industryterm:free software

  • Quelques organismes qui défendent le domaine publique en Allemagne et ailleurs

    Commons und Konvivialismus – Das Commons-Institut
    https://commons-institut.org/commons-und-konvivialismus

    Das »Konvivialistische Manifest« (2014 auf Deutsch erschienen) hat die globale Debatte um die Frage neu formatiert, wie wir das Zusammenleben angesichts von Klimakatastrophe und Finanzkrisen gestalten wollen und müssen. Die Beiträge des Bandes »Konvivialismus. Eine Debatte« (Hg. Frank Adloff und Volker M. Heins, erschienen im Transcript-Verlag) eröffnen nun die Diskussion um die Möglichkeiten und Grenzen des Manifests im deutschsprachigen Raum: Wo liegen seine Stärken, wo die Schwächen? Was hieße es, eine konviviale Gesellschaft anzustreben – in Politik, Kultur, Zivilgesellschaft und Wirtschaft? Welche neuen Formen des Zusammenlebens sind wünschenswert und welche Chancen bestehen, sie durchzusetzen? Acht Mitglieder des Commons-Instituts haben einen Kommentar-Beitrag zu dem Diskussionsband geschrieben

    Free software is a matter of liberty, not price — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
    https://www.fsf.org/about

    The Free Software Foundation (FSF) is a nonprofit with a worldwide mission to promote computer user freedom. We defend the rights of all software users.
    As our society grows more dependent on computers, the software we run is of critical importance to securing the future of a free society. Free software is about having control over the technology we use in our homes, schools and businesses, where computers work for our individual and communal benefit, not for proprietary software companies or governments who might seek to restrict and monitor us. The Free Software Foundation exclusively uses free software to perform its work.

    GNU und die Freie-Software-Bewegung
    http://www.gnu.org/home.de.html

    GNU ist ein Betriebssystem, das Freie Software ist ‑ d. h. es respektiert die Freiheit der Nutzer. Das GNU-Betriebssystem besteht aus GNU-Paketen (Programme, die speziell vom GNU-Projekt freigegeben wurden) sowie von Dritten freigegebene Freie Software. Die Entwicklung von GNU ermöglichte es einen Rechner ohne Software benutzen zu können, die Ihre Freiheit mit Füßen treten würde.

    Commons einfach erklärt - Hauptsache Commons
    https://www.hauptsache-commons.de/home/commons-einfach-erkl%C3%A4rt

    Die Haupt-Commons-Formel lautet:
    ∑[aD+nW] = bL

    aD = anderes DENKEN
    nW = neues WIRTSCHAFTEN
    bL = besseres LEBEN

    Das Handeln nach Commons-Prinzipien ermöglicht eine Gesellschaft ohne soziale Widersprüche oder ökonomische Krisen. Commons ersetzen die alten Strukturen. Sie bilden sich selbst organisierende Netzwerke aus, geeignet für Innovationen, da sie die kollektive Intelligenz für das Wohlergehen Aller nutzen.

    Wildnis in Deutschland - Hauptsache Commons
    https://www.hauptsache-commons.de/spezielles/wildnis-in-deutschland

    Die Initiative „Wildnis in Deutschland“ wird von 18 Naturschutzorganisationen getragen. Die Beteiligten finden, dass es ’höchste Zeit für mehr Wildnis in Deutschland’ ist !

    Sie unterstützen die Gründung von Nationalparks und die Schaffung von Wildnisgebieten und stärken die Öffentlichkeitsarbeit rund um das Thema Wildnis. Gemeinsam mit vielen Partnern und Initiativen sind sie aktiv für mehr faszinierende große Wildnisgebiete in Deutschland – für uns, unsere Kinder und Enkel.

    Creativity & Innovation | Electronic Frontier Foundation
    https://www.eff.org/issues/innovation

    Our digital future depends on our ability to access, use, and build on technology. A few media or political interests shouldn’t have unfair technological or legal advantages over the rest of us. Unfortunately, litigious copyright and patent owners can abuse the law to inhibit fair use and stifle competition. Internet service providers can give established content companies an advantage over startups and veto the choices you make in how to use the Internet. The Electronic Frontier Foundation fights against these unfair practices and defends digital creators, inventors, and ordinary technology users. We work to protect and strengthen fair use, innovation, open access, net neutrality, and your freedom to tinker.

    In principle, intellectual property laws (or IP law, a catchall term for copyright, patents, and trademarks) should serve the public in a number of ways. Copyrights provide economic incentives for authors and artists to create and distribute new expressive works. Patents reward inventors for sharing new inventions with the public, granting them a temporary and limited monopoly on them in return for contributing to the public body of knowledge. Trademarks help protect customers by encouraging companies to make sure products match the quality standards the public expects.

    #domaine_publique #creative_commons #convivialité #Allemagne

  • The “Drunk Pelosi” video shows that cheapfakes can be as damaging as deepfakes.
    https://slate.com/technology/2019/06/drunk-pelosi-deepfakes-cheapfakes-artificial-intelligence-disinformation.html

    The A.I.-generated “deepfake” video implicitly but unmistakably calls for Facebook to make a public statement on its content moderation polices. The platform has long been criticized for permitting the spread of disinformation and harassment, but it became particularly acute recently, when the company said that it would not remove the “Drunk Pelosi” video.

    On Thursday, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence will hold an open hearing on A.I. and the potential threat of deepfake technology to Americans. Many technology researchers believe that deepfakes—realistic-looking content developed using machine learning algorithms—will herald a new era of information warfare. But as the “Drunk Pelosi” video shows, slight edits of original videos may be even more difficult to detect and debunk, creating a cascade of benefits for those willing to use these digital dirty tricks.

    The video, posted to a self-described news Facebook page with a fan base of about 35,000, depicted Nancy Pelosi slurring her words and sounding intoxicated. However, when compared with another video from the same event, it was clear even to nonexperts that it had been slowed down to produce the “drunken” effect. Call it a “cheapfake”—it was modified only very slightly. While the altered video garnered some significant views on Facebook, it was only after it was amplified by President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans on Twitter that it became a newsworthy issue. The heightened drama surrounding this video raises interesting questions not only about platform accountability but also about how to spot disinformation in the wild.

    “Cheapfakes” rely on free software that allows manipulation through easy conventional editing techniques like speeding, slowing, and cutting, as well as nontechnical manipulations like restaging or recontextualizing existing footage that are already causing problems. Cheapfakes already call into question the methods of evidence that scientists, courts, and newsrooms traditionally use to call for accountability

    Many will never know the video was a fake, but the advantages it gave to pundits will echo into the future. It’s a recent example of what legal theorists Bobby Chesney and Danielle Citron call the liar’s dividend . Those wishing to deny the truth can create disinformation to support their lie, while those caught behaving badly can write off the evidence of bad behavior as disinformation. In a new survey from Pew Research Center, 63 percent of respondents said that they believe altered video and images are a significant source of confusion when it comes to interpreting news quality. That loss of trust works in favor of those willing to lie, defame, and harass to gain attention.

    As Daniel Kreiss and others have pointed out, people don’t just share content because they believe it. They do it for a host of reasons, not the least of which is simply because a message speaks to what users see as an implicit truth of the world even as they know it is not factually true. Researchers have found that creating and sharing hateful, false, or faked content is often rewarded on platforms like Facebook.

    The looming threat of the deepfake is worth attention—from politicians, like at the upcoming hearing; from journalists; from researchers; and especially from the public that will ultimately be the audience for these things. But make no mistake: Disinformation doesn’t have to be high tech to cause serious damage.

    #Fake_news #Deep_fake #Cheap_fake #Nancy_Pelosi #Médias_sociaux

  • What comes after “open source”
    https://words.steveklabnik.com/what-comes-after-open-source

    In a previous post, I discussed the history of open source, and ended with this claim:

    Today’s developers have never learned about this history, or don’t care about it, or actively think it’s irrelevant. … For the same reasons that “open source” came up with a new name, I think the movement that will arise from today’s developers will also need a new name.

    We talked about the ideological history of open source, but that’s not what developers object to, really. I don’t think developers are moving back towards a world of making source code private. Instead, it’s something related to a very old discussion in free software. To quote the FSF:

    “Free software” means software that respects users’ freedom and community. Roughly, it means that the users have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. Thus, “free software” is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of “free” as in “free speech,” not as in “free beer”. We sometimes call it “libre software,” borrowing the French or Spanish word for “free” as in freedom, to show we do not mean the software is gratis.

    In a similar fashion, I don’t think that developers are turning against the concept of “free as in free speech”. I think that they don’t believe that the current definitions of free software and open source actually produce software that is “free as in speech.”

    (…)

    t’s that the aims and goals of both of these movements are about distribution and therefore consumption, but what people care about most today is about the production of software. Software licences regulate distribution, but cannot regulate production. (technically they can, but practically, they can’t. I get into this below.) This is also the main challenge of whatever comes after open source; they cannot rely on the legal tactics of the last generation.

    (…)
    When developers talk about problems they see in open source, it’s often that there are production problems. Companies don’t “give back” money or developer hours. Programmers today don’t seem to be upset that, if they’ve developed any proprietary extensions to their open source software, that those extensions are not shared back with the community. They care that the production process is impeded by additional pressure, without providing resources. If a company were to add a proprietary feature to an open source project, yet pays five employees to develop the open source part further, the FSF sees this as a tragedy. The commons has not been enriched. The new generation of open source developers sees this as a responsible company that thankfully is contributing to the development of something they use and care about.

    Software licenses can only restrict what people can do when they distribute the source code, and that’s it. It cannot force someone to have a bug tracker, or a code of conduct, or accept your patch. Copyleft can force an absolute minimal “contribution” back to your project, but it can’t force a good-faith one. This makes it an inadequate tool towards building something with the kinds of values that many developers care about.

    (…)

    This image on a product is part of a process called “certification.” The image itself is referred to as a “certification mark.” In order to use this image on your product, you apply to a “certification body”, in this case, the USDA. This body has set up some kind of tests, and if your product passes them, you gain the ability to say that you’ve passed the certification. I chose organic food on purpose here; most aspects of this certification are about the process by which the food is produced.

    Technology is no stranger to these kinds of processes:

    So in theory, one could imagine an organization that produces a different kind of document. Instead of a license for the source code, they would provide a way to say uh, let’s go with “Open Development Certified.” Projects could then submit for certification, they’d get accepted or rejected.

    #free_software #logiciel_libre #open_source

    • Résumé très rapide : autant la FSF que l’OSI décrivent les logiciels libre/OS en terme de licence uniquement. Comme c’est distribuer donc.

      Mais les devs (et là je ne suis pas d’accord : pas que les devs, TOUTE personne contributrice et/ou utilisatrice) se préoccupent de plus en plus de comment c’est fabriqué.

      Dans le réseau Libre-Entreprise, et aux RMLL, on a régulièrement parlé de ce problème : un vrai logiciel libre devrait être plus que la licence. C’est aussi avoir une bonne documentation, construire une communauté inclusive, qui permet à des nouvelles personnes de s’intégrer et modifier autant le noyau que les extensions, etc.

      Semi HS : Après il y en a même qui vont encore plus loin hein : qu’est-ce que fait le logiciel ? Peut-on considérer qu’un logiciel en licence libre qui permet de guider un missile, ou qui est un ERP très pyramidale qui permet de contrôler ses salariés, et qui impose un management et des méthodes de travail pas cool, c’est un logiciel libérateur ?

    • cf. https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01137521

      Les deux critiques du capitalisme numérique par Sébastien Broca

      L’hypothèse de l’article est ainsi que la critique de la propriétarisation de l’information, portée par les acteurs du logiciel libre, des Creative Commons ou de l’open access, a été largement incorporée par l’économie numérique, comme le montre le succès actuel de business models reposant moins sur l’appropriation privative des ressources informationnelles que sur la participation gracieuse des utilisateurs à la création de valeur. Cette « incorporation » a ouvert la voix à un deuxième type de critique, celle du digital labour, qui ne porte plus sur les entraves à la circulation de l’information et du savoir, mais sur les formes de travail et les modalités de répartition de la valeur qui sont au cœur du (nouveau) capitalisme numérique. L’article analyse les ressorts (et certaines limites) de cette deuxième critique d’inspiration marxiste, qui substitue à un discours axé sur les libertés individuelles et le droit un discours centré sur le travail et les structures économiques.

      La troisième critique est bien sur celle de la valeur elle-même (avant de discuter de sa répartition) et du lien intrinsèque qu’elle entretient avec le numérique... :)

  • KEI letter to US DOJ, opposing IBM acquisition of Red Hat | Knowledge Ecology International
    https://www.keionline.org/30093

    Très intéressant sur les relations Logiciels libres et grandes entreprises. Utiliser le LL comme cheval de Troie pour renforcer des services spécifiques... brisant la confiance et la neutralité du libre. L’inverse de ce que décrit « Des routes et des ponts » sur les partenariats communs-privés.

    The following was sent to US DOJ today, to express KEI’s opposition to the IBM acquisition of Red Hat.

    13 March 2019

    Bindi R. Bhagat
    U.S. Department of Justice
    Antitrust Division
    Technology and Financial Services Section

    Dear Ms. Bhagat,

    Thank you for taking our call today, regarding the International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) effort to buy Red Hat, Inc. As discussed, Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) is opposed to IBM acquiring Red Hat.

    At present, Red Hat controls the most important Linux distribution for Internet and cloud servers.

    The important metrics in this area include, but are not limited to, the share of Internet traffic supported by Red Hat server installations, as well as the revenue that Red Hat realizes for maintaining and customizing Linux server software, compared to other Linux server distribution companies or organizations.

    Red Hat is an important contributor to the Linux kernel and to the code that is used in many elements in the broader GNU/Linux platform of free software programs that are used by server platforms, including the many non-Red Hat Linux distributions.

    IBM is proposing to pay a large premium for Red Hat. Prior to the acquisition offer, Red Hat was valued at approximately $20.5 billion. IBM is proposing to buy Red Hat for $34 billion, a premium of about 67 percent of the previous value.

    IBM could have invested in Red Hat stock at a much lower price, if the objective was simply to share in the expected profits of Red Hat, continuing its current business offerings. What IBM gains from its acquisition of Red Hat is control, and the ability to shape the direction of its software development efforts, to favor IBM’s own cloud services.

    Today Red Hat is considered a neutral partner for many companies offering or developing cloud services. If IBM acquires Red Hat, the trust in Red Hat will be eroded, and IBM will have powerful incentives to influence Red Hat’s software development efforts towards providing special functionality and benefits to IBM and the IBM cloud services, and even to degrade the functionality of services to companies that compete directly with IBM, or fail to buy services from IBM.

    The Department of Justice (DOJ) should consider the impact of the merger on the incentives that Red Hat will have, post merger, to undermine competition and degrade the benefits of a more level playing field, for this critical Internet resource and platform.

    Our concerns are shaped to some degree by the detrimental decision made by the DOJ in approving the Oracle acquisition of Sun Computer’s open source assets, including the MySQL database program. At the time, DOJ viewed the MySQL software as unimportant, because the revenues were small, relative to other database programs. Most users of MySQL did not pay any fees to use the software. Our organization, KEI, used MySQL to support our Joomla, Drupal and WordPress content management systems, and did not pay fees to Sun Computer, along with countless other businesses, non-profit organizations and individuals who also used the free version. We were concerned, at the time, that Oracle would degrade and slow the development of the capacities of MySQL, in order to protect Oracle’s very expensive proprietary database services. We believe that our concerns about Oracle have unfortunately been borne out, by the blunting of the rate of innovation and ambition for MySQL, the fact that Open Office (another program gained in the acquisition of Sun Computers) is no longer an important free software client for office productivity, and Oracle’s aggressive litigation over copyright and patent claims related to Java.

    The DOJ might consider conditions on the merger that would provide greater assurances that Red Hat will not be used to create an unlevel playing field that favors IBM’s own cloud services. We are willing to suggest such conditions, relating to governance, licensing and other issues. For example, the DOJ could require IBM to show how it will ensure the continued policy of ensuring that Red Hat’s patents are only used for defensive purposes. Conditions on this issue should be durable, and avoid predictable loopholes.

    IBM’s competitors and existing customers of Red Hat will have more informed suggestions as to specific conditions that would protect IBM’s competitors. But overall, the best decision would be to reject the merger, on the grounds that is is fundamentally designed to create an unlevel playing field.

    Red Hat is not just another technology company. It is one of the main reasons the Internet functions as well as it does.

    Sincerely,

    James Love
    Knowledge Ecology International (KEI)
    1621 Connecticut Avenue, Suite 500
    Washington, DC 20009
    https://keionline.org

    #Communs #Logiciels_libres #Red_Hat #IBM

  • Can’t Be Evil vs. Don’t Be Evil
    https://hackernoon.com/cant-be-evil-vs-don-t-be-evil-12fb625057b7?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---

    Don’t be evil: a cute slogan. Now a rescinded promise.Can’t be evil: a model for future organizations and business.Companies will transition from trusted terms of service to establishing contractual agreements of service digitally. Proving an immutable level of service will be the new norm and a unique selling point across consumer and enterprise software.Users have had enough of broken #privacy and broken products. #tech companies have painted themselves into a dangerous corner with free software and ad supported models. Growth at any cost, a model backed by many VCs and startups is often at odds with users’ interests. This has led several entrepreneurs to put can’t be evil at the focal point of their efforts as far back as 2014. Major points of Internet failure were illuminated by Muneeb (...)

    #blockchain #technology #data

  • DiRT4 Power Slides onto Linux in 2019
    https://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2018/12/dirt4-linux-mac-release-2019

    Buckle up tight, as acclaimed rally racing game DiRT4 is revving up for a Linux release early next year. DiRT 4 is the latest instalment of the popular franchise to drift on to free software platforms (as well as a non-free software platform in macOS). It follows on from the successful Linux release of DiRT Rally last spring. […] This post, DiRT4 Power Slides onto Linux in 2019, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

  • Jimmy Wales of #wikipedia
    https://hackernoon.com/jimmy-wales-of-wikipedia-2335c43f1204?source=rss----3a8144eabfe3---4

    Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, tells us why his initial attempt at creating an online encyclopedia failed and what he learned from that venture which allowed Wikipedia to succeed. Along the way, he also shares with us his approach to building a successful business in today’s digital world.This #interview was originally written by Justin Runyon from ProwritingserviceLessons Learned from NupediaWales’ first attempt at building a free online encyclopedia started with the creation of Nupedia in March 2000. Inspired by the growth of the free software movement and the new models of collaboration that were sprouting online, Wales set about working on a project he felt would be greatly beneficial to the world — something others would be passionate about and would be willing to give up their time (...)

    #jimmy-wales #founder-stories

  • FSF statement on Microsoft joining the Open Invention Network — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
    https://www.fsf.org/news/fsf-statement-on-microsoft-joining-the-open-invention-network

    Microsoft’s announcements on October 4th and 10th, that it has joined both LOT and the Open Invention Network (OIN), are significant steps in the right direction, potentially providing respite from Microsoft’s well-known extortion of billions of dollars from free software redistributors.

    These steps, though, do not by themselves fully address the problem of computational idea patents, or even Microsoft’s specific infringement claims.

    #patents #Microsoft #OIN #Linux

  • What do open source and cooking have in common? - Florian Effenberger
    https://blog.effenberger.org/2018/05/28/what-do-open-source-and-cooking-have-in-common

    Why free software and the art of cooking have more in common than you may think

    What’s probably the most stupid idea to promote the principles of free software without actually coding? Well, I might have a proposal for you: Let’s do some Open Source Cooking! We’ve in fact been doing that in Munich for the past eight years already and the idea behind it is rather trivial: “Why don’t we cook together with many others – like, 30 people?!”

  • The ’New Open Source Licensing’ : Why the GPL’s Heyday Is Over
    http://www.itprotoday.com/web-development/open-source-licensing-why-gpls-heyday-over
    http://www.itprotoday.com/sites/itprotoday.com/files/Screen+Shot%202018-07-22%20at%208.37.04%20PM_0.png

    J’ai malheureusement peur que cet auteur ait raison sur la distinction entre l’ouverture du code et la participation à un mouvement des communs. Toutefois, il convient de peser également le changement du logiciel vers le service. Peut être faut-il inventer une licence pour la confiance dans les services. Une licence que Facebook et compagnie ne pourraient pas signer ;-)

    The GNU GPL is the software license that helped bring free and open source software to the mainstream. In recent years, however, the GPL’s prominence has waned as more permissive licenses, like Apache, have taken its place. That begs the question: Does the GPL have a future, or is it a relic of free software’s past? And how did the open source community come to this pass, anyway?

    What accounts for this state of affairs? Why is the GPL no longer the go-to software license for open source projects, despite its storied history?

    That’s a complex question and the answer surely involves several factors. One might be that today’s developers don’t remember how important the GPL was in making open source possible, and so it does not feature as prominently on their radar. Another might be a perception, fair or not, that the GPL actually stifles the creativity it was designed to protect because it places strict limits on the conditions under which software can be redistributed. Specifically, it requires that developers share the source code of any GPL-licensed application or a derivative of that application; being held to this standard may feel like the opposite of freedom for some developers.

    Yet the most important reason for the decline of the GPL, I think, is simply that we’re living in a new age of open source. Today, open source has become the “default” approach to software development, according to one study. For a developer or company, choosing to make your source code open source no longer signals a brave commitment to an innovative, ideologically driven mode of software distribution. Instead, open-sourcing your code (or some of it, at least), is just the thing you do. After all, even Microsoft is now riding the open source bandwagon.

    For these companies, permissive open source licenses like Apache provide an easy out. They’re a way to brand yourself as an open source company without having to take as strong a stance about open source software as GPL adoption implies.

    Sure, choosing the Apache license or most other permissive licenses requires that companies make the source code of their products publicly available, and that counts for something. But it doesn’t signal ideological commitment to the ethos of the free and open source software movement. Nor does it place many restrictions on what partners or third-party developers can do with your code.

    #Logiciel_libre #Open_source

  • Ethical Reasons
    https://diasp.eu/p/6988517

    Ethical Reasons

    I wonder if this is the sort of thing Neil Postman was trying to get at in Technopoly, The Surrender of Culture to Technology . One of the Minamata Disease Victims and Activists, Teruo Kawamoto, said that the problem is that the development of philosophy(and ethics?) have not kept up with the development of science(or technology?)...

    One of the most striking features of your approach to the issues of technology and software and so on is that you consider ethical and social matters more important than possible technological advantages. - https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/rms-hack.html

    The philosophy of open source, with its purely practical values, impedes understanding of the deeper ideas of free software; it brings many people into our community, but does not teach (...)

  • http://joeyh.name/blog/entry/prove_you_are_not_an_Evil_corporate_person

    #Google is known to be deathly allergic to the AGPL license https://opensource.google.com/docs/using/agpl-policy. Not only on servers; they don’t even allow employees to use #AGPL software on workstations. If you write free software, and you’d prefer that Google not use it, a good way to ensure that is to license it under the AGPL.

    I normally try to respect the privacy of users of my software, and of personal conversations. But at this point, I feel that Google’s behavior has mostly obviated those moral obligations. So...

    Now seems like a good time to mention that I have been contacted by multiple people at Google about several of my AGPL licensed projects (git-annex and either keysafe or debug-me I can’t remember which) trying to get me to switch them to the #GPL, and had long conversations with them about it.

    Google has some legal advice that the AGPL source provision triggers much more often than it’s commonly understood to. I encouraged them to make that legal reasoning public, so the community could address/debunk it, but I don’t think they have. I won’t go into details about it here, other than it seemed pretty bonkers.

    Mixing in some AGPL code with an otherwise GPL codebase also seems sufficient to trigger Google’s allergy. In the case of git-annex, it’s possible to build all releases (until next month’s) with a flag that prevents linking with any AGPL code, which should mean the resulting binary is GPL licensed, but Google still didn’t feel able to use it, since the git-annex source tree includes AGPL files.

    I don’t know if Google’s allergy to the AGPL extends to software used for drone murder applications, but in any case I look forward to preventing Google from using more of my software in the future.

  • microG Project
    https://microg.org

    The linux-based open-source mobile operating system #Android is not only the most popular mobile operating system in the world, it’s also on the way to becoming a proprietary operating system. How is that?

    While the core operating system is still released as part of the Android Open Source Project, the majority of core #apps are not. It gets worse: More and more libraries and APIs are only available on phones that run various Google apps pre-installed, effectively locking third-party apps to the Google ecosystem. For these reasons Android is described as being a “look but don’t touch” kind of open.

    At this point, several popular open-source applications already require some of Google’s proprietary libraries to be installed. Increasing demand in the free software community in addition to severe problems in Google’s proprietary software discovered by the Android modding community, have led to the development of a free software clone of Google’s proprietary core libraries and applications - the microG Project was born.

    Although most microG components are far from complete, users are amazed by the results. Free software users got extended application support, privacy-caring users can reduce or monitor data that is sent to Google and especially older phones can expect some battery life improvements. microG is not only used on real devices, but also replaces Google tools in test emulators and is even used in virtual mobile infrastructure.

    #play_store #logiciel_libre

  • restic · Backups done right!
    https://restic.net

    Fast, secure, efficient #backup program

    restic is a program that does backups right. The design goals are:

    Easy : Doing backups should be a frictionless process, otherwise you are tempted to skip it. Restic should be easy to configure and use, so that in the unlikely event of a data loss you can just restore it. Likewise, restoring data should not be complicated.
    Fast : Backing up your data with restic should only be limited by your network or hard disk bandwidth so that you can backup your files every day. Nobody does backups if it takes too much time. Restoring backups should only transfer data that is needed for the files that are to be restored, so that this process is also fast.
    Verifiable : Much more important than backup is restore, so restic enables you to easily verify that all data can be restored.
    Secure : Restic uses cryptography to guarantee confidentiality and integrity of your data. The location the backup data is stored is assumed not to be a trusted environment (e.g. a shared space where others like system administrators are able to access your backups). Restic is built to secure your data against such attackers.
    Efficient : With the growth of data, additional snapshots should only take the storage of the actual increment. Even more, duplicate data should be de-duplicated before it is actually written to the storage backend to save precious backup space.
    Free : restic is free software and licensed under the BSD 2-Clause License and actively developed on GitHub.

  • Linux Release Roundup : gThumb, Peek Gif Recorder + More
    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/11/linux-release-roundup-peek-gthumb-more

    With the Thanksgiving celebrations in the US the past week was never going to be chock-full of new Linux releases. That said, a couple of juicy app updates did manage to squeak out during the past 7 days, including new releases of a Linux Winamp alternative, a free software stalwart, and one of my absolute favourite […] This post, Linux Release Roundup: gThumb, Peek Gif Recorder + More, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

  • The #apple is still rotten: Why you should avoid the new iPhone — Free Software Foundation — working together for free software
    https://www.fsf.org/blogs/community/the-apple-is-still-rotten-why-you-should-avoid-the-new-iphone

    Today Apple announced the arrival of several new iPhone models and other updated gadgets. As usual, the phones were revealed with great fanfare — but from the glass exterior down to its guts, the new iPhone is just another freedom-restricting trap for unsuspecting users. — Permalink

  • Purism Could Be Close to Revealing Their Linux Phone…
    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/07/purism-linux-phone-os-speculation

    Purism is best known for being the driving force behind the creation of a truly free software laptop — but is the company about to launch a Linux phone? Fuelling speculation that it is, the company accidentally published a blog post earlier today titled: “Phone Campaign Temporary Page“. Oblique title, sure, and as the post was […] This post, Purism Could Be Close to Revealing Their Linux Phone…, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

  • Un titre un peu trop enthousiaste ? Open Source is Taking Over Europe!
    https://itsfoss.com/open-source-adoption-europe

    he commune of Mappano (Italia) in the neighborhood or Turin, has decided to use free and open source software for its IT infrastructure and eGovernement services.

    If you follow It’s FOSS regularly, you remember earlier this year, we regretted Munich was turning its back on free software. Of course, Mappano is not Munich. It’s a municipally counting around 7000 inhabitants and established in 2013 from the reunion of several territories. What made that case interesting is, until recently, Mappano was temporarily administrated by a prefect. And it’s only in June 2017 the first Mappano municipality was elected.

    So, this is a rare case of a public administration having the opportunity to start its IT infrastructure from scratch. And it was one of the first decision of the newly elected council to build their infrastructure and the eGovernement services based on free and open-source software.

    Some might see in that news the sign free movement leadership has moved toward the south of Europa? Maybe. Maybe not. So I decided to investigate about the adoption of Open Source software in public administrations across the European Union.

  • Cory Doctorow’s ’Fully Automated Luxury Communist Civilization’ - Reason.com
    http://reason.com/archives/2017/07/12/cory-doctorows-fully-automated

    But I also think that prediction is way overrated. I like what Dante did to the fortune tellers. He put them in a pit of molten shit up to their nipples with their heads twisted around backwards, weeping into their own ass cracks for having pretended that the future was knowable. If the future is knowable then it’s inevitable. And if it’s inevitable, why are we even bothering? Why get out of bed if the future is going to happen no matter what we do? Except I guess you’re foreordained to.

    I’m not a fatalist. The reason I’m an activist is because I think that the future, at least in part, is up for grabs. I think that there are great forces that produce some outcomes that are deterministic or semi-deterministic. And there are other elements that are up for grabs.

    But I think Uber is normal and dystopian for a lot of people, too. All the dysfunctions of Uber’s reputation economics, where it’s one-sided—I can tank your business by giving you an unfair review. You have this weird, mannered kabuki in some Ubers where people are super obsequious to try and get you to five-star them

    Google runs this data center in Belgium in a place where two-thirds of the time it’s so cool that they don’t need the air conditioning, and the other third of the time they just turn [the data center] off. And their file system is so good at migrating data away from places that are shutting down and into places that are running that it doesn’t really matter.

    A lot of places that do aluminum smelting, because it’s so energy intensive, they use aluminum smelting as a kind of battery. They say: We need to smelt so many tons of this this year, and when we have lots of solar or lots of wind or lots of tidal power, and we don’t have anything to use it for, we smelt the aluminum then, and not at the moment when other people are trying to turn on their lights or run their air conditioning or run their Google data centers.

    That kind of coordination—where at the moment that something is needed, and at the moment where it’s cheap to do it, it’s done—is characteristic of the efficient-market hypothesis. It’s characteristic of planned economy theory. It’s the thing that everyone is shooting for.

    The thing that free and open-source software has given us is the ability to coordinate ourselves very efficiently without having to put up with a lot of hierarchy. To be able to take things that we’ve done together, where we’ve reached a breaking point, and split them in two and have each of us pursue it in our own direction, without having to pay too high a cost or even have a lot of acrimony.

    That’s the free software world I’m trying to imagine. What would it be like to build skyscrapers the way we make encyclopedias in the 21st century?

    #Cory_Doctorow #Science-fiction

  • Michel Bauwens : Contribution to the Great Transition Debate:

    I very much appreciate Al Hammond insights into the new market dynamics of digital capitalism, and on the likely perenniality of the market function within a broader plurality of resource allocation methods.

    One key for me is to distinguish capitalism from markets, and to realize that markets can be transformed. Markets can rule with a market state at their disposition , but market can also serve other more dominant systems of allocation as it did when it was an emergent force under feudalism.

    Today, with the exponential growth of new digital and urban commons, most of which are subsumed under capital but by no means all of them, we have a new opportunity to transform markets so that they can serve the commons.

    Capitalism is, as Kojin Karatani has argued in The Structure of World History, a three-in-one system: capital - state - nation.

    Crucial in this current conjucture, is that the classic strategy of change ’within capitalism’, the famous Polanyan double movement, in which the mobilized people (aka the ’nation’) forced the state to periodically rebalance run-away capitalist logics, seems to no longer function. The most likely reason is that capital has become transnational, and that nation-states simply no longer have the clout and the will to rebalance through inter-state efforts.

    This means that though the system is in deep crisis, it’s alternatives are in a bind too, which is a great opportunity for a more systematic transformation.

    One of the potential strategies is to work with the commoners and their commons-based entrepreneurial coalitions, and to work, from the commons outward, to transform the market forms that depend on the commons. This is crucial , as capitalism in the advanced sectors and places, is moving from commodity-labor forms, to ’netarchical forms’, i.e. the direct exploitation of human cooperation, whether in commons-production or in distributed markets.

    In my last contribution, I mentioned briefly protocol cooperativism. Here is the rationale for it.

    In the last few years , we have seen the emergence of a cooperative/solidarity-based alternative to the netarchical platforms (GAFA), i.e. the platform cooperative movement. Signs of change are the two successfull conferences in NYC, evidence of union-coop funded platforms for nurses and cleaners, and more and more cooperative digital platforms that are listed in the Internet of Ownership directory. I am personally involved in the shift from the cooperative and ESS movement in France, towards a convergence of cooperative and commons forms; and the same evolution is underway in cooperative federations in other countries and Western Europe.

    Platform coops are worker or multi-stakeholder owned and governed platforms, that are at the service of a commons or distributed market based community, in which the platform itself is considered a commons; and the ’cooperative’ legal form is considered to be a management model for such commons.

    But they can easily slip back into competitive cooperativismand become mere collective modalities of capitalism. This is why platform coops need to be ’open coops’, i.e. they must make their contribution to the commons a strategic and legal priority. They must move from a position of capital accumulation, to a position of commons accumulation, and from a position of redistribution, to one of predistribution. The way to do this is by adopting protocol cooperativism.

    This means there should not be 40 different ride-hailing coops competing with the one Uber, each with their own software (there are 13 ordering software packages for ordering food from CSA’s, only in the italian solidarity economy, as Jason Nardi of RIPESS told me once).

    There should be one open source ride-hailing applications, which can be used by all the different open/platform cooperatives.

    Given the fragmentation of the commons economy, who can be the ’agents’ of such transformation, of such ’commonification’ of market dynamics?

    Today, we already have 2 such agents, but we need a third political/institutional one.

    The two first agents which have emerged in the last 15 years are the global open source communities in the world of free software and open design, who have successfully created for-benefit associations (such as the FLOSS Foundations) as ’commons infrastructure organisations’.

    The second agent are the global generative and entre-donneurial coalitions who have created market activities and incomes for the commons sector. This second sector is still very emergent and weak, but is exists and is growing.

    But global transnational civic institiutions, and global post-capitalist ethical market coalitions may not be enough, we may need a transnational political institutions, i.e. the ’state form’ of the commons economy.

    My intuition is that, in a age of increasingly fragmented sovereignty, coalitions of cities may play this role. The exponential rise of urban commons, (I identified 500 projects in a 300k populated city of Ghent, covering all provisioning systems), the rise of ’rebel cities’, ’fearless cities’, climate change coalized cities, commons-oriented progressive coalitions in spanish cities (look at the amazing Impetus Plan for the growth and support of the cooperative, solidarity and commons economy in Barcelona), give me hope that in time, coalitions of cities may emerge who can collective support the infrastructures of protocol cooperativism. In other words, networked cities today are a potential form of transnational governance that may also be an important agent for the commons transition.

    The role of progressive coalitions at the nation-state level, is to support the emergence , consolidation, and trans-nationalization of the commons infrastructure, so that it becomes maximally resilient and able to withstand the pressures of global capital.

    An all-out assault of a single progressive nation-state against capital today is doomed, but the nation-state arena can be an area for consolidation of a transnationally organized commons sector.

    #Communs #Communs_urbains #Michel_Bauwens #Coopérativisme

  • #OpenSourceSeeds, is trying to “make #seeds a common good again.” The license amounts to a form of “copyleft” for new plant varieties, enabling anyone to use the licensed seeds for free. Like the General Public License for free software, the seed license has one serious requirement: any seeds that are used, modified or sold must be passed along to others without any legal restrictions. This is the #share-alike principle, which is also used by Creative Commons licenses. Its purpose is to prevent the privatization of a common resource by requiring any user to share it freely and forever.
    https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/new-open-source-license-fights-the-enclosure-of-seeds/2017/05/05 #graines #semences #GPL #license #licence

  • Free software to reveal how Facebook election posts are targeted
    https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/03/free-software-reveal-facebook-election-posts-targeted-chrome-extension

    Digital campaign experts have created program to allow voters to expose how political messages arrive in Facebook feeds A tool exposing how voters are targeted with tailored propaganda on Facebook has been launched in response to what is likely to be the most extensive social media campaign in general election history. Experts in digital campaigning, including an adviser to Labour in 2015, have designed a program to allow voters to shine a light into what they describe as “a dark, (...)

    #algorithme #élections #électeurs

  • Ubuntu 18.04 To Ship with GNOME Desktop, Not Unity
    http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2017/04/ubuntu-18-04-ship-gnome-desktop-not-unity

    Ubuntu 18.04 LTS will use GNOME as its default desktop environment, not Unity. In an extraordinary blog post that I have yet to fully digest, Mark Shuttleworth has announced that Canonical is to end its investment in Unity 8, Ubuntu for Phones and tablets, and end its ambition to seek “convergence”. “I’m writing to let […] This post, Ubuntu 18.04 To Ship with GNOME Desktop, Not Unity, was written by Joey Sneddon and first appeared on OMG! Ubuntu!.

    • Le post original qui ne « serait » pas un poisson :

      This is a post by Mark Shuttleworth, Founder of Ubuntu and Canonical

      We are wrapping up an excellent quarter and an excellent year for the company, with performance in many teams and products that we can be proud of. As we head into the new fiscal year, it’s appropriate to reassess each of our initiatives. I’m writing to let you know that we will end our investment in Unity8, the phone and convergence shell. We will shift our default Ubuntu desktop back to GNOME for Ubuntu 18.04 LTS.

      I’d like to emphasise our ongoing passion for, investment in, and commitment to, the Ubuntu desktop that millions rely on. We will continue to produce the most usable open source desktop in the world, to maintain the existing LTS releases, to work with our commercial partners to distribute that desktop, to support our corporate customers who rely on it, and to delight the millions of IoT and cloud developers who innovate on top of it.

      We care that Ubuntu is widely useful to people who use Linux every day, for personal or commercial projects. That’s why we maintain a wide range of Ubuntu flavours from both Canonical and the Ubuntu community, and why we have invested in the Ubuntu Phone.

      I took the view that, if convergence was the future and we could deliver it as free software, that would be widely appreciated both in the free software community and in the technology industry, where there is substantial frustration with the existing, closed, alternatives available to manufacturers. I was wrong on both counts.
      In the community, our efforts were seen fragmentation not innovation. And industry has not rallied to the possibility, instead taking a ‘better the devil you know’ approach to those form factors, or investing in home-grown platforms. What the Unity8 team has delivered so far is beautiful, usable and solid, but I respect that markets, and community, ultimately decide which products grow and which disappear.

      The cloud and IoT story for Ubuntu is excellent and continues to improve. You all probably know that most public cloud workloads, and most private Linux cloud infrastructures, depend on Ubuntu. You might also know that most of the IoT work in auto, robotics, networking, and machine learning is also on Ubuntu, with Canonical providing commercial services on many of those initiatives. The number and size of commercial engagements around Ubuntu on cloud and IoT has grown materially and consistently.

      This has been, personally, a very difficult decision, because of the force of my conviction in the convergence future, and my personal engagement with the people and the product, both of which are amazing. We feel like a family, but this choice is shaped by commercial constraints, and those two are hard to reconcile.

      The choice, ultimately, is to invest in the areas which are contributing to the growth of the company. Those are Ubuntu itself, for desktops, servers and VMs, our cloud infrastructure products (OpenStack and Kubernetes) our cloud operations capabilities (MAAS, LXD, Juju, BootStack), and our IoT story in snaps and Ubuntu Core. All of those have communities, customers, revenue and growth, the ingredients for a great and independent company, with scale and momentum. This is the time for us to ensure, across the board, that we have the fitness and rigour for that path.

      https://insights.ubuntu.com/2017/04/05/growing-ubuntu-for-cloud-and-iot-rather-than-phone-and-convergence

      Ubuntu Unity is dead : Desktop will switch back to GNOME next year

      https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/04/ubuntu-unity-is-dead-desktop-will-switch-back-to-gnome-next-year

    • C’est vrai, ce n’est pas un poisson d’avril. Il y a eu depuis d’autres nouvelles qui se sont accumulées sur celle-ci : licenciements suite à la fermetures de ces projets, relance de la comm’ d’Ubuntu pour redonner confiance dans cette distrib…
      Donc c’est fini Unity, Mir, Mobile…
      Remarquez, vu la force brute que va être #Vulkan ces prochaines années sur le panorama du libre, c’est peut être bien d’arrêter ce projet institutionnel qu’était Ubuntu pour laisser mûrir le reste autour de nouvelles dynamiques.

      Par contre dommage de choisir Gnome (3 Shell) qui bafoue certains paradigmes ancestraux des interfaces H/M (comme la continuité des actions utilisateurs).
      Vieil article sur le sujet, mais y’en a eu tellement d’autres : http://www.thelinuxrain.com/articles/over-a-month-on-conclusion-to-the-gnome-shell-challenge
      #futurologie