Also, jetzt mal langsam. Vielleicht habe ich die letzten Wochen mental auf dem Mond verbracht, denn irgendwie kriege ich erst heute was von einem Projekt names De-Mail mit. Das sieht in Grundzügen wohl so aus:

Dem heutigen E-Mail-Standard mangelt es an Vertraulichkeit, Integrität
sowie an der Beweisbarkeit von Sende- und Empfangsvorgängen. Für die
rechtssichere digitale Kommunikation zwischen Bürgern, Behörden und
Unternehmen sieht die Bundesregierung daher künftig die
De-Mail-Infrastruktur vor, die auf gewohnten Internetdiensten wie
E-Mail und Web basiert. Dabei stehen De-Mail-Anwendern drei
Sicherheitsstufen für die Kommunikation sowie ein Datentresor zum
Ablegen privater, sensibler Daten zur Verfügung.
 

Im Lawblog bemerkt Udo Vetter dazu:

 

Sind es nicht gerade die Bundesregierung und insbesondere der
Bundesinnenminister, die mit ihren Gesetzen (Vorratsdatenspeicherung,
Bundestrojaner) das Vertrauen in die Vertraulichkeit der Kommunikation
nachhaltiger erschüttert haben, als es ein paar Hacker und Phisher
jemals gekonnt hätten?

Herr Schäuble sollte vielleicht gleich noch die Nutzung anderer
E-Mail-Dienste außer De-Mail zur Straftat machen. Ansonsten dürfte es
schwer werden, mich zu einer Anmeldung zu bewegen.

Und jetzt ist gerade noch ein ISP aus dem Projekt ausgestiegen, weil nur die Telekom-Tochter T-Systems das nötige Sicherheitszertifikat bekommen hat. Ausgerechnet die Telekom, die Kundendaten schneller verliert, als unsereins sie eingeben kann.

Ja spinnen denn jetzt alle?

 

 

The French government is likely to lobby the other EU member states to support disconnecting people from the Internet without a court case. The French government first tried to convince the European Parliament (EP), but that backfired and the EP adopted a text (amendments 138, 166) stating that a judicial process should always be necessary (Sept 24th). Then Sarkozy sent a letter (Oct 3rd, page 2 paragraph 1) to the European Commission asking them to reject the EP's amendment, but the Commission has rejected Sarkozy's request (Oct 7th).

So the remaining option is for Sarkozy to convince the other EU member states to oppose the European Parliament's amendments. The EU member states form the European Council, and they have the power during the current stage of the EU legislative process. So letters will have to be sent to the relevent minister in each national government regarding this issue.

This isn't a direct threat to free software, but Sarkozy's proposal is to give control over Internet connections to the Music industry. Internet connections are important for free software users and developers, and the Music industry is practically always our opponent on legislative issues.

More information can be found at:

• EUwiki.org
• LaQuadrature.net
• Or search the Internet (while you still have a connection) for "Telecoms package"

-- 

Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship

• Rockbox 3.0 is out! - I've installed it and it's working well. The default theme is nice, and radio seems to work on my iRiver H10. On the downloads page you can see what pocket music players are supported.
• GIMP 2.6 is out too! The user-interface has been improved so that the toolboxes shouldn't get lost under image windows anymore, all toolboxes are dockable in the toolbox window now, and the menubar now appears in the image window(s) instead of the toolbox window.
• FFII's new anti-swpat petition is still in draft, so comments should still be made
• More release announcements: GnuTLS 2.6.0 and coreutils 7.0
• ...and Nick Clifton has started a series of blogs describing monthly changes in the GNU Toolchain (gcc, binutils, newlib and possibly gdb as well), which I hope he continues.

See also: Yesterday's links - the archive of my Links posts.

-- 
Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship

Today I read Hanno's blog entry about his failed Microsoft Windows Vista refund. He used the same formula as I did. He got the answer (rough translation):

We won't refund your windows-license, because we think it's an integral part of the product.

Side not: I got 30 EUR without any answer on my bank account.

As you might know we have a Windows tax refund where we want to summaries all essential information about this topic. (Yes the page is in the first beta ;) ).

If you have information about Windows tax refunds, especially Lenovo with in Germany at the moment, please report your experience to FSFE's German Team under germany@fsfeurope.org.

--
Matthias Kirschner
Join FSFE's Fellowship and protect your freedom!

From the 22^nd of September to the 4^th of October Kathrin and me were on a wonderful holiday to Ireland. The first two days we stayed in a B&B in Galway, the last day we were in a hotel in Dublin. In between we stayed in a cottage near Brandon Point on Dingle (far, far away from anything which I might call “civilisation”).

I just have to say, Ireland is absolutely stunning! I took a whopping 1,208 fotos on my shiny new camera (which I now have to sort somehow). Even the view of Dingle Bay from the living room of the cottage every morning and evening was worth the whole journey… but of course we did not stop there and saw a lot of nice things on the Dingle peninsula.

All in all I can really recommend Ireland to anyone who likes it a little more quiet and enjoys a beautiful scenery.

According to German news-sources heise and golem the Bolivarian Government of Venezuela has signed a contract with a Portuguese Company covering 250.000 "ClassMate-PCs", to be devlivered early next year and more to follow.

The Notebooks will be equipped with a locally developed GNU-Linux-Distribution and distributed to families at prices depending on the income. Poor families are supposed to get one for free.

 

Official Newssource (in Spanish):

http://www.gobiernoenlinea.ve/noticias-view/ver_detalles.pag?idNoticia=83396

Heise.de (in German):

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/Venezuela-will-rund-1-Million-Schueler-Notebooks-beschaffen--/meldung/116809 

Golem.de (in German): 

http://www.golem.de/0810/62720.html 

We've started a series of monthly Fellowship interviews, as many probably noticed (thanks to LWN, FSDaily, GNUvox, Linux.com, and Groklaw).

There's an RSS feed and a permanent URL:

• http://www.fsfe.org/en/layout/set/rss/content/view/full/21882.rss
• http://fellowship.fsfe.org/interviews

Any Fellow of FSFE can be nominated to be interviewed. In fact, we need nominations: we don't know every Fellow, so to find good candidates, we need suggestions from you. Let me know, or send suggestions to fellowship [a] fsfeurope dot org.

-- 

Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship

There's a new essay on gnu.org about Avoiding Ruinous Compromises. I guess the main point is that if we want the freedoms of free software to eventually come as standard, we need people to take freedom into consideration when choosing software. Or as Stallman puts it, we need to change people's mindset, rather than looking for short-term gains by appealing to people's existing mindset.

The second is an interview looking back at 25 years of GNU. He's asked at the end if he's discouraged by the rate of progress of the free software movement, but he replies: "It's a strange thing, but at least in the area of free software, we're making progress, whereas in all other areas of human rights, the world is getting worse".

And there's one on guardian.co.uk, denouncing cloud computing. This generated quite a discussion on reddit.com. (Thanks to Matthias for hightlighting this one)

Update 2008-10-06: RMS's cloud comments have made quite a stir, getting on Linux Journal, Slashdot, Computer world, and many others.

-- 

Ciarán O'Riordan,
Support free software: Join FSFE's Fellowship

The guardian has an article about "cload computing":

"One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control," he said. "It's just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else's web server, you're defenceless. You're putty in the hands of whoever developed that software."

(Read the whole article.)

I also do not understand why so many people give away the control over their data. Especially as the prices of small USB storage is so low...

Let me know your opinions on this on discussion at fsfeurope.org.

--
Matthias Kirschner
Join FSFE's Fellowship and protect your freedom!

The smallest unit of freedom: a Fellow

Welcome to the first in our series of monthly interviews with a Fellow of FSFE - "the smallest unit of freedom". We're starting off by turning the tables on Seán "The Interviewer" Daly to ask him about his chosen way to contribute to the Free Software movement.

Ciarán O'Riordan: Hi Seán. Thanks for agreeing to this interview. You've done a lot for FSFE and for other projects such as Groklaw, by recording events, writing articles, and above all, interviewing others. That's not something many people do as a hobby, so how did you end up contributing in this way?

Seán Daly: Greetings Ciarán. Well, I make a good living working in IT and a few years ago I started to feel that I should contribute in some way and not just further my own interests. The free software movement places a high value on coding, and although I can write a decent bash or awk script, I'm not at a level to be able to contribute code. So I took an inventory of things I *can* do, and as a former tech journalist and audio engineer with some knowledge of digital and Web video encoding, I had the idea of recording speeches and conducting interviews. Back when I was a fulltime journalist, I enjoyed interviewing since it is usually an opportunity to go beyond official documents and statements and get a feel for the people involved in change. That's still the case.

Arranging audio and video recordings can be an expensive proposition for an NGO, I remember asking you what was planned for the GPLv3 Barcelona conference and when you mentioned that no budget was available, I decided then and there to volunteer. You know, any one of us can make a difference in some way; I had wondered for some time in what way I could contribute and I've been pleased to have had the opportunity to make basic decent quality recordings available of those historic events.

COR: The first time we made contact was about the EU vs. Microsoft antitrust case. That's quite a bureaucratic project, so what made you think it was where you wanted to get involved?

Seán Daly: I've been watching Microsoft for a long time, as an end user, as a journalist, and as a corporate buyer. What motivated me finally was when I saw coverage of the EU Commission antitrust case. In Europe, Microsoft's foot-dragging in complying with the 2004 Monti Decision concerned me, and I saw that with very few exceptions, the mainstream and tech media seemed not to cover fully all that was going on, in particular the important role of the intervenors like Samba and the FSFE. I felt that since traditional journalists were missing a vital part of the story, perhaps it was time for a nontraditional journalist to step up and report on that part. And as it turned out, they were the single most important part of the story, since they did not back down.

Others like Novell, RealNetworks, Sun and even the CCIA that originally were the complainants against Microsoft ended up settling and withdrawing from the fight, and in some cases taking some of the vital evidence with them, and it left FSFE and the Samba Team and ECIS standing on the field holding the ball, so to speak, all alone, but they kept going to the successful ruling on appeal a year ago. I will never forget the tension in that Luxembourg courtroom as the thirteen judges filed out to announce the ruling and then the satisfaction of Carlo, Jeremy, Volker, and Georg afterwards. It was a privilege to interview them that afternoon, and Thomas Vinje two days later; that coverage was, I think, a missing part of the puzzle for anyone wanting to understand what was happening.

COR: Since this is the first in a series of Fellowship interviews, I have to ask your advice: What makes a good interview? Is it about getting someone to pin down their positions, or about drawing out unexpected insights? What should an interviewer keep in mind when designing questions?

Seán Daly: I think it's important to set aside one's personal feelings on a subject, keeping in mind the goal of understanding more thoroughly the issues. I mean, I personally am disappointed with Microsoft, but next time I am interviewing someone from Microsoft, I want to be fair, so we can understand better. Clearly, every person, every situation is different, and an interview which should have gone smoothly sometimes doesn't. Other times, an important bit of news comes out, and it's important to stay on the ball and follow up right away.

That said, I think it is absolutely essential to prepare as much as possible. That means knowing as much about the subject matter as the previous statements of the interviewee which of course provide clues as to their positions and interests. Some interviewees are talkative and relish the opportunity to get their message out. Others are concerned about making a mistake and are more guarded. There's certainly an element of risk involved for them, so it's important to make people feel at ease; the best way to do that is to let them know they will have a fair shake. Preparing questions takes time and reviewing questions with another person beforehand helps. I've been very fortunate with PJ, she's a clear-minded editor.

COR: You've worked with high-profile people and legally sensitive topics. When a reader sees your interview, they've no idea what hoops you might've had to jump through to get it done. Is there a lot of bureaucracy, regulations, and agreements behind interviewing certain people?

Seán Daly: Yes, I could fill a boring book on that topic! Sometimes I hit a bump getting accreditation, other times an agreement mysteriously evaporates or changes. It's the result that counts, nobody really wants to know if I could only park half a mile from the courtroom and had to jog in or how many faxes I needed to send. In adverse conditions, politeness and fairness are your friend, along with unswerving determination to get the story. To make things simple for myself, I use very high quality recording equipment and carry extra everything since Murphy's law applies!

COR: Your interviews often cover topics that are broader or tangential to Free Software, such as fair use of copyrighted work (Copiepresse) and preserving competition in the software market (such as interviews with proprietary software companies who are supporting FSFE's antitrust case against MS).

Seán Daly: We are living in a critical period in history where traditional law for copyrights, patents, trademarks, trade secrets, is struggling to keep pace, a sea change is underway with the increasing importance of free software and open standards, the efficiency of search engines offers fantastic access to information while threatening privacy and disrupting existing business models. At the same time, web-published information is ephemeral, fragile; future historians may encounter difficulties locating primary sources of information. PJ takes the opportunity to cover issues in depth which have been passed over by the traditional media and has encouraged me when I have suggestions.

COR: I have to ask about terminology. In almost all your interviews, the interviewees talk about "Free Software" and "GNU/Linux", instead of using other terms. I know that you politely suggest this to interviewees beforehand. How have reactions been? Do people have strong feelings about this?

Seán Daly: It's funny you say that, I'm not sure I've done that often. It's true though that I prefer the term "free software" to "open source". In fact, I prefer the French "logiciel libre" to "free software" because of the ambiguity of the English word "free". And I'm uncomfortable not saying GNU with Linux since I use GNU tools every day -- bash and gawk and so on.

I think that in most conversations and particularly in interviews, an effort is made on both sides to find common words and phrases. Many interviewees understand that some words are weighted and take the trouble to understand why. I'd just as soon avoid taboos, but some commonly used words are just silly -- I mean, calling illicit copying "piracy" is so ridiculous considering what has been happening recently off Somalia.

COR: There's wildly mixed analysis of the music industry's attempts to control people's computers by making DRM ubiquitous. In the same week, we can see claims that DRM is doomed, and claims that it's inevitable. From talking to some of the active groups on this, and from reading the reactions to your own interviews, how do you gauge the levels of public awareness and the optimism among the experts?

Seán Daly: At this point, my impression is that the public thinks that Digital Restrictions Management is just a fancy way of ripping them off, making them pay over and over for music or films they have already purchased in a heavy-handed effort to maintain dying business models. With music, it seems doomed. But with other works, I think it's still to be determined. At some point, after everyone realizes DRM isn't a good way to properly compensate content creators, hopefully a better method will be found. Initiatives such as Bandstocks show that new business models are just waiting to be developed.

COR: You've lived in Europe and the USA, and in Europe you've talked to politically active organisations and companies. Do you see differences in how campaigning, lobbying, and raising awareness is done in Europe and the USA?

Seán Daly: I daresay there are differences in style, but I think it's mostly the Internet which has radically changed (although not eliminated) the old lobbyist power lunch.

COR: Let's talk about audio and video file formats. I know you prefer free formats. How do you go about editing and transcoding?

Seán Daly: I always keep the original rushes and raw audio files and work on copies when editing audio or video. I interview in stereo with my voice on one side and the interviewee's on the other. I usually normalize each channel individually; sometimes a phone interview track requires a bit of EQ though. I adore Audacity for audio editing, it's powerful and intuitive and has lots of plugin filters available. Video is trickier, it's more time-consuming and I haven't found suitable free software for that yet. Transcoding is actually the easy part, because there are a number of excellent commandline tools (transcode, ffmpeg, mplayer, oggenc, ffmpeg2theora, ...) and all you have to do is run a command adjusting the parameters with trial and error to hit the sweet spot of acceptable quality at low bandwidth. I always try to populate metadata fields, the Ogg container is well-suited for that. Even if search engines (Internet and local) don't crawl that metadata today, they will someday, and it's always a good idea to indicate copyright information, CC licence, date and place and of course the names of the people - open up any of my Ogg files with VLC and you will see that information. I'm very interested in the BBC's free Dirac codec which apparently can offer H.264/MPEG-4 AVC quality and scalability without the patent encumbrances.

I'm disappointed that popular sites such as YouTube discourage the use of free formats. The day Flash video can encapsulate the Xiph codecs or Dirac alongside Sorenson, On2VP6 and H.264, these formats will gain wider acceptance.

COR: I'm a big fan of transcripts, and from helping you a little on some of yours, I know you like to publish complete transcripts. This contrasts with many journalists who paraphrase answers. Can you give your reasons for doing this work?

Seán Daly: Indeed you have and PJ and I are most grateful for that assistance, you and I have worked an all-nighter more than once! I feel transcriptions are extremely important because that's how today's search engines index -- text. I have often listened to fascinating interviews on podcasts or audio files for which no text was available; what was said disappears immediately without a transcription -- you can't find it, you can't absorb what was said. To give an example, EU Commissioner Neelie Kroes answers questions from journalists at each press conference concerning the Microsoft case, and often, her responses are very interesting. The wire services paraphrase what she says but sometimes miss a key point. I have several times transcribed Commissioner Kroes' Q&A sessions from the EbS feed (About the MS-EU settlement, Oct 2007 and About the MS fine, Feb 2008). Of course, these are not official; the original EbS audio recording is there for that. But these transcriptions are the only source on the Net of these historic events. Web-published transcriptions can be as long as the interview, there's no space constraint as in a newspaper or magazine.

COR: And we have to close with the crystal ball question. You're always looking for a scoop. What projects or bodies are you keeping an eye on right now? Where do you see that someone's going to make a move on something you'll want to report on?

Seán Daly: You mean, show all of my cards? I can say that I monitor a certain number of subjects covered by a certain number of news sources, from press releases to wire reports to blogs. I am also subscribed to several mailing lists of interest. Alas, we have to choose our battles due to limited resources. But we will always prefer completeness and getting it right over speed and scooping others. There are two or three untold stories on the back burner which you will be sure to see some day :-)

On netzpolitik.org (which covers topics related net politics) is an interview from Markus Beckedahl with Georg. He explains why the GNU project is important, which future challenges he sees, and how FSFE's work looks like. Enjoy the interview (in German).

--
Matthias Kirschner
Join FSFE's Fellowship and protect your freedom!

 

"On 11. October 2008 we call for an international action day in as many European capital cities as possible and elsewhere around the world to demonstrate against the total retention of telecommunication data and other instruments of surveillance. We would like to recall the remembrance of the historical achievement of civil rights and liberties as a heritage of the Age of Enlightenment and to support the trust in security in our free society."

I am proud that  Sofia, Bulgaria will stand up for cause as well: big thanks to e-frontier Bulgaria and especially to Bogomil Shopov for making this event possible.

I know where I will be on Oct 11th, because I am sick and tired of these power-greedy b**tards, that are trying to force us into a f**king '1984' reality . For our own protection, of course. Yeah, right.

Yavor informed me that there is a new article on GNU's philosophy page.

The author Bob Chassell writes about why he think it is bad to talk about viral if you talk about strong protecting licenses such as GNU GPL. He suggests to call it vaccinates. I am also using this expression when explaining strong protecting licenses, I think it helps people understanding it better (I first heard it in a speech from Georg iin 2004).

So here is the link to: "Viral Code and Vaccination" by Bob Chassell.

--
Matthias Kirschner
Join FSFE's Fellowship and protect your freedom!

This year we celebrated Software Freedom Day with a concert, the Software Freedom Concert.

Read the full report, see the photos!