today I was on my way to add in a new plugin for Elgg to make it possible to have multiple group operators. Unfortunately the plugin was only for the new version of Elgg, 1.8.

While that particular plugin would mean just a minor enhancement, it triggered me to pose this question: Is it worth to upgrade, and if so, when and how could we best do that together?

I remember that maybe a year ago, Franco already mentioned it that one day we should upgrade to 1.8. Why would we do that? If you have any opinions and comments about this, let them hear.

best, Wouter

For example, one can use the single signon capabilities native to Drupal for integration with CRM, ERP, eCommerce, and other software like forums, etc., and even integrate OpenID support (even as an OpenID provider service!). 

Maintenance of a Drupal installation, including security updates, is very simple too, via the cli, with Drush, the drupal shell, and makes the installation of new modules as simple as an invocation in a single command. 

As far as DBMS are concerned, anything (including Drupal) that works with MySQL also works with MariaDB (also created by Monty) or Percona, two of my favs that don't require one to use software owned by the evil EllisonCo ;)

I've posted a couple of notes about the use of Drupal, it's inherent revision control and forward mobility etc., although one of those posts seemed to disappear. Oh well...

Anyway, in followiing up with that, I wanted to share an example of how well Drupal integrates tightly with other FOSS projects which facilitates the educational community, just as an example of what can be done. For that, I'm going to provide a couple of links to OpenScholar:

http://openscholar.harvard.edu/

http://openscholar.harvard.edu/pages/frequently-asked-questions

and http://drupal.org/project/openscholar

I hope that helps, and lemme know how I can help out, k?

Kindest regards,

Bradley - http://NorthTech.US

.

you'll have noted that over the last few months a few hundred new members subscribed. However they're not active on the community site. And looking into their profiles you'll see that many of them don't mention any interest in Free Technology. Instead, often you'll read in their profile pages that they're promoting some kind of company, very suspicous of SPAM.

And yes, then some of them also start posting pages directly asking attention for a whole bunch of external links. When it is so loud and clear, we can and should immediately ban them and remove their pages.

Regarding the inactive new members who don't express any interest in FT, do you consider we need to take any collective action? I know some of the community members find it somewhat irritating. Then again, we can also simply ignore them, as we have been doing mostly. When they don't trouble us, we can avoid ourselves the work of checking them out and banning them.

I look forward to your suggestions.

best,

Wouter

(1) Live conversations (like the one we just had); and, 

(2) Money (which would allow us to work faster by freeing up time).

What else?

We started with a small team, first of all Joe, Fabrizio and myself. Later David Jacovkis and Hinde joined the conversation. And now it may be time to welcome new participants. People who are interested in building the platform with us, people with various skills in Free Technologies, people with concrete projects to share with the group, to learn and earn some money, people interested in developing and presenting project proposals to calls for funding, so we can accelerate the development process, finetune and build the prototype platform etc. (see e.g. matchmaking tool ideas).

So if you are someone who maybe interested in some part of this and like the FTG ideas, please let us know. Feel free to present any comments in this welcoming thread.

For the updating process, there an instance of the book in the annotation tool, but as I see so far there haven't been made any annotations yet. This tool might be helpful to annotate feedback, while then the feedback needs to be incorporated into the book and a new version can be released.

Of course this depends on the possibilities of working on this together with the original authors. If that for whatever reason might be hard to coordinate at this point in time. A fork could emerge. Then we'd need to see how we evolved from there for later (official) versions.

Whatever we may decide, I think the tools that are chosen for the feedback & editing can be rather determining for the outcome. So I'd like to hear your ideas about this. And likewise for the tools for translation. Check also the wiki pages on Translation.

In any case I'm happy to hear more about CEATA's initiative!

best,

Wouter

I made a rough draft of our roadmap here:

http://campus.ftacademy.org/wiki/index.php/Free_Technology_Guild_Roadmap

Any suggestions or additions are welcome!

Wouter, perhaps you can add it to the list of important documents on the Working Group's landing page?

Joe

One useful reference is Fabrizio's wireframe,

http://campus.ftacademy.org/community/pg/photos/download/17871/inline/

Let's try to add some more pictures, ideas, and clear requirements in this thread.

With today we have 126 days of group activities. Many ideas have been proposed a lot of work has been done by all participants to transform a vision into an ambitious project. As you know even if only as an apprentice I am an optimist and I believe in a bright future and our ability to build it together. Each person adding its small brick of passion, dedication and individual features.

The simple act of bringing people together has value and power.

Thanks to all...  :)

I think we need to summarize the activities to facilitate access and active participation to new companions.

If you agree, we could schedule a joint publication by the end of September at which explaining to the world what we believe and summarize the activities and the roadmap.

For this we can immediately use the FTG repository at.

If you haven't done before :

• clone the repository  : git clone git://repo.or.cz/ftg.git
• Change directories : cd ftg
• Set up remote tracking branch : git branch --track mob origin/mob

If you have any suggest please go head..!

I am looking forward to collaborate and keep learn with you.

cheers,

Fabrizio

What do you think ?

I made a start in the wiki; have a look and comment if you find it interesting.

This thread is a good place to discuss concrete steps on the Elgg prototype, and/or any other prototypes that can be built with other software tools.

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<free-technology-guild-working-group@campus.ftacademy.org>: Command died with
   status 1: "/usr/share/ftacademy/server/elgg/tools/cryptobot/mailcheck.py".
   Command output: Traceback (most recent call last):   File
   "/usr/share/ftacademy/server/elgg/tools/cryptobot/mailcheck.py", line 19,
   in <module>     f = open(config_file, 'r') IOError: [Errno 2] No such file
   or directory: '/etc/cryptobot/config.yaml'

Final-Recipient: rfc822; free-technology-guild-working-group@campus.ftacademy.org
Original-Recipient: rfc822;free-technology-guild-working-group@campus.ftacademy.org
Action: failed
Status: 5.3.0
Diagnostic-Code: x-unix; Traceback (most recent call last):   File
   "/usr/share/ftacademy/server/elgg/tools/cryptobot/mailcheck.py", line 19,
   in <module>     f = open(config_file, 'r') IOError: [Errno 2] No such file
   or directory: '/etc/cryptobot/config.yaml'

For example: a reasonable Blue Team objective would be to develop an aggregation tool and get it adopted by an external platform.

For example: a reasonable Red Team objective might be to find someone cool, and recruit them into the FTG as a member.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has recently come up with a way to reduce the shortcomings of the patent system: the Defensive Patent License. As they say in their page: "Let's start with the obvious: The patent system is broken. Inventors are shutting down their businesses, small developers are removing their products from the U.S. market to avoid bogus legal threats, and industry groups are warning members that obvious technological improvements might draw lawsuits."

Their DPL proposal would remedy the negative aspects of patents, as it provides a patent pool, like the "Open Innovation Network" has set up for patents related to GNU/Linux.

EFF:

The idea behind not-yet-operational Defensive Patent License (“DPL”) takes the good from defensive patenting (attempts to stem litigation) and removes the bad (the risk that patents obtained defensively will be used downstream by a troll). The license would work like this: 

• DPL patent holders must offer a nonexclusive, royalty-free license for any patent they own to anyone who requests one, as long as the licensee agrees not to sue the licensor or any other member of the DPL community for patent infringement.
• The licensee must offer its patents under the DPL with the same conditions to anyone who requests one.
• The licenses remain in effect throught the patent's life, even if it is later sold.
• The licenses can only be revoked if an offensive patent suit is filed.

The DPL borrows heavily from the ethos surrounding the free and open source software community, honoring the important freedoms to operate and innovate openly. As such, it is those communities who will most likely use, and benefit from, the DPL.

One obvious remark however is made in ArsTechnica: their proposal does nothing to stop software patents.

But maybe a more general criticism would be: if we know that the patent system is broken and that patents go straight against the sharing of knowledge, why would we need patents at all? Only for existing patents such DPL might be a solution, but wouldn't it be better to avoid teh effort of registering a patent at all? In their illustration "How Patents Hinder Innovation", the EFF themselves show how useless it is for a small firm or inventor to request a patent.

Maybe in their Campaign "Defend Innovation" they could add the option to abolish the patent system, what do you think about it? What other ways of sharing ideas and inventions do you know of?

• Open Internet of Things: Open IoT Assembly
• the draft Open IoT Assembly Statement (http://bit.ly/openiot>)

Hi Wouter,

I want to find financing for Alex Shure so that he can develop the VAWT. My goal is to find companies and organizations that could give him 1000€/month for the development. I wrote here a summary about the VAWT Financing: http://wiki.opensourceecology.de/wiki/Wind_Turbine/Finance and started selecting Open Source Software Companies for the goal to connect with them here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Au4HBfGndfFmdDFDRURlSTNVMDhqRGpzMHpoUC1Yenc
My questions to you are:
a) Do you have personal contacts to some of the already selected companies?
b) Do you know other Open Source Companies that we could contact about this fundraising?
c) Do you have any other ideas about fundraising possibilities?

Thank you!

Best regards,

Nikolay

--
Nikolay Georgiev
osede.org - Open Source Ecology Germany | Contacts: http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Nikolay_Georgiev

as you have probably noticed, we've had some issues with the virtual server that hosts the FTA Campus. The same issue has also affected the web server that hosts the FTA static site. These virtual machines run on a Xen 3.2.1 server with a linux-2.6.26 kernel on both host (dom0) and guests (domUs). Every domU runs on a LVM partition.

The bug manifests as a soft filesystem lockup where the system becomes unresponsive (but not crashed). Rebooting fixes the issue, although the system is not always able to shutdown cleanly.

The system log in the guest VM shows messages of this kind:

INFO: task php:1002 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
INFO: task syslogd:1518 blocked for more than 120 seconds.
...

This is an elusive bug that has been hitting us for a while at seemingly random intervals (every two weeks or so). It seems to be related to high I/O loads, but so far I've been unable to reproduce it at will. It seems to be this bug (or closely related to it):

http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-kernel/2010/9/6/4616023/thread

I'm hesitant to invest a lot of time on solving this because there is a pending system update on both the dom0 and the domUs, which will include updates of both the kernel and the Xen hypervisor. I'll be testing the update path in the coming days on another server, and once I'm confident about the process I'll update the production server.

I'll keep this group posted.

^dj

Here is one such possibility:

http://www.epsrc.ac.uk/funding/calls/open/Pages/softwareforthefuture.aspx

This is through a UK-focused grant agency - a percent of a percent of their funds do go to "overseas" institutions, but that's unlikely to be very relevant for us:

http://gow.epsrc.ac.uk/NGBOListOrganisations.aspx?regionid=99

Instead, I think I will look for local partners who I can apply with.

Any additional ideas for funding can be posted/discussed here.

this is a proposal to organize within FTA online courses on this topic. I explained what FPGA are and why I think it's time to "bring them to the masses", also through proper training, in these articles: http://stop.zona-m.net/?s=fpga

Feedback is very welcome!

mentoring/coaching, teaching/training, software/technology/knowledge development, deployment, incubation of projects, project consulting ... and hosting a network/platform/market for other people to do the same, using free software and other free technologies!

More details can be discussed here.

I think it would be good to do a littlebit of research to know the needs of participants. A very first draft of a survey can be found here: http://campus.ftacademy.org/wiki/index.php/Survey_for_Enhanced_Peer_Learning_model

Once the questions are final, we can use LimeSurvey and start spreading it. Any help is highly welcome!

Best, Hinde.

today I found out that groups are not always accessible, even when they're set to "Public", i.e. should be accessible to all.

We had this discussion about it in the FTG working group. And although individual posts are public & accessible, the group itself isn't. This seems to be a bug, or do you have any clue what went wrong here?

best, Wouter

Weird, as it seems that the group itself is publicly accessible. Any clue?

I would rather start with the Diaspora* page, but when the procedures are stilltoo  long. In the meantime I created a page onFB.

Page:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/FTG-Free-Technology-Guild/450854138263494#

We're thinking of allowing learners into courses for a monthly subscription fee, still with support from learning assisistants. We could revise existing course books and materials to more introductionary courses and/or develop less labour-intensive assignments. There are several options and this is the place to discuss them!

However, it's also true that Charlie Danoff and I are using CC0 for our work on http://paragogy.net (non-copyright, non-copyleft, no rights reserved).  There may be some works that we want to release under those terms.  We also advocated for those terms on a bigger collaborative writing project (which is soon to be released in "alpha" at http://peeragogy.org).

I'm aware that our approach to maximal freedom for downstream users may clash with long-standing values in the Free Software community, so maybe there are things to discuss there.

Further, we presumably to be compatible with other Free content from future FTG contributors, just re-using known definitions of that (e.g. from Debian).

If there's any discussion needed - let's discuss, otherwise I will assume the CC-By-SA + GNU GPL v2 combination discussed in the first paragraph (and add suitable licenses to the git repo).

after I had been seleted to present my FTA presentation at LINUXTAG in Berlin this year, I had finished a first version of the presentation and want to put it up for discussion.

regards

Veit

FTA presentation LINUXTAG

There are bound to be others.  This is a thread for talking about this outreach effort!

It would be great if participants in the working group could begin to spell out the needs and wishes in each of these areas a bit further, and say a bit more about how we can start building prototypes that deliver.

It may be helpful to talk in terms of "design patterns" that are relevant to this project.  (I hope to post some examples soon!)

Wouter, thank you very much , I really appreciated your encouragement.
Virtualgallery.com doesn't allowed us a FTG foundational document presentation.. well, we will create a better one, we are FTG not a Sbirulino Inc.

http://campus.ftacademy.org/community/pg/photos/album/15276/vrlm-fontational-documentation-presentation-gallery

I have complete a 15% of the design work and I can already give you a nice shot.

The itinerary animation is already pretty cool .

The idea ( and I personally think is quite innovative approach) is to prepare a dynamic profile presentation of the FTG group. We will accompany virtually all people interested to know through the gallery and at each station will find all the information and official documentation. In addition to graphics material, I also intend to include audio files, and some trick assistive browser extention plug-in that allows even people with different cognitive demands to be able to interact with us and give and receive group collaboration.

We Will insert the material into the repository created by Joe to allow the final work to be completed  combining  creativity and differentiated expertise.

Obviously we will arrange together images and materials, this is for the moment only a draft.

But first I want to discuss with joe the meaning of “trust”.

Have a nice week,

Fabry

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: [SEWORLD] Senior lecturer position in Informatics  with expertise in web technologies
Date: Fri, 20 Jan 2012 10:43:12 +0100
From: Mikael Berndtsson <mikael.berndtsson@HIS.SE>
To: <seworld@sigsoft.org>

One senior lecturer position in Informatics, with expertise in web
technologies, at University of Skövde, Sweden.

We are looking for a strong applicant with a doctoral degree in
informatics, software engineering, or computer science that has
expertise in web technologies. The position is full-time and includes
research and teaching in web technologies (e.g., web programming, web
design, cloud computing) and administrative work.

It is expected that the applicant is able to teach in English and within 2 years is able to teach in Swedish. The split between teaching and research is 50/50 during the first 2 years. After 2 years the result will be evaluated and a re-negotiation of the split between teaching and research will take place.

The applicant will be introduced and is expected to contribute to
ongoing research projects undertaken in the Informatics Research Centre
(IRC) at the University of Skövde. There are currently a number of
ongoing research projects which are strategically important for the
research centre, and several of these have addressed issues relevant to
web technologies. For example, the Software Systems Research Group in
the research centre has undertaken a number of research projects
together with industrial and public sector partners in the area of web
technology, Open Source, and Open Standards. The applicant will be
introduced to a new research project starting in 2012 that will explore
web technologies in the context of Open Systems (specifically Open
Standards and Open Source software for the web).

The University of Skövde is an expansive university that offers
traditional and unique educational programs within a number of different areas. Informatics is a prioritised research area at the University of Skövde. The University employs at the present time approximately 500 people with about 11 000 students and constitutes an important resource for regional development. A central campus area in central Skövde offers a creative environment with excellent possibilities for development for employees and students.

The closing date for receipt of applications is Tuesday, 15th May, 2012.


Application information:
http://www.his.se/hogskolan/lediga-anstallningar/  (in Swedish)

General information and teaching:
Mikael Berndtsson, Assistant Professor, e-mail mikael.berndtsson@his.se

Information about research:
Björn Lundell, Associate Professor, e-mail bjorn.lundell@his.se

Informatics Research Centre:
http://www.his.se/english/research/informatics/


Regards,

-- Mikael

________________________________________
Mikael Berndtsson, PhD
Assistant Professor

School of Humanities and Informatics
University of Skövde
Box 408
541 28 Skövde
Sweden

http://www.his.se/berk

Hi all,

I've made a quick draft to reach out and get more learners enrolled to the planned courses. Any comments? I'm planning to send it out today!

Thanks,

Hinde.

FTA Announce #17: GNU/Linux Basic and Advanced open for registration

Permanent link: http://ftacademy.org/announce/17

Since January 2012 the FTA courses are organised in a bottom-up fashion: courses will take off if a sufficient number of participants have expressed their interest in a specific course and a minimum amount of tuition fees has been collected.

Currently, we have two courses in the pipeline that should reach the threshold. The first one is the Basic GNU/Linux course [1] and it could already take off on January 30th: we only need a few more enrolments! Following that module, we plan to run GNU/Linux Advanced [2] in May. Interested? Please go to our Programme Page [3] and follow the steps presented.

=== January 30th, 2012: Basic GNU/Linux ===
The aim of the Basic GNU/Linux course is to initiate you into the world of GNU/Linux. It covers the basics of the open source philosophy, how to use and modify GNU/Linux to suit your needs, and how to find your way in this new world more easily. Previous experience at user level with any operating system is recommended. Expertise in systems administration in any platform is desirable. Please note that this module is not a master-level course.

=== May 2012: GNU/Linux Advanced ===
The contents of the module "The GNU/Linux operating system" are mostly related to systems administration. Students will learn how to install, configure and optimise a GNU/Linux operating system and the most widely used computer services. During this course students will engage in practical activities related to these topics, applying them in real GNU/Linux systems. Basic knowledge and skills in GNU/Linux is recommended. Expertise in system administration in any plattform is desirable background. Understanding the Concepts of Free Software and Open Standards is recommended.

Note that new payment options are in place: apart from wire transfers we can now also receive tuition fees - and donations - through PayPal. If you don't have a PayPal account, you can use a credit card as well.

If you are interested in a different course, please fill out the survey [4] created to find out which persons are interested in which courses. Also make sure you're on the FTA Discussion mailinglist [5] and touchbase with the Coordination Space: [6]

[1] http://ftacademy.org/courses/modules/13
[2] http://ftacademy.org/courses/modules/2
[3] http://ftacademy.org/courses/programme
[4] http://ur1.ca/6zsek
[5] http://mail.freeknowledge.eu/mailman/listinfo/fta-discussion
[6] http://campus.ftacademy.org/wiki/index.php/Course-Coordination

as you might know, in the beginning of the FTA we had a bunch of people interested in translating FTA course books. We then started to discuss which formats and tools would be most useful (see here). Some people made a start, but no one really completed the work. We felt that we needed a more collaborative approach, as doing this on your own is just ... too much.

Today I discovered a web platform for localisation called Transifex. It can be used free of charge by Free Software projects, and a community edition is made available as Free Software under the GPLv2, so at any point one could set it up on its own servers.

Does anyone know this? Is there interest to try it out?

best,

Wouter

We need to confirm the date and time today....

There is a company here in the UK that provides what they claim is "a unique consultancy/training program": http://www.computerminds.co.uk/drupal-freelance-web-developers -- Basically, they will provide a professional to work with you while you work on your project, someone who tells you what they are doing as they go.  Thus, not only do you make direct progress on your coding project, but you also learn more about the system.

I would say that "training" and "consultancy" are two ends of a spectrum.  There should be some fruitful stuff going on in the middle.

It wouldn't be hard to set up the information infrastructure to support this.  Mainly you would need to keep track of

• interests (e.g. Drupal in my case)
• skill level (e.g. beginner in my case)
• budget or fee (e.g. I could probably come up with some money)
• brief description of project