Re: federated free software movement
On 11/17/21 1:10 AM, Arthur Torrey wrote: A couple of points - 1. The original proposal was for an effort, presumably SEPARATE from LibrePlanet to make alliances IN THOSE AREAS WHERE OUR INTERESTS ALIGN with folks such as the OSHWA, and other open source hardware advocates, and the Right to Repair folks. I believe there is a good bit of overlap since it is easier to write software for open hardware, and there is potential to use Free Software tools to repair hardware, etc... I did not see anything in the original proposal to suggest that THIS LIST should endorse non-Free hardware / software, nor did I intend it in my posts on the subject. I do believe that any effort to make alliances with other communities needs to be tolerant of the needs and practices of those communities. The reality is that these communities use or do things with hardware that needs binary blobs or proprietary software. We are not going to make many friends if we come at them with an attitude that they are going to Software Hell for doing so... Certainly; however, that is not how I would understand the ethics of software freedom, and I would freely condemn anyone who takes such a view. The only perpetrators of injustice- many victims themselves rather than willing and knowing participants- are those who pressure or drive others to relinquish their computing freedoms. I'm not aware of any situation where that is common in the listed communities except inasmuch as hardware is promoted without clearly indicating the required blobs (or that the whole system is proprietary software), even sometimes on projects that are misleadingly labelled "(fully) open source". There are no doubt parallel limitations the other groups could identify, and raising concerns in the interest of co-operating to improve does not seem fractious. 2. Reality check - A lot of people build Open Source Hardware around the Raspi and similar boards that need binary blobs From their standpoint it's a good choice to do so, as it's a low cost, readily available board with plenty of documentation and support. Is it better to approach them with a demand that they start over with a different board that is blob free but offers no other benefits, or to thank them for making a project that is mostly free by our standards and suggest that they MIGHT want to look at a freer alternative for their next project, or even ask them how you can help open some other device to whatever degree is possible... While the latter approach is indeed the most reasonable, it also doesn't preclude recognizing that the project has ethical problems. It is quite possible to state that respectfully without blaming or holding complicit the project's creator. 3. Reality check - You have a repair shop - customers come to you with hardware that needs fixing and needs proprietary tools to do so. Which benefits your business more - gritting your teeth and using the tools, or telling the customers they made a bad choice in hardware and sending them away??? There a number of possible options here. Firstly, telling the customer of issues with the chosen hardware is neither problematic nor mutually exclusive with fixing that hardware. Phrasing it as "you made a bad choice in hardware" would be unjust victim-blaming, of course; however, a basic outline of how the manufacturer's practices present a danger to both local repair business and the customer's ownership of their device could be valuable (or at least not counter-productive). Secondly, as the hypothetical owner of such a shop, would I not have the latitude to make decisions for reasons other than financial gain? Obviously the need to break even and draw a livable income establishes a baseline; there is nevertheless the option to sacrifice anything beyond that in this (presumably) privately-held business with very few exceptions. Finally, gritting your teeth and using the tools does not compromise anyone's software freedom except your own (or the business's, perhaps). Tragic as that is, it is a fair response and a poor reflection only on whoever wrote the tools and the hardware. 4. Personal reality - I mentioned earlier that I need a proprietary closed software program that only runs on a proprietary OS in order to adjust the programming on my power chair... I got a comment back that I should figure out how to do it w/ Free Software So let me see, I have a proprietary undocumented piece of hardware that I need to totally reverse engineer from the hardware communications protocol to it's internal data structures, along w/ how to read and write to it (as a non-programmer) OR use an existing set of non-free tools that already does what I need? (and there is *NO* commercially available Free Software compatible wheelchair control hardware, I'm using what is arguably the most open of the available systems) Tough decision(NOT!) If I wasn't already a Free
Re: federated free software movement
On 11/16/21 7:45 PM, Dennis Payne wrote: I don't see how a federated wikipedia would work. Even if you banned obvious trolls, how would you deal with contentious issues? Federation isn't some magical technologies that immediately makes everything better. For the case of contentious issues, Stallman did make an interesting suggestion in his essay proposing a free encyclopaedia that multiple versions of an article could be offered. I don't know how that would be technically implemented, yet it might be a viable option. An emphasis on self-hosting is not a good idea in my opinion. It is great that we are not locked into a commercial provider but most people don't want to self-host. Self-hosting is work. Some people will certainly do that but thankfully some of them allow the rest of us to use their service. While I can run my own mastadon, I don't want to. (That being said, it should be easy to setup a self-host. I was on a Hubzilla instance but it broke and the admin could not figure out how to fix it. For Hubzilla they provide support using Hubzilla. So if you have a problem on your instance, you need to register on another instance so you can ask for help.) Alyssa Rosenzweig wrote an interesting article on this: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/the-federation-fallacy.html OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Linux distro chooser
On 10/28/21 6:12 AM, Jean Louis wrote: * jahoti [2021-10-28 08:54]: For practical purposes, yes; it was based on someone else's first-hand account, the source of which I've misremembered and now cannot find. Regardless, your first-hand experience is much more informative, relevant, and fortunately also optimistic- thank you for sharing it! Could I ask how you deal with Wi-Fi? Regarding Wi-Fi, I have used USB dongles that simply work with free operating systems. These I have used for years. Some Wi-Fi devices in computers work without problems anyway. Though these last years, I don't use Wi-Fi directly, I connect to mobile phone, USB tethering and mobile phone may connect to Wi-Fi. Now I am connected to Mi-Fi by USB tethering and use GNU/Linux notebook to route Internet to LAN and other computers. Thank you! I completely forgot USB tethering existed- it sounds like a much more practical technique than I had thought it was, which is good. OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Linux distro chooser
On 10/28/21 4:13 AM, Jean Louis wrote: * jahoti [2021-10-28 05:57]: I would not call it "Freedom Ladder", you give me impression it is something difficult, while I don't share that viewpoint. True as that may be, it is important to consider that switching to a new OS (even part-time) is a relatively large step, especially for those who don't do so regularly. If the experience does not begin well, there is a real risk people will give up and be less willing to try again in future. That's not to suggest recommending non-free distros, just that great care be taken to ensure people will not install the free ones only to be frustrated by them. Sounds like hypothetical statement, help me understand it better. For practical purposes, yes; it was based on someone else's first-hand account, the source of which I've misremembered and now cannot find. Regardless, your first-hand experience is much more informative, relevant, and fortunately also optimistic- thank you for sharing it! Could I ask how you deal with Wi-Fi? OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Linux distro chooser
On 10/27/21 5:23 AM, Jean Louis wrote: * Arthur Torrey [2021-10-26 06:51]: IMHO given that a user starting on the Freedom Ladder probably has hardware that was purchased for a non-free OS, pointing them at an all-free distro is setting them up for a bad experience... Quite contrary, giving proprietary software to user without his knowledge is subjugating user to control of software makers, that has been shown over and over again to be bad experience. I would not call it "Freedom Ladder", you give me impression it is something difficult, while I don't share that viewpoint. True as that may be, it is important to consider that switching to a new OS (even part-time) is a relatively large step, especially for those who don't do so regularly. If the experience does not begin well, there is a real risk people will give up and be less willing to try again in future. That's not to suggest recommending non-free distros, just that great care be taken to ensure people will not install the free ones only to be frustrated by them. OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: On Free Software, Education in China and the COVID-19 Pandemic
On 10/23/21 2:20 AM, Andrew Yu via libreplanet-discuss wrote: I am a secondary school student from Shanghai, China. This email discusses the problems I discovered in the Chinese educational system, in terms of students' right to freedom in computing and options to control the COVID-19 pandemic from the standpoint of a person living in China. Thank you for your very interesting and insightful piece on the topic! It's nice to hear the personal perspective of someone inside China too, being the unfortunate rarity it is. When COVID-19 broke out in 2020, students were required to watch lecture videos produced by the city's education department for twenty minutes, then join the Tencent Meetings room to discuss in their own class for 10--15 minutes. Watching the videos wasn't an issue for me. Our apartment has cable TV, where the videos are broadcast; there was also a website that played the livestream without JavaScript. However, Tencent Meetings presented a problem to me. At the time, I run Arch Linux. (Currently, I run Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre, a Free Software-only distribution, which would have made this even harder.) Tencnet Meetings, claiming to support "all operating systems and platforms", only supports Windows and macOS. (I wonder how they passed the resolution to display that statement, I believe that they have many programmers who use GNU/Linux.) (As of October 2021, a classmate noted that there is a "Linux versuon".) School required Tencent Meetings, therefore I went through a hard proccess to setup QEMU running a Windows 7 virtural machine---I believed that 7 would be slightly better than 10 in terms of privacy, though as always with nonfree software, I can't really know for sure. It was slightly unstable, which is an annoyance, for example the connection from the Windows audio server to pulseaudio would stop working from time to time, but it was acceptable. Though my setup was okay (in the perspective of my school), it left me in a psycological crisis about education and freedom. More on that later. You're unfortunately not alone in this; the way educational institutions (and no doubt corporations) the world over made such sudden changes, even if it was understandable, is doubly traumatic for those of us whose perspectives were never considered.The only option I could come up with for my classes was to not go- and I took a whole year off just trying to reverse engineer the necessary software! Offline classes resumed in May 2020, as most of China has minimal cases of COVID-19. This freed me from using a proprietary non-privacy-respecting bloated piece of software in a virtual machine, but it did not free me from teachers' requirement to use WeChat (think of it as the equiv of WhatsApp in China), Xiaoheiban (A proprietary classroom information distribution system), or other pieces of nonfree software. Similar to the beliefs stated in the GNU Education project, I believe that schools and educaion are a means of sharing information and knowledge. I understand that meeting software and lesson management software are used as means of distributing knowledge, rather than the knowledge being distributed themselves. However, I believe this doesn't lead to the argument that the mandate of proprietary software usage is just, for three reasons as below. 1. There are always going to be curious students who wonder how the trchnology works. Proprietary software denies them this right. 2. The usage of proprietary software when young may implant dependence on it in the future. 3. Education is a right and a responsility. Mandating nonfree software in education adds unjust responsibilities on students. Point 1 and 2 are explained well in the Education section of the GNU website, therefore I am not going to focus on them. Focusing on the third point: Under laws of almost all countries, citizens have the right to an education. Traditionally, this involves going to school, meeting teachers and classmates, listening to classes, taking notes, passing exams (I have strong opinions that exam systems ought to change to better represent individual talents, but this is out of scope of this memo.) and finishing homework. Students loose a slight bit of their time and freedom of movement (as in, it's not easy to move to a house 100 miles away from school), in exchange for being educated. However, with schools requiring the use of nonfree software, in effect students are required to give up their privacy, and digital freedom, both crucial rights in modern society, as the effect of needing to use nonfree software. The right to education has effectively turned into an exchange for other basic rights. This is not acceptable. Furthermore, in countries like China, 9 years of education is mandatory for children. I understand this law as a means to the goal of creating a knowledgeble and educated society, which is good. However, when mandatory edication mandates nonfree software, it deduces
Re: Linux distro chooser
On 10/25/21 2:31 PM, Greg Farough wrote: On Mon, Oct 25 2021, Paul Sutton via libreplanet-discuss wrote: Could the fsf not perhaps adapt the tool to work alongside freedom ladder? I think that's a good idea, as the current FSDG distro page doesn't do the best job of steering people toward a distro appropriate for them. We could adapt a site like this for our own purposes, one which gives the FSDG distros priority and wraps a similar questionnaire around them. As a matter of interest, does anybody know if the questionnaire used is available under a free license? The framework for the website is under the MPL 2.0 (https://github.com/distrochooser/distrochooser), yet the finer details of the actual selection algorithm are missing. OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: COVID-19 testing
On 8/20/21 1:41 AM, fischersfr...@sent.at wrote: jahoti writes: a good strategy might be asking what to do if you don't have a mobile phone (or pretending you don't). This already is my strategy, and it fails. I think the problem is that people don't know; that is, people without mobile phones are rare staff either were never told what to do about it or were told but forgot. They do try to advise me based on their own knowledge, beyond official instructions, but it is very hard for people who use smartphones to advise me on whether I need a smartphone, since there could be a small, forgettable step of the process that requires a smartphone. Very true; I extend my greatest sympathies to you for dealing with that. jahoti writes: Also, as stupid a question as it is, have you seen https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/covid-19-testing-sites/#manhattan ? If not, they might be useful, and if so then I concur with others that a good strategy might be asking what to do if you don't have a mobile phone (or pretending you don't). [snip] > I considered not mentioning this point about the doctor's office, since one might see it as the fault of the office and not related to software licensing. However, I see it as a reflection of dependance on proprietary dis-services. I suspect most people in my position would have search with proprietary a search engine for something like "covid test in new york", and clicked on one of the proprietary pharmacy web pages, and signed up in a way that does not respect their freedom. If this is the common practice and office staff were not specifically informed of alternatives, it is only reasonable that staff would not be able advise me on how to get tested. Indeed, it doesn't really seem fair to blame anyone except the software vendors and lawmakers for this (and, if they had any other feasible choice, the owners of the practice). Unfortunately, that webpage links to a proprietary disservice (MyChart) nominally managed by the NYC Health + Hospitals but truly managed by the company Epic. This disservice runs proprietary JavaScript. I could call some places to see if there is an alternative, but I suspect to encounter the same difficulties as everywhere else, so I think I will stick with my current plan rather than looking for other places. That's a completely respectable decision, and if you take/have taken it I have nothing to offer except gratitude for you trying to bring light to a critical issue. However, for any future people interested and you if you still have any interest, some other possibilities: - I might have misunderstood the page, in which case I apologize; however, that webpage is nominally for walk-in testing which (at least to my assumption) means there's the option of just turning up and getting a test. - if you have a community center or public facilities of some sort, that might be a better place to ask for "low-tech" options, as they probably need to support people who don't have those kinds of luxuries. - While I have no idea how effective it would be in Manhattan, a last-resort option could be to call and suggest you think you have (or might have) CoViD-19. Where I am that will get you just about anything :). OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: COVID-19 testing
On 8/19/21 12:56 PM, fischersfr...@sent.at wrote: Dear jahoti, Here are what I have tried so far. Rite Aid runs proprietary software and requires a Google account. I called and confirmed that this is the only way. https://baseline.google.com/enroll/account/covid19mtch [snip] I asked some locals who pay attention to software freedom and learned that some at-home tests do not require a smartphone, such as BinaxNOW. Unfortunately, I need the test for a special doctor's appointment, and my doctor's office won't accept at-home tests. I am so incredibly sorry you've had to go through all that- as well as what you describe below it- and still gotten nowhere. Unfortunately, I think rather laws passing requiring certain software/devices and putting us in a "new fascism arena" of some sort, what you've experienced above is going to be the major issue: technologies hit critical mass, start to be used for services, and alternatives get reduced and become afterthoughts in new schemes, pushing more and more people to give in and making life ever harder for those who don't. Meanwhile, little is said in opposition as there isn't any direct curtailing of people's rights, only "rational economies" or "response to consumer demand". - As for actual advice, the only thing I can give is in response to this: A related issue is that of text messaging. The proprietor of local pharmacy said that it is fine if I have someone else register for me but that the result will still be sent by text message. CityMD said they didn't require a smartphone, but they said that you need to receive text messages when there is a long wait, because this is how they manage the waitlist. They don't accept appointments. With the prevelant use of text message, I am concerned that perhaps there could be a new difficulty that I had not foreseen. For example, will the text message contain a link that needs to be opened with a proprietary software (for example, JavaScript)? I had a similar issue with the urgent care where I had my other COVID-19 test. I did not need to get this test, but I got it at the insistance of associates whom who wanted to be especially cautious. In this case it was fine that I got the result only by telephone, but I am concerned at why I did not get it by email, since the office told me that I would get the result by email. I am concerned, thus, that a clinic may be able to test me but still have trouble delivering proof of the negative result. Definitely ask if any text would require opening a link- I know somebody who took a test in the past few months and received their (negative) result as a text message, albeit not in your vicinity. Also, as stupid a question as it is, have you seen https://www.nychealthandhospitals.org/covid-19-testing-sites/#manhattan ? If not, they might be useful, and if so then I concur with others that a good strategy might be asking what to do if you don't have a mobile phone (or pretending you don't). OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: COVID-19 testing
That might or might not be a different situation; the potential to gain freedom through the choice of software on a personal device is far, far greater than what can be obtained from a traffic light control system or kiosk. Ibsen, what exactly are the pharmacies asking you to do when they "require you to run proprietary software"? On 8/18/21 5:30 PM, C. Cossé wrote: You are using proprietary software from the moment you wake up in the morning. Even the traffic lights on your way to the pharmacy use prop software. On Wed, Aug 18, 2021 at 8:00 AM <[1]fischersfr...@sent.at> wrote: Dear Pedro, I don't just go to a local pharmacy and take the test there because every local pharmacy I have tried requires me to run proprietary software if I am to take the test. Cordially, Ibsen OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Were Intellectual Property to be abolished altogether, would you or FSF support it?
On 7/12/21 9:37 PM, Yasuaki Kudo wrote: In a worker cooperative, there is one-person-one-vote democracy. So I cannot just dictate that the Software Licensing we use will be GPL. If all other members say Proprietary is better, I would have to go along with that decision. Arguments for Proprietary Software might be that we live in a Capitalist system and even the cooperatives cannot escape the economic reality that forces their hand. I might still argue that we should 'voluntarily' use Libre-licensing such as GPL (but again I would only have one vote ) This is what I meant Ah- that makes sense! I wish you the best of luck in trying to convince your co-workers, and for one am a ready audience if you wish to share the eventual results (whatever they may be). OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Were Intellectual Property to be abolished altogether, would you or FSF support it?
On 7/12/21 8:29 PM, Yasuaki Kudo wrote: 'Voluntarily' , as in this: http://dklevine.com/papers/ip.ch.2.m1004.pdf Meaning, I would prefer something like GPL citing the benefits described in the link I'm still not quite sure I understand, sorry. Do you mean citing the benefits of a preamble on top of a free software license body, and then using that on your works? OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
Re: Were Intellectual Property to be abolished altogether, would you or FSF support it?
On 7/12/21 12:48 PM, Yasuaki Kudo wrote: My personal preference/instinct is to go voluntarily free software, regardless of what other companies or even cooperatives do. What do you mean by "voluntarily free software"? Bear in mind that almost all countries (including Japan) recognize copyright restrictions by default, which means software published without a license is non-free by default. OpenPGP_signature Description: OpenPGP digital signature ___ libreplanet-discuss mailing list libreplanet-discuss@libreplanet.org https://lists.libreplanet.org/mailman/listinfo/libreplanet-discuss
