For all my gripes about the brokenness of the international development system, today's a good day. I was fortunate to be able to lead a workshop of 30+ people working at funding agencies/donors. Coming out of #COP26 discussing how to band together to make progress on #climate action using technology -- hopefully in responsible & ethical ways.
Lots of good lightning talks and productive breakout groups discussing how to build partnerships & synergy to respond to the giant challenges ahead.
Another sterling FOSS event comes back to real life 🐣 This is the #FossBackstage #CallForPapers (deadline upcoming). #NotRemote #OpenSource https://foss-backstage.de/news/call-participation-now-open
Chatty 5.0~beta is out!
https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/chatty/-/tags/v0.5.0_beta
This is the first Chatty released with integrated MMS support!
It's great to see a few gov'ts (e.g. the EU) starting to realise how much they've undermined their own sovereignty and stunted their local industries by adopting Microsoft (and, to a lesser extent, Google/Amazon/Apple/Facebook) software and services. They've only just started to realise that they've outsourced their most business-critical systems to a potentially hostile party, and in doing so, they've condemned their institutions, and the people dependent on them, to exploitation.
Anybody know any #WorkerCoop developers/TA providers in South Carolina? Going to be talking with some members of a nascent intermodal trucking co-op later today and looking for some ppl in their area to direct them to.
Has anyone seen this documentary? Sounds pretty interesting.
"Solidarity Economy is a portrait of a small forgotten town in the mountains of the Northern part of the State of Veracruz, Where they decided to create their own economic system by printing their own community currency; a coin that is based on the exchange system, initiating this way, an autonomous project with its own resources, detached from Government hands and crosscurrent to the capitalist system."
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7235380/plotsummary?ref_=tt_ov_pl
The first episode of this season, “What Police Get When They Get Your Phone” with @harlanyu, explores the tools that are being used by police departments across America—often without warrants—to access the most intimate information on your cell phone. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2021/11/podcast-episode-what-police-get-when-they-get-your-phone
Police used 3 cameras mounted on utility poles to secretly record someone's life 24/7 for 18 months. A court said cops didn't need a warrant for this highly intrusive act. We're asking SCOTUS to make clear that's a violation of the Fourth Amendment. https://www.eff.org/press/releases/eff-supreme-court-warrantless-24-hour-video-surveillance-outside-homes-violates
Ted Rall has a new post talking about real inflation and referencing John Williams’ Shadow Government Statistics (https://www.shadowstats.com/). It's a nice expose to how the US Government has been manipulating the inflation numbers. It is on https://rall.com/ below the cartoon.
Has anyone working on #FreeSoftware ever seen an MIT License with a mandatory arbitration clause?
As has been pointed out, it is wrong of the United States of America to lay claim to the word, "America", but it's more than welcome to own the words, " 'merica" and "Amerika".
Privatization, because private companies are much better at exploiting workers than public companies.
@doctormo @lightweight This is actually the emerging trend right now. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/10/how-to-build-digital-public-infrastructure-estonia/
The first step is to consider computer software and business standardisation to be INFRASTRUCTURE.
Using Microsoft Office is, to me, the same as giving a company a private toll road right through the middle of your local city and business districts.
@lightweight Microsoft/GitHub are big sponsors and speakers at this year's UN Internet Governance Forum where a major topic is digital sovereignty. 🤯
"Farmers have already told us that they’re buying older tractors to avoid the software repair restrictions that manufacturers like Deere put in place." https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxd8wy/the-used-tractor-market-is-far-wilder-than-the-used-car-market
Also sometimes you'll see the narrative "Look how much we can accomplish when we work together! Millions of lines of code!" This is thankfully dying down, but I think it's problematic in a different way.
Because when a project's too large, it's impractical to exercise any of the Four Freedoms you might legally have. To e.g. alter Chrome or Firefox & keep it working.
And I do reckon established projects should invest in solid governance to give non-programmers influence over it.
4/4
What do I view as being toxic?
* Insist everyone must want to put time into customizing their computers.
* Insist every Linux user (or worse computer user) needs to understand how computers work.
People may have other things to do!
* Villify software projects you don't like; You don't have to use them! systemd haters can have their own distros!
Often a fossbro will villify a project for hiding configuration options...
* Telling others "just fork it" and/or villifying subsequent forks.
3/4
#ShlaerMellor, #FunctionPointAnalysis, #punk, #environmentalist, #unionAdvocate, #anarchosocialist
"with a big old lie and a flag and a pie and a mom and a bible most folks are just liable to buy any line, any place, any time" - Frank Zappa