FSF

Tomorrow itâ??s back on the rails again. I am off to Stockholm to meet family and then to do some work early on Monday. The three-hour trip to Stockholm is becoming a very common occurrence lately but I donâ??t mind I enjoy train travel. Also the train has power outlets at all seats and wifi. All this means that I can surf while traveling at 200 km/hour.

On Monday I shall meet with people from Solidaritetshuset (Solidarity House) to discuss how the FSFE can help with their plans for holding seminars and training courses in Free Software and developing an open archive for their material.

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Enlightenment or countering the dangers lurking in darkness

My friend and colleague Jonas Ã?berg of the Free Software Foundation Europe (FSFE) has just turned the pressure on. The Swedish section of the FSFE has recently launched an ad campaign encouraging people to join the Fellowship of the FSFE. The campaign included a bonus give away of a pin or a lanyard to all those who joined before 31 December.

Today Jonas wrote a blog post where he complained about poor visibility in traffic which places pedestrians and cyclists in danger when it is dark – which is almost always this time of year in Sweden. So in order to do something about this he has just announced that he will buy a reflex vest (out of his own pocket) for anyone in Sweden who joins the Fellowship before the winter solstice (22 December 2006).

All you have to do is join fsfe.org/join then email him your Fellowship user name and length (for the right vest size) and he will send you a reflex vest…

This is such a brilliant idea!

I want to be part of it too. So if you (only in Sweden since this is a Swedish campaign) order your Fellowship (not renew, but become a new member) before the 22 December and you email Jonas your length (for the vest) then I shall send you a copy of John Stuart Mill’s “On Liberty” (please let us know if you want it in Swedish or English).

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Java under GPL

Sun will release key parts of Java under GPLv2 today! The initial release today will include the HotSpot runtime, javac compiler, JavaHelp, and Sun’s Java ME implementation. The rest of Java will be released under GPLv2 early next year.

The license that GPL Java will be released under includes a classpath exception, which allows linking against the Java class libraries without open sourcing your code, so the GPL licensing will not affect the ability of Java developers to produce closed source applications with Java.

In addition, Sun will offer dual licensing of Java, so there will also be a commercial port still available which is fully certified to be standards compliant.

“This is a milestone for the whole industry,” said Rich Green. “Not only are we making an influential and widely used software platform for the Web available under an open-source license, it also underscores Sun’s commitment to changing the whole industry model for how software is enhanced and developed.”

(via JavaLobby)

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Bolzano day 1 & 2

Day 1

Early mornings in airports are worrying places â?? this impression is enhanced by the people in the bar swigging alcohol before 7 am. Otherwise traveling is fun. Most enjoyable was the train between Verona and Bolzano. It is a 2 hour trip up a valley between high mountains. Every open place seems to be guarded by a fort-like building and every second impregnable hill seems to have a church on top.

Bolzano seems to be a nice northern Italian (oops sorry South Tyrolean) city. A clean, well organised city based upon a medieval model. The main irritation was that I forgot to bring an Italian power adapter but we passed an electrician on the way to the conference â?? problem solved.

Once at the conference it was lots of old and new people to talk to. Its great. Only drawback now is patchy wireless and that the dinner is three hours away…

Day 2

Yesterdays dinner was held on the top of a mountain unfortunately it was dark so there was no view. Dinner was nice – lots of people to talk to. Eventually the bus took us back to the hotel.

Today begins with a workshop on the fellowship smart card (which is used to handle the GPG encryption keys) by Werner Koch.

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To Bolzano

Tomorrow I fly to Bolzano, Italy to attend the South Tyrol Free Software Conference 2006. Then on Saturday the First International Annual Meeting of the Fellows of FSFE will be held (in the same place â?? someone has planned ahead). On Sunday there will be a team meeting and then its time to fly back home.

Austrian airlines flies to Verona and then a train ride up to Bolzano. This is a bit nostalgic since I spent some time as a guest researcher in Rovereto (which is between Verona and Bolzano). Unfortunately there is no extra time to spend in Verona, Rovereto or any other of the beautiful Italian cities in the vicinity.

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Good News

Today has been a good day. Two pieces of very good news dropped in. The first is that the Technical Museum in Stockholm has asked us (Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef & I) to build a Freedom Toaster for an exhibition.

The second piece of good news is that we have received approval from the Dean of our faculty that we can form a Centre for Free Software. This means that FSF Europe will have a stronger base in Sweden and that we will be able to lay the foundations for a long-term research agenda in Free Software.

Obviously there is a lot more to say about this latter point but that will have to come at a later stage when we have begun to formalise what we want to do and what we are able to do. The founding people at the centre are Jonas Ã?berg, Henrik Sandklef, Lennart Petersson, Alan Carlsson and myself.

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Internet Days

Today I am in Stockholm for the IIS (Internet Infrastructure Foundation) Internet Days. Two days of presentations concerning issues of interest for the Internet. In addition to this they also present the list of stipends for the projects they will support. This year both Jonas Ã?berg (Free Software education project) and Henrik Sandklef (PGP project) both from FSFE have received money for individual projects. So we are all here in Stockholm to exhibit and present FSFE and they are here to accept their funding â?? Congratulations guys!

The FSFE stand at the IIS Internet Days

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Bolzano

On the 11/11 I will be in Bolzano, Italy attending the First International Annual Meeting of the Fellows of the FSFE this will be an excellent opportunity to meet the fellows and the team. In addition to this there have been promises of new projects that will be announced at the meeting. The event also coincides with the South Tyrol Free Software Conference which is in Bolzano on the 10th – unfortunately I will miss a large part of this event since I shall be travelling to Bolzano.

If I have some spare time (which I doubt) I hope to be able to pop in to the South Tyrol Archeological Museum, which hosts the Ã?tzi the iceman.
Ã?tzi is the nickname of a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC, found in 1991 in a glacier of the Ã?tztal Alps, near the border between Austria and Italy. The nickname comes from Ã?tztal, the region in which he was discovered. He is Europe’s oldest natural human mummy, and has offered an unprecedented view on the Chalcolithic (Copper-stone Age) Europeans (Wikipedia).

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