- <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Debian_Edu_interview__Shirish_Agarwal.html">Debian Edu interview: Shirish Agarwal</a></div>
- <div class="date">15th April 2015</div>
- <div class="body"><p>It was a surprise to me to learn that project to create a complete
-computer system for schools I've involved in,
-<a href="http://www.skolelinux.org/">Debian Edu / Skolelinux</a>, was
-being used in India. But apparently it is, and I managed to get an
-interview with one of the friends of the project there, Shirish
-Agarwal.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Who are you, and how do you spend your days?</strong></p>
-
-<p>My name is Shirish Agarwal. Based out of the educational and
-historical city of Pune, from the western state of Maharashtra, India.
-My bread comes from giving training, giving policy tips,
-installations on free software to mom and pop shops in different
-fields from Desktop publishing to retail shops as well as work with
-few software start-ups as well.</p>
-
-<p><strong>How did you get in contact with the Skolelinux / Debian Edu
-project?</strong></p>
-
-<p>It started innocently enough. I have been using Debian for a few
-years and in one local minidebconf / debutsav I was asked if there was
-anything for schools or education. I had worked / played with free
-educational softwares such as Gcompris and Stellarium for my many
-nieces and nephews so researched and found Debian Edu or Skolelinux as
-it was known then. Since then I have started using the various
-education meta-packages provided by the project.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the advantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>It's closest I have seen where a package full of educational
-software are packed, which are free and open (both literally and
-figuratively). Even if I take the simplest software which is
-gcompris, the number of activities therein are amazing. Another one of
-the softwares that I have liked for a long time is stellarium. Even
-pysycache is cool except for couple of issues I encountered
-<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781841">#781841</a> and
-<a href="https://bugs.debian.org/781842">#781842</a>.</p>
-
-<p>I prefer software installed on the system over web based solutions,
-as a web site can disappear any time but the software on disk has the
-possibility of a larger life span. Of course with both it's more a
-question if it has enough users who make it fun or sustainable or both
-for the developer per-se.</p>
-
-<p><strong>What do you see as the disadvantages of Skolelinux / Debian
-Edu?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I do see that the Debian Edu team seems to be short-handed and I
-think more efforts should be made to make it popular and ask and take
-help from people and the larger community wherever possible.</p>
-
-<p>I don't see any disadvantage to use Skolelinux apart from the fact
-that most apps. are generic which is good or bad how you see it.
-However, saying that I do acknowledge the fact that the canvas is
-pretty big and there are lot of interesting ideas that could be done
-but for reasons not known not done or if done I don't know about them.
-Let me share some of the ideas (these are more upstream based but
-still) I have had for a long time :</p>
-
-<p>1. Classical maths question of two trains in opposing directions
-each running @x kmph/mph at y distance, when they will meet and how
-far would each travel and similar questions like these.
-
-<p>The computer is a fantastic system where questions like these can
-be drawn, animated and the methodology and answers teased out in
-interactive manner. While sites such as the
-<a href="http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.two.trains.html">Ask
-Dr. Math FAQ on The Two Trains problem</a> (as an example or point of
-inspiration) can be used there is lot more that can be done. I dunno
-if there is a free software which does something like this. The idea
-being a blend of objects + animation + interaction which does
-this. The whole interaction could be gamified with points or sounds or
-colourful celebration whenever the user gets even part of the question
-or/and methodology right. That would help reinforce good behaviour.
-This understanding could be used to share/showcase everything from how
-the first wheel came to be, to evolution to how astronomy started,
-psychics and everything in-between.</p>
-
-<p>One specific idea in the train part was having the Linux mascot on
-one train and the BSD or GNU mascot on the other train and they
-meeting somewhere in-between. Characters from blender movies could
-also be used.</p>
-
-<p>2. Loads of crossword-puzzles with reference to subjects: We have
-enormous data sets in Wikipedia and Wikitionary. I don't think it
-should be a big job to design crossword puzzles. Using categories and
-sub-categories it should be doable to have Q&A single word answers
-from the existing data-sets. What would make it easy or hard could be
-the length of the word + existence of many or few vowels depending on
-the user's input.</p>
-
-<p>3. Jigsaw puzzles - We already have a great software called
-palapeli with number of slicers making it pretty interesting. What
-needs to be done is to download large number of public domain and
-copyleft images, tease and use IPTC tags to categorise them into
-nature, history etc. and let it loose. This could turn to be really
-huge collection of images. One source could be taken from
-commons.wikimedia.org, others could be huge collection of royalty-free
-stock photos. Potential is immense.</p>
-
-<p>Apart from this, free software suffers in two directions, we lag
-both in development (of using new features per-se) and maintenance a
-lot. This is more so in educational software as these applications
-need to be timely and the opportunity cost of missing deadlines is
-immense. If we are able to solve issues of funding for development and
-maintenance of such software I don't see any big difficulties. I know
-of few start-ups in and around India who would love to develop and
-maintain such software if funding issues could be solved.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which free software do you use daily?</strong></p>
-
-<p>That would be huge list. Some of the softwares are obviously apt,
-aptitude, debdelta, leafpad, the shell of course (zsh nowadays),
-quassel for IRC. In games I use shisen-sho while card-games are evenly
-between kpat and Aiselriot. In desktops it's a tie between
-gnome-flashback and mate.</p>
-
-<p><strong>Which strategy do you believe is the right one to use to
-get schools to use free software?</strong></p>
-
-<p>I think it should first start with using specific FOSS apps. in
-whatever environment they are. If it's MS-Windows or Mac so be it.
-Once they are habitual with the apps. and there is buy-in from the
-school management then it could be installed anywhere. Most of the
-people now understand the concept of a repository because of the
-various online stores so it isn't hard to convince on that front.</p>
-
-<p>What is harder is having enough people with technical skills and
-passion to service them. If you get buy-in from one or two teachers
-then ideas like above could also be asked to be done as a project as
-well.</p>
-
-<p>I think where we fall short more than anything is in marketing. For
-instance, Debian has this whole range of fonts in its archive but
-there isn't even a page where all those different fonts in the La
-Ipsum format could be tried out for newcomers.</p>
-
-<p>One of the issues faced constantly in installations is with updates
-and upgrades. People have this myth that each update and upgrade
-means the user interface will / has to change. I have seen this
-innumerable times. That perhaps is one of the reasons which browsers
-like Iceweasel / Firefox change user interfaces so much, not because
-it might be needed or be functional but because people believe that
-changed user interfaces are better. This, can easily be pointed with
-the user interfaces changed with almost every MS-Windows and Mac OS
-releases.</p>
-
-<p>The problems with Debian Edu for deployment are many. The biggest
-is the huge gap between what is taught in schools and what Debian Edu
-is aimed at.
-
-<p>Me and my friends did teach on week-ends in a government school for
-around 2 years, and
-<a href="https://flossexperiences.wordpress.com/2012/10/08/sharings/">gathered
-some experience</a> there. Some of the things we learnt/discovered
-there was :</p>
-
-<ol>
-
- <li>Most of the teachers are very territorial about their subjects
- and they do not want you to teach anything out of the
- portion/syllabus given.</li>
-
- <li>They want any activity on the system in accordance to whatever
- is in the syllabus.</li>
-
- <li>There are huge barriers both with the English language and at
- times with objects or whatever. An example, let's say in gcompris
- you have objects falling down and you have to name them and let's
- say the falling object is a hat or a fedora hat, this would not be
- as recognizable as say a
- <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puneri_Pagadi">Puneri
- Pagdi</a> so there is need to inject local objects, words wherever
- possible. Especially for word-games there are so many hindi words
- which have become part of english vocabulary (for instance in
- parley), those could be made into a hinglish collection or
- something but that is something for upstream to do.</li>
-
-</ol>
+ <div class="title"><a href="http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Is_Pentagon_deciding_the_Norwegian_negotiating_position_on_Internet_governance_.html">Is Pentagon deciding the Norwegian negotiating position on Internet governance?</a></div>
+ <div class="date"> 3rd November 2015</div>
+ <div class="body"><p>In Norway, all government offices are required by law to keep a
+list of every document or letter arriving and leaving their offices.
+Internal notes should also be documented. The document list (called a mail
+journal - "postjournal" in Norwegian) is public information and thanks
+to the Norwegian Freedom of Information Act (Offentleglova) the mail
+journal is available for everyone. Most offices even publish the mail
+journal on their web pages, as PDFs or tables in web pages. The state-level offices even have a shared web based search service (called
+<a href="https://www.oep.no/">Offentlig Elektronisk Postjournal -
+OEP</a>) to make it possible to search the entries in the list. Not
+all journal entries show up on OEP, and the search service is hard to
+use, but OEP does make it easier to find at least some interesting
+journal entries .</p>
+
+<p>In 2012 I came across a document in the mail journal for the
+Norwegian Ministry of Transport and Communications on OEP that
+piqued my interest. The title of the document was
+"<a href="https://www.oep.no/search/resultSingle.html?journalPostId=4192362">Internet
+Governance and how it affects national security</a>" (Norwegian:
+"Internet Governance og påvirkning på nasjonal sikkerhet"). The
+document date was 2012-05-22, and it was said to be sent from the
+"Permanent Mission of Norway to the United Nations". I asked for a
+copy, but my request was rejected with a reference to a legal clause said to authorize them to reject it
+(<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20,
+letter c</a>) and an explanation that the document was exempt because
+of foreign policy interests as it contained information related to the
+Norwegian negotiating position, negotiating strategies or similar. I
+was told the information in the document related to the ongoing
+negotiation in the International Telecommunications Union (ITU). The
+explanation made sense to me in early January 2013, as a ITU
+conference in Dubay discussing Internet Governance
+(<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Telecommunication_Union#World_Conference_on_International_Telecommunications_2012_.28WCIT-12.29">World
+Conference on International Telecommunications - WCIT-12</a>) had just
+ended,
+<a href="http://www.digi.no/kommentarer/2012/12/18/tvil-om-usas-rolle-pa-teletoppmote">reportedly
+in chaos</a> when USA walked out of the negotiations and 25 countries
+including Norway refused to sign the new treaty. It seemed
+reasonable to believe talks were still going on a few weeks later.
+Norway was represented at the ITU meeting by two authorities, the
+<a href="http://www.nkom.no/">Norwegian Communications Authority</a>
+and the <a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/dep/sd/">Ministry of
+Transport and Communications</a>. This might be the reason the letter
+was sent to the ministry. As I was unable to find the document in the
+mail journal of any Norwegian UN mission, I asked the ministry who had
+sent the document to the ministry, and was told that it was the Deputy
+Permanent Representative with the Permanent Mission of Norway in
+Geneva.</p>
+
+<p>Three years later, I was still curious about the content of that
+document, and again asked for a copy, believing the negotiation was
+over now. This time
+<a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/kopi_av_dokumenter_i_sak_2012914">I
+asked both the Ministry of Transport and Communications as the
+receiver</a> and
+<a href="https://mimesbronn.no/request/brev_om_internet_governance_og_p">asked
+the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva as the sender</a> for a
+copy, to see if they both agreed that it should be withheld from the
+public. The ministry upheld its rejection quoting the same law
+reference as before, while the permanent mission rejected it quoting a
+different clause
+(<a href="http://lovdata.no/lov/2006-05-19-16/§20">offentleglova § 20
+letter b</a>), claiming that they were required to keep the
+content of the document from the public because it contained
+information given to Norway with the expressed or implied expectation
+that the information should not be made public. I asked the permanent
+mission for an explanation, and was told that the document contained
+an account from a meeting held in the Pentagon for a limited group of NATO
+nations where the organiser of the meeting did not intend the content
+of the meeting to be publicly known. They explained that giving me a
+copy might cause Norway to not get access to similar information in
+the future and thus hurt the future foreign interests of Norway. They
+also explained that the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was not
+the author of the document, they only got a copy of it, and because of
+this had not listed it in their mail journal.</p>
+
+<p>Armed with this
+knowledge I asked the Ministry to reconsider and asked who was the
+author of the document, now realising that it was not same as the
+"sender" according to Ministry of Transport and Communications. The
+ministry upheld its rejection but told me the name of the author of
+the document. According to
+<a href="https://www.regjeringen.no/no/aktuelt/unga69_rapport1/id2001204/">a
+government report</a> the author was with the Permanent Mission of
+Norway in New York a bit more than a year later (2014-09-22), so I
+guessed that might be the office responsible for writing and sending
+the report initially and
+<a href="https://www.mimesbronn.no/request/mote_2012_i_pentagon_om_itu">asked
+them for a copy</a> but I was obviously wrong as I was told that the
+document was unknown to them and that the author did not work there
+when the document was written. Next, I asked the Permanent Mission of
+Norway in Geneva and the Foreign Ministry to reconsider and at least
+tell me who sent the document to Deputy Permanent Representative with
+the Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva. The Foreign Ministry also
+upheld its rejection, but told me that the person sending the document
+to Permanent Mission of Norway in Geneva was the defence attaché with
+the Norwegian Embassy in Washington. I do not know if this is the
+same person as the author of the document.</p>
+
+<p>If I understand the situation correctly, someone capable of
+inviting selected NATO nations to a meeting in Pentagon organised a
+meeting where someone representing the Norwegian defence attaché in
+Washington attended, and the account from this meeting is interpreted
+by the Ministry of Transport and Communications to expose Norways
+negotiating position, negotiating strategies and similar regarding the
+ITU negotiations on Internet Governance. It is truly amazing what can
+be derived from mere meta-data.</p>
+
+<p>I wonder which NATO countries besides Norway attended this meeting?
+And what exactly was said and done at the meeting? Anyone know?</p>
projects / homepage.git / blobdiff