News/6
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Jump to navigationJump to search- Freeing networks where we need freedom mostThe struggle for the freedom of Internet is ever growing. Corporations, and their partner in crime, governments, come up with new clever ideas to restrict free flow of information. Overlords of the truth are trying to recover old control, which the Internet has eroded everywhere in favor of the people.
- User Respecting Software - free software development driven by usersWhy is it that some free software projects, although started at the same time as comparable propriety projects, are still playing catch-up in terms of number of users and desired features? Features comparisons as well as the network effect and how well known a piece of software is play into this, but what features do users find most important? We can’t make “better” software until we know what features users actually care about.
- Openwifi project: The dawn of the free/libre WiFi chipIn past decades, free software has played a key role towards the free and trusted Internet. In recent years, free software processor projects like RISC-V have pushed forward to construct free devices and computers. However, the radio connectivity of the device still relies on the black box silicons (WiFi, BLE, cellular chips).
- How to free the imaginationMany issues exist in the comic book industry: How to solve the problem of unauthorized sharing? How to protect authors from the asymmetrical relation between them and publishers? Where to find funding to live more fairly when doing art? How can authors be more independent with the tools they use? How to manage derivations, fan fiction and commercial reuse?
- Machine agency: Infrastructure for creative automationKeynote at LibrePlanet 2021: "How can we harness the precision of machines for the creativity of individuals? Automation and computer control of machines is increasingly widespread. However, it's often employed for dull, dirty, or dangerous tasks. This is partially because setting up these systems is complex and time consuming."
- Plom: Paperless Open MarkingWe present Paperless Open Marking (Plom), a software system for giving tests on paper, but marking and returning them online. We (undergraduate students) worked on this software as a summer project.
- REUSE: Simple steps to declare your copyright and licensesFree software licensing can be tiresome. But setting the conditions for the use and reuse of your code is extremely important. To make developers' lives easier, there is the REUSE initiative. This presentation explains simple yet powerful best practices for defining licenses and copyright holders.
- Beyond "learning to code": How Tech Learning Collective merges IT training with emancipatory political action"What good is a pen if the paper it touches can refuse to show its ink? What good is your app when your API key is revoked? Through metaphor and with a unique apprenticeship-based pedagogy, Tech Learning Collective (TLC) is empowering users by doing exactly what code boot camps and corporate-funded "learn to code" programs don't: TLC tells students to ignore new Web frameworks and focus instead on the lowest layers of an IT stack like physical network and hardware storage devices."
- Libre designers do exist (and survive)"Libre designers do exist (and survive). Let's explore the pros and cons, experiences, job opportunities and more, from experiences gathered for over 15 years in the field."
- Making dollars and sense of free software funding's future"Sustainably funding public goods is hard, just ask your local government. We know free software benefits everyone, whether or not users contributed to its development. How then can we reach the world of everyone working on software they love while making a livable wage?"
- A dispatch from the front lines of right to repair"FUD fighting on the front lines of right to repair: As our homes, workplaces and public spaces fill with Internet-connected "smart" stuff, a digital right to repair is critical to protecting consumer rights, property rights and civil liberties. Despite that, electronics giants like Apple, Samsung, LG and General Electric have snuffed out scores of proposed state laws seeking to create such a right. How? By scaring legislators with tales of device hacking, cyber stalking and identity theft."
- How to make more users love free software: Double the love, double the freedom"In past years, free software projects have increased their usability considerably. Still, one of the main reasons users with no technical background don't use many free software projects in their daily routine is that some projects don't offer good usability, which drives them into choosing proprietary solutions." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- How to make more users love free softwareIn the free software ecosystem most users end up being someone who has a technological background. Meanwhile, many regular software users stick to proprietary solutions.
- Empower users by asking them for money"I've always been a free software programmer, a contractor to the rich and already powerful so they could use free software to its fullest. But, users, normal everyday users, are left out, and their needs are often different from business, universities and other large organizations who can afford to pay developers."
- An information theoretic model of privacy and security metrics"An information theoretic model of privacy and security metrics - or - how I learned to stop worrying about password meters and love the dice." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Ten years of empowering activists AND everyday people through free mobile software"From bringing OTR, Tor, GnuGP, FFMPEG and SQLCipher to Android, to developing and supporting apps like Orbot, Tor Browser for Android, Onion Browser, F-Droid, ChatSecure, Haven and more, we at Guardian Project have been pretty busy for the last decade. Through ups and downs, iterations and improvements, we have a lot of interesting stories to tell about where we've been, and where we are headed." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Care about your users: don't minify your JS!A lightning talk by Sebastian Crane at LibrePlanet 2021 where he argues that minifying free JavaScript code hurts users freedom and their ability read, understand and re-use it.
- Labor movements and the free software community"The labor movement and free software are natural complements to one another. Both rely on (often decentralized) groups of workers that commit to a higher purpose in the pursuit of building something that will advance people on a larger scale."
- Free/libre solutions to address the shortage of ventilators"Over 100 teams attempted to create free/libre solutions to address the shortage of ventilators caused by the COVID-19 pandemic; we created a large spreadsheet evaluating all of them along many coordinates."
- Informal chatter to formal decisions: How-to"So many repetitive conversations? No forward movement? Everyone getting along mostly, but not sure how to be decisive without clear hierarchy? What could legitimate authorization look like in a decentralized world anyway? This talk touches on specific steps anyone can take." From LibrePlanet 2021.
- Richard Stallman: Unjust computing clamps downHonorary Doctor Richard Stallman elaborated on the growing injustices in computing in a 46 minutes long talk titled Unjust computing clamps down at LibrePlanet 2021 on March 21st, 2021. He also briefly mentioned that he is once again a Free Software Foundation director, and that he won't be stepping down again.
- Here's how you can get all your day-to-day computing done with free software"Alice, 11, has given multiple talks at technical conferences and will go over more than 10 programs that will replace proprietary with free software." This great 40 minute talk from LibrePlanet 2021 is absolutely worth watching and sharing.
- Remote education: My children's freedom and privacy at stake"During COVID-19 confinement, I saw how all teachers were choosing proprietary video conferencing programs over free software for the continuation of online lessons. I had two options: do nothing about it and let proprietary video conferencing tools spread among my children and their classmates, or try to fight back against this injustice."
- SecureDrop Workstation: Handling unsafe documents safelySecureDrop is a whistleblowing platform originally created in 2012 for journalists to accept leaked documents safely from anonymous sources. It's used by dozens of news organizations including The Guardian, The Washington Post and The New York Times. This talk (at LibrePlanet 2021) introduces the SecureDrop Workstation, the next-generation platform aimed at helping journalists communicate with sources in a high-security environment.
- Ingestum: A libre NLP document ingestion libraryMany NLP projects that depend upon the analysis of documents are impaired by the difficulty of transforming source material into a computer-readable format. For example, PDF files are designed for human consumption but can look like a bag full of words to a computer. To address this problem engineers at Sorcero developed Ingestum, a library that is used to "devour" content sources, outputting a format that can be used for additional processing.
- Audacity 3.0 is Released With A New Project File Format and 160 BugfixesAudacity 3.0 brings several significant improvements to the popular free multi-platform audio editor for Linux, Windows and macOS. The latest version brings a new and improved project file format using SQLite3, a new "Label Sounds" sound analyzer and fixes for a whopping 160 different bugs. The severe lack of any user-interface scaling on GNU/Linux is not addressed so Audacity remains a border-line useless joke on Linux machines with high resolution monitors despite all the other improvements.
- The Mesa Graphics Library Developers Are Considering Dropping Android AOSP SupportThe developers of the Mesa graphics library, mainly used to provide OpenGL and Vulkan API support on Linux desktop systems, are debating if they should drop Mesa's support for the Android Open Source Project (AOSP) operating system. It would still be possible to build Mesa using the Android NDK toolchain.
- The Linux Desktop Could "Soon" Get Support For Vulkan With 10-Bit Color EnabledEnabling 10-bit color is a non-issue on proprietary operating systems. That is far from being the case on the GNU/Linux desktop. Enabling 10-bit color on GNU/Linux is easy enough, but things like the Vulkan graphics API, the Steam games store and launcher, the KDE Plasma and Deepin desktop environments and Chromium hardware acceleration do not work.
mpvdeveloper Niklas Haas has submitted patches to the Mesa graphics stack that make it possible to run Vulkan games and applications on GNU/Linux desktops when 10-bit color is enabled.
- LibreOffice Is Looking For Google Summer Of Code ParticipantsThe Document Foundation, the organization behind the free multi-platform LibreOffice office suite for Windows, Linux and macOS, has been accepted into Googles "Summer Of Code" program. They are currently looking for students with an interest in programming who want to get a financial stipend for working on LibreOffice this summer.
- The Rust Programming Language Is Now One Step Closer To Entering The Mainline Linux KernelThe Linux kernel community has been discussing the possibility of using the Rust programming language to write new kernel device drivers since last summer. Initial Rust support has now landed in the Linux-Next tree. This does not guarantee that Rust will be supported or even allowed in the mainline kernel, but it does mean that there is now a fair chance that Rust will eventually be required to successfully compile a Linux kernel.
