs wit and patience. :)

Am Freitag 03 Mai 2019 13:01:52 schrieb Paul Sutton:
> I tried to approach people such as digital unite in the UK, who are
> working to bridge the digital divide by developing digital skills.

That is https://www.digitalunite.com/ I guess.

> They work on a set curriculum on how to use digital kit, use the
> Internet, use e-mail, social media etc,  and this is set by people above
> them and funded by government.

One of the next step can be to find out who has an influence
about what is taught and then start reasoning with them.
(There is quite a bit of evidence that teaching skill with and for Free 
Software products is better. Maybe some of this can be used to argu the 
point.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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FSFE "officials" on this list (Re: The "rival" discussion mailing list)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

Am Donnerstag 02 Mai 2019 21:45:40 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> I would also encourage the FSFE leadership to use venues like this list to
> more fully engage with the community, even when this involves encountering
> dissent.

doing a rough count on my personal archive which starts 2016: There are about 
1500 posts in this discussion list and I count about 350 from people
that are in the main e.V. which is the highst official organ in the FSFE.
So I'll estimate 20% of posts here from the "leadership".

Personally I've encountered some criticism and I experience FSFE very open to 
finding ways of how to improve. To me some criticism was not constructive. 
Thus I think that FSFE must limit its time to deal with criticism that is 
repeating or non-constructive. We certainly have to respond to it from time 
to time so that others know that loud voices may not be right (as like in 
other part of the public life) and point to the information we already 
publish.

Also we shall spend more time on the topics were we can advance Free Software 
in society according to our constitution. Our newsletters and other articles 
are full of hints that we need to spread and explain to more people. I 
believe that most our supporters are supporting us because FSFE is pragmatic 
about what we can do (and this includes limiting the energy spending 
on "internal politics").

To make an example:
I found some of your articles on mobile computing with Free Software helpful,
we could see if we collect information about this more systematically. To 
include new "fair" approaches like the Shift-phones or LineageOS-MicroG on 
used phones. If some folks are interested in this a group of volunteers 
within FSFE can do a lot of useful things.

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Fridays for Free Software ;)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello Friends of Free Software,

as you may have heard a number of children refuse going to school on each 
Friday to make people aware that the world has to act swiftly if we want to 
protect our stable world climate.

Free Software can help to protect the climate and the environment,
because it helps to run hardware longer.


== Hardware production worst for the environment

Looking at the life cycle of hardware, the production phase
contributes most to the environmental ballast. A lot of greenhouse
gas emmission [1]. And use of rare earth materials, which cannot be recycled.

=> using hardware longer is environmentally friendly, even if new hardware
   is more energy efficient


== Free Software allows to run hardware longer

Use of Free Software can extend the life of hardware significantly.
At least one third more life time in the average.
There are some old examples of studies in [2], subsection 4,
but also throughout the whole text. We probably find more if we search.
It makes sense and in many aspects. Just think about LineageOS-MicroG
giving old Smartphones a security patched operating system again.

=> Use of Free Software helps the climate.


== A series of stories about Free Software on Fridays?

This is not just a discussion list, this is also our list to tell nice stories 
about Free Software, connecting dots and restate to each other in new and fun 
ways why we all are here. Maybe we can make it a tradition: Tell one 
interesting thing that others may not have thought of, or have forgotten 
about why Free Software should be used more often.

Best,
Bernhard

[1]
https://www.umweltbundesamt.de/publikationen/timely-replacement-of-a-notebook-under
Autors: Siddharth Prakash, Ran Liu, Karsten Schischke, Dr. Lutz Stobbe
September 2012

[2]
https://dwheeler.com/oss_fs_why.html#tco
Why Open Source Software / Free Software (OSS/FS, FLOSS, or FOSS)?
Look at the Numbers!
David A. Wheeler
Revised as of July 18, 2015
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Re: Fwd: [FSFE PR][EN] Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software at the last minute

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Christian,

Am Donnerstag 28 März 2019 18:14:38 schrieb Christian Imhorst:
> This means that on this limited subject the FSFE
> is taken seriously as someone to talk to.
>
> I can not judge your last sentence, Bernhard, but I hope that's the
> case.

the indicators known to me:
 * Our representatives got appointments with people in Brussels
   when asking for the topic
 * There was one draft were there was an exception for non-commercial
   towards Free Software, we pointed this out, and it got changed.
 * Some other friendly NGOs did not get appointments for their broader
   topics. (We'd wished they would.)

Of course we probably were not the only ones that people talked to,
but this is also part of successful explanations to say something that is 
confirmed by other groups as well.

Well in one meaning it is lobbying, as we try to speak to politicians, on the 
other hand it is edcuation because we give them the same arguments that we 
give everybody, we help them to understand how software and society is 
connected.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Fwd: [FSFE PR][EN] Copyright Directive – EU safeguards Free Software at the last minute

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,

Am Donnerstag 28 März 2019 09:47:34 schrieb Christian Imhorst:
> in our last press release on the EU Copyright Directive

meanwhile we have updated the press release, because some passages
were not clear enough:

  https://fsfe.org/news/2019/news-20190326-01.en.html

Press releases often have to be done under time pressure. As we all know this 
increased the chance of making mistakes and get oneselves missunderstood.

> "The exclusion of Free Software code hosting and sharing providers from
> this directive 

Is a sign that the people who were shaping the current EU directive
understood our arguments that Free Software development is important for 
Europe. They even understood that "non-commercial" is not enough to exclude 
platforms that help to collaborately develop and share code under Free 
Software licenses. This means that on this limited subject the FSFE is taken 
seriously as someone to talk to.

However we were not heard about the more general aspects about the directive,
especially not about the dangers of articles 11, 12 and 13 (old numbering). :/

> Other open source platforms, such as Mastodon instances, 
> have to install upload filters 

The directive always was about what is "shared" on the platforms, not how it 
is implemented. From what I've read it is unclear how this will be handled in 
legal practice. There maybe clear ways to construct something useful for 
peer-to-peer social networks, in any case it is getting harder not easier to 
compete with the major "sharing" platforms from the US, so it is a clear 
advantage to them.

> I urge the FSFE to argue *against* uploadfilters 

We always did, though if the legislation keeps standing as it is, 
- there is a tiny chance that it will be abolished in the Council of the EU -
I consider it valid to think how the bad effects of bad upload filters can be
reduced by less dangerous updates "filters". This debate may actually proof 
that it is not possible, however.

Regards,
Bernhard

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vscode - any known Free Software builds/packages?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,
there is an MIT licensed base version called "vscode"
which the proprietary version of Microsoft Visual Studio Code
is based, which seems to be getting more popular.

Does somebody know of Free Software re-building or packaging efforts?

Best Regards,
Bernhard

== Details
https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/60#issuecomment-161792005
"We build on top of the vscode code base we just open sourced and we release 
it under a standard, pre-release Microsoft license."

"We clone the vscode repository, we lay down a customized product.json that 
has Microsoft specific functionality (telemetry, gallery, logo, etc.), and 
then produce a build that we release under our license."

"When you clone and build from the vscode repo, none of these endpoints are 
configured in the default product.json. Therefore, you generate a "clean" 
build, without the Microsoft customizations, which is by default licensed 
under the MIT license"

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Re: vscode - any known Free Software builds/packages?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 31 Januar 2019 17:17:43 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> there is an MIT licensed base version called "vscode"
> which the proprietary version of Microsoft Visual Studio Code
> is based, which seems to be getting more popular.
>
> Does somebody know of Free Software re-building or packaging efforts?

Found one
  https://github.com/VSCodium/vscodium

Had searched around a while before and did not find something before I've
decided to write to the list. So sorry for answering my own post. 
Found vscodium via
https://carlchenet.com/you-think-the-visual-studio-code-binary-you-use-is-a-free-software-think-again/
 
I've seen an Arch initiative for packaging mentioned somewhere as well.

Are there others out there?


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UNICEF wants to financially "invest" in Free Software products of companies

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

"[...] The Fund provides investment-style funding for early-stage, open source 
technology solutions that address the most pressing challenges faced by 
children and young people. [...]" [1].

Though full of overrated technology hypewords, it maybe of interest because 
its explicit requirement of Free Software results.

Best,
Bernhard

[1] https://www.ungm.org/Public/Notice/82482?utm_source=email
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Re: Innovation, funding and FS

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Samstag 15 September 2018 17:20:26 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> On Friday 14. September 2018 09.06.50 Bernhard E. Reiter wrote:

> It is worth noting that there are a number of recurring obstacles.

.. with micropayments and financial regulations being among them, yes!
I'll have to take more time read through the interesting links
you were providing.

> Then again, I am inclined to think that such platforms tend to favour
> transactional work, often underpriced, that is viewed as fashionable
> amongst the relentless promotion of the "gig" economy (hence the venture
> funding for some of the companies above). Instead, I think that structures
> to fund Free Software should enable developers to actually draw a salary,
> not have people speculatively do work in order to compete for payouts.

If I do understand you correctly, you believe they fund more "marketing" and 
less "development". Whereas sometimes good quiet engineering would need to be 
funded. In a bird's view I'd agree on this. The challenge - though - is to 
find out which kind of engineering work is worth what.

> Micropayments with low transaction costs is like the Holy Grail of
> payments, though. 

It look doable, though, if a major bank would back it (in a traditional sense 
without distributed ledger technology).

> But the matter of persuading people to pay for stuff is 
> worth further thought, and there was a blog article about that recently:
>
> http://think-innovation.com/blog/should-you-donate-to-open-source-software/

This article is interesting, my rule of thumb how much to pay is
* 10% of cost for a license of a comparable proprietary product
* or 1% of the revenue for each business topic/unit that depends
  on Free Software  (for my company that is 1% of 100%, but some
  companies may depend less on Free Software).

> One thing I ought to mention is the need for solutions that use real money
> as opposed to today's favourite cryptocurrency. When looking for creative
> solutions there always appears to be someone wanting to sweep everything
> off the table to further their "cipherpunk" anarchist pipedream.

Well said.

> People need genuine solutions that do not involve financial speculation,
> legal uncertainty, and exposure to criminal schemes. A crucial aspect of
> funding Free Software is exactly that of giving people certainty 
> so that they can focus on what they actually want to do.

Fine again, except for the last part. 
It is not the desire of the Free Software engineer that should drive the 
directions of funds, but the needs of the users. There can be a wide 
difference between the three things:
 a) what people want to do
 b) what people are good at
 c) what others need

To be succesful in my eyes, a funding model would need to make sure that 
mainly c) and b) is matched.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: FSFE and censorship - not true?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Andreas,

Am Sonntag 16 September 2018 11:05:02 schrieb Andreas Nilsson:
> Personal attacks are something else and are not criminal. 

but not welcome here either I hope, especially attacks that aim for degrading 
a person (lile "ad hominem" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem)
as opposed to their political view.

Please also compare this to 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:No_personal_attacks
which includes comparing people to infamous persons
or various threats.

> Satire uses personal attacks a lot in art and comedy 
> without meaning a malicious intent.

If it is clearly satire, it would'nt be a personal attack it would be ironic 
or saracstic or so. :)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Innovation, funding and FS (was: to git or not to git)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Andreas,

Am Donnerstag 13 September 2018 17:05:41 schrieb Andreas Nilsson:
> By the phrasing "leading provider" I assume that it means a company
> that won't share the software innovations with the rest of the
> community so that all can benefit. 

yes.

> If this is the case then I would suggest to seperate out the parts that
> makes Github and others to have an upper hand and then see how the

This seems the logical step to take, however it is hard to do this 
successfully as far as I can say. It takes many little things and a dedicated 
team with a lot of time on its hands, which basically means professionals.
And then we get to the question of funding and a "business" model, which of 
course could be a non-profit "business" model. It had to be stable for years.

> It's really bad that a company thrives on a thing like "open source"
> while using that income to fund "closed source". I wonder if even the
> open source camp would approve of that as a thing to further
> improvements.

Many people accept the comfort coming from innovations funded with non-free 
software or coming with non-free products. I cannot blame them in principle, 
as it is a personal decision how far out someone is willing to go from the 
mainstream. Hopefully we can point out ways where each person can support 
Free Software with little efforts and we should always offer the next steps 
for everyone, no matter where they stand.

> I could share an idea I have had about the financing and the "poor free
> software developer not getting paid". 

Most Free Software is developed by people are paid for doing it already.
The more the more releveant the FS-product is. The question is: Who paids 
those developers and makes sure the interests of the organisation is 
considered.  For the famous kernel, there are some basic statistics

https://lwn.net/Articles/760690/ 4.18
https://lwn.net/Articles/756031/ 4.17
https://lwn.net/Articles/750054/ 4.16
https://lwn.net/Articles/742672/ 4.15

where you see companies like Intel, Redhat, AMD, IBM, Google appear often.
It is major companies and their customers that drive the main lines of 
development. My conclusion is that we need funding models for IT-interest of 
small organisations or private people to be successful with Free Software.
A customer demand and funding can help a lot.
Fortunately a number of companies are trying to create product with lots of 
Free Software, so the availble number of offerings is growing. 

> The idea is to make an economical funding platform. The platform itself
> only communicates between the two parties users and developers,
> economically.

This has been tried a number of times in the past and hasn't worked out well.
What could help would be a system for micropayments that is easy and has low 
transaction costs. Another approach would be to have a organisations that 
distribute small amounts of money (e.g. GNU system distributors would be in a 
good position to do so.) A key point is peoples willingness to pay for 
something, even if they are not force to.

Best Regards,
Bernhard 


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Re: to git or not to git

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Samstag 08 September 2018 15:36:08 schrieb Adonay Felipe Nogueira:
> Personally, I don't think we need to dive down into completely different
> VCS software just because a VCS repository provider decided to go evil.

The argument is about how to counter the network-effect that will makes it 
easier and easier for a leading provider to get more ahead of others.
And it is about what is a more sustainable choice.

The money that Github is earning with helping to develop proprietary
software, allows it to innovate fast and turn a user experience of git into a 
user experience of git-hub. If many people are socialised with it, they want 
that user experience whereever they go. This is why even using Bitbucket
as a proprietary competitor does something good to keep the competition open.
And using hg or services that allow hg also help weakening the network-effect 
cycle a bit, while strengthening chances of competition.

> GNU Savannah provides Git repository hosting too, and is powered by GNU
> Savane, a host software that you can use on your own[2]. 

It is very good that these Free Software product and services exist.
The problem is that many developers now believe them to be too far behind (in 
features, available add-ons and user experiences) compared to 
github/bitbucket/gitlab.

Even Allura (which is the Free Software that runs Sourceforge) is considered 
by many to not play in the same league.

For instance Savane is an continuation of the old sourceforge code variant,
a newer one is http://fusionforge.org/
which was used by Debian and others (see list at
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GForge#FusionForge)
But Debian is moving off Fusionforge.
The listed organisations (which includes my company) have failed to finance 
and organise a steady development of Fusionforge so it could keep up.
Think about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gna! which shutdown a while ago.

If we (as Free Software people) want a first class Free Software product
and a number of service providers offering to run it for us, we need to make 
sure professionals can earn serious money with it. 

Regards,
Bernhard

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hg SCM, history rewriting (Re: to git or not to git)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Donnerstag 06 September 2018 22:40:49 schrieb Timothy Pearson:
> > I think you could do something similar to git with Mercurial but it
> > wouldn't be exactly the same.

> As long as the general class of functionality is present, that's fine.

https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/HisteditExtension

  History editing plugin for Mercurial, 
  heavily inspired by git rebase --interactive.

(shipped with hg since v2.3 (2012-08) it just needs to be enabled)

Mercurial also has a concept called "phases" where hg tracks which changes
have already be published to assist avoiding conflicts with shared repos.
https://www.mercurial-scm.org/wiki/Phases

One other feature of hg that I personally like is the ability to push and pull 
from a clone via ssh. So I can use a development virtual machine with less 
security requiemtns from a regular machine.
(If you know how to do this easily with git, I'd appreciate a hint to a 
tutorial as personal mail. It will be possible somehow.)

   Regular machine, 
   (more rights)  (R)  > dev machine (D)

There is no direct way from D to get to R.
I ssh onto D, work there, then commit and pull it back to R from R.
Inspect code on R and push in into the public repo.
So if someone subverts D, they can only change code (which gets inspected
on R), but they do not get R's priviledges.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Conference Bits

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hello,
there is a conference https://bits-und-baeume.org/en
that aims to bring together several approaches for sustainability
in the physical and digital world.

I've learned about it only a few days before the closing of the CfP
and submitted three proposals:

a) Talk about "How to improve the world on many topic with limited personal 
resources"

which is a rough translation of
  Mit wenig Einsatz, bei vielen Themen die Welt verbessern
  -- Mit System handeln und andere überzeugen

b) an 8 minute provocative stand-up about
   "It is in your best interest to pay for software, services and newspapers!"

rough translation of
  Meine These ist: Es ist in Deinem Interesse für Software, Dienste, 
  Newsticker und Zeitungen zu bezahlen!

c) a workshop about
  We set up Email-Cryptography
  -- End-to-End with OpenPGP got easier

a) and b) are being planned in German, though I could do English as well.
As you are English readers, do some of you plan of going there?
If more people are interested I could do a translation of my abstracts for a) 
and b) and send it here.

I don't know how the organizers react towards wishes from the audience,
what I've heard is that they would like more Free Software people to bring in 
their experiences. Thought I'd let you know.


Best Regards,
Bernhard

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pros for hg instead of git (was: to git or not to git)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 21:44:20 schrieb Alessandro Rubini:
> Having two options instead of one is always good.

Yes, this is why my post was about the effect chains if we use and support one 
tool or several ones. Because in a lot of situations others are already 
completely booked on one tool, I'm using all opportunites to use the other, 
because they come less often. Just like I am always trying to use
https://iridiumbrowser.de/ instead of Chrome and Edge if I can.
And a GNU system instead of Windows. LineageOS-microg over Vendor 
Android/Linux. And so on. It is not a major hassle for me, I'll just keep an 
eye open for more Free Software opportunities.

But back to Mercurial SCM (aka hg from https://www.mercurial-scm.org/):

> Today I read some (most?) documents on the project's site, and I see
> that it's very similar, 

Thanks for giving hg a look. In my experience it is a sound option
and comes with comparable power, if compared to git.

> but on the flip side it looks like interactive 
> rebases are not as easy as they are with git, and I really use them a
> lot (I write several features and test them all together, so I often
> squash my fixes in the original commit before pushing).

With due respect: Here you can see how your style of working was shaped by the 
tool. In my company (where we use hg and git) we'd already lost code because 
an interactive rebase can lead to data loss, thus breaking a mental concept
that some have of an SCM to be able to reconstruct each configuration once it 
has been checked in. Still I believe interactive rebased can be useful,
and you've probably found the extensions that allow it for hg,

e.g. see the dicussion at 
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1725607/can-i-squash-commits-in-mercurial#1725638

> Also, I don't like much the data model (which is why, I think, changing
> the whole history is not as easy as with git).
>
> Thank you none the less, it was interesting reading.

Thanks for considering hg, a technically diverse "ecosystem" is much more 
resilient against all sorts of "problems". :)

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: Daniel on discussion@ (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Stefan,

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 19:03:46 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
> If you have had just googled, for the sake of your intelligence, 
> my name, you will have seen that that email is associated to my name.

when you wrote (on the 31th) that you
| know and have been part of communities like FSFE for the last 20+ yrs and
| represented some of them as president.

I got interested in your work and put your email address in a privacy aware 
search engine like 
  https://duckduckgo.com/
  https://www.startpage.com
  https://www.qwant.com/
(no hits which have the email address itself)

> I am the supporter of Free Software
> and the community and I promote both equally for more than 2 decades.

It is for respect that I want to understand where my communication partner is 
coming from and it helps to make communication easier.

An open question is also an opportunity to clarify, as other may get the same 
ideas, but do not try to ask it openly.

> I do pay you.

So far I have not been paid by FSFE, I held honoary positions, am a volunteer 
and a donor with my company. You'll find a link to my homepage from the blog 
in my footer.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Bernhard lectures on discussion@ (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Matthias,

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 14:16:15 schrieb Matthias Hager:
> My connection with Daniel?  He is our representative, long live our
> representative 

A number of people that were previously supporter or fellows-only have to 
become into internal communication channels and the e.V. membership. 
Mirko is also an active fellowship-seat holder.

The problem with Daniel is that he seems to have an incompatible style of 
working with many people within FSFE (volunteers, staff, supporters).
Main reason seems to be that he sometimes uses personal accusations
and he keeps repeating things, even if they have been explained to him
in many ways. He also does not seem to respect that if he had tried multiple 
times to convince others about a point and did not convince a significant 
number of people, the large majority does not want to discuss a taken 
decision again and again. In addition he seems to take a change that predates 
his involvement in the e.V. and the existing of a motion that make it extra 
clear that he can continue to be active in the e.V. personally. It wasn't 
personal, as many explained to him.

> Looks like you are trying to whip up another excuse to send 
> our rep back to us 
[..] 
> and evade answering serious questions 

In the last week I took an extra effort to explain the situation, which 
included answering many questions, some even multiple times.
Which questions do you want me or FSFE to answer in addition?

> funny FSFE accusing people of trolling and identity abuse, maybe the whole
> organization should be disbanded, the FSFE raison d'etre could  be trolling
> the FSF? 

The FSFE consist of multiple persons, which hold a variety of opinions.
The criticism coming from me was about aggressive phrasing and explicit or 
implicit accusations that I believe we must be intolerant to as a group.
According to who writes what: I wanted to have an open statement for 
clarification, because there were some initial signs. I did appologize
for my writings that came with a great potential for missunderstandings.

To becoming involved with FSFE is to help forming opinions, meet with other 
Free Software people and help promoting Free Software.
(That are two major points from 
https://fsfe.org/contribute/contribute.en.html)

Best Regards,
Bernhard
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Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Stefan,

Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 13:07:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
> This is becoming really noisy now, l have asked clearly to stop this debate
> that is running on different threads and let the main representative to
> feedback and respond to issues raised. Not accusations but issues.
> Apparently you ignored that email.

initially I could not see it on the mailinglist. (Due to my mail setup, which 
is now improved.) Sorry for not responding. Let me respond here to your main 
point:

It is also my expectation that FSFE will officially respond. I believe 
Matthias will do this sooner or later, after having spoken the relevant FSFE 
teams.

However I do not necessarily think he has to respond quickly, especially not 
if he feels that all important points have already been raised by others on 
the list. (Otherwise it would come down to a possible denial of service 
method: just call the president and he has to personally respond.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Daniel on discussion@ (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Paul,

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 11:47:54 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> Although we should always be cautious about whether people are who they
> claim to be on the Internet, we should also exercise restraint in accusing
> people of not being who they might say they are. Otherwise, we risk denying
> someone their voice and ultimately their identity, which is a very
> undesirable outcome indeed.

this I agree to, sorry if my email was too direct and could be interpreted
as accusation itself. My intention was more to create an opportunity to 
clarify this. As also written in my other mail, currently I am not aware of
identify abuse on this mailinglist.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Tone of discussion

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Andreas,

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 08:59:54 schrieb Bernhard E. Reiter:
> While we are at speaking as oneselfs:
> Another example I'd find un-acceptable is astro-turfing or using
> sockpuppets to make it appear like an opinion is carried by many people.

My message could have been missinterpreted as it was in reply to your email.
So just to clarify: it was meant as a general question, while discussing
what is supposed to be acceptable on this list. 

I am not aware of any astro-turfing or sockpuppets on this list.

== Details
As always I've put some email addresses in a search engine if people refer to 
their experience to better understand what they mean, as a number of people 
run a blog or are involved in other organisations. The background is that 
some spam and chatbots are getting more and more sofisticated and if a 
message is phrased very generally or very provocative it does not makes sense 
to respond to the questions. It just unlikely that an email address is used 
the first in public only on this list.
I've asked Daniel about two email addresses, because I found the exchange with 
the quoted HTML email and him strange and hope to clear up unwritten 
suspicions some may have.

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Tone of discussion

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Andreas,

Am Mittwoch 05 September 2018 07:31:05 schrieb Andreas Nilsson:
> > Please respect that I can speak out for whomever I'd like, whenever I
> > like.

> I usually don't post here but this is a tone I'm not comfortable with
> from you Bernhard. You don't have an automatic right to copy someone
> else's identity and speak for their behalf, 

I agree that people should speak for themselfs and and this is what I've did.
I've voiced my support of how FSFE and its president currently works
and just like everybody can voice their criticism. Both should be done in a 
civil tone.

> > This is our mailinglist, so it's partly mine and I blieve I can speak
> > out, just like anybody to defend a civil tone here. 
> > The statements you've cited are not civil in my opinion.

> "This is my mailinglist so I can say what I want." and then "You are
> not civil." is not something I would hear on a TV debate I think. You
> claim your right to be somewhat rude since you moderate the list, in
> that case maybe you should stick to only moderating and not voicing
> your opinions
[..]

I'm not a mailinglist moderator of this list. 
I'm not claiming the right to be rude.
I point out what I believe is non-civil, but in a civil tone.
(Of course I may sometimes fail at doing so, thus I am listening what others 
write and set out to clarify what I've meant if this needs to be the case.)

While we are at speaking as oneselfs:
Another example I'd find un-acceptable is astro-turfing or using sockpuppets
to make it appear like an opinion is carried by many people.
What do you think about this?

Regards,
Bernhard

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Daniel on discussion@ (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Daniel,

Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:22:33 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
> are you trying to change/misrepresent the intention of
> somebody else's email?

please read the exchange again and look at the quotes,
I was asking what ostend...@gmail.com meant by quoting from an HTML mail by 
matthias.ha...@zoho.eu.

BTW: as both email addresses have no direct hits on an internet search engine, 
they strongly support your points and they have similiarities in writing 
styles, I'm just asking you directly: What is your connection to these email 
addresses?

> The second motion included a very aggressive and ultimately toxic option

Please reread my last explanations and what other wrote about this.
Others don't share your view. It does not make sense bringing this up
again and again.

Regards,
Bernhard


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Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Am Dienstag 04 September 2018 23:21:36 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
> > and how do you find such an ideal person?
>
> In most organizations, they let any member of the community nominate for
> the position and then all the people can vote.  An election.

As others have pointed out before: 
This is not the case with many successful NGOs for the reasons mentioned
several times.

> > Our anchor person has much to do, a volunteer wouldn't have enough time
> > on her hands to do the job.
>
> The key responsibilities are to prepare for the annual meetings and
> chair those meetings.

This is your opinion on how an organisation lobbying for Free Software should 
work, but not mine (and as far as I can say I am in agreement with the 
majority of people that build up, run and contribute to FSFE).

It seems you are unhappy with FSFE. You have voiced it multiple times,
it did not resonate a lot. Please do not repeat it more often,
it won't change people's view if it hasn't by now.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Tone of discussion (Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Stefan,

> I clearly quoted to Matthias's email, was that hard to understand this.

because of the HTML format of the email you were citing, 
I wasn't sure if you really meant to support what you have cited or meant
the included citation of the email that redated it.

> I don't think l have posted anything disrespectful here, ever in this ml.
>
> So be nice and respect my feedback/opinion and stop with your lecturings
> plus insinuations pls.

At least the above statement is something that I could read as disrespectful,
as I merely wanted to understand what you mean. The second part of my email
was to repond to what you have only cited and originated from 
matthias.ha...@zoho.eu.

> Stop talking on behalf of Matthias Kirchner and let him exercise his own
> defence. I don't think I called you into this, don't remember mentioning
> your name.

Please respect that I can speak out for whomever I'd like, whenever I like.

This is our mailinglist, so it's partly mine and I blieve I can speak out, 
just like anybody to defend a civil tone here. The statements you've cited 
are not civil in my opinion.

> Not accusations but issues. 

Up to now I believe I have responded to all questions, to some questions more 
then once. This a least clarifies the position where I stand. And it saves 
others to to explain some of the things which have been explained before.
I don't think it necessarily takes FSFE's anchor person to respond to each 
question, especially when it was already explained sufficiently (for most) by 
many. 

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: Free Software economics

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Paul,

[deliberately breaking the thread, so this does not get drowned in unrelated 
stuff, only quoting a bit]

Am Freitag 31 August 2018 15:35:21 schrieb Paul Boddie:
> Unfortunately, the "for exposure" culture encourages people to overstretch.

It is just one out of several motivations to develop Free Software or 
participate actively in a community.

In general I think the good effects of "for exposure" are exaggerated in 
society, it seems to be a problem of modern social media.

ut the "for exposure" argument is overblown in other parts of society as well, 
it is a general problem of modern social media. Just think about influencers.

> In one case in the Python community, someone who had been "all over" every
> topic of concern eventually burned out:
>
> http://jessenoller.com/blog/2015/9/27/a-lot-happens

It is sad to read. 
We can find many examples.
When making policies and organisating, we need to keep looking out for
a work/volunteer/life balance. Doing this for Free Software is quite similiar 
to other job or honorary positions.

> since this kind of "noble volunteerism" meshes with a popular flavours
> of capitalism, such people and the lessons they have for us are readily
> forgotten, their misfortune seen as "regrettable" but somehow an acceptable
> cost to bring about other people's success. 

At least not here. We must teach people how to keep the balance, make good 
choices and we need to make sure that the structure in society allows for 
people to grow, be happy. Hopefully even catching them, if they stumble and 
fall.

> I mention this particularly because it may help some people to understand
> why people become so aggrieved and feel mistreated.

It is one reason to become aggieved, there are others as well.
However when being in such a state it is more important to watch out for 
oneself and leave the situation which causes this sort of stress.
And while surrounding people maybe empathic, they also need to be clear to 
draw a line and sometimes to end the situation to protect themselfs and this 
person in an emotional difficult situation.


== Professional offerings for Free Software

> There most certainly are professional offerings, yes. But then again, there
> are people like Werner whose PGP libraries are being used by billion dollar
> corporations as the foundation of their businesses' operational viability,
> and yet it apparently took security scares in other cryptographic libraries
> and Edward Snowden's remarks to crack open wallets and get things funded at
> a more tolerable level.

The publications of Edward Snowden were a wakeup call for some. It maybe sad 
that it sometimes has to make headlines before people take some action.

However I believe that the growing numbers of supporters of FSFE also 
support our mission because they like what we are explaining it to more policy 
makers and companies why funding better Free Software is in their own best 
interest (while being better for society as well). 

> I am arguing against the zero-sum game played by various businesses,
> the result of which is a shoal of little fish whose only defence is not to
> be big enough to be noticed by the big (proprietary) fish that everybody
> else has to deal with.

This seems to say that many Free Software businesses could do something in a 
better way. While I agree that offerings could be better, this would also 
take customers to be willing to buy those offerings. It is a circle and if we 
want it to grow, we can act at any situation. (This is why I had started 
paying for Free Software many years ago.)

> From conversations I have had over the years, I sometimes wonder whether
> certain companies regard their Free Software competitors as worse enemies
> than the proprietary vendors and solutions they should all be doing their
> best to defeat. So that game of divide and rule continues, of course.

To me it seem natural that the small company offering something similar to 
yours is often seen as competitor. However there are business associations 
where the same companies are working together. E.g. the Open Source Business 
Alliance in Germany.

From personal experience I can say that it is a challenge to cooperate with 
many companies, just size would not get you the contracts. (My company does 
cooperate as much as we can, this is why I know it is difficult.)

Best Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: what makes a good president and chairperson?

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi,

Am Montag 03 September 2018 22:12:28 schrieb Stefan Uygur:
> Pretty much it
> Can't say l disagree.

thanks for quoting the HTML email.
Can you say to which you agree with in particular?
Carsten's statement that we believes that everything is basically fine?

> On Mon, 3 Sep 2018, 21:08 Matthias Hager,  wrote:
> > All the crazy stuff on this list doesn't make you cringe?  The culture of
> > this organization is hideous.  Everybody is infected with it.

It is this kind of statements that we do not want here.
Even if you'd have a few persons that write in a disrespectful tone, there is 
no need to generally accuse everybody.

What shall we do if questions are asked? Even in a disrespectful tone?
We had chosen the path to allow them and reply with answers and a good tone.
So we attempt to err in doubt of the argument. However if the tone is 
degrading, we need to be more strict about our moderation policy to protect
the other people who want to ask and discuss in a civil tone.

> > Get a new leader and get a new culture.  Other people worry about too
> > many details but they are right about the solution: change

Sorry, change without detailed plan or purpose is just activism.
Something I do not like in politics in general. Do you?

> > Funny question but how did a little posse in Berlin trying to a-- f---
> > the absent fellowship rep benefit free software?

Daniel had several potential ways to make sure his opinion and vote would have 
been represented. He had chosen to not pursue any of them. There also is a 
second fellowship representative. And the change voted upon there was already 
in planning before Daniel became to have a fellowship seat. He knows all this 
and could not convince others about his ways of working over several months 
and now does not accept what a majority has concluded and goes public here. 
It is yours do judge the discussion of course.

Regards,
Bernhard

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Re: what makes a good president and chairperson? (was: supporting our fellowship representative)

[Bernhard E. Reiter]

Hi Daniel,

Am Montag 03 September 2018 19:04:25 schrieb Daniel Pocock:
> The ideal president or chairperson needs to be somebody who can unite
> staff, volunteers, fellows, supporters, donors and external parties.  To
> chair meetings, lead effectively and gain respect when representing FSFE
> publicly, they need to be above the controversial politics we have seen
> recently and acceptable to everybody.

and how do you find such an ideal person?

> The president doesn't have to be staff, it could be a volunteer too, we
> have over 1,500 people in the community and I'm sure there are many good
> candidates there.

Our anchor person has much to do, a volunteer wouldn't have enough time on her 
hands to do the job. 

> Matthias could continue to lead the staff in the Executive Director
> role, given Jonas' recent news that he is vacating that role?  Could
> this be the most constructive way to move forward and close the chapter
> on the recent politics?

No, it couldn't. Politics don't go away.
And the executive director position is almost as powerful as the anchor person 
position, so if you'd support Matthias in that position, you'd also support 
him in his current position. 

Matthias is doing a very good job in my opinion (and in the majority of FSFE 
people I know).

> Maybe a dramatic change of leader could also be a good alternative to
> the endless discussions about diversity. 

Which endless discussion are you referring to?
Diversity is a difficult topic with a lot of inertia in society. From the 
beginning we in FSFE have tried to enhance it, were only having a minor 
successes and we will try again with learned lessons. Thus we evolve and will 
continue the topic from now to then, discussing it. I see this as a good 
thing.

> By making it a position for a volunteer, more people might apply for it.

May apply yes, but being able to do a good job on it: No, because they'd lack 
time.

Regards,
Bernhard

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