FSF

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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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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Denying Censorship

Georg Greve of the Free Software Foundation Europe is present at the Internet Governance Forum in Athens and he posts daily reports. On the second day of the forum the discussions turned to openness â?? a topic which many states that censor Internet traffic may find embarrassing.

So it was natural to expect hostile reactions towards countries which have a well documented history of Internet censorship. One way of dealing with bad news is simply to deny everything which Mr Yang Xiokun of the Chinese mission in Geneva did.
He stated that China has no access restrictions â?? at all.

Here is Georg Greve report of the exchange:

NIK GOWING:  Could I — may I ask you a question?  How would you define, for those who are not familiar with your government’s policy and the detail of it, what is the principle on restrictions of openness in China?

YANG XIAOKUN:  We do not have restriction at all.

Lets not forget that China is not alone in censoring the Internet. Organisations like the Reporters without Borders publish a list of â??15 Enemies of the Internetâ?? and many (most? all?) enlightened (?) European/Western countries intimidate, censor or limit access to information through alternative means – but at the same time it is almost impressive to be able to deny everything.

For more information about China and Internet censorship read the Open Net Initiative report on Internet Censorship in China between 2004-2005.

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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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DRM & Vista

Yesterday at the Internet Days in Stockholm a nice man from Microsoft who was apparantly no more than three steps away from the head developor at Redmond (nice, if you like games like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon)  stopped by the FSFE table to discuss DRM. We were on opposite sides of this issue and we had a very interesting discussion which concluded (predictably) that we were still in disagreement.

Basically his argument was that DRM can be useful and that opponents to DRM were too emotional (and a bit paranoid). My arguments were that DRM limits users rights, regulates in a way that limits legal rights and requires trust in a corporate body (whose goals are, and must be, profit – not user’s rights).

After a move into arguments that nobody is forced to use DRM:ed software we then moved into the realm of philosophy with arguments whether the user can “choose” without facts, or whether the user is aware that choices need to be made, and finally, whether or not the user cares about his/her rights.

We both had an agreeable time.

We also exchanged products. I gave him a copy of my PhD and he gave me a copy of Windows Vista Customer Preview program (Release Candidate 1). This version has ten licenses, which means that it can be installed on ten computers (or ten times on the same computer).

So â?? does anyone want to try Vista?

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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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