free software blog

Is trying to fix (E)SMTP really worth it?

Thu, 27 Mar 2008 19:51:29 +0100

I wanted to let you know that I just published an article covering the shortcomings of SMTP, the current email infrastructure and how some fixes to problems of SMTP, like SPF and DKIM, are not a real solution.

You can find the article here.

Python IDEs tested

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 11:42:28 +0100

I just wrote a blog post about my recent test of Python IDEs and observations about them.

Until now I have been using GNU Emacs instead of a fully-fledged IDE and was quite happy with it. But one IDE in particular changed my mind.

If you are looking for an IDE you might want to read the blog post (oh, and you vim and GNU Emacs users out there might want too).

BarCamp Senza Confini 2008

Thu, 03 Jan 2008 12:19:11 +0100

It has been a whole year since I last blogged but I was just too busy with other things.

However, I just heard of the upcoming BarCamp Senza Confini 2008 which is going to take place in Klagenfurt, Austria on 2. and 3. February and wanted to let you know.

Some of you might know that I did come up with the idea of doing a multi-national Free Software conference a while back. It was intended to attract not only people from Austria, but also from Slovenia and Italy. As the BarCamp Senza Confini 2008 is also about having a multi-national conference I believe it would be also a great opportunity for Free Software advocates from the region to meet and have a good time.

Even though I do not know if I'll be able to make it there yet I would love to see the Free Software community meet there.

FreeAlternatives: project proposal

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 11:15:14 +0100

I have just uploaded a file containing information on a proposed project, FreeAlternatives.

To give you a short primer, the project is about creating a database containing information on FreeSoftware packages which can replace proprietary software. The proposal contains information on how the database could be built, kept up-to-date and extended by the community instead of a small group and still contain valid and approved data.

The proposal is written in plain-text and can be downloaded from here.

Discussion should take place on discussion__at__fsfeurope.org, but you are also welcome to leave your comments here or drop me an email at sp__at__fsfe.org.

Linux developers discussing banning of 'binary-only' kernel modules

Thu, 14 Dec 2006 08:40:35 +0100

As LWN.net is reporting today [0], there is an ongoing discussion on the LKLM [1] about banning 'binary-only' Linux modules.

The real problems are not caused by 'binary-only' modules, but GPL-incompatible code being linked against GPL'ed code. From my understanding this does violate the GPL as linking A, a GPL licensed program, against B, which is licensed under a proprietary non-free license, does create a deriative work of A.

However, the suggested banning of proprietary and GPL-incompatible modules from being linked is a step forward.
It clearly would help stopping hardware vendors from 'tricking' users into violating the GPL by making them link proprietary modules against GPL'ed code themselves.

After all, I really like to see this happening now and hope that the Linux developers are finally going to stop others from violating kernel's license.

[0] http://lwn.net/Articles/213977/
[1] http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel/475727

Status Update

Tue, 12 Sep 2006 22:32:14 +0200

Hi to all of you reading my blog.
It's been a while now since I last blogged, so this is going to be a long post containing a lot of things that happened.

Let's start with one of the most important ones for myself. My idea of having an international Fellow meeting has been 'accepted' by you, and especially Stefano. I'm more than only pleased by the fact that one of my ideas has finally made it to a stage where it became reality. I'm really looking forward to that meeting on 11th Novembre in Bolzano/Italy and hope to see a lot of you guys there.

Okay, let's head on to the next topic. I finally found a GNU project I can participate in and do something good(tm). I'm currently undergoing training over at GNU Savannah and am looking forward to eventually become a GNU Savannah hacker sometime. This project might be interesting for some of you aswell, as doing project submissions has a lot to do with advocacy and spreading the word. Oh, and it's great fun. :-)

Another thing that has happened is that I finally got rid of my Plone/Zope based homepage. Plone is a nice webpage system, but it's way too ressource intensive. I've now gone back to the roots and my webserver is now serving a static 'plain-HTML' page. No CSS, no JavaScript, no 'fancy' design, just pure text and information.

Last but not least I'd like to extend my call-to-arms to this blog. I've been working on a project lately that should eventually, at some point, have a Free Software malware analyzation/sandboxing tool as outcome. The project is called penalyze2 and works with PE (Windows) executables. What it basically does is emulation of an x86 CPU and a Windows enviroment. This way malicious code can be analyzed without actually infecting a machine. Why I'm writing about a 'call-to-arms' is, that I'm still in need of people interested in working on that project. Its current state is that a proof-of-concept works, as in emulating/analyzing a simple helloworld application. The project, code and some more information can be found at penalyze2's GNU Savannah project page. If you are intersted in this topic go ahead and have a look at the project page (and maybe the todo list as well ;-) ).

That would, or better put, should be all for now.

Happy hacking!

Dublin and the IFSO

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 23:48:00 +0200

It has been a while since I last wrote a blog entry and I now finally found some time again to do so.

As some of you might (or might not) know I've been on a trip to Dublin with my school class last week. What we did there was basically having some fun and enjoying the Irish culture and of course the city itself.

I had a great time there and a few things are worth noting.
The first thing I'd like to note is the fact that when I went to the surfing station in my hostel I immediatly noticed that it was running GNU/Linux, some kind of kiosk software and Mozilla Firefox. That was pretty much the first impression I got from Dublin on a technical point of view - very impressive.

There's another thing I really need to blog about. As reinhard suggested to me before I left Austria I contacted the IFSO while I was in Dublin and also met up with a few people.
We had a great evening in a bar which seems to be quite famous (and indeed is quite nice aswell) called Messrs Maguire.
The most important thing though is that I had a great time that evening. I really enjoyed the talks we had and I've really been given a warm welcome and of course once again noticed the well-known Irish hospitality.

I can really suggest everyone spending a few days in Dublin to contact these guys and try to arrange a meeting as it has been a great experience to me.
I'd not only like to thank everyone who was there but especially Glenn Strong who seems to have arranged everything that evening.
Another thing I'm somehow proud of is that I'm now owner of an IFSO t-shirt. ;)

If anyone who has been there is reading this and you plans to visit Austria sometime, don't forget to give me a shout about it, as I told you. I would probably be able to either meet with you personally or arrange something.

So, the short version: Thanks guys for a great evening which was real fun and the nice, interesting talks we had. That evening was the best one I've had in Dublin, honestly.

NSA, AT&T and EFF: Dismissal of a lawsuit

Sun, 14 May 2006 09:08:34 +0200

Even though I did expect something alike, now it has become true.

As you can read in a /. article [0], the U.S. government has "'filed a motion on Saturday to intervene and seek dismissal of a lawsuit [1] by a civil liberties group against AT&T Inc. over a federal program to monitor U.S. communications."

Now that's scary. It pretty much seems like the U.S. are finally turning into a police state dismissing legal actions taken by groups that are aware of the constant loss of freedom and are trying to change that.
As I'm shocked I can hardly comment on that topic really, but I do have a strong feeling to inform others about it. So please go and read about it yourself.

[0] http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/06/05/13/219216.shtml
[1] http://yahoo.reuters.com/stocks/QuoteCompanyNewsArticle.aspx[...]

EU's storing of digital connection data and the loss of our freedom

Wed, 12 Apr 2006 11:37:13 +0200

The title already suggests that the article is not closely related to Free Software, but I guess a lot of you are interested in reading an article pointing out why there is a flaw in the proposed law and that it could seriously harm european ISPs (and especially mail service providers) in the long term.

The whole article is due to the lack of relation to Free Software hosted on my personal homepage and a here is the link.

Using the Fellowship Cryptocard for SSH authentication

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 00:30:58 +0100

I just finished setting up my fellowship cryptocard for ssh authentication.

Here I want to let you know what seems to have changed since Georg Greve gave an update on that topic the last time.

Debian knows about gpg2. gpg2 (and gpg-agent) can be installed on Debian testing and unstable as 'gnupg2' and 'gnupg-agent' in version 1.9.20 (There is also a version for stable but I doubt that one is recent enough, that would be gnupg2 version 1.9.15). Both are working fine with the card.

gpg2 however tries to find the pcsc-wrapper program in /usr/lib/gnupg. The program is installed to /usr/lib/gnupg2 though - a symlink fixes that problem.

There seems to be one problem though. Once the agent is running gpg2 cannot access the card anymore at all and gpg1 cannot use it for signing anymore, gpg --card-status seems to work though.
The latter one is quite straight-forward: gpg1 cannot use gpg-agent, it's still a feature of gpg2.
The other thing worries me though: gpg2 should know how to use the agent to gather information on the card that's being used by the agent right now.

I'll check if I can find any bug reports or possibly a fixed bug related to this tomorrow. If I don't succeed in doing that I guess I'll have to fix the 'bug' myself.

However, I'll keep you updated.

Multi-national free software conference

Tue, 21 Mar 2006 16:23:01 +0100

A while ago I came up with the idea of doing a multi-national conference here.

'Here' means southern Austria which would probably be a good place to do such a conference. Both the Italian and Slovenian borders are just a few minutes of driving away from here making this place a perfect location for something like a multi-national conference. As Stefano Mafulli does also have contact to the Croatian community they should be asked whether they want to contribute aswell - and I would gladly appreciate that.

The idea behind it is well known to regional organisations. There are quite a few events involving all three countries so why shouldn't there be something like a free software conference involving free software people from all three countries?

On the third Austrian fellowship meeting last week in Vienna I presented this idea to both Karin Kosina and Reinhard Mueller and both seemed to like it and asked me to inform the Italian team about it.

So I sent an email to Stefano Mafulli and after talking to him I realized that the idea seems to be quite good.

This shouldn't be a 'normal' meeting like the local fellowship meetings but is rather meant to be something 'bigger'. I can even imagine having a full-blown conference including workshops and seminars.

The most important reason for doing this conference is bringing together the 'neighbours' (geographically), have them meet up, discuss and maybe even start new projects together - we are one fellowship and all interested in one topic in particular, aren't we?

If the first conference is a success I can also imagine doing follow-up conferences in the other countries involved.

There is nothing like a 'big plan' for doing an event like this one yet, but it should be discussed on discussion@fsfeurope.org to get to know who is intersted in such an event and what those people can contribute (this includes constructive critism).

I hope I didn't forget anything and am waiting for your contribution.

*UPDATE*

With full blown I'm more referring to having workshops and seminars. This imho does already make sense with about 20 people participating. Just to avoid misunderstandings.

Austrian free software and GNU/Linux users have to unite

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 18:38:29 +0100

There is a free software (and GNU/Linux) community here in Austria, but there is still one main problem with that community: There is no organization.

A few user groups exist, but not everywhere. For example, in the state I'm living, Carinthia, there is no 'real' GNU/Linux user group. There does however exist a message board, but it is only used by a few people and I'm quite sure there are more GNU/Linux users around here. Everything looks pretty unorganised.

Having a look at the nation-wide organisation I also have to admit that it is rather non-existant. There is no main-entity uniting all users and usergroups. In my opinion something like that would make sense. The bigger the group is, the easier it is to get heard by the public and the chances that someone else in that group can help you with a specific problem is also higher.

In my opinion the sadest thing is, that when I asked for other Carinthian Linux users on a mailing list belonging to the "Linux User Group Austria", which should probably rather be called "Linux User Group Vienna", I got only one answer. And that within two days.

There is need for organisation here - there is need to get the users and usergroups united. But how to get them united if you don't even know, but still hope, that people with similar views and interests exist near you?

So if you are reading this, are living somewhere in Carinthia/Austria and feel like helping to form a usergroup here or help uniting Austrian users, give me a shout via email: sp at fsfe dot org