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Software Cooperative News
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DLT is better than CAPTCHA
» Software Cooperative NewsStop using CAPTCHAs. It’s time to switch to DLT: Design, Limit and Trapdoor.
“[a certain website] has the evil bad wrong Google reCaptcha on the edit page to stop disabled users, so screw it. Google’s reCaptcha seems to be spreading again, obstructing more people when accessing more websites. Is there a reason for that? The re in reCaptcha stands for replace with real anti-spam, please!“
I wrote the above about two years ago and it’s not getting any better. I’ve written similar things over the last ten years, as have many others, and I’ve always sought to avoid using physical ability tests as a way to cut down spammers.
Why do people keep reaching for the reCaptcha non-captcha or things that use similar bad eyetests like Mollom? So most online messages may be spam, but those physical ability tests do nothing to test for spam. They’re trying to detect computer submissions (the TCHA in CAPTCHA is meant to be Telling Computers and Humans Apart), but that’s really bad when the computer is helping someone with a disability to access the internet.
People from the home of the CAPTCHA describe access for sight and hearing-impaired users as “an important open problem for the project” (Luis von Ahn, Manuel Blum and John Langford. Telling Humans and Computers Apart Automatically. In Communications of the ACM). Until that problem is closed, CAPTCHAs should be considered defective and removed whenever possible.
What webmasters should do instead is DLT:
- Design it well: Set up sites so the spammers cannot get a quick win in the first place. Configure permissions and things like that so people have to do some work before they are trusted to post links. This is similar to the basic theory behind my Open Activism paper Fighting in the Shadows. This is much easier to do if the system is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS), too.
- Limit the damage: include rate limits to stop one person causing you lots of work: even with computer-assistance, few people need to post 10 forum messages every minute. Join up in co-operative anti-spam networks like blogspam.net so if they hurt you, others can see them coming. Again, it’s easier to hook into a network if you’re using FOSS.
- Trapdoor: keep a way for people to contact you if they are really blocked by your design decisions and limitation and keep a way to exempt them from the limits if needed. Make it welcoming because disabled users are tired of reporting barriers to webmasters who don’t care and will never fix the web. A good multi-step eyetest-free contact form is a basic way to do this.
Have you tried this? Have your experiences been as good as our co-op’s? Are there sites you don’t think it would work for? A comments form is on the original of this article, as ever.
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Debian Project Leader Election 2012
» Software Cooperative NewsVoting is open in the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012
So now I need to figure out who to vote for. This year I didn’t take part in the discussions (all my spare time was bought, basically). The platforms are linked from the Debian Project Leader Elections 2012 page above and the key discussions were:
- Questions to all candidates
- discouraging discussion styles – any cure? – I think this is vital. I like Gergely’s answer best, but there’s not much between his and Wouter’s. I’m not sure about Stefano’s.
- More votes in Debian? Any idea for improvement? – Another vital issue to me, as democracy is a point of principle for me and our co-op. Wouter’s answer sucked and there’s not much to choose between the others.
- Finding sponsors for Debian
- Raising money for Debian – I didn’t feel that any candidate distinguished themselves on this or the previous question. No financial revolution looks likely.
- About debian-companies – Wouter’s answer is pretty much identical to my view… so I’m disappointed he won’t interfere if elected.
- how informed should a DPL be? – I’ve a slight preference for Gergely’s answer, but all are good again.
- Debian’s trademarks and logos, and their terms of use. Sadly, I suspect this is most likely to divide three good candidates for me… (reads) or not. Basically the same positions, with Gergely expressing interest in delegating it to Stefano to finish what’s been started.
- Question to all candidates: In eight years… Seems only Stefano has a vision?
- Questions to some candidates
- Gergely and Wouter: on the need of becoming a DPL – It seems they mainly want the freedom and a few style changes, but I feel Wouter makes a bit of a pig’s ear of this discussion, seemingly insulting Stefano at one point and even defending the broken Mail-Followup-To because it would help him use reply-all for everything.
- Gergely and Wouter: the level of independence from other distributions – It seems that both want to decide first but share more if we reach the same decision as others.
- Wouter and Gergely: software monopoly vs diversity – both seem pro-choice, as long as it’s maintainable.
- Questions to one candidate
- Stefano Zacchiroli: What would you do different – no big changes.
- DPL practicing
- Gergely Nagy: enough packaging manpower? This becomes about reforming the mentor/sponsor system, which I feel is needed.
- Gergely Nagy: how will you “search for talent and passion” has more good ideas on similar themes.
- Gergely Nagy: Disappearing? No, won’t happen, based on experience.
Thanks to everyone who asked these great questions. So, what do you think?
- Questions to all candidates
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Document Freedom Day – 28th March 2012
» Software Cooperative NewsDo you run Microsoft Office? Do you upgrade to the latest version because people send you Office attachments that your version can’t read?
Do you have lots of personal or company documents stored in an office suite format? Will the latest version of your office suite always be able to read those old documents?
Or have you migrated to LibreOffice (or OpenOffice) and hope that the Microsoft Office document you’ve just opened actually looks the way it was intended?
Document Freedom Day (March 28th 2012) is for those of us who want something better. Open Standards allow your software to open documents created in other software, that also supports Open Standards, without worry that they won’t look the way they were intended or that you’ll mess up the appearance or structure when editing.
The Open Document Format is an example of just such an Open Standard. It was developed by the OpenOffice team and is used natively by LibreOffice and OpenOffice. Wikipedia lists many other applications that support ODF.
Let’s support Document Freedom Day and call for Open Standards and freedom of software choice. See how you can get involved at [www.documentfreedom.org] , add a banner or badge to your web site, and add your support for DFD to your sig:
Document Freedom Day – Liberate your documents
[documentfreedom.org] – March 28th 2012
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Signed the PDFreaders Petition
» Software Cooperative NewsWe, the undersigned, hereby state that we expressly and unequivocally oppose the advertising of proprietary software products on government websites.
Such advertising breaches impartiality and encourages citizens to employ technologies that unnecessarily restrict their freedom. The role of government is not to support certain market participants and not others, particularly when doing so works to maintain the monopolies of global software companies.
In explanations of how to use digital resources that they provide, government agencies should clarify that multiple methods are available, and favour technologies which do not restrict users’ digital rights; by linking to PDFreaders.org, for example.
Free Software guarantees the users right to use (for any purpose), study (without secrets), share (with anyone), and improve the software that they use. Public institutions should publish their documents in formats that can be read with Free Software. Indeed, many Free Software applications exist for reading such documents. Governments should lead citizens to freedom, and encourage them to make use of these applications.
Sincerely,
Our co-op and 56 other businesses, 69 organisations and over 2200 individuals so far.
How about adding your signature? Surely it’s time for our governments to stop giving free adverts to Adobe? It was particularly annoying in the Digital Britain report, I thought.
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Food Co-ops in Bristol
» Software Cooperative News
Last week I went along to the food co-ops networking event at the Southville Centre in Bristol. It was a useful event and very inspiring and informative to meet people from so many other co-ops, as well as attend some useful workshops: the two I went to were Good meetings and communication and Starting and developing a food co-op, while there were also ones on funding and Simply Legal available.There was some time for networking, as well as a relaxed end to the day which let me catch up with a few more people. I would have preferred a little more time for the workshops and a little less on case studies (every food co-op is different and I don’t think any of the featured ones were quite what I was looking for), but that’s a very minor thing and didn’t really reduce the usefulness of the whole day.
Our co-op is a tech worker co-op and not a food co-op, so I didn’t know that much about how to start one before the event. Now I’ve got a much better idea of what I need to do when I eventually move back out to what may be a co-op desert in King’s Lynn.
Are you a member of a food co-op or buying group? If so, what would you say about it? Were you involved in its start-up?
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Comments with OpenID
» Software Cooperative NewsReaders who look at our blog itself (rather than one of the lovely sites that reprint our articles) may have noticed that you can now comment in either the usual WordPress way (Name/Email/Link) or by logging in with a social media profile from one of a large range of providers, including WordPress, Livejournal, Yahoo, Google and many more.
This uses the broadly-cooperative openID system. If you run a website that accepts reader contributions, you should allow comments with openid because it helps people to use their existing social media membership without you having to surrender any control to facebook, twitter, or anyone else (unless you choose to). You also don’t have to ask your readers to weaken their security settings like with disqus (which requires javascript and third-party cookies).
The comment form on our site is powered by the openid plugin, together with our co-op’s version of the comments-with-openid plugin which can be downloaded from our site. Please download them if you’d find them useful for your WordPress site. (I’d love to adopt the official comments-with-openid at wordpress.org because the previous maintainer doesn’t answer – anyone know how to do that? I’m surprised it’s not in the FAQ.)
Do you use some other platform? What tools have let you add openid logins to it? For example, Drupal has some openID support in its core distribution: what else is out there?
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SPI Feb 2012
» Software Cooperative NewsSoftware in the Public Interest, the mass-membership association that supports some great Free and Open Source Software projects, will hold a public board of directors meeting today, Thursday 9th February 2012 at 21:00 UTC. The day and time of SPI meetings has changed recently, so maybe different people can get to them now.
They’re held online, on irc.spi-inc.org (the OFTC network). The agenda for the meeting is open and available at [www.spi-inc.org] and there’s been a bit of discussion of back office support on the SPI email list.
I’ll link to a meeting summary from the comments in this blog post after it happens.
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Stop ACTA Marches Map
» Software Cooperative NewsFurther to last week’s blog post that mentioned this Saturday’s (11 Feb) London Stop ACTA march, there’s a map of anti-ACTA marches on Google’s website (thanks to Martin Houston for the link).
There’s also been a new Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement factsheet from European Digital RIghts (EDRI), as apparently there are a lot of misconceptions about ACTA. I don’t feel that has been helped by some spectacular misdirection from the European Commission in its latest “10 Myths” paper (linked from the EDRI factsheet) which is almost as interesting for what it doesn’t mention (like sneaking ACTA through the parliament fisheries committee), what it misunderstands (like the near-uselessness of a non-commercial exemption to Free and Open Source Software or Creative Commons users), and the way it fails to rebut the final point that ACTA was done this way to avoid the oversight of the World Trade Organisation! I mean, if they can’t even get it past the usually very pro-enforcement WTO, surely that should tell you something?
If you can, would you please go along and join your nearest march? Recent marchers seem to have been wearing stylised Guy Fawkes masks, but how would that be viewed in London?
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Two Campaigns, One Spot
» Software Cooperative NewsSometimes two campaigns that I care about a lot pick the same day to hold an awareness-raising drive. It happened again on Tuesday.
The one I took part in was advertising the Stop ACTA London Protest on Sat 11 Feb. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (#ACTA) is a plurilateral international agreement on enforcement of so-called “intellectual property rights” – copyrights, trademarks and so on. It’ll have major implications for freedom of expression, access to culture and privacy. It will also harm international trade and stifle cooperation. (More background at EDRI or a fairly large AJE page – thanks to Occupy Bristol for the AJE link.)
So the one I didn’t support at the time was the Move Your Money UK launch day. That’s a great idea too, suggesting that if we, the 99%, are actually unhappy with the big banks and their titled leaders, we should move as much as possible out of those banks and into financial institutions that we control. As you might expect for someone whose first memory of mutuals is a trust account at the local building society, I support that too. I still have building society accounts, as well as banking with the co-op bank and recently joining my local credit union. I’ve moved my money. Why don’t you?
I didn’t try to support both campaigns simultaneously on social networks because I thought it would reduce the number of people who saw my message. I backed the ACTA protest because a lot of my networks were already discussing Move Your Money and I thought Stop ACTA would benefit more. Was that the right decision? Who can tell? What would you have done?
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Phones, Privacy and Co-ops
» Software Cooperative NewsAnd now a slightly longer than usual rant: The problem with the o2 network disclosing mobile browsers’ phone numbers that I repeated 2 days ago (and it appeared on our co-op website) snowballed yesterday to the point that it was on the short bulletins from ITN, BBC, IRN… and probably many more. And then o2 fixed it. Good!
The reply claims that it’s only since 10th January which is rather at odds with other claims that it has been happening since at least March 2010 in some situations.
I started buying from o2 in December. I was using Three, but their network where I stay in Norfolk isn’t reliable and you can’t just buy a device in a shop for The Phone Co-op. The dongle from o2 is a recent Huawei USB device that just worked in debian and was fairly easy for me to get working in Ubuntu. There’s space in it for a memory card, so maybe I could boot from it… but that’s an idea for later.
The o2 deal is OK but not great, and the included wifi is nowhere near as good as it looked: when it says it includes “BT Openzone” that doesn’t include any of the “BT Openzone-H” hotspots that are much more common. You’re only allowed to register one device for wifi, so no using your phone, tablet and laptop at different times!
I can’t believe it’s legal to advertise that as “unlimited wifi”, but o2 is still a better offer than access to “BT Openzone-H” hotspots at £39/month (yes, that’s the price for wifi-only…).
Ultimately, I think the problem is that there’s a rubbish choice of mobile (wifi or 3G) internet access providers in the UK. It’s a completely and utterly failed market, so you need to use Virtual Private Networks and similar tricks to protect yourself from the dysfunctional networks. My VPN meant my mobile number was safe: how about yours?
As luck would have it, I had already proposed a resolution about protecting customer privacy to The Phone Co-op (affiliate link) for our AGM on Saturday 4 February (if you’re a member, let me know). We were trying to find a compromise wording and I don’t think this little o2 scandal has hurt my proposal at all!
At least the phone co-op’s mobile service is based on Orange’s network, which wasn’t affected. How does your network perform? There’s an Internet Service Provider evilness test which might tell you.
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The New UK Co-op Bill: In Praise Of Diversity
» Software Cooperative NewsI’ve given my reaction to yesterday’s announcement by the prime minister in my blog on the Co-operatives UK website. If you want to comment and can’t do so there, comments can be left on this article too.
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SOPA: Lash Out is better than Black Out
» Software Cooperative NewsOnce again, lawmakers are considering a stupid protectionist measure and this time it’s the US, so it has some effects outside the US too.
Once again, some websites have taken themselves offline and caused great inconvenience to their supporters.
This is really annoying. Protesting about threats to take websites offline by taking websites offline is as stupid as protesting against a ban on kissing by not kissing. It just demonstrates that you can do without your websites/kisses if you must.
I feel it’s much better to use websites to distribute information and call people to action, like this epetition for UK citizens and residents, or by asking your associations and suppliers to oppose these measures and their supporters.
Wikipedia is probably a bit to blame. Although it called its action a blackout, it wasn’t one and there were still many ways to access its information. In fact, if you use NoScript, the banner didn’t even display and there’s only a line on the front page to say anything is happening.
The one that really annoyed me was identi.ca, which even turned off its API so clients just started spewing errors everywhere (I returned to my desk to a stack of retry questions). That stopped some of my websites from distributing a link to the anti-SOPA epetition because they read from my identi.ca stream – how much other anti-SOPA activism was hindered?
I’ve been told that Evan held a vote, but I didn’t see it, so I didn’t vote and I don’t know the turnout or anything. How many people voted for the blackout because they use other sites like twitter more anyway?
Banners: yes; Blackouts: no.
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Speaking about Koha at Online Information Olympia
» Software Cooperative NewsIn conjunction with Library Coop, we will be speaking about how libraries can benefit from free software. The presentation will focus on Koha, citing examples from a range of libraries. Come along and ask your questions. The presentation is in Theatre 1 at 1430.
Here is a picture from the excellent talk by professor Hazel Hall, in which she outlined the informative results of her research.
Update… The talk went well. It was wonderful to see how many delegates were interested in free software. I have been giving free software advocacy presentations for many years, and I always ask for people to give a show of hands. I want to know how many people have heard of free software and how many people use it. Five years ago there was usually a tiny proportion of FOSS users, and I am really pleased to see that now the majority of people in our audience seem to use some free software.
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Online Information, Olympia.
» Software Cooperative News
Visit us at Online Information. We are at Library Coop’s stall (579).
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Growing Your Co-operative, Bristol
» Software Cooperative News
Eli Sarre from Essential Trading speaking at C-SW Annual Conference
Last Friday (11 November 2011), I was at the Cooperatives-SW annual conference at the Cube Cinema in Bristol, titled “Growing Your Co-operative” and sponsored by the Co-operative Membership South and West. It was another sold-out event, featuring headline talks from Co-op Party member and Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, Eli Sarre of Essential Trading worker co-op (pictured), Carole Theyer of Sparks Inc and Jim Pettipher from Co-operative Futures.
There were also some great workshops – I went to a finance workshop led by Ian Rothwell from Co-operative and Community Finance and a regulations one with Paul Martin of Kabin (details may appear on their event page) – and a brilliant lunch from Runcible Spoon (and those of you who know me will know I have been livid with some co-op event lunches!) with some time to chat and network, although I also went to a fringe meeting about the RISE problems.
The event concluded with the formal AGM of Co-operatives SW (electing a new chairperson and approving transfer to a new co-op corporation) as well as a bit more chat afterwards. I felt it was a great event and well worth my time being there. I’m glad that some people from outside the co-op movement, from community businesses like the Strawberry Line Cafe and a few people considering joining or forming co-ops, were there and I hope it was good for them too.
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RISE Faces Demutualisation Threat at EGM
» Software Cooperative News
UWE Frenchay, Bristol: Venue of the RISE EGM
The RISE co-op is the sole shareholder in the Social Enterprise Mark CIC and its members have been called to an Extraordinary General Meeting during the lunch break of next Tuesday’s “Knowing and Growing” conference at UWE Bristol. The RISE board has proposed Four Special Resolutions that would dissolve the co-op and transfer all assets as windfalls to the SEM CIC and a trust, ignoring RISE Ltd’s Memorandum of Association. software.coop is calling on other RISE members to attend the EGM and oppose this demutualisation attempt. Update: dissolved but not demutualised (see below). Update 2: new vote called (see below).
RISE is constituted as a common ownership co-op and its Memorandum of Association contains a clause that directs the assets to be transferred to another common ownership social enterprise organisation if the co-operative is dissolved. However, unlike the CIC asset lock, there is no independent regulator enforcing it and, unlike in many co-ops, there has been no requirement for new members to pledge to obey the RISE common ownership clause at an individual level and there has been no member education about common ownership in the last three years.
This demutualisation is the wrong solution for RISE because:
- it has recieved much public money and money from members on the understanding that it would be kept in common ownership;
- there are common ownership social enterprises that could really benefit from the legacy assets at this time of budget cuts, but if those assets go to a CIC, they are lost from common ownership;
- the EGM is the day after the global launch of the United Nations International Year of Co-operatives, which is about promoting mutualism around the world and the RISE co-operative should support this;
- many RISE members are mutuals, including the world’s largest consumer co-operative and demutualisation would be embarassing to them;
- demutualisation should be discussed seriously, through a proper democratic process before the regular Annual General Meeting, not sprung from the board to members in a short meeting during the lunch break of another event;
- the proposal has not been published on RISE’s website or email newsletter;
- appointing the former directors of a dissolved co-op as trustees without member oversight seems unlikely to secure the assets in the long term.
software.coop will vote against the demutualisation, in favour of social enterprise, and calls on other RISE members to show solidarity with the co-operative and common ownership social enterprise movements.
Update 2 November: rise has announced its dissolution but they’ve got to “give further consideration” to where the assets go because the demutualisation resolutions were defeated. I fear that they’ll still try some way to bail out the Social Enterprise Mark despite the rejection, but I hope they’ll do the right thing and give the assets to good common ownership social enterprise like the RISE Memorandum of Association requires.
Update 10 November: We got another “Dear Member” letter today, dated 7 Nov, saying “there are two key issues to be resolved” (which is rubbish because the Memorandum offers a default – I think the board just hates that clause) and that there will be a new postal vote that will run from 18 November to 5 December.
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Stand up for your freedom to install free software
» Software Cooperative NewsIt’s been busy at our co-op but I’m never too busy to support calls for the freedom to install debian (or any other Free and Open Source Software Operating System) so I’ve signed the FSF-led public statement on so-called “Secure Boot”.
“This could be a feature deserving of the name, as long as the user is able to authorize the programs she wants to use, so she can run free software written and modified by herself or people she trusts. However, we are concerned that Microsoft and hardware manufacturers will implement these boot restrictions in a way that will prevent users from booting anything other than Windows.”
So please, read the full thing and consider signing it yourself. If you want to watch for further news on this topic, Matthew Garrett’s Journal seems to be the bomb.
Right, well, it’s another busy week this week, so it might be the weekend before I find time to blog again, but posts will be a bit more frequent next week: watch this space!
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Help Bring KohaCon to Edinburgh
» Software Cooperative NewsOur co-op has put in a bid to bring KohaCon to Edinburgh in 2012. Edinburgh is a great Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) conference city, with libraries of national and international importance, a huge choice of hotels, restaurants and entertainments and good international transport links.
2012 is also a great time for our co-op to host, because it’ll be the International Year of Co-operatives and our co-op’s tenth anniversary.
So please, if you’d like a library FOSS conference here next year, head over to KohaCon2012 voting straight away. I’ll announce the result after the vote closes on Saturday 1st October.
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Six of the Best Podcasts?
» Software Cooperative NewsI’m listening to quite a few podcasts recently. Here are my current favourites:
- Cyberunions which covers the tech/work crossover space and is appearing as Ogg near the start of most weeks. I reviewed an earlier episode and it’s kept on improving. It’s under CC-BY-NC-SA, so you can share it, but it isn’t free software (FOSS) itself. Thanks to John Atherton for the tip.
- The Command Line is more tech, but with a leaning towards activism too. This podcast is actually FOSS – sadly the only one of this round-up! It’s recently dropped to once a week on Sundays, which is a shame in one way, but suits me better. I don’t remember how I got started on this.
- More or Less: Behind the Stats is about numbers in the news. Maybe my love of statistics influences me, but I think this is brilliant, puncturing the pompous politicians who try to mislead (figures don’t lie, but liars do figure). Imagine the FactCheck Blog with its own show and a sense of humour. It’s just gone on a break, but there’s plenty of recent episodes to catch up on.
- Real Peloton is about pro cycling, by reporter-presenter Ned Boulting and journalist Matt Rendell. They probably should not be left alone to make podcasts, but it’s great that they do. They appear sporadically, depending on other work schedules of the presenters. The Banjo Cycles team including Matt Rendell won the IG Markets Hot Lap during the final stage of the Tour of Britain in London and the world championships are this week so maybe they’ll have something to say soon.
- Answer Me This appears on Thursdays (although it has just gone on a month’s break) and gives right-but-sideways answers to listener questions.
And now for number six, what are you listening to? Anything you’d recommend?
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Tour of Britain: Cheddar Gorge-ous
» Software Cooperative News
Fans in the Gorge
So tired, but so happy. Well worth it as a day out. Yesterday I went to the Tour of Britain as it passed through Cheddar Gorge. It was a fairly social trip, riding along with two from Bristol on the way in (hope they got back OK – one bike broke crossing the orchard at Sandford, but I showed them Cheddar Cycle Store) and one from Milton on the way back.When I got there, I rode up the Gorge until I had to stop (or else fall off) and it was still packed with fans. It was a good half-hour before the race would pass by, but already almost every flattish piece of land by the road had either a spectator or a bicycle on it. I watched twitter for race news, posted an update @mjray, then put the phone away as the green-fronted police bikes came through just ahead of the racers. I tried videoing the race, but it’s only the second outing for the handlebarcam and I seem to have deleted the recording before hooking it up to the laptop. Thankfully, the itv4 coverage (repeated 13:00) is pretty good. (My back is on TV! Ahem.)
Now, today (Saturday) I will be mostly doing the work scheduled for Friday, but it was still worth it. Go along if you get the chance: Suffolk and Norfolk today, Westminster tomorrow. I suggested it to @enterprisehub’s #coopsweekend because the Rabobank team are doing well.
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Help with co-op development? Don’t ask here
» Software Cooperative NewsThe blog is back. We’ve moved it to our new blog hosting (please contact us if you’d like us to host your blog – or if you spot a problem with our blog), so the adverts are gone and I’m still correcting the plugin setup for the new version. Among the comments was this one:
“My small design firm needs to upgrade its software, which is very expensive. I am wondering what the legalities might be of putting together a cooperative of other designers to share the $4900.00 expense + additional seats.”
Legalities of a buying co-op for seat-licensed software? I can write reams about co-ops but I shouldn’t because:
- Our co-op doesn’t sell seat-licensed software and we’re basically opposed to that concept, preferring co-operative development of free and open source software (FOSS).
- This is a site about software, not co-op development. I helped set up our co-op, but I don’t know enough to help many others. For co-op development, our co-op is a member of Somerset Co-operative Services and Co-operatives UK who can advise far better on that sort of thing and publish the damn fine Simply series of guides. We refer enquiries about co-op development to them, Co-operative Assistance Network and the co-operative enterprise hub.
- Mentioning $ makes me think this is a US-based question, so National Co-op Business Association may be a better place to start. If it’s another dollar, the International Cooperative Alliance membership may show the right country. The legalities vary by country.
Anyway, now the blog is back, I’ll write about software more soon. If you’ve got questions about software for co-ops, co-op-made software and that sort of thing, please leave them in a comment.
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Back to Work
» Software Cooperative NewsThis is my first week back after two weeks off (I aim for three complete weeks off a year). Even if I had reached InboxZero (and ToDoZero and so on…), there was two weeks of requests, reports and rubbish piled on top of what was already scheduled. I wasn’t even completely offline this time and was forwarding urgent incoming messages to other members of our co-op, but the backlog is still significant.
How you deal with this? Basically, I arrive back and I feel like I’m already behind. The good feeling of being up-to-date seems like a distant memory. The clear day I allocated to dealt with things that arrived seemed inadequate. Was that just bad luck because a lot of stuff came in, or is there a rule-of-thumb for how much catch-up time to allocate?
3 Lessons Learned From 6 Days Off The Grid | Social Butterfly Guy offers a view on how to prioritise things, but it still looks like catch-up takes hours. Can you see any ways to make it more efficient but still please clients, collaborators and co-op members?
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Software in the Public Interest August 2011 – and election results
» Software Cooperative NewsThe SPI election results have been declared. Jimmy Kaplowitz, Clint Adams and Robert Brockway were elected to the SPI board. There were 75 voters, which is 16% turnout, up from the 13% in the last contested election, in 2009.
The next meeting is this evening at 20:30 UTC (21:30 UK) in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org and there are a couple of resolutions, inviting the Drizzle database and Arch Linux distribution projects to associate, so that SPI can collect and process funds for them. Please, pop in and see how the new board members perform.
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SPI Annual General Meeting 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsSoftware in the Public Interest (SPI) will hold its Annual General Meeting today: Wednesday, 13th July 2011 at 20:30 UTC (21:30 UK, 22:30 CET).
SPI is the developer association that supports debian, OpenWrt and many other projects. SPI meetings are held on irc.spi-inc.org (the OFTC network). The agenda for the meeting is available at [www.spi-inc.org]
There are currently no resolutions on the agenda, but there should be some annual reports.
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#coops14 continues: Guardian, Facebook, Cyberunions and Breakfast
» Software Cooperative NewsThanks to the Guardian for publishing Why co-operatives matter written by two members of our co-op.
Also today, I’m pictured being given a share by Giles Simon of our national co-ordinating co-op on the Co-operatives Fortnight Facebook page. I’m not a big fan of facebook and I still want to try the more sharing alternatives that cyberunions reviewed.Speaking of cyberunions, apparently they answer the criticisms from my review in episode six which I still haven’t found time to listen to yet – and there’s an episode seven out already. Maybe I’ll start to catch up later today (Tuesday), if I don’t go to the Bristol Wireless Annual Meeting. Tomorrow is another busy day, hopefully including the Koha Town Hall Meeting.
And there’s still half a week of Co-operatives Fortnight to go, so we’re not done by a long way yet! If you’d like to take part, there’s a Co-operative Business Breakfast in Weston-super-Mare on Friday morning at 9am – please leave me a comment if you’d like to come along.
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Co-operatives Fortnight and Congress 2011 (#coops14 and #cc11)
» Software Cooperative NewsIt’s Co-operatives Fortnight until 9 July and our co-op is supporting many events:- This afternoon (Wednesday 29 June), we’ll be at Co-operative lending and ethical investment in Bristol;
- Tomorrow, we’ll be at a Co-operative Business Breakfast in Glastonbury;
- Next Friday, we’re hosting a Co-operative Business Breakfast in Weston-super-Mare;
- and we’ll post more events to our co-op’s news page as we find out about them.
As you may know, we’ve already done two events:
First, last Friday, Michael attended the Co-operatives UK Annual Meeting on our behalf. Co-operatives UK is our national co-ordinating co-op and the figurehead for the movement in this country. I didn’t see the meeting (the live video link didn’t work for me, as before), but Michael reports:
“The AGM seemed well organized; it was good to hear about the work they’re doing and the concerns regarding the co-operative situation in Poland. I think it’s important to exercise one’s ability to vote, but would have liked more opportunity to speak with people.”
We couldn’t send anyone to the Mary Portas session on Friday evening, but Paul Dale Smith summarised the session and RuthRosselson described it as “Mary Portas tells Co-op Congress how it is”.
Then on Saturday, I was in Manchester for The Power of Co-operation, thanks to support from software.coop and The Co-operative Bank.
The first session I attended, on mutualisting the Post Office was interesting and pretty full, but I found some later sessions rather frustrating. As well as my usual concerns about surrendering to uncritical use of private-sector software, I got quite annoyed by two sessions on member engagement where the presenters seemed to talk for almost the full time without letting the audience engage! Not good for my blood pressure, that, especially when I feel they’re missing something!
But the real value of the day was in the fascinating discussions I had with many people in the short breaks in the plenary, or while wandering around the exhibition and the marketplace. For example, it was great to see Revolver still selling the T-shirts I mentioned here in 2009 – as well as giving out free samples of their brilliant fairtrade coffee. What comes from the various discussions will probably decide whether we attend similar events in future.
Were you in Birmingham? How was it for you? Are you supporting Co-operatives Fortnight? How, where, when and why?
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Re: Cyberunions Podcast: Building links with the Co-operative Movement
» Software Cooperative NewsJohn Atherton sent me a link to cyberunions discussing open-source and worker co-ops.
In general, it’s a very good show and worth a listen by anyone from the union movement, in my opinion. It’s available in Ogg as well as MP3, which I think is also a plus point.
There were a couple of points where I was ranting at the radio, though…
The first was the choice to try Skype alternatives. Leaving aside the danger of playing the “alternatives” game, I can understand why they chose that (the change of corporate control to Microsoft has been in the headlines recently and the phones affect them but not their listeners or readers), but open internet phones are a bit fiddly because they try to move quite a lot of data (audio) in real-time and a lot of domestic network devices don’t behave correctly with the protocols that they use to do it.
I agree with their conclusion that the problem is probably networking, but I wonder why they didn’t log in to their routers, look at any debugging output and try to find the setting to change? Or try switching on debugging in the software and see what’s wrong, or send it to someone who can help? Instead, it seemed like Linphone and Ekiga got blamed for not doing Skype-style router-busting without asking. They don’t mention whether they tried switching on the STUN option mentioned in the Linphone FAQ and I don’t see a email on linphone-users asking for support but I don’t read every mail on that list.
Am I being unfair, expecting them to seek support? Maybe but I’m not sure. If you got the software from a store, what would you do? Would you throw it away and tell people that the stupid thing doesn’t work? Moreover, would you use your podcast to say it doesn’t work because users need to be “clever enough” for that “obscure” tool? That’s a great way to scare people off unnecessarily.
Wouldn’t you usually think you might be overlooking some detail and ask for support, from its maker or the place where you got it? I think you’d ask. I’d probably ask, even though I’m available for hire to fix FOSS problems and it’s not the proudest feeling when I have a script-reading call-centre worker solve my mistake.
Of course, with most from-store software, you’ve paid an artificially-inflated box price, but the bigger cost is your time and that’s the same for downloaded free and open source software, so why give it less of a chance to work?
I also think they had easier options, like switching more of their website over to free and open source software, like getting rid of the rubbish comment system which doesn’t work if you don’t let it run javascript on your browser. I’ve had a bit of discussion with them since the show and it seems my first suggestion may no longer work (typical!), so we’ll see how that goes.
Back to the show: the next segment did a good job of linking FOSS to the co-operative movement. I really think they should call it Free and Open Source Software and not just “open source” because I feel the freedom should be important to the labour movement. Also, calling the whole thing “open source” seems like calling all of the political left “Revolutionary Socialism”: inaccurate at best. I don’t often express this objection these days (I’ve bigger targets to work on), but it’s important when trying to inform new audiences, else they only see part of our rainbow, a less radical part.
Pretty interesting to suggest Orbea bikes as Mondragon’s most famous brand. I’d pick Eroski or Caja Laboral. What about you?
Then it moved on to a pretty good description of UK co-ops, mentioning co-ops that I’m a member of (the Co-operative Group) or buy from (John Lewis and Suma). I was surprised that it seemed to stop short and didn’t mention any of the co-ops that work with free software, or with any software in fact. Of course, I’d love software.coop to be mentioned, but there are other interesting and very different ones like BristolWireless.net and OSAlliance.com. Globally, many of the worker tech co-ops are linked through the tech-coop mailing list. This was the second part where I was shouting at the speakers. After all, Debian is a great voluntary project making a fantastic GNU/Linux distribution, but it is not a worker co-op by a long way and I suspect some of my fellow developers would be horrified to hear that suggested. Why not mention some actual tech worker co-ops?
Finally, before the listener feedback, suggestions of tools which union activists could use. There was some minor confusion about exactly which version or name was really FOSS and a surprising claim about openoffice into LibreOffice (I thought Oracle were still screwing that up with Apache’s help but I may have missed some news), but it was a good list of door-opening suggestions. I hope some activists will take them up.
It seems there’s an earlier show about open social networks, which is a topic I’ll look at after I finish my series of posts about mailing lists. So, please let me know if you have comments on this show, that show, open social networks or mailing lists which you think I might find interesting, or if there’s anything above you’d like me to expand upon (or correct – often, correct…).
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Software in the Public Interest June 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsSoftware in the Public Interest is one of the oldest and best non-profit associations (and not a foundation!) that supports free and open source software development and it will hold a public board of directors meeting on Wednesday at 20:30 UTC (21:30 UK). SPI meetings are held on irc.spi-inc.org (the OFTC network) in channel #spi. See the OFTC site for more information about connecting to OFTC.
The agenda for the meeting is available on the web. A single resolution regarding ankur.org.in joining as an SPI associated project has been received.
Please, come along and support SPI and thank its volunteers for their efforts.
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Top 10 Benefits of Mailing List Software
» Software Cooperative NewsParticularly around local government, but also some not-for-profits and universities, I’m trying to persuade people to stop using huge Blind Carbon Copy (BCC) lists that they keep in their address book and switch over to using mailing list manager software. Our co-op even gives some simple mailing list hosting away with web hosting. I think good mailing list software is better because:
- List members can help themselves – they can subscribe, unsubscribe and set options by sending email to the software or visiting its website, which reduces the worker time required to manage the list. But you can still manage it directly if you prefer.
- Your address book is smaller – because you don’t need every address on the mailing list cluttering up your email software’s address book any more
- Errors are handled automatically – if an address doesn’t work any more, the software will unsubscribe it, usually with some safeguards against one-off problems
- Privacy is safeguarded – dedicated email list software will not put all the mailing list addresses in the To-line by mistake (as often happens with Address Book announcement lists)
- Spam is filtered – rules can be set centrally and they can be different to the rest of your organisation
- Messages can be moderated – if needed, the list managers can be asked to pre-approve the messages, or you can set rules to allow some automatically.
- Emails can be archived – most list software can save copies of messages for you, or put them on the web
- You can offer digests – offer members the choice between getting every message or daily or weekly batches
- Multiple versions can be sent – some list software can send different versions of the same email (like rich and plain text, or different languages) as chosen by the user
- You can syndicate news – some list software can also put your announcements on content management systems or social media
- (OK, I’ve done 10… there are two more which matter to a tech worker like me which I’m going to mention as free extras.) It’s more efficient – most list software is designed to handle hundreds or thousands of recipients and sends email with more robust settings than a typical desktop email client. It is less likely to fail after recipient 373 and ask you to resend them all.
- Comply with standards – good list software either follows standards for things like self-service and digests automatically or can be told to do it. Some desktop email software (Outlook?) usually can’t.
Do you think these are good reasons? Are there other reasons you would include above some of these? Would they persuade you to stop using your computer’s address book?
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SPI May 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsSoftware in the Public Interest (the organisation behind debian and many more) will hold a public board meeting later today (Wednesday) at 20:30 UTC (=21:30 BST, 22:30 CEST or
date -d @1305145800to you). SPI meetings are held in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org (the OFTC network). The agenda for the meeting is available at [www.spi-inc.org]At the time of writing, there’s a single resolution regarding Jenkins joining as an SPI associated project. Jenkins (formerly known as Hudson until the Oracalypse) monitors execution of jobs like software builds or scheduled tasks. Its website is [jenkins-ci.org]
Why not come along and wish Jenkins well? Or just see if I’m awake after a #koha meeting at 3am UK time?
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Standing for election, times 2 or 3, plus public access wifi
» Software Cooperative NewsIt’s a bit quiet on this blog recently because I’m busy with lots of non-software tasks, including:
- I am standing for election to the UK Worker Co-operative Council. Thank you to software.coop for the nomination and help. Voters can ask me questions on the uk.coop site.
- I was renominated to Kewstoke Parish Council and even though there’s no contest (just enough candidates to fill the council), I’ve another 16 pages of legally-required forms to complete to take up office. I hate bureaucracy and I think it deters a lot of good people from helping their villages.
- I’m contemplating standing in the co-operative group area committee elections again.
So, I’m far from idle. I’m still developing software for clients of our co-op but not finding time to write about it just now. Maybe this would be more interesting to readers: I’ve moved my wifi antenna out of the metal box it’s been in for a while. Now it covers a half-decent area, I’m looking at installing CoovaAP to offer some free public access wifi while trying to limit the risk of illegal activity. Would you do it? Do you run a public wifi point? What should I watch out for?
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Kilman IT Services social engineering phone call attack
» Software Cooperative NewsI just received a strange call. Basically, someone phoned me up and tried to convince me to change my computer’s settings. They called my direct line (not the co-op switchboard), so I think they might be calling other numbers in the Weston-super-Mare area. Watch out for this attack.
I’d heard about these calls from Box Bush Farm a year or so ago, but this is the first one I’ve had. They introduced themselves as calling from “Kilman IT Services” (if I heard it correctly – I didn’t find it in a web search, so hopefully they’re not defaming a real company) and say they’re calling about the critical error that I reported from my computer (I guess they mean the dialogue that some applications pop up when they crash). I said something non-commital like “riiight” and they continued.
Apparently, that error has been registered in my computer’s files and could cause damage at any time! So, they need me to edit my computer’s registers to remove the error. Then they started trying to talk me through the process of running regedit. I’m guessing the changes would have allowed them to control a Windows computer somehow.
At this point, I introduced myself and hung up the phone. Of course, there was no caller ID shown. If only I’d picked up the call from a phone with a record button, I would post a recording! It sounded like a call centre and the caller spoke English with a far-eastern accent, but of course it could be from anywhere.
This is a crude social engineering attack. Don’t fall for it. As it says on Get Safe Online: “How to spot social engineering: You get an unexpected call, email or visit from a technical support person”. Better yet, make sure you know the names of your tech support providers and refer any unsolicited repair calls to them. I think real IT services would talk to your lead support provider.
This sort of obnoxiousness is part of the reason why our co-op doesn’t publish our client list. I’m posting this mainly so if anyone searches for “Kilman IT Services” they’ll find details of the call.
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Windows 7 Bites Your Files?
» Software Cooperative NewsA new comment on the Samsung N150 Ubuntu Netbook Remix reminded me that maybe I should post this here:
I’ve just seen a report of lost files in a dual-boot Windows 7 situation. One suggestion is that you shouldn’t suspend Windows, boot GNU, edit files on the Windows disks, shutdown GNU, then resume Windows.
I’ve not dual-booted for over a decade, but friends and clients do and they’re slowly moving to Windows 7 as it comes on new PCs. Is this a new twist on the old Windows-expects-one-user-at-a-time sharing problems, perhaps?
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#Budget11 – one #coops response
» Software Cooperative NewsI’ve posted #Budget11 – one #coops response on UK.coop because it’s a bit long and I doubt many of the people reading this through software-related sites will want to read it. If you’re interested in UK co-ops and the budget, click through to read points including:
- it’s a mixed bag for co-op members and not really clear if we win or lose. The BBC reckons individuals will lose about £400 on average.
- Basically, the business measures which I can understand are bad for co-ops and seem to be aimed at private businesses, but some of the other things might be useful.
- Co-operatives UK general secretary Ed Mayo asked for changes to employee share ownership annual tax concessions, easier starts for co-operatives and encouragement for grassroots successes. I don’t see any of those in this budget. Do you?
Comment here or there, as you prefer. I’ll read both every day or so for the next little while.
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#Debian and #KohaILS Conference Planning
» Software Cooperative NewsThis seems an active time for conference planning in two of the projects I like:
- KohaCon11 is being planned for Thane, India. Registrations are open and I’m helping to admin the conference system (OCS). If you’d like to talk, submissions are also open now, although how we review and choose has yet to be decided (should be at the next volunteer meeting). If you’d like to sponsor the event, please register as a potential sponsor.
- DebConf12’s location will be picked at an IRC meeting today (Tuesday). Bids from Belo Horizonte, Brazil and Managua, Nicaragua are on the web and you are invited to help choose between them.
Are there any other Free and Open Source Software community conferences you’d like to mention?
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SPI March 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsSoftware in the Public Interest, the contributor-led not-for-profit corporation that supports debian GNU/Linux, OpenVAS, OpenOffice.org and an ‘ole load of other free software projects meets tonight (Wednesday 9th) at 20:30 UTC in #spi on irc.spi-inc.org. The agenda has been published and the main item to be discussed is adding LibreOffice as an associated project.
What do you think of that, then? SPI supporting both LibreOffice and OpenOffice? A balanced position, fence-sitting or something else?
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John the Revolution!
» Software Cooperative NewsIf you were watching itv1 last night (or since), you might have seen the co-operative group’s Join the Revolution advert that hints at how buying from co-op shops helps to support a wide range of other co-operative efforts. This isn’t unique to that co-op – our co-op has been helped by the group and many others over the years, both formally and informally, and we’ve helped other co-ops too – but the shops are one of the biggest co-ops and it’s great to see them getting the message out there.
It’s rather less great that my mobile phone is convinced that “John the Revolution” is much more probable. Got to love software. If only it was free software I could fix…
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Event for creative co-operatives
» Software Cooperative NewsLast week, I was at this event in Bristol where we heard some interesting stories from other creative co-ops. I think the oldest had been running for about the same length as time as our co-op, but with a bit of a smoother history.
The organisers have posted their report on the event.
What did surprise me is that it seemed that the other tech co-ops weren’t as strong about free and open source software. I felt that the links between co-op values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, solidarity, honesty, openness, social responsibility and caring for others and the freedoms to use, study, adapt and share were obvious, but maybe I should try to write them out very clearly?
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OpenBiblio Principles
» Software Cooperative NewsThere’s a lot of exciting activity going on around libraries at the moment. One of them is the OpenBiblio Principles, which are:
- When publishing bibliographic data make an explicit and robust license statement.
- Use a recognized waiver or license that is appropriate for data.
- If you want your data to be effectively used and added to by others it should be open as defined by the Open Definition [opendefinition.org)] – in particular non-commercial and other restrictive clauses should not be used.
- Where possible, explicitly place bibliographic data in the Public Domain via PDDL or CC0.
Happily, our co-op has decided to support these principles. I feel that the third one is particularly important: non-commercial clauses lock out many cooperatives and social enterprises from sharing and helping.
If you’ve got an idea for an app using open bibliographic data (you can enter the idea or a prototype app), you’ve just about got time to enter the OpenBiblio Challenge before it closes on 17 February and win some money. Good luck!
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SPI February 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsThe regular monthly board of SPI (Software in the Public Interest, the contributor-run non-profit which supports debian, drupal and many other projects not beginning with the letter d) is on IRC this evening at 20:30 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net. If you need an Internet Relay Chat client, check what’s available in your package manager, or you could do worse than adding Chatzilla to Iceweasel or Firefox.
The agenda has been posted and the reports really ought to be included by the time this blog post appears. Come along and see FOSS project support infrastructure do its thing, then maybe chat a bit afterwards.
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The co-operative difference
» Software Cooperative NewsI’ve been a bit quiet on this blog and it’s mainly been because our co-op is busy, with the annual reports and tax returns to do as well as an increasing amount of client work. It seems that we’re not the only busy co-op:
“Last year, whilst the UK economy as a whole contracted by 4.9%, the co-operative economy grew by 15.8% to £33.5 billion. This is partly down to the success of The Co-operative Group, but also stems from the success of over 4,990 other co-operatives in the UK which have continued to thrive.”
– From Differences revealed in consumer views between PLCs and co-operatives | Co-operatives UK
Meanwhile, I’ve been testing out a couple of bits of software, including encrypted filesystems and new firmware for the FS-4400 Satellite PVR, which I could post about soon. We’ve developed some Wordpress add-ons which I will package, release and announce. Finally, we’re attending a couple of events next week.
Busy times indeed!
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SPI January 2011
» Software Cooperative NewsThe meeting agenda is already posted for tonight’s (Wednesday’s) SPI board IRC meeting which will be at 2030 UTC in #spi on irc.oftc.net.
I’m sorry it’s pretty late notice, but you might like to come along and let the board know what you think they should be doing, or offer to help out with the new website.
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Initial Citylink Make Me Wish I Paid Treble
» Software Cooperative NewsSo, last week I bricked a device and I think I can fix it over a RS-232 cable from a borrowed Windows computer. However, I don’t have the right cable in my office and the Windows computers I can borrow no longer have old-style serial ports. So I had two choices:
- Order a USB-serial converter and the right cable from an online supplier and pay a premium for next-day delivery (so it doesn’t arrive when I’m on the trip);
- Make a half-hour detour on a trip two days later to visit a high street electronics store and pay fairly high prices (like three times the online price).
Of course, I ordered online. And that’s where the trouble started. My order was sent by Initial Citylink, who make Parcelfarce look good. Next day came and went with no delivery. About 2pm, the parcel’s web page changed to say “There was no one to receive the goods at the delivery point so a card was left” and that it would be delivered today, Monday. Of course, there had been someone here all day and no card was left. Phoning Citylink gets a recorded message saying they’re too busy to take calls. No offer to call me back. Just suggests trying the useless website.
Over the weekend, the page changed again. Now it says “Thank you for your rescheduling request. Your parcel(s) will be delivered on Tuesday 14th December between 07:30 and 17:30″. I didn’t request that, I don’t know who did and there’s no way to tell from the web page. There’s no way to undo that request and ask for it to be delivered on Monday instead. I wanted the device fixed by today if possible. Now I’m going to have to bodge something together from spares (for once I’m glad I have a cupboard of old kit here…). Still no answer from Citylink’s phones and the supplier doesn’t seem to know what’s going on either.
I’m not paying for next-day delivery from anyone who uses Citylink again.
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ECJ on SAS v WPL: A Coming Storm?
» Software Cooperative NewsWhile I share Alex’s “law [is] boring” view, this also attracted my attention because it’s (slightly) about statistics software. I feel the SAS v WPL case mentioned on his blog deserves a wider airing:
“The basic story is that the Judge in this case is deeply unsure of the boundary of copyright. [...] has sent a number of questions to the European Court of Justice (ECJ). The questions are hypothetical, but clearly designed to test the waters and figure out where this line falls.”
Now will this re-affirm what I’ve always been told, that copyright’s border is between ideas and expressions, and copyright only covers expressions? Or will it draw a different boundary?
It seems that those most likely to be affected are those who are at the edges of acceptability of licences like LGPL, or trying to provide workalikes of hostile proprietary companies, but please, read it for yourself.
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What Price Networking?
» Software Cooperative NewsHow much would you pay to participate in a social network and what would you expect for that?
On the web, I’m used to some social networks being available for free. Usefulness and size varies massively, but there’s quite a choice of them. There’s a price to access them (computer, internet access, time) but once you’ve paid that, there are free-to-use networks.
Offline, a lot of networking opportunities cost money and not just access costs (travel, time). Especially business networks. OK, there are paid business networks online too, but some of the biggest ones have some long-term free access level, to try to entice people to upgrade. Offline, it seems like the reverse: there are some free networks and some that have short-term free access, but the norm seems to be pay-to-play. Often you get nothing except entry for the basic subscription, but at least our co-op usually prefers networks where we’re proper members with some say in how things are run.
Not that democracy always works. One networking organisations made a mistake in posting out ballot papers that means we can’t vote in its leadership election. This isn’t the first administrative problem we’ve suffered and their last decent event was at least a year ago, too. At what point should we quit? I think I’ll try to address this through the membership democracy first.
In this recession, some of our offline networks are reviewing their prices. In one case, a network which was free is going to become one of our more expensive annual subscriptions if we renew. If I look at it as a simple “does this bring in enough work to pay for itself?” decision then probably it won’t. How much value do you attach to being there and to being visible, though?
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FixTheWeb is Coming!
» Software Cooperative NewsI travel across the Sedgemoor/North Somerset/Bristol council borders, so I’m a big fan of FixMyStreet which puts fault reporting for things like potholes, flytipping and broken lights behind a common interface. Credit to the MySociety charity project, once again.
So I’m quite happy that something similar is starting for website faults. If you know disabled people who are willing to report web accessibility issues for volunteers to pick up, please let them know they can currently:
- email
post(at)fixtheweb.net - tweet
#fixtheweb #fail url problem
They will very shortly be able to use a browser toolbar too, which should make things even easier. The core team are intending to launch a website later in November, but there are the usual teething problems.
- email
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UCEPROTECT and SORBS SPAM: Two DNSBLs to Avoid
» Software Cooperative NewsI just had another conflict with a debatable anti-spam configuration. I think it was debatable rather than obviously wrong, so I’m not going to rant about the specific setup, but while discussing it with other postmasters, the following two Domain Name Service Blacklist (DNSBL) facts surprised me:
- UCEPROTECT3 can be evaded if you pay them EUR 75 every 2 years. UCEPROTECT is a German organisation but refuses to publish the details usually found on an Impressum so you could be funding spammers, for all you know. Their four suggestions to stop spam (no C-R, rate limits, block port 25, refuse to sell) seem so unlikely to stop spam it’s either naïve or insincere.
- SORBS asks ISPs to pay USD 50 to get delisted from the SORBS SPAM database. It’s to charity rather than SORBS, but it still seems like a protection racket. Spammers can get out of jail for a few dollars?
Those lists both seem quite trigger-happy to me, which isn’t surprising as these payment demands encourage listing first and asking questions later. It means I won’t be using these two lists anywhere soon.
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Report on TravelWatch SouthWest General Meeting 9 Oct 2010
» Software Cooperative NewsI attended this meeting last Saturday, taking up the Cooperatives-SW invitation (we have been invited before, as reported on this blog). It was held, once again, at SCAT in Taunton.
First, we had introductions from everyone. The Go! Co-op rail plan for Yeovil-Oxford and beyond got a mention by the chair after I introduced myself – I didn’t realise it at the time, but C-SW member Co-Cars were next door at an exhibition in the Genesis centre and are preparing to launch in Taunton. Then there was a formal welcome from Christopher Irwin, TravelWatch SouthWest CIC Chair and a keynote presentation from First Great Western’s operations director Kevin Gale.
Delays on the GW Main Line have returned in the last three months, with performance below targets. The blame was squarely laid at the door of not-for-profit infrastructure company Network Rail, but this area is still better than it used to be. The FGW 30 train fleet (refurbished Sprinters from London Midland and London Overground?) start arriving in about two weeks. There’s a new consistent company organisation. In the Q+A, I think we were told:
- passenger information distribution will become a phone tree to cut the load on central control when there’s disruption;
- central control with authorise station staff overtime when services are late;
- the current 1960 signalling system will be renewed over the next 7 years;
- The Reading area rebuild may be causing later failures;
- FGW want more new rolling stock, not just the FGW 30;
- network rail is basically good but has been cut back this yr;
- they would like us to keep feeding back through travelwatchsouthwest and keep lobbying politicians.
Then there was a discussion asking: what should be the SW transport priorities in the era of 30% cuts? I suggested co-op-friendly right-to-try measures should be in those priorities. Interestingly, a reply was given by Duncan Hames MP (Chippenham, LD), followed by a talking point from transport portfolio holder Richard Gamble of Wiltshire Council.
After lunch came the “just a minute” speeches on: arctic oil, Devizes-Bath bus mistakes (change of operator, not serving Bath bus station), Local Enterprise Partnerships and bus cuts, a suggestion to require council transport officers to use public transport to get to meetings, the need for better integrated transport info for the Wessex area, senior citizen fares and CTAs (I don’t remember what this stands for…sorry), the big subsidy of High Speed 1, and the problem of Dorset’s main towns having poor westward rail links.
There was a quick summary of the report from the CIC board which can be downloaded from the TWSW website and a presentation on integrated smartcard ticketing system from Andrew Seedhouse of GO-SW. The West of England back-office system has been launched, but there is still more to do for the SW and to connect it to operators. The event ended with the second keynote address by TfL Commissioner Peter Hendy which I’m sorry to say I don’t really understand my notes about and have little recollection of the key points at the end of the day.
As before, I felt that the best bits of the event were the morning question-and-answer sessions and the “just a minute” points immediately after lunch. So, in that line: what do you think are the biggest issues and the priorities for mass transport in the South West?
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Blog Action and Blog Action Day
» Software Cooperative NewsBlog Action Day approaches on Friday. The call this year is for clean water and some high profile blogs including the UKFCO and the White House will be joining in.
But until then, you can look at the wonderful direct blog action by Lars Wirzenius – In defense of Nicole and others after this shocking episode. I hope Lars is wrong in this case and the Davids will join together in their common interest to overthrow the Goliath.
There is a far longer prelude than Lars describes, going back to the April 2005 launch of Liblime (announcement here). An independently-authored history of Koha and LibLime and the recent problems can be found at LWN.net (US$7/month if you woud like to subscribe and support LWN).
Actually, I’m not sure if PTFS is even a Goliath. They seem to stomp around a lot, but how big are they? Biggest credible guess I’ve seen is 125 people across all products (not only Koha), which is fewer than the 150ish Koha-Community developers (not all supporters). So there you have it: Koha is bigger than PTFS. Literally.
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What’s a Good Payment Service?
» Software Cooperative NewsThere was a lot of news coverage like Credit card fees being imposed by councils, says Which? earlier this week.
People seemed outraged that councils were making a small surplus over the year in total. Interviewees suggested that councils should just include the cost of taking payments in the amount charged.
Of course, councils are sort-of not-for-profit, so they’ll just set prices to include the credit card fees and make a small surplus on other cheaper forms of payment over the year in total. So everyone who uses bank transfers will pay more because credit card fees are high! Will that be next year’s scandal?
Presumably that’s what happens in France, Germany and other countries where sellers can’t charge more for credit card payment. That, or you just don’t accept credit cards, like many German retailers never used to. What else can they do?
It’s a bit odd of Visa to claim it costs more to accept other forms of payment. Cheques are horrendously expensive if you only get a few, but seem to get cheaper if handled in bulk. Domestic bank transfers and cash also seem cheaper than Visa to me.
Sellers seem to be asked explicitly to assume much more fraud risk in order to accept credit cards, too. Mind you, with the amazingly slack approach of most US retailers to cards (no chip-and-PIN and they usually don’t bother to even check the signature – I cut up the card I used in the USA when I arrived home), I’m surprised there’s not more card fraud.
I’m also a bit surprised Bath and North East Somerset (which neighbours my home district) is paying 2% on credit card transactions. Our co-op has been offered deals about as good as that and we don’t do anything like as many transactions. We’ve not yet taken one up because the setup paperwork is a pain and the setup and maintenance fees usually suck. It feels like it doesn’t matter what you do with money, bankers still get rich.
Even though I keep looking (like in 2007), it’ll probably happen: we need to act again, because some overseas customers seem unwilling or unable to register with a site to pay (and some payment sites have ethical questions too), while international bank transfers are even more expensive and an even bigger pain.
Besides card payments, we’re considering opening a currency trading account and a Euro bank account. Anyone done these and do you think they’re worth it or not? And do any Eurozone banks allow a UK company to open an account without a member visiting in person? I’ve found few possibilities, after looking at banks in seven countries so far.
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Best Email Server Features
» Software Cooperative NewsI’m putting together a list of email server features that you should look for. I’m thinking:
Transport Layer Security support - this successor to SSL means that your connection will be encrypted. You want this so that your email and your login details aren’t being intercepted. Unless you trust everything between you and your mailserver completely, this is pretty much a minimum requirement. A good login method, probably either CRAM-MD5 or APOP - you want this so that you aren’t simply sending your password over the network. Your connection might be encrypted, but this is a belt-and-braces approach. IMAP rather than POP - Internet Message Access Protocol usually offers many more features than the antiquated Post Office Protocol. POP usually shoves all your email through your virtual letterbox, junk or not, and dumps it on your computer. IMAP is more like telling a postman which email to deliver where and when. You can create folders on the server (as well as on your local computer), you can delete junk mail before you download its bodies and it’s easier to access your email from multiple locations – like your desktop and your phone. QMUL has a longer comparison but nearly everyone would be better off with IMAP. Sieve configuration - Now I’m getting really optimistic. A Sieve file is an instruction file of standardised mail filtering rules. They’re a little harder to write, but should be much easier to move between Sieve-compatible mailservers.So do you agree with those as desirable features, and would you add more?
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Forthcoming Attractions
» Software Cooperative NewsMembers of our co-op will be attending:
- North Somerset Cycle Forum, Yatton, Somerset, 9 September 2010
- A Roundtable Discussion about Bristol City Council’s Future Web Platform (#BCCWeb), Bristol, 10 September 2010
- Futures North, Leeds, 11 September 2010
- Bristol Business Show, Leigh Court, Somerset, 15 September 2010 (tbc)
- site" href="http://www.kohacon10.org.nz/">KohaCon10, Wellington, New Zealand, 25-30 October 2010
Further events are being planned. If you’d like to suggest an event or arrange to meet at one of the above events, please contact us.
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KohaCon10
» Software Cooperative NewsRussel Garlick writes on behalf of the KohaCon10 Organising Committee:
“KohaCon10 starts on October 25th in Wellington, New Zealand. We have an exciting line up of speakers on a range of topics related to Koha and [Free and] Open Source and Open Standards in libraries. See our programme for details.
KohaCon is an opportunity for the entire Koha community, librarians and developers alike, to come together, meet each other, swap ideas and learn something new.
The conference is split into 2 parts.
The community conference will be held over 3 days – 25-27th of October. This is not just a developer’s conference. There will be presentations from librarians and developers alike.
The second part of the conference is the Hackfest for Koha developers that will be held from 29th-31st of October.
For more information see our website
KohaCon10 is a free conference (that is right it will cost nothing for you to attend), but you still need to register to reserve your place.
Registrations from the international Koha community have been very strong. Over half of all available spaces are already taken.
If you have been holding off on the premise that you will have plenty of time to do this later, then please register now. Please do not rely on there being free spaces on the day.
Registration is quick and easy via the website.
We look forward to seeing you in Wellington!”
Our co-op will be represented there. Will you?
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Hi, Why Are You Doing?
» Software Cooperative NewsIn a great post a few days ago, Jono asks why you are doing free software and reminds us to remember it. It’s quite easy to lose sight of our goals and motivations while working on the day-to-day tasks.
This reminds me of an interesting point made in the course I’m currently studying on Applying Our Co-operative Values and Principles. As well as our shared values and principles, each co-op should have a statement of its goals. For our co-op, that’s “to provide computer-related services…”. For the Co-operative Group, it’s currently “inspiring young people; tackling global poverty; and combatting climate change” – it’s a big co-op, so it has big goals.
But while goals are a shared commitment, your motivation for them is often a personal thing. Often it will be rooted in a negative, a dissatisfaction about how the world was before you started, then making that into an excitement about what you could do, the new possibilities that are opened up. I think you can see this a little in Jono’s motivation of “how excited they were at exploring their new system” and many of the comments there. They’re positives and often the silver lining around some cloud.
So, please, head over to Jono’s page and share your motivations. Then pop back to my site and tell me your goals (or how I’ve misinterpreted this
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Audio Processing Tips for ffmpeg
» Software Cooperative NewsI did some sound file mangling earlier this week. I’ve been using the Bambuser app for Symbian recently to capture some recordings. If you tell their site your User-Agent is a mobile browser, it’ll work OK with free software – icky but better than many video services today.
Even when I was recording audio only, the site left me with flash video (flv) files which contained both audio (mp3) and video streams. Step one was to remove the blank video and convert to mp3:
ffmpeg -i videofile -acodec copy -vn part1.mp3Mobile service isn’t great in rural Somerset around Weston-super-Mare, so some recordings were split into several parts. Step two is to combine them with
cat part1.mp3 part2.mp3 >whole.mp3That’s OK, but it leaves some painful squawking at the join, where the player hits the header information of part2. If you’re unlucky, it’ll crash some players. So step three is to remove it:
ffmpeg -i whole.mp3 -acodec copy whole-clean.mp3. Often I transcode to ogg vorbis at the same time withffmpeg -i whole.mp3 whole-clean.oggbut it depends what I’m doing with the recording.Are there any other handy ffmpeg tricks I could use here?
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Library Cuts
» Software Cooperative NewsAnother day, another story about #ukgov cuts and today it’s the turn of libraries. When I turned on the TV at breakfast, they were discussing BBC: A novel idea: Take a look inside the library pub. There’s also a discussion on the terrible BBC “speak your branes” site.
People have quickly pointed out that the library pub is quite small (a few hundred books) and couldn’t run without the support of the council library service (according to FranksCasket and msarahwickham), so it’s not an obvious cost-cutter. I guess the most endangered are the mobile libraries, as the books could be delivered on request by parcel or courier services without skilled staff. North Somerset has already consulted on cutting the number of stops (the results will be published by 06 Sep 2010) so that might be happen anyway.
The reply which made me smile the most was “Have a better plan: put a pub in the library” which, of course, the visionaries in Norwich have already done. Well, a cafe-bar in the same building as the Millennium Library, at least. Not quite Real Ale, but it’s a start.
Personally, I feel library IT should be in line for cuts before library branches (I really don’t enjoy using the local council library catalogue and the Windows-based PC kiosk control system feels like an expensive nasty experience to me), but it’s all connected. More flexible library IT like Koha, with its web-based user interfaces, common hardware and possibility of distributed cooperative support, could probably support microbranches better than some of the legacy systems.
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Reasons to use cat unnecessarily
» Software Cooperative NewsRecently, I read on planet debian another rant along the lines of “why oh why do people use cat when they could just redirect from a file?” – but not that this is a new complaint from expert users.
I’ve got one big reason for using cat on the command-line: it’s far too easy to type gpg >encryptedfile when you mean gpg <encryptedfile and almost no systems have noclobber switched on by default any more, even on shells that support such an option. So you end up losing a valuable data file and having to recover it from backups – I’ve seen it happen too often.
Because the pipe symbol is nowhere near anything destructive, cat encryptedfile |gpg seems far less likely to end in tears, so I try not to criticise someone for doing that.
That doesn’t completely excuse using it in a script file, though, especially if it’s used lots.
Is there another way I’ve forgotten that would reduce the risk of a destructive typo in the redirection?
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Respond to the European Consultation on Library RFID
» Software Cooperative NewsAs you may remember, our co-op is working on various RFID (radio tags instead of barcodes, basically) extensions for Koha. One of the main ethical concerns about RFID is privacy – if done wrong, it could become quite easy to see what books from which libraries someone has in their bag, without their consent and without physical contact. If borrower cards themselves become RFID-enabled, you might even obtain their personal data pretty easily, although I’m not aware of any libraries in practice who put any personal data onto the borrower card tags yet.
On 12 May 2009, the European Commission Recommended privacy and data protection in all RFID applications. That was followed by EU Mandate M436 for the European Standards Organisations (ESO) to develop standards to support that recommandation. Phase 1 started last March and has delivered a document RFID-DTR07044v006-draft (PDF). Phase 2 will build on that to produce formal standards for signage, privacy impact assessments and so on.
EDItEUR are replying to that draft on behalf of the library sector and have sent me their draft response RFID_LibrarySectorCommentsDTR-07044-1 as a PDF.
It’s worth opening those two side-by-side to read through. If you can help improve the combined response, please send feedback to the email address in the Library Sector PDF by 6 September. If you’d like to make your own response, you have until 15 September to reply to the ESO PDF using their template.
By the way, does the ESO PDF look jaggy to anyone else? It looks like ghostscript can’t anti-alias the text.
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Welcome Back
» Software Cooperative NewsI’m back. Where have I been? I was in Portishead, Plymouth and Taunton in Co-operatives Fortnight back in late June/early July. I seemed to spend July flat out with work trying to catch up again, then I fell ill just as I caught up (soon after cycling a 40-mile round trip to Portishead, but that wasn’t the cause) and spent the rest catching up again. The last two weeks, I’ve been busy travelling around internationally (some work, some sight-seeing), then catching up again.
Of course, this has meant that other members of our co-op have been helping my clients more than usual, so haven’t written here either.
But now I’m back on schedule again, clearing the backlog and writing a few things here. I’ve quite a stack of things to write here. I’ll pace myself and I’ve some news to post first. This week is getting back into Koha again. It’s good to be back on track.
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Doing Business the Co-operatives 2010 Way
» Software Cooperative NewsOn Friday, I was at this event in Plymouth. The basics of it are pretty well covered by John Atherton’s blog post. I led one of open surgeries on use of Social Media, which I’m going to try to summarise and expand into an interactive briefing note on the website of our co-op. If you’ve hints and tips, or questions you feel I should cover, please leave me a comment here.
Other than that, I was trying to help support the event (as I’m one of the steering group for co-sponsors Co-operatives SW), so I was carrying some kit around and videoed the Question Time. That and some other clips should find their way online next week, along with some other thoughts triggered by the presentations. It was a pretty interesting and productive day, worth the ticket price in my opinion.
Happily, we launched the new Co-operatives SW website from a train at 9am Friday because of some unforeseen events and it seems to be working fairly smoothly. Please be gentle with it. I like the Members News section, but then I would, wouldn’t I?
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Budget 2010: take 2 (IT, Co-ops and Community edition)
» Software Cooperative NewsI’ve been watching the June budget and pondering its effects on me, our co-op, co-ops in general and the wider community.
IT Taxes I just want to flag this one up as a special interest: the telephone tax is killed off before it starts. Yippee! But now we get to wait and see how “the government will support private investment” to get universal provision of fast broadband. I’ve no problem with tax relief for the video games industry being scrapped - why should any type of software get special treatment? VAT up 2.5% to 20% from 4 January 2011 This seems bad for everyone. It’s a bit less bad for our co-op because we have some international suppliers, whose sales tax rates won’t change, but we buy a lot from the UK too and it hurts all our workers. Personal Taxes The basic income tax allowance rise of £1,000 is welcome, as is restoring the pension-earnings links. More widely, the freezes in various things, increase in Capital Gains Tax and drop in cider tax all seem broadly good ideas. The housing benefit £400 maximum is a bit mixed - how bad it is may depend how lenders react when borrowers get into difficulty. Business Taxes At a time when a VAT increase is called “unavoidable”, it stinks a bit to cut corporation tax, extend the 10% capital gains tax allowance and raise the employers’ National Insurance threshold. Of course, our co-op pays none of those, so it also hurts us by giving our competitors an advantage. Business Incentives George Osborne said he wants to tackle regional economic differences, but the big change in this budget is bad for all existing businesses outside London, the South-East and East: National Insurance exemptions for new businesses. Once again, existing co-ops take it in the neck from another government obsessed with capitalism and employment instead of businesses and work. Meanwhile, increasing the Enterprise Finance Guarantee props up debt-laden business and a new Growth Capital Fund encourages capitalist businesses, while both appear useless to good co-ops at first glance. I don’t mind being ignored, but could we please elect a government which doesn’t actively hinder co-ops? Where’s the fabled “commitment to fairness”? Promises around the Green Investment Bank and Green Deal sound good, but are in the future. Council Tax Council Tax will be frozen for a year. I wonder if that applies to parish councils, because our village planned a cut after a one-year project-based increase last year. The Budget Document has pretty much no detail.So, how was it for you? Have I missed some friendly changes?
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Koha in Book Industry Communication
» Software Cooperative NewsOur co-op has joined Book Industry Communication as an associate member, mainly in order to voice experiences of the Koha community and ourselves about RFID tag standardisation and related sustainable development. I want us to give the Free and Open Source Software library world and our charity and academic clients more input in developing this big change to libraries.
Even so, it wasn’t an easy decision to join. I still believe that RFID standards development would be better done in an open forum, but there doesn’t seem to be a perfect choice and I don’t think we can create one. BIC already has cross-sector support and seems much more open than the so-called “RFID Alliance”. Pragmatism was enough, this time, and so far BIC seems friendly and welcoming. I see that a larger service provider co-operative, OCLC (UK), is also a member, so hopefully that means it’s safe for co-ops.
I think most of the readers of this will be free software developers, koha users and/or members of other co-ops. So, I ask you, what do you think of this move? Leave me a comment on our blog – or email me if you prefer to keep it private.
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Talks: RMS Kosovo, MJR Plymouth
» Software Cooperative NewsRMS will be visiting Kosovo today to speak at the national library. There is no entrance fee, however the number of seats is limited to 250, so please register by writing to register@flossk.org.
Less illustriously, MJR will be visiting Plymouth to run a social media surgery as part of Doing business the co-operative way on Friday 25 June (tickets £25 or £75 – email now). I’ve a few good ideas for what to cover if people are interested but don’t have specific questions (and I’ll post a few of them here later), but what tip would you give to a new social media user?
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Hello Oslo, This is Emacs Calling
» Software Cooperative NewsThe Eurovision Song Contest has been and gone with a better-than-usual winner and much of the snarkiness was on microblog sites like identi.ca this year. Search for #ESC, #eurovision or incomprehensibly-to-me #eurovison (no second i – is it spelt like that in some language, or can thousands not spell?). Anyway, enough of the title, on with the message…
I’ve been irritated by my linphone SIP internet phone (Skype without lock-in, with standards) taking up my screen space for a while. I’ve been meaning to upgrade to one of the recent versions that includes the
linphonecshshell and write some client that only displays windows when it’s needed, but I’ve been writing programs for work so much that I’ve not even found time to write blog posts recently, much less fun code, so that’s not happened.So I’m quite happy to find linphone.el for my GNU Emacs text editor and find it mostly works. I changed one line at the end to
(define-key global-map [menu-bar tools linphone] '("Linphone" . linphone))to put it on the tools menu, but other than that, it just worked. Well, the Mute doesn’t, but that’s probably my phone headset being a different ALSA device. I don’t care: I use the hardware mute button.In previous times, I would have added the link to the venerable EmacsWiki too, but it has the evil bad wrong Google reCaptcha on the edit page to stop disabled users, so screw it. Google’s reCaptcha seems to be spreading again, obstructing more people when accessing more websites. Is there a reason for that? The re in reCaptcha stands for replace with real anti-spam, please!
Anyway, now I’m controlling phone calls from Emacs. Whatever next? Voice recognition, M-x doctor and a speech synth?
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TravelWatch SouthWest General Meeting
» Software Cooperative NewsWeeks ago, I was at a TravelWatchSW meeting in Taunton for Cooperatives-SW. The Chair’s theme for the meeting was “the journey was going so well, but is there trouble ahead?” contemplating cuts due to the debt crisis and possible change of government. Lots of good people were present, so it was quite an illuminating meeting.
First, we listened to Dr Gabriel Scally, Director of Public Health for the South West NHS, as he spoke on fat, exercise and transport… He’s a keen cyclist, so I asked for suggestions of how to get better parking at health centres and hospitals. Sadly, he had no easy answer. One tip: Primary Care Trusts control most money, so they’re probably the best ones to persuade.
The second keynote address was First Great Western’s Projects and Planning Director Matthew Golton. He spoke about railway development, unsurprisingly. Rail is vital for co-operatives in the South West, as it’s a greener way to travel the 250 miles length of this peninsula and avoids our poor congested roads.
The big news is that class 150s (Sprinters) will replace the Exeter area 142s (Pacers/Railbuses) and there will be grade-seperated junctions at Reading by 2016 to reduce congestion between the various routes that converge at that point. There’s bad news on the Intercity Express Programme and HST2 being delayed until after the election, but the original High Speed Train fleet should continue as reliably as ever.
After lunch, there were a series of “Just a minute” comments on topics including: west country commuter services, staffing, Taunton nhs parking, axminster peak times, a TransWilts meeting.
Finally before the reports and forum came the third and final keynote from Mike Lambden, head of corporate affairs for National Express Group. He outlined their plans including longer coaches, but asked for better coach stations. One strange mistake had been increasing the leg room on some coaches so much that they got complaints from shorter passengers that they couldn’t reach the footrest any more – oops!
The forum was a scary discussion of rail under-provision planned in our region. Even if we only continue to grow rail use at the last decade’s rates, overcrowding will increase.
The forum ended with applause for all the hard work done by TWSW and the next meetings will be 9 October 2010 in Taunton, 5 March 2011, 1 October 2011.
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General Election 2010
» Software Cooperative NewsYou may have noticed that the UK votes in a General Election tomorrow. It looks like the closest for at least 18 years and maybe more. Happily, all the major parties are saying nice things about cooperatives, but I wonder how much of that will translate into policies that are practical for co-ops like mine.
Our national body Cooperatives UK has gathered the commitments from 18 manifestos and summarised them in a PDF. The first 7 pages deal with the five biggest English parties.
One striking thing is how many gaps there are in the Labour, LibDem and UKIP policies, while it’s not really clear to me that the Conservatives or LibDems really understand cooperatives. The Conservatives seem to suggest council-controlled co-ops (which wouldn’t normally be co-ops if they lack autonomy), while the LibDems mention employee trusts more often than worker co-ops.
I’m sulking at Labour after several recent schemes that subsidised private competitors and excluded worker co-ops – and I don’t believe Labour can win in Weston-super-Mare. That would leave the Greens, who probably can’t win but do seem to get it, except that there’s no Green candidate where I live because he stood aside and recommended the LibDems (as I understand it). Drat.
So, only a few hours to go before the start of the ballot and I’m still an undecided voter.
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Day Against DRM, 4 May 2010
» Software Cooperative NewsToday is the Day Against DRM, working against Digital Restrictions Management or Technological Protection Measures (TPM). I’ve two tips to help with our public disservice British Broadcasting Corporation which has consistently failed to act in the public interest and reject DRM:
- If you want to link to a BBC radio show like Global Business, you can often get mp3 and avoid Flash-forcing DRM-wannabe iPlayer (and cool toys like get_iplayer) by using BBC Mobile’s Podcasts Index.
- Satellite TV broadcasts can be captured as MP2 by MythTV or even 50-quid black box home entertainment devices. The DRM-free file can be played back on a computer with
mplayer -demuxer +mpegts filename.dvror re-encoded for other devices withmencoder.
What DRM-avoiding tips would you give?
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Samsung N150 Netbook and Ubuntu Netbook Remix
» Software Cooperative NewsThat was a pretty good weekend. I set up someone’s new Samsung N150 netbook with Ubuntu Netbook Remix.
If you like Windows, you might want to skip this long paragraph: the N150 came with Microsoft Windows 7 Starter. When I realised what that was, I thought it was some sort of joke. It’s more like an advert for Windows than a proper operating system. They even removed the option to replace the branded backdrop image, which gives you an idea of the pettiness of that distribution. I read that Win7 Starter used to have a 3 simultaneous application limit but an update removed it because of the sheer volume of complaints and rumblings about court cases to get money back. Microsoft justify all the limits with the argument that it’s optimised for low-power netbooks, but the N150 goes like stink compared to my own (7-year-old) work laptop and how much power is saved by loading the Windows logo backdrop instead of a nice picture anyway?
What did that make me want to do? Well this:
But I’d read that Samsung view nuking Win7 Starter from orbit as voiding the warranty and I couldn’t see anything to confirm or reject that in the paperwork, so I made it dual-boot with Ubuntu netbook remix. If it ever has to go back to the shop, I’ll hide the boot menu. I had enough trouble installing it that I did contemplate get.debian.net with some of the Debian Eee PC things, but I wasn’t sure what I needed and I didn’t have that much time.
There were two big gotchas when installing:
- When you switch between Ubuntu and Windows, it won’t boot the first time. Second and subsequent boots are fine, but the first one just reboots immediately. I suspect this would be the same for all GNU/Linux distributions.
- I didn’t realise that the current ndisgtk (or the underlying ndiswrapper?) couldn’t use Win7 drivers. Once I downloaded some XP drivers, it worked. There are some native drivers for the rtl8192 but I didn’t have time to go compiling on it yet.
After figuring those out, Ubuntu seems to work fine. Better than the Windows.
I got particularly appreciative comments about the large clickable spaces on the launcher that netbook remix uses (which is what I’d expect from Fitts’s Law). Debian probably has a similar launcher, but I don’t know what it’s called yet. It looks like some Gnome window or file manager and I’m a GNUstep throwback.
Setting up the mobile phone for internet access was also a breeze. It’s a later model than my old k608i, so it supports PANU, so after the Bluetooth pairing, it appeared in the networking menu on the top panel bar and it just worked.
On Sunday, I cycled to Clevedon (7 miles away as the crow flies, but 12 by bike because of a missing river crossing). Pretty good weekend.
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Debian Project Leader Election Campaign Round-up
» Software Cooperative NewsI’ve been AWOL for most of the debian project leader election campaigns this year, but I still want to vote, so I’ve been dredging the emails on the last day. Maybe someone still has to vote and reads this, or maybe it’ll help someone to interpret the result.
What I’ve done this year is to make a quick tally of platform points and campaign answers that I liked and disliked for each candidate, then total them up to get an order. If anyone gets a negative (more dislikes than likes), then I’ll rank them below NOTA.
Platforms: Margarita Manterola, Stefano Zacchiroli, Wouter Verhelst, Charles Plessy.
Some of the questions:
- Do you plan on taking on a “2IC” or a team? No – SZ, WV, CP, MM
- What do you think are valid goals to spend donated money on? How would you think is a valid way to thank (hardware) contributors? What qualifies a “Debian Partner”? Spend on what we cannot receive by donation – CP. Partner is defined on website – CP. Spend on maintenance, development, contributions, use – MM. Spend on keeping the project running and emergency reserve – SZ. Partnership programs usually require an yearly subscription fee – SZ. No specific spending list – WV. No formal list of partners – WV
- How much time do you currently/would you devote to Debian? Couple of evenings per week and a couple of days per month – CP. A daily hour, more in future – MM. 1-2 hours/day + 2-4 hours/week – SZ. Varies – WV.
- infrastructure to finance Debian related projects? Why not use other infrastructure? – CP, MM. Don’t – SZ, WV.
- Please finish “In ten years I’d like Debian….”to still be thriving as the Universal OS – MM. to be *THE* renowned distribution in terms of freeness and democracy – SZ. to be mainstream – CP. to still be the distribution I consider to be the best one out there – WV
- Do you think current frequency/amount of heated discussions is acceptable for the Debian project? What would you do to reduce those? too agressive, use social pressure – MM. Acceptable? No. Normal? To some extent, yes. DPL must set a good example – SZ. Stricter policies – CP. No amount of ad-hominem attacks is acceptable, see platform – WV.
- Which project and external Debian-related communications media do you follow? and contribute to? lists, IRC, planet – MM, WV. lists, Planet – CP. lists, IRC, planet, DN, identi.ca – SZ.
- How, as DPL, you would (or even could) address the social issues around releasing? add manpower – MM. status reports – SZ. public disappoval of bad behaviour – WV. reshape the archive – CP
- should we try to coordinate our release process with Ubuntu’s? Yes – MM, SZ. Why not – WV. More info – CP
- Will you withdraw delegations of DD not behaving correctly? On recurrence – MM, CP. No(?) – SZ. No – WV.
- Is there any part of Debian that should be restricted to a small subset of developers? Yes – WV, CP, MM. No except security reasons – SZ.
- Personal mentoring? Good idea – MM. Recycle NM process – CP. Use teams – SZ. NM already is mentoring – WV.
- Standardization, large scale changes, innovations – valuable questions, but the responses are too complex to summarise here, sorry.
- How would you enforce Debian Community Guidelines? wouldn’t – SZ, MM, WV. No clear answer from CP.
- is planet.d.o a good thing? Not necessarily – WV. No clear answer from SZ, MM. No reply from CP.
- How do we face the challenge to do more every year? improve our way of working and get more people to help us do our jobs – MM. open Debian’s door wider – CP. have enough people to work on Debian – WV. use our communication media – SZ
Make of that what you will. It surprised me which way the scores came out, but there was one answer with such a massive problem (in my opinion) that I ranked its giver equal with the next candidate down anyway.
If you’re a debian developer (DD), have you voted yet?
