Free Software Melbourne committee meet-up

Attending

  • Adam B.
  • Ben F.
  • Ben S.
  • Lillian R.

Apologies

  • Andrew

Software Freedom Day 2014-09-20 (Saturday)

  • Electron Workshop in North Melbourne
    • Mick Jaffen{: list-style-type="no-bullet"}

Allow for 25–50 attendees

  • Events:
    • Installfest
      • in a separate corner; allow people to wander to other events simultaneously{: list-style-type="no-bullet"}
    • Arduino demo
    • Speaker presentations
      • Strive for gender balance
      • Privacy and freedom
      • Adam B.: find workmate to talk about email encryption
      • Maia S.: Open Knowledge Foundation (ref. Lilly)
      • Jacinta R.
      • Dale D.: BitCoin
    • Video
      • Suggestions include:{: list-style-type="no-bullet"}
      • “Indie Game: The Movie”? (I don't think there's any free software in there from memory -Adam)
      • “Patent Absurdity” (re. Bilski patent case) http://patentabsurdity.com/
      • Revolution OS
      • Hope94
      • The FreeBSD Story Lev apparently has the last three. I don't know what the last two are about - DuckDuckGo and Google have failed me, but Lev used them in previous years.
      • Blender demos?
      • A recorded RMS talk?

Need:

  • Swag — shirts / stickers/ badges?
  • Catering — provider, budget
  • Sponsorship:*
    • Ben F.: ask VPAC
    • Adam: ask SitePoint
    • Ben S.: Free Software Queensland, Red Hat?
    • Best to have an incorporated entity for sponsors to coordinate with
      • L.U.V.wi Bmotion:
    • Lilly: spot on 3RRR Byte Into It
    • Open Knowledge Foundation
  • Leaflet with list of free software
  • ISO images
  • DHCP/Switch/Samba server setup

Ben F.: hand back FSM secretary to Ben S.

  • likely unavailable during late August – September 2014

Ben S.:

Adam B.:

  • To setup a Samba/DHCP server on an EeePC.
  • Put together a list of free software on a leaflet
  • Download a bunch of GNU/Linux distros

August meet-up

Task list

Ben S.:

  • Check with Andrea of the Open Innovation Project Network about giving a talk around Copyright/Patent/Trademark or what Andrea does at the OIPN. (http://defensivepublications.org/publications/)
  • Ask Les Kitchen if he would like to finish his talk about how he got into free software.

Thoughts

  • Provide a 5 minute notice before a meeting needs to end so as to not run overtime.

Meet-up

Hopefully a talk by Andrea

Ask for Software Freedom Day volunteers

  • Talks
  • Ideas

Les Kitchen/Brian May to complete their talk about how they got into free software.

A talk on Password Managers, depending on how we go for time with the above (if Andrea can make it).

Gnews (last)

General

Software releases

  • ownCloud 7 is here, with server-to-server file-sharing! We used ownCloud 7 collaborative document editing functionality (which was basically functional, but not ideal). http://owncloud.org/
  • DAVdroid (free software CalDAV/CardDAV sync tool) is now available on F-Droid and is fully compatible with ownCloud.
  • LibreOffice 4.3
    • Improved support for comments (importing/exporting nested comments, comment formatting and printing comments made in margins).
    • Supports OOXML Strict, as well as a host of legacy file formats such as MS Works Spreadsheets, ClarisWorks, MacWorks SuperPaint and more.
    • Animated 3D model support in Impress.
    • Calc has smarter highlighting of cells in formula, adds a display of the number of selected rows and columns in the status bar and other usability improvements.
    • Native look and feel on OS X.
    • Libreboot launched.

Controversial decisions

  • Systemd
    • Systemd: Harbinger of the Linux apocalypse
    • "[Violates] the rules of Unix, specifically the rule stating it's best to have small tools that do one job perfectly rather than one large tool that is mediocre at performing many jobs" - InfoWorld.com
    • Still hungry!
      • Replaces:
        • sysvinit (replacement is 6Mb+ excluding deps)
        • pm-utils
        • inetd & tcpwrappers
        • acpid
        • syslog (although apparently not very well)
        • watchdog
        • cron
        • atd
        • ntp
        • mount/umount & autofs
        • login
        • PAM
        • getty
        • udev
        • dbus
        • cryptsetup
      • Also includes:
    • Now in Debian (testing/jessie)
    • Pushed by Red Hat
    • From some of the devs that brought you PulseAudio.
    • Required by GNOME (See NetworkManager dependencies).
    • Time to switch to Slackware or Gentoo?

Did you know?

  • Qupzilla
  • LibreOffice on Android is in development
  • Counter To Hacienda Spy Program Developed
    • "Five western intelligence agencies are using the Hacienda software to identify vulnerable servers across the world in order to control them and use them for their own purposes."
    • Countered via a new kind of NAT-compatible knock integrating the knock secret in the initial TCP SYN packet in the SQN field.
      • Simple kernel patch (hopefully upstream soon)
      • Not a single extra packet on the wire (no window of opportunity for an attacker to use, as would be the case if a first packet enables the server)
      • Does not merely enable opening the connection, but also can be used to protect the first N bytes of the TCP payload (even an active man-in-the-middle adversary cannot hijack the connection)
      • Unlike SilentKnock (another single-packet port knocking implementation), it's compatible with most NAT implementations.
      • Will hopefully be supported by projects like GNUnet, Tor and OpenSSH in the near future.
      • Video
  • youtube-dl

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