Bradley M. Kuhn bkuhn@identi.ca

Free software or proprietary on the backend, between Google Code and Gitorious both shutting down, your code hosting monolith is not Too Big To Fail (even if run by a mega-corporation like Google!).

Relatedly, @Tsyesika@io.theperplexingpariah.co.uk started to spec out federated code hosting. It might be totally necessary at this point.

Hey,

So as most of you know gitorious is being acquired by a GitLab and therefore will be shut down. The idea was brought up of possibly having a community run code hosting with issue tracker that will pool money, resources, time and experties to run and maintain a code hosting solution.

Maybe we could get a Mailing list and/or an IRC channel where we can figure out this and get a start. Anyone would be interested in using this and helping in some way or another we can discuss it on this thread until we decide where else to go.

The questions we really need to figure out are:

• Is there enough interest to make this worth while?
• What software should we use?
• Where should we continue to disucss this (I think I'd prefer a Mailing list for this)?

I would obviously want to use this for my own personal projects and possibly Inboxen (would have to speak to moggers first). GNU Mediagoblin would obviously want to use it too.

URL of this announcement: https://sfconservancy.org/news/2015/feb/04/outreachy-joins/

February 4, 2015

Outreach Program to Join Conservancy from GNOME; Program Renames to Outreachy

Software Freedom Conservancy and the GNOME Foundation together announce that the Free and Open Source Software Outreach Program is moving from GNOME to Conservancy. As Karen Sandler, Executive Director of Conservancy and co-organizer of the Outreach Program, announced in her keynote at FOSDEM this weekend, the program will be rebranding as part of the transition under the new name "Outreachy".

Outreachy helps people from groups underrepresented in free and open source software get involved by providing a supportive community for newcomers to contribute to throughout the year, and by offering focused internship opportunities twice a year with many free software organizations. To date, the program has had 214 interns with 35 different free software organizations, including the Linux Kernel, Wikimedia, GNOME, Mozilla, Twisted (a Conservancy member project), and OpenStack. Marina Zhurakhinskaya, Community Engagement Lead at Red Hat and co-organizer of the program said, "It's amazing that the program we started four years ago with eight GNOME interns has grown to enable hundreds of women become established free software contributors across a broad spectrum of projects. I vividly remember the call in which Karen proposed the idea of inviting other organizations to participate, and I'm excited to continue working closely with her in growing the reach of the program."

The GNOME Foundation, previous nonprofit home of the program, remains a core partner of Outreachy, providing infrastructure support. "The GNOME board is unified in its enthusiasm for Outreach to join Conservancy," said Jean-François Fortin Tam, President of the GNOME Foundation. "We're proud to have launched the program and seen it grow beyond our wildest expectations. We look forward to remaining a partner, supporting and participating in the program in its new home as it continues to grow."

Over the next few months, Outreachy will complete its transition to Conservancy, the non-profit home of over 30 free and open source software projects. "Outreachy is a natural fit for Conservancy," said Sandler. "Conservancy is organized to support many free software projects — and to promote software freedom in general. This program has become an essential way for free software projects to improve their communities. I am honored to keep working with Marina, Sarah Sharp and all of the other volunteers who keep Outreachy going."

The next round of Outreachy internships will have an application deadline on March 24, 2015, and internship dates from May 25 to August 25. Coding, design, documentation and other projects will be available. Applicants will be asked to select a project with one of the participating organizations and collaborate with a mentor listed for that project to make a relevant contribution to the project during the application process. Accepted participants will work remotely, while being guided by their mentor, and will receive a $5,500 stipend.

About Outreachy

Outreachy is the successor of the Outreach Program for Women (OPW). OPW was inspired by Google Summer of Code and by how few women applied for it. The GNOME Foundation first started OPW with one round in 2006, and then resumed the effort in 2010 with rounds organized twice a year. In the May 2012 round, Software Freedom Conservancy joined OPW with one internship with the Twisted project. In the January 2013 round, many other free and open source organizations joined the program. For the May 2015 round, the program was renamed to Outreachy with the goal of expanding to engage people from various underrepresented groups and is transitioning to Conservancy as its organizational home.

This program is a welcoming link that connects talented and passionate newcomers with people working in free and open source software and guides them through their first contribution. Through Outreachy, participants learn how exciting and valuable work on software freedom can be, while helping us to build a more inclusive community. The organizational partners of the program are the GNOME Foundation, Red Hat and Software Freedom Conservancy.

About the GNOME Foundation

GNOME was started in 1997 by two then-university students, Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena Quintero. Their aim: to produce a free (as in freedom) desktop environment. Since then, GNOME has grown into a hugely successful enterprise. Used by millions of people around the world, it is one of the most popular environments for GNU/Linux and UNIX-type operating systems. GNOME's software has been utilized in successful, large-scale enterprise and public deployments.

The GNOME community is made up of hundreds of contributors from all over the world, many of whom are volunteers. This community is supported by the GNOME Foundation, an independent non-profit organization that provides financial, organizational and legal assistance. The Foundation is a democratic institution that is directed by its members, who are all active GNOME contributors. GNOME and its Foundation work to promote software freedom through the creation of innovative, accessible, and beautiful user experiences.

About Software Freedom Conservancy

Software Freedom Conservancy is a public charity that promotes, improves, develops and defends Free, Libre and Open Source software projects. Conservancy is home more than thirty software projects — including Git, Inkscape, Samba, Wine, Selenium, the Linux Compliance project, PyPy, and Sugar Labs — each supported by a dedicated community of volunteers, developers and users. Conservancy's projects include some of the most widely used software systems in the world across many application areas, including educational software deployed in schools around the globe, embedded software systems deployed in most consumer electronic devices, distributed version control developer tools, integrated library services systems, and widely used graphics and art programs. A full list of Conservancy's member projects is available. Conservancy provides these projects with the necessary infrastructure and not-for-profit support services to enable each project's communities to focus on what they do best: creating innovative software and advancing computing for the public's benefit.

>> Charles Stanhope:

“The two examples you cite are probably targetted correctly. The 18-25 group probably isn't buying many new cars. I don't know what sort of insurance Salt-N-Pepa is selling, but that also sounds like something old people think about. ;)”

I saw that insurance commercial. It was freaky. I flipped the TV over to C-SPAN in response.

On Free as in Freedom, Episode 0x51, Bradley and Karen play and discuss Pam Chestek's talk entitled Why Licenses Requiring Use of Trademarks are Non-Free that she gave 15:00 European/Central time on Sunday 2 February 2014 at FOSDEM 2014.

Please donate now: We're trying to send Producer Dan to a Free Software conference. We need to raise $2,500 for travel expenses to send Producer Dan to a conference of his choice to record interviews and otherwise participate in the conference. A donate link is on the front page of the show's website.

Bluffing in poker is a tactical decision that has nothing to do with honesty. It's like a feint in basketball or soccer. Those aren't dishonest in the least. Yeah, you could have that flush, or you could have gone left, but you didn't.

One thing that I've realized teaching, and it's perhaps relatively evident because I teach JHS and SHS students, is that what someone says may have nothing to do with what's true. That's so obvious to many teachers such as myself and my coworkers that we generally don't even bother making a judgment on whether any given statement is true. The interesting thing is that once you adopt this behavior, even if you learn it teaching children, you tend to apply it to everyone. You could call it cynical, but I don't feel cynical. I'm not bitter about it. I feel like I'm treating people like they're ... people ... who cover up embarrassment and other badness through misleading words, either intentionally or not. Generally speaking I don't mind, as long as the statements in question are of a personal variety. To the extent our leaders are deceptive on group issues, group effectiveness is destroyed.

One interesting thing in the environmental movement is the typical anti-environmentalist argument structure. Suppose we're talking about global warming. OK, these days it's called climate change. Whichever you prefer. Some representative of an oil company will say you're wrong about global warming, and the order in which the argument proceeds is almost always the same!

1. Global warming doesn't exist.

2. [You show evidence.] OK, maybe it does exist, but it's not as bad as you think.

3. [You show evidence.] OK, maybe it is as bad as you think, but we didn't cause it.

4. [You show evidence.] OK, maybe we caused it, but it's necessary.

The cool thing, which can also be irritating as hell, is that this exact same progression happens on dozens or hundreds of issues. And if you're looking for it, you can see which stage you're at. Unfortunately, oil companies are savvy, so they'll intentionally make the arguments convoluted. Over time, with enough tangents, that gives them an opportunity to come back to point 1 again. The bullet is dodged, the argument is reset, and life goes on.

People in power usually think that the best thing that can happen to the communities they govern is that they keep the power.

So they lie to keep the power, "for the good of the community". I think that they even believe that they are doing the right thing all the time :/

What smart AI in its right mind would want to do computer programming?

Well, I'll start drafting my business plan for a IFMDDoSaaS company.

On Free as in Freedom, Episode 0x50, Karen and Bradley announce Conservancy's DMCA filing and Conservancy and FSF's joint launch of the copyleft.org project, and then discuss Eileen Evans's FOSDEM 2014 talk, entitled Licensing Models and Building an Open Source Community.

Excited about this new collaboration with Conservancy, and many others to come, to promote understanding and advancement of copyleft: http://www.fsf.org/news/software-freedom-conservancy-and-free-software-foundation-announce-copyleft.org

Conservancy Files Petition for DMCA Exemptions for “Smart” TVs

Conservancy asks U.S. Copyright Office to affirmatively permit community-based hacks on television firmwares

Software Freedom Conservancy, with the pro-bono assistance of Tor Ekeland, P.C., filed today a petition for a proposed exception to the anti-circumvention provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”). In its filing, Conservancy asks that the U.S. Copyright Office to legally permit circumvention of encryption for firmwares found on Smart TV products from manufacturers such as Samsung, Sony and LG. Conservancy's full Petition for Proposed Exemption under 17 U.S.C. § 1201 is available in PDF and in ODT format.

By default, the DMCA prohibits users from examining and attempting to decrypt firmwares on these devices when the manufacturer has used Digital Restrictions Management (“DRM”) to prohibit modification and augmentation of the software on the device. Most of these devices include software licensed under GPLv2, such as Linux and BusyBox, but the DMCA often legally stymies users' ability to installed modified versions of the firmware, even when the device manufacturer provides the complete, corresponding source for these components and “scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable” (per requirements in the GPLv2). If granted, Conservancy's requested exemptions would liberate users of BusyBox/Linux-based encrypted firmwares to circumvent the encryption (if they find a technically feasible way of doing so), and such users would need not fear the harsh penalties under DMCA for disseminating information on how to circumvent such DRM.

Commenting on today's filing, Karen Sandler, Conservancy's Executive Director, said: “We work to help create an open environment for users and developers of free and open source software to innovate and make use of the key freedoms that free software licenses give them. Unfortunately the DMCA curtails these freedoms. Our request is that the U.S. Copyright office restore these freedoms to everyone in the U.S.”

Aaron Williamson, Partner at Tor Ekeland, noted the importance of participation in this process by individual citizens, for-profit companies, and non-profits alike: “We're pleased to be working with Conservancy on this petition. The DMCA is a flawed law and the exemption process is imperfect, but an exemption that enables improvements to the free and open source operating systems at the heart of these devices will promote consumer innovation and security. ”

Conservancy hereby releases its Petition under the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication (CC0 1.0), in hopes that others will file petitions for other, similar consumer electronics products. The deadline for this round of petitions is this Monday, 3 November 2014.

Permalink for this announcement: http://sfconservancy.org/news/2014/oct/31/dmca-petition/

Couldn't be happier about Matthew Garrett joining the FSF board of directors: http://www.fsf.org/news/matthew-garrett-joins-free-software-foundation-board-of-directors